Now Id guess you to be a pharmacist? he said, leading him on.
The man had little English, but he understood that. He looked at OToole and twitched his nose. I thought he was not going to reply, but out the phrase came with all its international ambiguity, Import-export.
The priest for some reason began to speak of flying saucers. They swarmed over Argentina, so it seemed perhaps if we had clear nights we would observe one from the boat.
You really believe in them? I asked, and the old priest in his excitement abandoned his little English altogether.
He says, OToole explained, that you must have seen yesterdays Nación. Twelve cars were stopped coming from Mar del Plata to Buenos Aires on Monday night. When a flying saucer passes overhead a car-engine stops. The reverend father believes they have a divine origin. He translated almost as rapidly as the other talked. Recently a couple who were driving to Mar del Plata for the weekend were surrounded by a cloud. The car stopped and when the cloud dispersed they found they were in Mexico near Acapulco.
And he believed even that?
Sure. They all do. Once a week on the radio at Buenos Aires you can hear a programme all about flying saucers. Whos seen them that week and where. Our friend here says it may be the explanation of the flying house of Loretto. It was just picked up in Palestine, like those people on the road to Mar del Plata, and dumped down in Italy.
They served us a tough steak and afterwards oranges. The priest lapsed into silence and ate with a slight frown. Perhaps he felt in the presence of unbelievers. The business-man pushed back his plate of boiled vegetables and excused himself. I asked my neighbour what I had been longing to ask all through the meal: Are you married, Tooley?
Yeah. Sort of.
Youve got a daughter?
Sure. Why? Shes studying in London.
Shes in Katmandu, I said.
Katmandu! Why, thats Nepal.
The lines of anxiety deepened. Thats a hell of a thing to tell me, he said. How do you know? I told him about the Orient Express, but I left out any references to the young man. I said she was with a group of students, which was true when I last saw her.
He said, What can I do, Henry? Ive got my work. I cant go chasing round the world. Lucinda doesnt know the worry she gives.
Lucinda?
Her mother chose the name, he said with bitterness.
She calls herself Tooley now, like you.
She does? Thats new.
She seemed to have a great admiration for you.
I let her go to England, he said. I thought shed be safe there. But Katmandu! He pushed away the orange which he had so carefully sliced. Wheres she living? I doubt if theres a good hotel in the place. If theres a Hilton at least you know where you are. What shall I do, Henry?
Shell be all right, I said without conviction.
I could send a cable to the embassy I suppose theres an embassy. He got up abruptly and said, Ive got to take a leak.
I followed him out of the dining-room and down a corridor to the lavatory. There we stood side by side in silence. I noticed his lips moving perhaps, I thought, he was having an imaginary dialogue with his daughter. We left the lavatory together, and without a word he sat down on a bench on the port side of the deck. It was no longer raining, but it was grey and cold. There was nothing to see but some small trees growing at the edge of the dirty river, an occasional hut, and through the trees an expanse of brown scrub stretching to the horizon without a hill in sight.
Argentina? I asked to break the silence.
Its all Argentina, he said, till we reach the Paraguay river our last day. He took out a pocket-book and made some notes. They seemed to be figures. When he had finished he said, Excuse me. Its a record I keep.
Research?
Kind of a study Im making.
Your daughter told me you were in the CIA.
He turned on me his sad and anxious eyes. Shes a romantic, he said. She imagines things.
Is the CIA romantic?
A kid thinks so. I guess she saw some report of mine marked SECRET. Anythings secret that goes to a government department. Even malnutrition in Asunción.
I wasnt sure which of them I believed.
He asked me with an air of helplessness, What would you do, Henry?
I said, If you were really in the CIA you could probably find out how she was from one of your men there. You must have a man in Katmandu.
If I were really in the CIA, he said, I wouldnt want to get them mixed up in my private affairs. Have you any children, Henry?
No.
You are a lucky man. People talk about the age of reason. Theres no such thing. When you have a child you are condemned to be a father for life. They go away from you. You cant go away from them.
How would I know?
He brooded awhile, staring out over the scrub which never changed. The boat moved slowly against the strong flow to the sea. He said, My dad was all against the divorce for the sake of the child[244]. But there are limits to what a man can take she began to bring her boyfriends home. She was corrupting Lucinda.
She didnt succeed, I said.
