She gazed through the round window, watching a blackened kettle brighten beneath his brush. Soap frothed, piled like summer clouds, floated in the sink like small reflections of clouds. “Have you known him long?” she asked. “Mr. Fairchild, I mean?”
“I didn’t know him any until a couple of days ago. I was in that park where that statue is, down close to the docks, and he came by and we were talking and I wasn’t working then, and so he got me this job. I can do any kind of work,” he added with quiet pride.
“You can? You don’t live in New Orleans, do you?”
“Indiana,” he told her. “I’m just traveling around.”
“Gee,” the niece said, “I wish I were a man, like that. I bet it’s all right, going around wherever you want to. I guess I’d work on ships. That’s what I’d do.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “That’s where I learned to cook — on a ship.”
“Not—”
“Yes’m, to the Mediterranean ports, last trip.”
“Gee,” she said again. “You’ve seen lots, haven’t you? What would you do, when the ship got to different places? You didn’t just stay on the ship, did you?”
“No’m, I went to a lot of towns. Away from the coast.”
“To Paris, I bet.”
“No’m,” he admitted, with just a trace of apology, “I never seemed to get to Paris. But next—”
“I knew you wouldn’t,” she said quickly. “Say, men just go to Europe because they say European women are fast, don’t they? Are European women like that? promiscuous; like they say?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I nev—”
“I bet you never had time to fool with them, did you? That’s what I’d do: I wouldn’t waste my time on women, if I went to Europe. They make me sick — these little college boys in their balloon pants, and colored stickers all over their suitcases, bringing empty cognac bottles back with ’em and snickering about French girls and trying to make love to you in French. Say, I bet where you went you could see a lot of mountains and little cute towns on the side of ’em, and old gray walls and ruined castles on the mountains, couldn’t you?”
“Yes’m. And one place was high over a lake. It was blue as. . blue like. . washing water,” he said finally. “Water with bluing in it. They put bluing in the water when they wash clothes, country folks do,” he explained.
“I know,” she said impatiently. “Were there mountains around it?”
“The Alps Mountains, and little white boats on it no bigger than water beetles. You couldn’t see ’em moving: you only could see the water kind of spreading out to each side. The water would keep on spreading out until it pretty near touched both shores whenever a boat passed. And you could lay on your back on the mountain where I was and watch eagles flying around way up above the water, until sunset. Then the eagles all went back to the mountains.” David gazed through the port, past her sober tanned face mooned there by the round window, not even seeing it any more, seeing instead his washing-powder-colored lake and his lonely mountains and eagles against the blue.
“And then the sun would go down, and sometimes the mountains would look like they were on fire all over. That was the ice and snow on ’em. It was pretty at night too,” he added simply, scrubbing again at his pots.
“Gee,” she said with hushed young longing. “And that’s what you get for being a woman. I guess I’ll have to get married and have a bunch of kids.” She watched him with her grave opaque eyes. “No, I’m not, either,” she said fiercely, “I’m going to make Hank let me go there next summer. Can’t you go back then, too? Say, you fix it up to go back then, and I’ll go home and see Hank about it and then I’ll come over. Josh’ll want to come too, most likely, and you’ll know where the places are. Can’t you do that?”
“I guess I could,” he answered slowly. “Only—”
“Only what?”
“Nothing,” he said at last.
“Well, you fix it up to go, then. I’ll give you my address, and you can write me when to start and where to meet you. . I guess I couldn’t go over on the same boat you’ll be on, could I?”
“I’m afraid not,” he answered.
“Well, it’ll be all right, anyway. Gee, David, I wish we could go tomorrow, don’t you? I wonder if they let people swim in that lake? But I don’t know, maybe it’s nicer to be away up there where you were, looking down at it. Next summer—” Her unseeing eyes rested on his brown busy head while her spirit lay on its belly above Maggiore, watching little white boats no bigger than water beetles, and the lonely arrogant eagles aloft in blue sunshot space surrounded and enclosed by mountains cloud brooded, taller than God.
David dried his pots and pans and hung them along the bulkhead in a burnished row. He washed out his dishcloths and hung them to dry upon the wall. The niece watched him.
“It’s too bad you have to work all the time,” she said with polite regret.
‘‘I’m all done, now.”
“Let’s go swimming, then. It ought to be good now. I’ve just been waiting for somebody to go in with me.”
“I can’t,” he answered. “I’ve got a little more work I better do now.”
“I thought you were through. Will it take you very long? If it won’t, let’s go in then: I’ll wait for you.”
“Well, you see, I don’t go in during the day. I go in early in the morning, before you are up.”
“Say, I hadn’t thought of that. I bet it’s fine then, isn’t it? How about calling me in the morning, when you are ready to go in? Will you?” He hesitated again and she added, watching him with her sober opaque eyes, “Is it because you don’t like to go swimming with girls? That’s all right: I won’t bother you. I swim pretty well. You won’t have to keep me from drowning.”
“It ain’t that,” he answered lamely. “You see, I–I haven’t got a bathing suit,” he blurted.
“Oh, is that all? I’ll get my brother’s for you. It’ll be kind of tight, but I guess you can wear it. I’ll get it for you now, if you’ll go in.”
“I can’t,” he repeated. “I’ve still got some cleaning up to do.”
“Well—” She got to her feet. “If you won’t, then. But in the morning? you promised, you know.”
“All right,” he agreed.
“I’ll try to be awake. But you just knock on the door — the second door on the right of the passage, you know.” She turned on her silent bare feet. She paused again. “Don’t forget you promised,” she called back. Then her flat boy’s body was gone, and David turned again to his work.
The niece went on up the deck and turned the corner of the deckhouse on her silent feet just in time to see Jenny rout and disperse an attack by Mr. Talliaferro. She stepped back beyond the corner, unseen.
* * *
Boldness. But Fairchild had said you can’t be bold with words. How, then, to be bold? To try to do anything without words, it seemed to him, was like trying to grow grain without seed. Still, Fairchild had said. . who knew people, women. .
Mr. Talliaferro prowled restlessly, having the boat to himself practically, and presently he found Jenny sleeping placidly in a chair in the shade of the deckhouse. Blond and pink and soft in sleep was Jenny: a passive soft abandon fitting like water to the sagging embrace of the canvas chair. Mr. Talliaferro envied that chair with a surge of fire like an adolescent’s in his dry bones; and while he stood regarding the sprawled awkwardness of Jenny’s sweet thighs and legs and one little soiled hand dangling across her hip, that surge of imminence and fire and desolation seemed to lightly distend all his organs, leaving a thin salty taste on his tongue. Mr. Talliaferro glanced quickly about the deck.
He glanced quickly about the deck, then feeling rather foolish, but strangely and exuberantly young, he came near and bending he traced with his hand lightly the heavy laxness of Jenny’s body through the canvas which supported her. Then he thought terribly that someone was watching him, and he sprang erect with an alarm like a nausea, staring at Jenny’s closed eyes. But her eyelids lay shadowed, a faint transparent blue upon her cheeks, and her breath was a little regular wind come recently from off fresh milk. But he still felt eyes upon him and he stood acutely, trying to think of something to do, some casual gesture to perform. A cigarette his chaotic brain supplied at last. But he had none, and still spurred by this need, he darted quickly away and to his cabin.