Maggie Gee - Where are the Snows

‘I like sweet wine,’ she pouted.

‘I have something here I hope you will like.’

We played together for over an hour in the dark bedroom twelve feet above the spotless kitchen where Lucia was working, singing to herself, cursing the cat. Had she known, she’d have worried about my heart; too pure to worry about AIDS, and I am too greedy, and long past caring.

Lucia, I didn’t strain my heart. I was a grand seigneur all afternoon, lordly and idle, sitting there groaning with pleasure as her small mouth took me.

I paid her extra for being quite naked. Thump, thump in the kitchen below, Lucia’s great bare golden arms beating the sirloin water-thin. There would be olives, white butter, bread…

Somehow the image of my stately and virtuous cook got confused with my naughty girl. At the moment of exploding for the second time — the second, hear that! At seventy! Notice I use the verb ‘exploding’! So much sperm, it must be full of babies, Alex was wrong to despair of me — at the end of my second orgasm I was suddenly intensely sad. Below me, cutlery clinked like bells. In the distance, a real bell rang for the faithful.

Knives and forks and good fresh bread.

Who said that women should be good like bread?

Women should sit with you at table; love you, feed you, stay with you. I must have been thinking about my mother. Neither of my wives has ever done that.

– ‘Cover yourself,’ I said. I paid the girl double and she slipped away, suddenly ugly, obsequious.

Alex was never good like bread. She was good like shellfish or langues de chat or perfectly cold champagne in summer. I thought of Mary Brown. I suddenly thought of Mary Brown. Mary Brown was good like bread. A good wife, a good mother…

As I washed myself and applied cologne and smoothed my actor’s silver hair I started to think quite differently. A good woman can also be bad… I found it unimaginably exciting, conjuring up sweet Mary Brown, her frank pale eyes and thick pale skin and ample, accommodating body… I confess I defiled her memory.

(Three, I tell you! Don’t be depressed! It was my highest score in three times as many years, and tomorrow I quite expect a reaction. I shall be fragile, an invalid, and my good Lucia will bring me broth and offer to say a prayer for me. I shall nod, benign. I need to be shriven.)

Mary Brown. Not the one in my spasm. Mary Brown, the real live woman… at least, I hope she’s still alive. Ruth’s letter just said Matthew was ill.

Perhaps I should write to them. I recall that Mary was keen on letters, firing them off at my selfish wife, who probably never bothered to read them.

Oddly enough I did. So Mary didn’t waste her time. She wrote a good letter, an excellent letter. Good sort, good woman, good friend.

If it’s not too late, I’ll write.

Perhaps my money would help them. Did they have any money? I can’t remember. It takes a lot of money to help you die. It takes a lot of money to speed the passing — ease the passing, I must mean.

Matthew might already be dead, of course. I could offer her my sympathy. Later we would play at widow and widower…

No, don’t think me cynical. I’m just high-spirited, because of my score. The truth is, sometimes I get lonely. I’ve drinking partners, I’ve sexual partners, but sometimes I long to have — a friend.

Besides, I could talk to her about Alex.

Excellent. That’s the dinner-bell.

For a man like me, a whole clove of garlic, a side of sirloin, a bushel of peas, a ransacked glasshouse of fat tomatoes…

Open the second bottle, Lucia. A tired athlete needs his wine.

Good. I have been bad again.

Look on the bright side, at least we’re going, at least we’re getting out of this shithole!

Down below it’s pandemonium, the manager screaming at the maids, the cook raging at all of them because yesterday her mangy cat gave birth and she doesn’t want quarrels to upset the kittens — all seven of them billeted in the kitchen. Blind, disgusting, I know what they’re like, somebody ought to wring their necks, kill all babies before they’re born, strangle their mothers before they have them!

Everyone’s angry because we’re going. They hoped the rich gringos would be here for months, paying through the nose for dubious meat and rice in virulent pepper sauce — probably cat, that’s why the cook’s so protective — and telephone bills and taxi rides from the manager in his rattle-trap Daihatsu jeep. But no, it has all gone wrong, we’re going.

We thought everything was fixed at last. We had met the family recommended to us by the crippled miner in Concepción, their cousin, he said, as he asked us for money, this part of the world is riddled with cousins. The mother was pregnant and spoke only Quechua, or else she pretended, the cunning cow, but the father spoke Spanish fluently and he seemed to like us OK. No wonder he liked us, we’d paid him thousands of dollars in bribes to prove we were ‘serious’ — thousands of dollars for fucking nothing, for the bitch of a mother has changed her mind!

He had four daughters and said they couldn’t decide which one to let us adopt. Each time we visited we took more dollars. The children had uniform Indian faces, broad flat noses, unreadable eyes. Any one of them would have suited me. Of course they were alike, they were young, they were babies, what could it matter which one they chose!

Babies, babies. I came here to find one. Let’s be brutal, I came here to buy one, but it all went wrong. Now we have to get out.

This little town sprawls in a hole in the forest. It presses all round you, especially at night, repulsively fertile, crawling with life, the rubber trees oozing yellow milk… The rain-forest knew we were wasting our time. Two more stupid pale-faced tourists leeched of their money and sent away. You could hear the monkeys laughing at us, screeching with laughter in the sweltering dark.

Don’t worry, I’m not defeated. I have never been defeated. All this is only delaying the moment when my glorious plan becomes a fact, I’m not too old, I’m not… I am vigorous, I am only fifty-four — well, fifty-five, because I’ve just had a birthday, but only last month I was fifty-four — I run and dance like a very young woman, I tell you it’s true, ask Benjy.

Benjamin is packing in the room next door. We have two rooms; in this grubby little hotel there are no suites, so we took two rooms and made them unstick the communicating door. It was obvious we had to have a sitting-room, but they looked at us as if we came from Mars.

The maid kept giggling as she struggled with the lock. She was a fat little thing, bursting with hormones, her upper lip hairy and beaded with sweat and those awful stinking jungly armpits.

‘Ask her to go away,’ I told Benjy. ‘She makes me feel ill. You’re strong, you could do the door, no problem.’

Benjy was smiling at her straining rump. ‘Leave her alone, she’s rather sweet.’

The door suddenly yielded with a clanking shudder, the maid tumbled sideways, Benjamin caught her. His Spanish is ten times better than mine because he once lived with a Puerto Rican. She was grinning and speaking volubly. I went into the bathroom and ran the tap but only a trickle of brown water came out and the pipes ground hideously.

He came in and touched my shoulder. ‘Have you got any change? We should give her some money… She shouldn’t really do heavy work, she’s pregnant. And she’s got three children under five to support.’

— See how they try to torment me. This sweaty little pig, bursting with babies. I remain quite calm, I shall not be maddened.