Chapter 4
Topaz Vic stood on what remained of the dock and surveyed the island. Off to his left, running several hundred yards and then cutting in and out of sight, lay a beach of pinkish brown sand. Funny birds with long legs and thin, sharp beaks pecked at the flotsam at the water's edge, throwing their heads back whenever they caught something. There was no beach on the other side of him. The tropical growth, a tangle of big-leafed plants, palms, Eucalyptus trees, and huge ferns, ran right down to the water line. He could see brightly marked fish close to the surface, looking for bugs which darted out of the trees and swooped down close to the surface. Some of the insects were so big they made him wonder if it wasn't they that were hunting the fish.
Directly in front of him a path, once neatly paved with flagstone but now a mess of broken slate, sand and plants, led away from the dock and off to the left uphill. As far as he could make out when he was approaching it, the island was a mound, and the hotel was built at the peak of it. From where he now stood he could see the gables of the Carib Jewel. They were grey with an occasional streak of whitewash, and a couple of shutters hung from the windows at crazy angles.
Vic shook his head solemnly. He'd always heard people call these places God-forsaken, but the term never made any sense to him until today. A trickle of sweat ran down his. spine, and an immense fly took a swipe at his ear. He grimaced.
There was a tug at his arm. It was the gaunt colored islander who'd taken him in his launch from Cat Island. "You want he to take up your bag, Mistah?" The man gestured to his son, a pint-sized boy wearing little better than a loincloth. The boy had done all the work while his father made helpful comments.
"No. But can you hang around here for a few hours? If I stay I want you to carry a cable message back to Cat Island. If I don't you can carry me back."
"Okay. But that ten dollah more for waiting, ten dollah more for carry you back to Cat Island."
Vic turned to him, his temper short already. "You know, you have a hell of a nerve, charging ten bucks at the drop of a hat."
"Yes, boss."
"I could buy that dinghy of yours for five dollars."
"Twenty-five dollah and she yours."
Vic shrugged his shoulders. What the hell, it wasn't his money anyway. He had unlimited funds to work with. "Okay, stick around."
"For ten dollah?"
"Yeah, yeah." He picked his bag up and walked off the dock, heading up the path to the hotel. Behind him he could hear the boy and his father chuckling. He knew they were laughing at him. If he weren't so damned uncomfortable he might laugh himself. Why couldn't he have decided on Miami Beach or Nassau or any civilized spot in this big ocean? Well, maybe it wouldn't be so bad when he got to the hotel. Or if it was, maybe it could be fixed up. Or if it was really bad, there was nothing he had to stick with this place. He was just exploring the possibilities, that's all.
The undergrowth ahead of him finally cleared and he trudged out into the open. Before him rose the hotel, shabby and dingy, but sturdy for all the details that stood out as needing repair. It was larger than he thought it would be, and asymmetrical, with a tall main house on one side and a long wing on the other. The whole thing was up on concrete piers to protect it from sloshing into the mud in the rainy season. Leading up to the main entrance was a wooden stairway which had collapsed on one end, looking more like a ramp than anything else.
Inside things were no better. It was no cleaner, no cooler, no neater. There was a strange odor about it, like dead damp flowers. There was nobody around.
"Anybody home?" he called out, the sound of his voice echoing about the place as if he were yelling into an oil drum.
For a few moments there was no sound, but just as he was ready to call again there was a creak upstairs where a railed corridor ran around the second floor. A door opened.
The grey-haired man looked at him as if he were a polar bear. "Y ... Yes?"
"Come on down. I'd like to speak to somebody about accommodations."
"Certainly, certainly. Mais un moment," he said in a hoarse French accent. "Let me put some clothes on, hein?"
"Sure, go right ahead."
The man ducked into the room, and as he did so Vic caught a glimpse of what looked like a naked woman's body, rich brown and rather heavy. The door closed and he could hear a scurrying around upstairs, the sound made by a couple of people caught with their pants down. There was a vigorous whispering, verging at one point on an argument. Then the door opened and the man walked out, calmly and with dignity, looking at ease, but betraying complete surprise at anyone's being there.
