The sun had melted into the shape of a keyhole on the horizon, and the Island Trader moved as though enclosed by the sea and the dull beauty of the sky, with only a glimpse, through that open door, of the outside, real world o£ fire.
A shout of the mate's voice and the contest ended, abruptly the feet were withdrawn, to reappear a moment later in the door frame where Fuller paused to press them into shoes. — He callin me, Fuller said. — Mahn, I hope he not goin to be vexed again. This was because Fuller sat next to the mate, at the end of the table, at meals. Though immense bowls of mashed potatoes, platters of meat and fish, chops, croquettes, and many vegetables were served, the mate's diet never varied from pigs' feet, cooked roots, and banana chips. This'choice was all that reached Fuller, unless he interrupted the silent prandial industry beside him to ask for something else. When the mate was vexed, Fuller dared not hazard this interruption. He did his best with what was left in the three serving bowls, when the plate beside him had been loaded with pigs' feet, cooked roots, and banana chips. Such fare was difficult, for Fuller had no teeth. He had sold them in Tampa, Florida, to a rising young buck with social aspirations, left behind, like Crassus below, admonished, — Say, did the taste of gold make thy mouth good?
In response to the darkening sky, the sea changed its surface from glass to marble, the Breche rose marble of Italy reflecting the broken color of the sun, and losing that, to the gray-white Piastraccia, reflecting light from nowhere, veined with shadows.
The sun sank over the sharp edge of the marble sea. The shout sounded again from above. Nevertheless, Fuller paused there at the rail for a moment, that momentary sense of something lost, that sudden moment of emptiness which pervades everywhere the instant the sun has disappeared.
There was trouble in Tibieza. No one there wanted it. It came from the capital, up on the central plateau, where brisk weather encouraged that troubled intelligence necessary for revolution. It was all very well for them to run about the hills firing old Springfield '06 rifles, ponderous brass French Hotchkiss machine-guns whose clips jammed after the first few explosions, heavy American water-cooled Brownings and delicate Italian Bredas: that stock of arms which has been floating about Hispanic America for decades, whereabouts totally unknown until necessity produces it with revolutionary magic in any one of the sister republics. All very well for the educated people up on the plateau to blow each other to bits, but for Tibieza. . except that Tibieza de Dios, in fact its only reason for existence, was a port, and one of few. Therefore it must be taken. First, it was necessary to settle who held it. This was arranged one early morning, when three men suspected of belonging to the revolutionary party, and known to have participated in shady deals (an easily made and always justifiable charge) were shot over their morning coffee, in reprisal for removal of the local priest who had been found garishly made up with lipstick, and castrated, sitting on one of the petrified sponge-like rocks at the end of the seawall in an attitude of repose, with a hole in one side of his head where an ear had been, and out the other.
After that, even the veranda card game moved indoors.
The cathedral, in a state of such genial collapse that it looks never to have been built stone by stone, its arches chipped and smooth so that no one stone stands away from another, its saints armless and headless waiting, smoothed and quietened by the rain, in open niches, its towers hanging heavy with the silent bells, stands to one side of the central plaza, behind a pitted concrete wall. These pits, obviously due to poor contracting years ago, were now circled with chalk, and scribbled beside them, "Calibre.45 para los niños," though actually no children were known to have been blown up in some time. Across that plaza stood the Hotel Bella Vista, girt with a rickety balcony, and leaning, as though rickets were familiar throughout its frame, like a hipshot elder, toward the sea. There were a few large trees in the plaza, which was surfaced with concrete. Just around the corner, toward the beach, was the office of Doctor Espinach, whose sign told that he had been educated in the United States of America.
It was upon this strip of beach that Otto's mighty airplane careered to an ungainly stop. The passenger who had caused this aerodynamic embarrassment, by riding outside instead of in, was so cold that he remained fixed to the tail assembly as the others got out to see why their giant had hesitated, what engine of human frailty had interfered with the miracle so preternatural that they took it for granted. The other passengers were a fairly dismal group, except for a handsome lady with an armload of orchids, and a small man whose clothes bulged suspiciously, both of whom seemed delighted to be put down right where they were. The fresh-air passenger had boarded in New Orleans, so he said, in Spanish, for that was all he spoke, with lips which were the only thing about him that he could move. — We would have seen you when we stopped in Mexico, said the co-pilot, who allowed miracles only a reasonable breadth. — Dios. . dios. . said the passenger. The plane might have waited until this problem was disposed of, but its arrival had caused some consternation, and delight, in the town. At that moment seven carloads of men were racing toward it, believing it had brought arms from the capital. Two of the cars were loaded with revolutionaries, four with loyalists, the last undecided, but armed. All stopped behind the dunes. Before he knew what was happening, the co-pilot was knocked awry with a bullet in his calf. He and the pilot consulted in decisive profanity, and a minute later the airplane roared down the beach and veered away into the sky, slightly cockeyed, its topside passenger so occupied holding on that he did not raise even a paralyzed arm in farewell.
The proprietor of the Bella Vista was a man with a heavy bunch of keys which rattled against his thick thigh as he strode up and down the first-floor veranda, avoiding the place over the dining-room door where the boards had gone through one night during a visit from United States Marines. He wondered what the airplane's mission had been, what all the shooting was about, and it was oafish-ness rather than courage that permitted him to expose himself as he was doing. All he saw, however, was a draggled figure in gray flannel crossing the empty plaza toward his door. Everything was silent but for a distant hum of song, punctuated by thuds, from the direction of the Baptist Church where a prayer meeting was in full sway. They were using their new bass drum to rousing effect, its clamor enhanced by the resonance of the roof, which was pleached of flattened oil tins.
Past the sign of Doctor Espinach, a tempting swinging target with three holes in it already, he came on looking slightly dazed, to be given a room with one window facing toward the sea, hung with forlorn curtains in the middle of a sagging string. Two doors led to nowhere, and the louvers in the outside door were broken. The wire to the electric bulb swung free on the wall. The sink gurgled like the plumbing on a ship. There were large pictures of blond girls on the wall, one holding daffodils for Carr's English Biscuits, the other, suffering a running jaundice brought on by a leak in the ceiling, presented a tray of Canada Dry. With a cigarette, he lay back to consider that modest portion of the ceiling which was painted, just over the bed, and his own, a swelling weight on his chest where the wallet lay empty of anything but uncounted bills. He had escaped twice, this second time from the certain difficulties he would have had upon reaching his destination and being asked to produce identity papers and a visa. He had escaped, where, he did not know, he did not think, he had not thought since Christmas Eve, and when thought or memory intruded he forced it off with calculation drawn to one purpose: to keep moving, with money no object but to spend his way through it, to keep moving and live it through, without looking back. He reached out on the floor and drew the chamber pot nearer, to use as an ashtray.