Джон Макдональд - The Last One Left

Raoul Kelly survived the invasion and survived the imprisonment on the Isle of Pines, and was exchanged for medicines, and could not find Francisca. After she had heard of Enrique’s death, she had packed and gone away. They thought she was working somewhere.

He found her working as a waitress in a café in Homestead, Florida, merry and grinning and quick at her work, popular with the owners and the customers. To his surprise she remembered him at once, but she did not care to talk to him. He lost her, and then found her again, working as a live-in maid for an elderly couple in Miami Shores. She was friendlier to him than before, but not quite enough to make him feel welcome.

Six months ago he had looked her up again, and had traced her to this place. And, by now, she had been working for Crissy Harkinson for almost a year. She greeted him warmly, and he had fallen into the habit of coming to see her whenever he could.

She seemed always in good spirits, but he learned that it was forbidden to talk about anything which had happened to her before she had taken the first job. She would become very angry with him and make him leave. So he played the game on her terms. He knew the pitfalls inherent in any amateur psychiatric analysis. But it seemed to him that because she had found one identity, one existence, untenable, she had become quite another person.

Seeking clues to this new person, when he was alone in the little apartment over the garages, when the Harkinson woman had summoned her on the intercom, he would look through her belongings seeking the clues as to what she had become. Aside from her necessary identification papers and permits, the only personal things she had were some photographs of her taken with the other waitresses at the café, arms around waists, smiling in the sunshine, and the few little presents he had brought her. He was touched by the small furniture of her existence — sensible little cotton mesh briefs from Sears, simple and durable little brassieres from J. C. Penney, bright cheap skirts and blouses, supermarket cosmetics, and the blue and white maid uniforms the Harkinson woman had her buy. It gave him the saddened feeling of inventorying the possessions of the dead.

He knew her education had been good. From the things Enrique had told him, he knew she had been sensitive, imaginative and thoughtful. But this ’Cisca was a merry little thing, and her Spanish was that of the shop girls. She prattled about the plots of the television she watched, the fan magazines she read. He took her to the beaches, to outdoor movies, and to the back country to fish in the drainage canals. Being with her was undemanding fun. And it was a relief after the demands of his work. He had developed contacts which gave him reliable information about developments in Cuba and infiltration and subversion in other Latin American countries. He was doing news coverage and feature articles in this field for a Miami paper, and freelancing for Spanish language newspapers and periodicals in Florida and New York. Lately he had been doing magazine articles evaluating the total situation and attempting to anticipate trends and policies. As he attempted to be both thorough and scrupulously honest, his work had begun to attract attention on a wider scale. It was almost a blessing that his work fell into an area which was taboo insofar as ’Cisca was concerned.

When the early spring had brought the first softness in the Florida air, he had become more aware of a problem which he had been trying to ignore. On the beaches her slender thighs were golden, impossibly smooth and unflawed. There was a special and sensual intricacy of curve and pattern and texture in the way her mouth was made. The ivoried eyelid and the dense curve of black lashes slid down over the healthy gleam of eye with a meaningful perfection that seemed magical. At any casual and accidental brush of her body against his, he could feel his heart bumping against the hard wall of his chest. His jaws would ache, and he could believe the touch had left a visible weal on his flesh.

He could not sleep as well or eat with as good appetite as previously, yet he knew that any attempt to seduce her would be an unthinkable crime. Not only was he under the obligation of the request Enrique had made the night before he was killed, but he knew that only a selfish monster would, for his own need and pleasure, take the chance of smashing the adjustment she had made to the world. Soldier rape had driven her into the shadows, and she had found a way out. But quite evidently the new personality had no memory of rape, pregnancy or miscarriage. The physical act could not help but trigger the memories and destroy the new structure of personality.

And so he endured, sometimes half sick with desire, knowing it would be far easier to stay away from her, yet feeling the need to be with her and thus punish himself for his animality.

Two months ago, in mid-March, she had solved the whole matter with a blitheness and directness that disconcerted him as much as it pleased him. He had taken her bay fishing on her afternoon off, and then they had gone to a place which would broil their catch for them and which served cold draught beer in big chilled steins. Then he had to hurry her home because she was alarmed that she might miss the beginning of what she declared was her third favorite television program.

The show did not intrigue him. He sat on the couch, dulled by the afternoon on the water, by the beer and food. He fought to stay awake. Then he was awakened by the sudden warm weight of her on his lap, her arms around his neck. The set was off, the room dark. A weak lamp in her bedroom made a path of light out through the half-open bedroom door. There was a nervous edge to her small laughter, and an anxious quaver in her voice as she said in her butchered English, “What kind of boyfriend I’m telling Rosita I’m having, eh? Sotch a trouble her boy is giving her, I tell you, every minute. I see you looking to me with the quick little eye, eh? I wait, wait, wait. Nothings, eh? I am loving you, Kelleeeee, something tough. But ’Cisca is maybe a little scare now you theenk — I’m a bad theeng.”

As he held her, turned her to find her lips, telling her she was not a bad theeng, but indeed a very fine, a very splendid theeng, he realized with a shock and exultation there was nothing between the warmth of her and the clasp of his hands upon her but a wispy sheerness of short nightie.

She was shaky and nervous, and quite unschooled in her role, but eager in a rather dogged and determined way, and intensely inquisitive. They were together many times before quite suddenly, a week later, it began to be right for her; and once she knew what was sought, and could identify the earlier warnings, it became vastly right, and after many times when she indulged herself to the point of drugging herself with pure and prolonged sensation, she quite suddenly and earnestly set about learning him as completely as she had learned herself, asking intent little questions about how this was for him, and that, and how near was he now.

During this past month, the second month of their lovemaking, they had gradually established agreeable physical patterns. Yet he felt a sense of loss he could not quite identify. This supposedly ultimate intimacy was less than the intimacy he had sought. She was as merry and happy as before. At the beach he had taught her an efficient crawl. In the bays he had taught her how to manage a spinning reel and play a fish. This bed business was apparently, to her, another activity they could share. She had a casual and willing acceptance of him whenever the time and the place was suitable, and she would talk of other things at times, and then become intent when passion began to become more immediate. Pleasure made her chuckle. And she took quite an obvious satisfaction in their being able to make love quite skillfully. She would tell him, with a little shading of regret, the moment she realized she would not be able to finish, then would settle herself to making it as enjoyable for him as she could, sometimes adding mischievous innovations.