He was a fat man. A very fat man with a many-layered face and the semblance of a neck. His skin was pale and yellow, something Vic didn't expect from somebody who lived on a Caribbean island. He was practically bald, but a tuft of white hair ran around the back of his head from ear to ear, and his eyebrows were like white caterpillars, constantly undulating, raising, lowering, coming together, flying apart. They seemed to have an appropriate gesture for everything he said, like someone signaling you with flags even though you can hear his voice. His eyes were porcine, with the expression of a man who enjoys his pleasures deeply, in traditional fat-man style, but who can slash like a boar when deprived of them.
He came whizzing up to Vic and bowed. "You'll pardon my delay, Monsieur. I did not expect anyone, and I was ... well, indisposed." The caterpillar brows lifted up sensually, the eyes flashed a man-to-man signal to Vic, who got the message easily enough but chose to ignore it. "We rarely have the pleasure of visitors, I'm sorry to say."
"It's posible you may know the pleasure soon," Vic said.
"So? That would delight us no end." He grinned the grin of a reprobate who'd probably known no end of delight.
"I'd like to have a look around."
"Of course. But I'm not sure I understand the purpose of your visit."
You re not the only one, Vic said to himself. "I represent a group of businessmen who are looking for a place to spend their vacation. The place must be out of the way and not too expensive."
"You have certainly come to the right place," the fat man said wryly. He put a hand to his chin, putting a great deal of thought into his next question. He must have decided his best approach was honesty. "But Monsieur, to be truthful, we have not entertained guests-in large numbers, that is-for some time. Our accommodations are ... how shall I say?"
The burden of truth must have been too much for a guy who had had very little practice carrying it. Vic removed it from his shoulders. "These men have money. If they get a favorable report from me they might be willing to invest some here to fill in any accommodations you can't provide." Vic wondered whether it were wise to give his hand away so early in the game, but then figured it would be best to impress the man now, then carry the promise of money in front of his nose like a carrot.
All he said was "Ah," but his brows spoke eloquently, shooting up like a marionette's. Then he added: "I take it privacy is important, otherwise you would have chosen one of the larger islands."
"That's very shrewd of you," Vic said quietly, "but I think you'll be a lot shrewder if you keep your speculations to yourself for the time being."
"Of course, of course," he said, quite patronizingly. Veering away from the dangerous ground he'd just stepped on, he said: "I am Antoine Theodore, owner of the island and proprietor of this hotel."
"Victor Brighton. Now, how about showing me around?"
"I'd like to very much, but the fact is, I am too large to make my way with any speed inside the hotel, and I detest the heat, so I wouldn't wish to go outside. As you can see," he said, patting his belly with both hands, "I'm the type of fellow who takes his pleasures sedentarily-or prone." He leered. "And confidentially, even those pleasures are now denied me. My woman is growing old. She doesn't do the tricks she once did." He sighed and shrugged his shoulders.
Vic reflected that it probably wasn't the woman who was losing her potency, but Antoine Theodore. He wondered why Theodore was letting him in on this intimate business. Then it struck him the man might be extending an invitation for Vic to try his hand at this woman. If he liked her he might be compelled more easily to stay. He liked to think sex wouldn't have that weakening effect on him. He'd make his mind up his way, however many times he was seduced by somebody trying to get him to do things another way. Then he thought of that night with Dana and realized sex had the effect of helping him make his mind up-not always in the most favorable way.
His suspicions were just about confirmed when he saw Theodore's "woman" coming down the stairs.
It was a privilige to behold anything as profoundly beautiful. Her skin was a tawny brown with the rich consistency of cocoa, and it flowed and rippled over her frame with each step she took. She was not light and lithe, but she was not plump either. She was best described as full,, tall, and wholesome. Her eyes were almond-shaped and colored, her expression one of serenity, the kind that can go either way-to fierce hatred or fierce love. Her hair was long and mahogany black, and she wore it with no embellishments. It came down over her shoulders and fanned out over the front of the formless sack dress, grey and soiled, which was all that stood between the world and a body of deep, graceful curves and swells. Her breasts jogged easily beneath the dress as she walked, glorious fruit shaking in a mild breeze.
