It no longer has anything to do with us when it has been stolen and taken in two yellow suitcases to distant South America.
No sooner had the ship left harbor than Maud started flirting with passengers of various nationalities. And, as the sea was terribly rough throughout the passage, Tito hardly ever left his cabin.
Someone told him that the best way of getting rid of seasickness was to eat nothing. So Tito ate nothing.
Others advised him to eat. So he ate.
An elderly, very religious lady gave him some anti-hysteria water from Santa Maria Novella. He drank it.
A rastaquero, a self-made man from the pampas on his way home, recommended anchovies. So he tried anchovies. Someone advised him to lie on his back, so he lay on his back. Someone else told him to lie on his face, so he lay on his face.
As none of these things did him any good, he sent for the ship’s doctor.
“Doctor,” he said, “what do you do when you’re seasick?”
“I throw up,” he said.
The doctor, like all traders with a continually changing clientèle, was skeptical and indifferent.
The talkative Maud shone among passengers of the oddest nationalities on the promenade deck. A Bolivian diplomat wanted to know whether her continual infidelities did not drive Tito to distraction. She replied that in the matter of infidelity men’s hearts were like patent leather shoes. Everything depended on the first time. If they didn’t crack then, there was no danger of its happening later.
She was also observed disappearing into various first class cabins but, as this was of no interest to anyone but Tito, who at the time was more concerned with his stomach than with his heart, there is no point in our lingering over such minor episodes of transatlantic travel.
When they crossed the equator Maud danced, and received a great deal of applause and many presents.
Meanwhile Tito lay prone on the bed in his cabin, eating anchovies dipped in anti-hysteria water from Santa Maria Novella.
And over the sea the moon was like a match lit behind a porcelain plate.
One stormy night a Wagnerian tenor who was as blond as a camel and had sung en todos los grandes teatros de Europa y de America, pressed his two hands melodramatically to his corazon and murmured to Maud that he would be willing to spend toda la vida on the ocean with her, because jamás como en esta noche el perfume del mar me ha parecido tan dulce.
One day the rastaquero from the pampas, seeing that the care and attention he lavished on Tito were all in vain, for the poor fellow still had el sueño agitado, la lengua sucia y el color pajizo, turned his attention to Maud.
The rastaquero seemed to her to be a more worthwhile object for her attention than the Wagnerian tenor, who had told her frankly that the idea of giving a mujer a centavo had never passed through his cabeza, for las mujeres considered that granting him a capricho or, as they say in Paris, a béguin, was a great honor.
Maud had long since passed the stage of indulging in béguins or caprichos.
The rastaquero, for the benefit of those who have never come across persons such as he, was a typical parvenu, of the type that can euphemistically be described as a country gentleman. He kept his well-filled wallet in an inside pocket of his waistcoat, almost against his skin, and he wore cotton pants with a ribbon at the bottom that he wound five times round his ankles. His eyes looked different ways, so that he reminded you of one of those road signs that point to two different countries in opposite directions. If he had not been so rich he would have made an excellent supervisor in a big store, because with those eyes of his he seemed to be looking all ways at once.
As his cabin was next door to the music room, Maud was able to dance for his exclusive benefit to the sound of a slow waltz that seemed to come from a distant island, and as a token of his appreciation he allowed her to choose a small souvenir of the voyage from the contents of the wallet he kept hidden in the inside pocket of his waistcoat, almost against his skin.
As one courtesy deserves another, Maud allowed him to put his hand between her dress and her skin and help himself to what he wanted.
The notes of the slow waltz came from the music room while the ship sailed southwest at a steady speed of sixteen knots.
A few hours later when the rastaquero went back to bed alone, he found a hairpin in the bedclothes that preserved all Maud’s perfume, all the exquisite perfume of her violet crêpe-de-Chine lingerie decorated with fine organdy pleats.
Tito was well aware that Cocaine was paying instructive visits to various cabins. But now his jealousy was painless. Let me explain. Jealousy was at work inside him, but it was like an unthreaded pulley that went on revolving without starting up the machinery of pain and passion. When you feel ill, even if it’s only from seasickness, you no longer feel moral anguish. I should like to establish a new kind of therapy, curing illnesses of the mind by means of physical illness.
The idea would be to cure remorse by inoculation with influenza, jealousy by malaria germs, love by injections of spirochaetes. I think that is the direction in which the medicine of the future will have to move.
The ship called at Rio de Janeiro. As soon as Tito felt terra firma beneath his feet he wanted to go on to Buenos Aires by train, but when he heard that Cocaine was going by sea he agreed to go back into the lion’s den. He emerged, after five more days of seasickness at a speed of eighteen knots, when they arrived at Buenos Aires.
We shall not describe the landing, or the impressive sight of the Avenida de Mayo. All those who have been to Buenos Aires will remember it, and those unfortunate people who have not should be ashamed of themselves and go there immediately.
Nor shall we describe the moderate success enjoyed by Maud. Her beauty was declining, but the spotlights at the big music halls and the witchcraft of powder, rouge and eye-pencil ensured that she was still a desirable creature.
After dancing for a few months at Buenos Aires she went on to Montevideo, accompanied by Tito, Pierina and the dog.
She stayed at Montevideo for three months and at Rosario for a fortnight.
A paint manufacturer proposed to her at Bahia Blanca, and the head of a big canned meat factory fell passionately in love with her at Fray Bentos.
A year after they landed in South America she signed a profitable contract with the Casino at the smart seaside resort of Mar del Plata, one of the most luxurious spas in South America.
The half million francs extracted from Madame Kalantan Ter-Gregorianz’s precious family memories were nearly exhausted. Tito’s health was declining. The everlasting peregrination from hotel to hotel and from one city to the next, noting how suitors and lovers sprang up everywhere in Cocaine’s path, took an increasing toll of his nerves and impoverished his blood.
He had come to South America hoping that good theatrical contracts and the money he had earned by cleansing Kalantan’s past would assure him of exclusive access to Maud’s body. But the rastaquero whose acquaintance she had made on the voyage out, the greasy face of that country gentleman with his inexhaustible wallet and robust passions, followed them to the various cities they visited.
Cocaine distributed her favors both on expensive and on gratuitous terms. Now that she was aware of her swift physical decline, she sought out pleasure without wasting a day or missing an opportunity; she gave herself to men who turned out to be unworthy of her generosity.