“I’m sorry,” Beecher said. “I’ve got some letters to write.”
“Oh, I say! They can’t be all that pressing. Do come! It sounds great fun.”
“No, I’m sorry.”
“Just as you say. But I thought you Americans loved a fling. My American friends in London do, I can promise you. They don’t consider it a night until dawn, if you know what I mean.”
Beecher made no comment on this. They drove on in silence toward Mirimar, following a curving road that swept down the coastline into the village. The reason he had given Lynch was partially true; he did have letters to write, perfunctory notes to a sister and friends at home. But more importantly, he didn’t like Don Willie, and he didn’t intend to suspend or qualify that feeling for the sake of a plateful of food and a few free drinks.
“What does Don Willie do here in Spain?” Lynch asked him. He was hunched like an awkward bird in Beecher’s Citroen, bony knees drawn up to clear the dashboard. “What’s the name of his villa? The Paloma something-or-other?”
“La Paloma Negra. The Black Dove. He’s in the construction business,” Beecher said.
“I understand it’s a show place. He told me he built it a year or so after the war. He’s practically a native, isn’t he?”
“He’s been here fifteen years, I think.”
“I’m sorry you won’t come along with me. He told me there’ll be flamenco dancers and fireworks, and tons of people. I gather the construction business is doing well.”
“When Don Willie came here the Spaniards were starving. Land was going for a few pesetas an acre. He did all right.”
Lynch glanced at him curiously. “You sound as if you don’t like him.”
“I was just commenting on economic facts. The party will be a good one. He enjoys doing things on a big scale.”
“That should make him popular, I’d imagine.”
Beecher realized that Lynch was pumping him for information. He didn’t mind this; it wasn’t important one way or the other. But he had a certain native reserve about announcing his own opinions, so he merely said, “Yes, everyone enjoys his parties.” This was true enough, of course, but people enjoyed them for differing reasons. Some liked the free food and drink, the fireworks and gypsy dancers, and a view of the sea from terraces cut high into the mountains. But others went to laugh at their host, for Don Willie was in many ways a ridiculous sort of man. His bearing and enthusiasms suggested a paragon of Prussian values; in appearance he was tall and beefy and powerful, and he wore black leather overcoats in bad weather and kept a pair of vicious police dogs. He was elated by drums and parades, and spearing fish underwater. But behind this blatantly masculine façade trembled the anxious heart of a timid girl. At least it seemed this way to Beecher. Don Willie was pathetically eager to be liked, and painfully sensitive to real or fancied slights. He suffered over his “entertainments” like a nervous bride. The morning after one of his fiestas he would come shyly to the village to sample the gossip, to sift grains of truth from the polite chaff. Had the mayonnaise been too oily? Was there enough to eat and drink? Was it true that so-and-so had become ill after leaving? Had this been his cook’s fault? And the flamenco? He had rehearsed the gypsies like soldiers, but still they had danced too long...
But if everything had gone well, and the praise seemed not only fulsome but honest, Don Willie would simper like a pleased housewife, cheeks glowing and eyes sparkling with relief and happiness. Then he would confess the fears that had gripped him: that the police might not grant a permit for the fireworks; that the gypsies would show up drunk; that the delicacies ordered from Gibraltar would be stopped by Customs — and all the while sipping tiny glasses of Dutch gin, and bubbling with pride because he had circumvented these disasters.
Once a terrible thing had happened to Don Willie in the village. While sitting with friends on the terrace of the Bar Central, a small, poorly dressed man had attacked him violently and suddenly, raining impotent blows against his broad beefy chest and shoulders. Don Willie had stared at him for an instant in hideous disbelief, and then had leaped to his feet and fled across the plaza. From there he had run down the narrow street that led to his villa, eyes rolling like a stallion in panic, leather coattails flapping madly. That same night he had flown his airplane to Madrid, and had spent the rest of the summer attending to his various interests in Barcelona and Valencia.
Meanwhile the little man had been taken into custody by the police. He claimed that Don Willie had murdered his wife and children in a concentration camp during the war. He was a Czech. There was nothing that could be done about any of this, of course. The police let him go and told him to behave himself in the future. For several days he stayed in the village, a picture of impotent misery, a study in shock and anguish. A French family was kind to him. He sat at their table weeping and smoking cheap cigarettes. They told him nothing could be done about it. They advised him to forget the whole business. He left the village a week or so later, and everyone was vaguely relieved to see him go, even the French family.
As they approached the Pension Lorita, Lynch said, “It’s curious, isn’t it, how time softens up wartime memories and feelings,” and it was as if he had picked a thought from Beecher’s mind. “Take this Don Willie chap, for example. I dare say he was one of Hitler’s finest, and a dozen years ago I wouldn’t have shaken his hand for money. But now, all in all, he seems a decent enough sort. I imagine he took orders like the rest of us did. You can’t really hold it against a man for fighting for his country, now can you?”
“Maybe not,” Beecher said.
“You were in it, I imagine.”
“I was a flyer.”
“Dangerous racket, that.” Lynch smiled warmly. “Lucky to get out in one piece. Well, thanks awfully for the golf. I enjoyed it immensely.”
“Not at all.”
“Oh, by the way,” Lynch said, after opening the car door. “There was a girl with Don Willie. Dark-haired little thing, quite attractive but rather moody, I thought. Do you know her?”
“Yes, her name is Ilse. She’s Austrian.”
“And she lives with him?” Lynch’s eyes were bright with interest.
“That’s right.”
“His mistress, eh? Shouldn’t have guessed it from the way she acted. Not very lively, if you know what I mean. A chap told me they call her the Black Dove. What’s the gen on that?”
If Lynch had asked someone else about Don Willie’s friend, Beecher wondered why he was questioning him too. But he said, “It’s a play on words. Spaniards appreciate that sort of thing. They can discuss Don Willie’s villa and his mistress under one heading. They can ring some funny changes that way.”
“They don’t approve of her then?”
Beecher shifted gears as a mild hint. “I don’t know anything about that,” he said.
“Well thanks awfully again for the golf,” Lynch said and climbed out of the car. “Cheerio, old man.”
Beecher watched him stride up the palm-flanked pathway to the Lorita, his long sinewy legs covering the distance greedily, and his blue-and-white skullcap flickering among the lower branches of the trees like some silly but tranquil bird. Beecher smiled and drove back into the village.
2
Beecher sat at a table on the terrace of the Bar Central and ordered a brandy and soda. The café was crowded now, and a multilingual blur of conversation rose from the tables. Waiters and shoeshine boys moved swiftly about in response to the snap of fingers and clapping of hands. A burro brayed deafeningly in the streets, and the sound mingled with the despairing cry of a lottery vendor: “Hay venti-dos, Hay venti-dos... un numero suerte... un numero suerte...”