He held his breath as she reached the bottom'step and walked, almost glided, towards him. He felt Theodore's eyes scrutinizing his face for a reaction. "You should have seen her before chilbirth," Theodore murmured. "My daughter Carmina ruined her figure."
Vic turned a disdainful eye on Theodore. He liked him less every time he opened that snout to speak.
She stopped in front of the man and nodded a greeting to Vic.
"Isabela, I should like you to meet Mr. Victor Brighton. Mr. Brighton, my ... uh, wife Isabela."
"How nice of you to visit us, Mr. Brighton," she said in a calmly modulated voice. "Will you be staying for long?"
Vic opened his mouth to speak but Theodore cut him off. "Mr. Brighton is, how would you say it, a scout. He has been thinking of Topaz as a spot for his associates to vacation. I don't think he has to look any further, do you, Isabela?"
"It is a lovely spot, but sadly run down." She said "sodly," giving a hint of French to her Caribbean diction.
Theodore was checked by her frankness and hastened to say to her "Mr. Brighton has offered to help us put the place into order."
It was a very unsubtle reprimand, and she knew she'd get hell from Theodore if she was too outspoken. She merely answered "Then I think he'll find it suitable."
"Of course he will," Theodore said, taking a carefree tone, "and I'd like you to take him around Topaz and show him the high spots." There was the hint of a sensual suggestion in his voice, augmented by a furtive role of the white eyebrows .
"Perhaps Mr. Brighton will wish to get settled first."
"No," said Vic, raising his hand, "the sooner I see the place the better I'll like it."
"Fine," Antoine Theodore said. "I'll just take your bag and put it somewhere safe."
"Why don't you leave it where it is?" Vic answered pointedly.
"Suit yourself, Mr. Brighton,' the fat man said, getting the point quite clearly. "Suppose, Isabela, you start with the island proper, while I do my best to put the hotel into order. There isn't much I can do, fat slug that I am."
"Get Carmina to help you."
"If I can find her. The lazy wench is never around when I need her."
"That is to her credit as far as you're concerned," Isabela said, taking Vic by the arm and ushering him past the fretting bulk of her "husband."
"Suppose we start with the garden. There is a path leading away from it which goes out to the western shore, which is my favorite part of the island."
"Isabela," Theodore called. "May I have one word with you ... about Mr. Brighton's room."
Isabela walked back to him and there followed an intense exchange of whispers. Vic couldn't understand a word of the strange language, which was a bastard combination of French, Dutch, broken English and the peculiar Caribbean dialect. Still he knew that Theodore was instructing her about her behavior, and he doubted if fat boy was taking the position of a worried father warning his virgin daughter about her first date. He doubted it very much. Isabela answered him with an infuriating calmness, and Theodore's face grew red, his eyebrows jumping around like drops of water in a hot pan, his whispers hissing and angry.
Vic looked around the hotel, trying to appear innocent. His eyes roved to the balcony, and suddenly he threw his head back. There was a girl up there peering down at him. Her body was concealed behind a corner, but her eyes were the loveliest he had ever seen, large like a baby's, and full of curiosity. Her lips were pouted in wonder, her little flat nose wrinkled like a suspicious puppy's. As soon as his eyes found hers she darted back and disappeared from sight.
He stood entranced for a long moment until he felt a gentle hand on his arm. "Mr. Brighton, didn't you hear me?"
"Yes, I guess so. Who...?"
"You must have seen my daughter Carmina."
"She's an angel, if you don't mind my saying so."
"I don't mind at all. She's a lovely girl."
"But kind of shy."
"She hasn't been in the company of many people. Her life here has been rather sheltered. Shall we go?" She urged him firmly towards the entrance.
