Ray Bradbury Stories, Volume 1 (108 page)

‘I don’t like that,’ he said.

‘Perhaps I don’t like it, either, but do you want to end up far unhappier than you are now? Do you want both of us to be unhappy? Which we would certainly be. There really is no way to do anything about us—it is so strange even to try to talk about us.’

‘Yes’m.’

‘But at least we know all about us and the fact that we have been right and fair and good and there is nothing wrong with our knowing each other, nor did we ever intend that it should be, for we both understand how impossible it is, don’t we?’

‘Yes, I know. But I can’t help it.’

‘Now we must decide what to do about it,’ she said. ‘Now only you and I know about this. Later, others might know. I can secure a transfer from this school to another one—’

‘No!’

‘Or I can have you transferred to another school.’

‘You don’t have to do that,’ he said.

‘Why?’

‘We’re moving. My folks and I, we’re going to live in Madison. We’re leaving next week.’

‘It has nothing to do with all this, has it?’

‘No, no, everything’s all right. It’s just that my father has a new job there. It’s only fifty miles away. I can see you, can’t I, when I come to town?’

‘Do you think that would be a good idea?’

‘No, I guess not.’

They sat awhile in the silent schoolroom.

‘When did all of this happen?’ he said, helplessly.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Nobody ever knows. They haven’t known for thousands of years, and I don’t think they ever will. People either like each other or don’t, and sometimes two people like each other who shouldn’t. I can’t explain myself, and certainly you can’t explain you.’

‘I guess I’d better get home,’ he said.

‘You’re not mad at me, are you?’

‘Oh, gosh no, I could never be mad at you.’

‘There’s one more thing. I want you to remember, there are compensations in life. There always are, or we wouldn’t go on living. You don’t feel well, now; neither do I. But something will happen to fix that. Do you believe that?’

‘I’d like to.’

‘Well, it’s true.’

‘If only,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘If only you’d wait for me,’ he blurted.

‘Ten years?’

‘I’d be twenty-four then.’

‘But I’d be thirty-four and another person entirely, perhaps. No, I don’t think it can be done.’

‘Wouldn’t you like it to be done?’ he cried.

‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s silly and it wouldn’t work, but I would like it very much.’

He sat there for a long time.

‘I’ll never forget you,’ he said.

‘It’s nice for you to say that, even though it can’t be true, because life isn’t that way. You’ll forget.’

‘I’ll never forget. I’ll find a way of never forgetting you,’ he said.

She got up and went to erase the boards.

‘I’ll help you,’ he said.

‘No, no,’ she said hastily. ‘You go on now, get home, and no more tending to the boards after school. I’ll assign Helen Stevens to do it.’

He left the school. Looking back, outside, he saw Miss Ann Taylor, for the last time, at the board, slowly washing out the chalked words, her hand moving up and down.

He moved away from the town the next week and was gone for sixteen years. Though he was only fifty miles away, he never got down to Green Town again until he was almost thirty and married, and then one spring they were driving through on their way to Chicago and stopped off for a day.

Bob left his wife at the hotel and walked around town and finally asked about Miss Ann Taylor, but no one remembered at first, and then one of them remembered.

‘Oh, yes, the pretty teacher. She died in 1936, not long after you left.’

Had she ever married? No, come to think of it, she never had.

He walked out to the cemetery in the afternoon and found her stone, which said, ‘Ann Taylor, born 1910, died 1936.’ And he thought. Twentysix years old. Why, I’m three years older than you are now, Miss Taylor.

Later in the day the people in the town saw Bob Spaulding’s wife strolling to meet him under the elm trees and the oak trees, and they all turned to watch her pass, for her face shifted with bright shadows as she walked: she was the fine peaches of summer in the snow of winter, and she was cool milk for cereal on a hot early-summer morning. And this was one of those rare few days in time when the climate was balanced like a maple leaf between winds that blow just right, one of those days that should have been named, everyone agreed, after Robert Spaulding’s wife.

The kidnapping was reported all around the world, of course.

It took a few days for the full significance of the news to spread from Cuba to the United States, to the Left Bank in Paris, and then finally to some small good café in Pamplona where the drinks were fine and the weather, somehow, was always just right.

But once the meaning of the news really hit, people were on the phone, Madrid was calling New York, New York was shouting south at Havana to verify, please verify, this crazy thing.

And then some woman in Venice, Italy, with a blurred voice called through, saying she was at Harry’s Bar that very instant and was destroyed, this thing that had happened was terrible, a cultural heritage was placed in immense and irrevocable danger…

Not an hour later. I got a call from a baseball pitcher-
cum
-novelist who had been a great friend of Papa’s and who now lived in Madrid half the year and Nairobi the rest. He was in tears, or sounded close to it.

‘Tell me,’ he said, from halfway around the world, ‘what happened? What are the facts?’

Well, the facts were these: Down in Havana, Cuba, about fourteen kilometers from Papa’s Finca Vigía home, there is a bar in which he used to drink. It is the one where they named a special drink for him, not the fancy one where he used to meet flashy literary lights such as K-K-Kenneth Tynan and, er, Tennessee W-Williams (as Mr Tynan would say it). No, it is not the Floridita; it is a shirt-sleeves place with plain wooden tables, sawdust on the floor, and a big mirror like a dirty cloud behind the bar. Papa went there when there were too many tourists around the Floridita who wanted to meet Mr Hemingway. And the thing that happened there was destined to be big news, bigger than the report of what he said to Fitzgerald about the rich, even bigger than the story of his swing at Max Eastman on that long-ago day in Charlie Scribner’s office. This news had to do with an ancient parrot.