Chapter 2
Next morning I missed OToole: he didnt appear at breakfast, and I looked for him in vain upon the deck. There was a heavy mist over the river which the sun took a long time to disperse. I felt a little lonely without my only contact. Everyone else was settling into a shipboard relation: even a few flirtations had begun. Two old men paced the deck fiercely, showing off their physical fitness. There was something obscene to me about their rapid regular walk they seemed to be indicating to all the women they passed that they were still in full possession of their powers. They wore slit jackets in imitation of the English they had probably bought them at Harrods and they reminded me of Major Charge.
Next morning I missed OToole: he didnt appear at breakfast, and I looked for him in vain upon the deck. There was a heavy mist over the river which the sun took a long time to disperse. I felt a little lonely without my only contact. Everyone else was settling into a shipboard relation: even a few flirtations had begun. Two old men paced the deck fiercely, showing off their physical fitness. There was something obscene to me about their rapid regular walk they seemed to be indicating to all the women they passed that they were still in full possession of their powers. They wore slit jackets in imitation of the English they had probably bought them at Harrods and they reminded me of Major Charge.
We had pulled up at a town called Rosario during the night (the voices, the shouts, the noise of chains had entered my dreams and made them dreams of violence some while before I woke), and now the river, when the mist rose, had changed its character. The water was sprinkled with islands, and there were cliffs and sand bars and strange birds piping and whispering beside us. I experienced far more the sensation of travel than when I passed all the crowded frontiers in the Orient Express. The river was low, and a rumour spread that we might not be able to get beyond Corrientes because the expected rains of winter had not come. A sailor on the bridge continually swung the lead[245]. We were within half a metre, the priest told me, of the ships draught, and he moved on to spread despondency further.
I began for the first time seriously to read Rob Roy, but the moving scenery was a distraction. I would begin a page while the shore was half a mile away, and when I lifted my eyes after a few paragraphs, it had approached within a stones throw or was it an island? At the beginning of the next page I looked again, and the water was now nearly a mile wide. A Czech sat down beside me. He spoke English and I was content to close Rob Roy and listen to him. He was a man who, having once known prison, enjoyed freedom to the full. His mother had died under the Nazis, his father under the Communists, he had escaped to Austria and married an Austrian girl. His training had been scientific, and when he decided to settle in the Argentine he had borrowed the money to start a plastics factory. He said, I looked around first in Brazil and Uruguay and Venezuela. One thing I noticed. Everywhere but in the Argentine they used straws for cold drinks. Not in the Argentine. I thought Id make my fortune. I made two million plastic straws and I couldnt sell a hundred. You want a straw? You can have two million for free[246]. There they are stacked in my factory today. The Argentines are so conservative they wont drink through a straw. I was very nearly bankrupt, I can tell you, he said happily.
So what do you do now?
He gave me a cheerful grin. He seemed one of the happiest men I had ever met. He had shed his past fears and failures and sorrows more completely than most of us can do. He said, I manufacture plastic material and let other fools risk their money on what they make with it.
The man with the rabbit nose went twitching by, grey as the grey morning.
He gets off at Formosa, I said.
Ah, a smuggler, the Czech said and laughed and went on his way.
I began to read Rob Roy again while the leadsman called the sounding. You must remember my father well; for as your own was a member of the mercantile house, you knew him from infancy. Yet you hardly saw him in his best days, before age and infirmity had quenched his ardent spirit of enterprise and speculation. I thought of my father lying in his bath in his clothes, just as later he lay in his Boulogne coffin, and giving me his impossible instructions, and I wondered why I felt an affection for him, while I felt none for my faultless mother who had brought me up with rigid care and found me my first situation in a bank. I had never built the plinth among the dahlias and before I left home I had thrown away the empty urn. Suddenly a memory came back to me of an angry voice. I had woken up, as I sometimes did, afraid that the house was on fire and that I had been abandoned. I had climbed out of bed and sat down at the top of the stairs, reassured by the voice below. It didnt matter how angry it was: it was there: I was not alone and there was no smell of burning. Go away, the voice said, if you want to, but Ill keep the child.
A low reasonable voice, which I recognized as my fathers, said, I am his father, and the woman I knew as my mother slammed back like a closing door, And whos to say that Im not his mother?
Good morning, OToole said, sitting down beside me. Did you sleep well?
Yes. And you?
He shook his head. I kept on thinking of Lucinda, he said. He took out his notebook and again began to write down his mysterious columns of numerals.
Research? I asked.
Oh, he said, this is not official. Making a bet on the ships run?
No, no. Im not a betting man. He gave me one of his habitual looks of melancholy and anxiety. Ive never told anyone about this, Henry, he said. It would seem kind of funny to most people, I guess. The fact is I count while Im pissing and then I write down how long Ive taken and what time it is. Do you realize we spend more than one whole day a year pissing?