"Are you trying to protect her?" Vic asked as they stepped gingerly down the broken stairway.
"I can't protect her, but I can guide her. She is innocent and some day she will know pain and evil. I can't save her from them, but I can prepare her."
Vic felt if wisest to drop the subject for the moment and they walked in silence for a little while. She took him around the wing of the hotel, mentioning that it held twenty-five couples, and on to a large garden behind the wing. It was quite weedy and unkempt, but here and there he could make out some remnant of a pattern, here and there a square of herbs, over there a circle containing a purple blossom with tongues of bright yellow aspiring from their centers. "This garden was once my pride. I managed it the way a beautiful woman worries over every strand of hair."
That was all she said. The brevity of it disturbed him, as did the automatic, uncaring tone with which she spoke it. When, as they emerged from the garden, she said dully "It is the way to the west beach," Vic stopped, hands on hips, and looked at her impatiently.
"This is isn't giving you much pleasure, is it?"
"I'm not here for pleasure. It is my duty to show you the island."
"Who said so?"
"I don't know what you mean."
"And what else is it your duty to do?"
"I certainly don't know what you mean," she said shrewdly. "Shall we go on?"
They pushed through a path, dark with low hanging flat leaves, vines and sharply coiled tendrils. At last they came out on a bluff overlooking a magnificent cove. A golden beach, tinged slightly with pink, swept in a gentle curve away from them. The ocean was quiet, with only a few breakers of any size landing on the sand. Vic sucked in his breath. "It's fabulous. Let's go down."
He took her hand and led her down the slope to the beach. It was steep and they had to lean backwards and plant their heels firmly in the sand to prevent themselves from rushing headlong and out of control. Isabela was sure-footed and never lost the dignity of carriage which had impressed him from the moment he saw her. He wasn't quite so nimble, and fell on his back twice from leaning too far uphil. She helped him up, and he felt ashamed, but he also liked the feeling of her muscular arms pulling him to his feet, and especially the feeling of her large breasts against his back as she put him upright. She was not coy about them like American women. They were parts of her body, not special organs to be protected at all costs. If they happened to contact you accidentally there was no embarrassment, no giggle, no blush. To her they had their function-for giving sexual pleasure or feeding her young. At all other times they were neutral.
He wondered what they would be like when aroused.
They reached the sand, a little breathless, and after trudging through the soft sand to the center of the cove, at the foot of the bluff where they'd been standing a few moments ago, Vic plumped himself down. Isabela lowered herself gracefully to the sand, and for a long time they sat silently, hands around their knees, watching the emerald water drift in and brush the shore.
Finally he spoke. "Tell me about yourself and Antoine Theodore."
She shrugged her shoulders. "There is not much to tell." She pronounced it "Dere."
"Long ago I was a whore in an expensive brothel on one of the big islands. Antoine had me one night. He was very rich. Make his money smuggling rum into the U. S. He likes the way I make love and buys me, brings me here. This place was very beautiful then." She loked wistfully at the cloudless blue sky.
"Go on."
"Business was very good. Lots of rich people come down, gamble, drink, make love to the girls he brought in. Important customers come down. When they not sure they want to pay his prices for rum he gives them to me for a night. Then they pay his prices."
He spoke matter-of-factly. "You talk about making love as if it has no meaning to you."
She frowned. "When making love is a job it has no meaning. I make all the hot sounds and twist around and roll my eyes because they like it. But in my heart-and in the other place-I feel nothing. Once...."
Vic turned to her. Her eyes were vacant as if she had absented herself from him and was traveling back to another time. "Once...." he prompted her.
"Once there was a man, a man of great strength, but a gentle man too, and a man of wisdom and love. That man, he understood what I wanted."
"You loved him."
"Yes. He opened me up like a flower."
"What happened to him?" She set her jaw. "Antoine killed him." Vic grimaced. "I'm sorry."
"But he left something with me, and I still have it, Antoine knows I will slit my throat if he tries to take it away from me."
"What is that?"
"Carmina."
"Carmina. The girl."
"My daughter."
Well, Vic thought, at least one part of the mystery of that girl he'd seen at the hotel was cleared up-her beauty. It just didn't seen likely that Theodore's offspring could be possessed of such delicacy. "From the little I saw of her I thought she was very lovely."
"I hope you will continue to see little of her."
He felt a twinge of anger. "You don't trust me."
"I have never trusted men."
"I don't think I'm like many other men."
"J have heard that from too many of them."
"You'll just have to take my word for it."
She uttered a bitter laugh.
They sat quietly for a time, and then Vic said "Antoine told you to make love to me, didn't he?"
"He has a lot to gain from you."
Vic looked into her dark eyes. There was an emotion in them, but he wasn't quite sure what it was. There was tiredness, as if she had been called on too many times to make meaningless love and knew it was getting harder to fake meaning. There was fear of Antoine's wrath if she didn't perform the way he wanted her to. There was distrust of Vic, and yet there was the seed of a desire to trust him, as though her innocent faith in men had not been completely obliterated by countless scoundrels who'd asked her to believe in them and then betrayed that belief. Vic said "I'd like very much to make love to you."
She didn't flinch, but merely said "You know you can have me."
"But I won't have you on Antoine Theodore's terms. I want to enjoy you, but I want you to enjoy me too. If you're going to put on an act, I'd rather forget it."
"If you are the same as all the other men, I will know it."
"I know you will. I'm not afraid."
She took a deep breath and peered deeply into Vic's eyes. She was making a decision. Would she give him a chance?
Vic said "And if you're treating me like you treated the other men, putting on an act, I'll know it."
"If you can tell, then you are a good man."
"I say I can tell."
She leaned back on her hands. "Then take off my dress."
She lifted her body as he took the hem of her dress and slid it up her thighs. Her legs were strong and firm, with tight sheaths of muscles stretching from her hips to her knees. He ran a hand tentatively over them and they quivered. She moved them slightly and said "I have been asleep many years. Wake me up."
He brushed his finger tips along the legs and felt the muscles grow tense and sensitive to his touch. When he came to their juncture he skipped over it, as if to say there would be time for that, he would come back to it. But now he wanted to know the rest of her, know the way she was built, know what she liked and didn't like, where she was tender and where she was hard, what gave her pleasure and what did not, what made her sigh, what made her gasp, what made her wince, what made her cry.
She lifted her bottom and he pulled the dress up to her stomach. "Turn over," he said, and she did as she was asked. Her buttocks were large, but without a trace of fat. He laid a gentle hand on them and caressed them. They pulled in defensively for a second, then relaxed as his hand gave her the assurance of tenderness.
She looked over her shoulder at him and he smiled. She managed to smile too, and then put her head on her arms and closed her eyes.
Again she raised her body to allow him to slip the dress up, this time over her breasts and off. She lay on her stomach completely naked now, and he began to run his hands softly over her sleek back and buttocks, up her graceful neck, pushing the long black hair aside. Her neck was especially sensitive. Her head would roll up towards his hand when he touched her there. He leaned over and kissed her at the base of it.
Her skin was coming alive, twitching to the touch of his tongue and the fingers that roamed over her back. She rolled slightly to one side, leaving a space between the sand and her breasts and stomach. He placed his hand, palm up, on the sand under her so that the barest tip of her breast touched it. Her breast was a firm cone, a pinkish tan almost exactly the color of the sand beneath her. The tip of the cone was a chocolate brown, smooth as marble. It semed to have a life of its own as his hand, barely touching it, tantalized and provoked it. His fingers closed over the firm flesh and she breathed deeply, letting the breast expand into his hand and fill every pore of it.
With his other hand he undid his shirt and pants and undressed himself. When he was totally unclothed he rolled her on her back. She put her knees up, put her arms out on the warm sand. She was the very picture of the submitting woman, but he knew she would not submit the way a frightened, beaten animal does, but rather as a woman who knows that her place is on her back, and that the pleasure she bestows will be from a passive position. Vic thought of the many American women he had known who felt that position to be a humiliating one. For them it was a sign of defeat to end up on their backs, helpless beneath the conquering male. But for Isabela there was no conquest, no domination, no victory. This was where she belonged.
He lay beside her and pressed his mouth against hers. His hands, by no means passive, were exploring the crests of her luxurious breasts, fondling them, sliding over the sweet bulge of her stomach and over the thighs. Her breath began to come quickly as the spirit which had been asleep for so long began to stir and stretch and become aware of itself again.
Inside Vic too there was a stirring, but it was something more than the usual male urge he felt with a woman. There seemed to be something more at stake here, something touching a part of him other than his sexuality. It was sex plus, but what the plus was he wasn't sure. Because he had never felt the plus part of it before. There was a throbbing in his heart and brain as well as in his flesh, and the throbbing grew stronger with every pulsebeat. There was a throbbing within her too, as if her body were moving to some primitive drum beat. It infected both of them, gripping them in an emotion stronger than the physical.
It grew unbearable. Her eyes were wide and imploring, her mouth open and gasping not only for air but for satisfaction, her body swelling with each breath. Her breasts expanded and contracted furiously. She pulled him close to her, putting her hands on his buttocks and squeezing them rhythmically. Pure sensation caused her to emit a low moan of pleasure....
Their bodies were in perfect harmony, something Vic had never known before, and something Isabela had known but rarely. The rhythm increased but never grew frantic, each beat seemed to engulg them deeper and deeper into knowldege of each other's bodies and souls.
Then suddenly the rhythm stopped and they seemed suspended in the middle of a bright and silent universe. Their hearts stopped, their lungs ceased, and for a moment everything lost its existence.
Then came a surge of feeling so deep it threatened to dash them to pieces in each other's arms. They were raised up and held at the pinnacle of creation, then dropped to its base, love between hearts, love between souls, love between total man and total woman.
And then there was peace and silence, save the lapping of breakers on the shores of Topaz. They slept, she supporting his dead weight, he feeling child-like on the cushion of her breasts.
When they walked back to the hotel there was no point in talking about what had happened. She knew that Vic was more than a self-seeking, self-gratifying man. And he knew just as well that she had not withheld herself from him and had given him, sincerely, the core of herself she had held in reserve for so long. Their mutual taciturnity was that of two people who understand and trust one another. Words could elaborate this but not affect it to any serious degree. Finally they spoke, but about other things.
She asked him what he was doing on Topaz and he told her everything. She said she would do everything she could to help him, but she warned him about Antoine. The man was a fawn when somebody else wielded the power. But once the power devolved on him, he could be tough, vicious-even murderous. "Make sure he does not become too significant," she told him when they leached the hotel, "either to you and your friends, or to himself. Step on him and keep your foot on him and he will do no harm. Li-l him put his foot on you and he will crush you."
"I'll remember that."
They walked into the lobby. The sun was setting and broad shafts of light revealed a lot of dust in the air. Obviously somebody had rushed through the place and cleaned it as quickly as time permitted. It loked a little better, but was still pretty dismal.
Fat Antoine Theodore came wheezing over to them, rubbing his hands and smiling. "I trust you have enjoyed the many things our island has to offer," he said, eyebrows curling expectantly.
"I did," Vic answered, giving no satisfaction to the fat man by indicating just what the source of his enjoyment had been. "And I think we can do something with this place."
Theodore looked significantly at Isabela, thanking her silently for a job well done. "I'm delighted you think so. Suppose we have a drink over it and settle the arrangements. You'll find the rum outstanding."
"Okay. But first I have to cable my associates."
"We have no telegraphic equipment here, I'm afraid."
"I anticipated that. I have a couple of flunkies waiting for me at the dock. They'll carry the message back to Cat Island and have it sent off from there. Only ten dollah."
"Ten dollars? You did not bargain with them."
"Not really. I'm saving my bargaining for you."