That senior bird lived in a cage right atop the bar in the Cuba Libre. He had ‘kept his cage’ in that place for roughly twenty-nine years, which means that the old parrot had been there almost as long as Papa had lived in Cuba.

And that adds up to this monumental fact: All during the time Papa had lived in Finca Vigía, he had known the parrot and had talked to him and the parrot had talked back. As the years passed, people said that Hemingway began to talk like the parrot and others said no, the parrot learned to talk like
him
! Papa used to line the drinks up on the counter and sit near the cage and involve that bird in the best kind of conversation you ever heard, four nights running. By the end of the second year, that parrot knew more about Hem and Thomas Wolfe and Sherwood Anderson than Gertrude Stein did. In fact, the parrot even knew who Gertrude Stein
was
. All you had to say was ‘Gertrude’ and the parrot said:

‘Pigeons on the grass alas.’

At other times, pressed, the parrot would say. ‘There was this old man and this boy and this boat and this sea and this big fish in the sea…’ And then it would take time out to eat a cracker.

Well, this fabled creature, this parrot, this odd bird, vanished, cage and all, from the Cuba Libre late one Sunday afternoon.

And that’s why my phone was ringing itself off the hook. And that’s why one of the big magazines got a special State Department clearance and flew me down to Cuba to see if I could find so much as the cage, anything remaining of the bird or anyone resembling a kidnapper. They wanted a light and amiable article, with overtones, as they said. And, very honestly. I was curious. I had heard rumors of the bird. In a strange kind of way, I was concerned.

I got off the jet from Mexico City and taxied straight across Havana to that strange little café-bar.

I almost failed to get in the place. As I stepped through the door, a dark little man jumped up from a chair and cried, ‘No, no! Go away! We are closed!’

He ran out to jiggle the lock on the door, showing that he really meant to shut the place down. All the tables were empty and there was no one around. He had probably just been airing out the bar when I arrived.

‘I’ve come about the parrot,’ I said.

‘No, no,’ he cried, his eyes looking wet. ‘I won’t talk. It’s too much. If I were not Catholic, I would kill myself. Poor Papa. Poor El Córdoba!’

‘El Córdoba?’ I murmured.

‘That,’ he said fiercely, ‘was the parrot’s name!’

‘Yes,’ I said, recovering quickly. ‘El Córdoba. I’ve come to rescue him.’

That made him stop and blink. Shadows and then sunlight went over
his face and then shadows again. ‘Impossible! Could you? No, no. How could anyone! Who
are
you?’

‘A friend to Papa and the bird.’ I said quickly. ‘And the more time we talk, the farther away goes the criminal. You want El Córdoba back tonight? Pour us several of Papa’s good drinks and talk.’

My bluntness worked. Not two minutes later, we were drinking Papa’s special, seated in the bar near the empty place where the cage used to sit. The little man, whose name was Antonio, kept wiping that empty place and then wiping his eyes with the bar rag. As I finished the first drink and started on the second, I said:

‘This is no ordinary kidnapping.’

‘You’re telling me!’ cried Antonio. ‘People came from all over the world to see that parrot, to talk to El Córdoba, to hear him, ah, God, speak with the voice of Papa. May his abductors sink and burn in hell, yes, hell.’

‘They will,’ I said. ‘Whom do you suspect?’

‘Everyone. No one.’

‘The kidnapper,’ I said, eyes shut for a moment, savoring the drink, ‘had to be educated, a book reader, I mean, that’s obvious, isn’t it? Anyone like that around the last few days?’

‘Educated. No education.
Señor
, there have always been strangers the last ten, the last twenty years, always asking for Papa. When Papa was here, they met him. With Papa gone, they met El Córdoba, the great one. So it was always strangers and strangers.’

‘But think, Antonio.’ I said, touching his trembling elbow. ‘Not only educated, a reader, but someone in the last few days who was—how shall I put it?—odd. Strange. Someone so peculiar,
muy ecéntrico
, that you remember him above all others. Someone who—’

‘
Madre de Dios!
’ cried Antonio, leaping up. His eyes stared off into memory. He seized his head as if it had just exploded. ‘Thank you,
señor. Sí, sí!
What a creature! In the name of Christ, there was such a one yesterday! He was very small. And he spoke like this: very high—
eeeee
. Like a
muchacha
in a school play, eh? Like a canary swallowed by a witch! And he wore a blue-velvet suit with a big yellow tie.’

‘Yes, yes!’ I had leaped up now and was almost yelling. ‘Go on!’

‘And he had a small very round face,
señor
, and his hair was yellow and cut across the brow like this—
zitt
! And his mouth small, very pink, like candy, yes? He—he was like, yes,
uno muñeco
, of the kind one wins at carnivals.’

‘Kewpie dolls!’

‘
Sí!
At Coney Island, yes, when I was a child, Kewpie dolls! And he was so high, you see? To my elbow. Not a midget, no—but—and how old? Blood of Christ, who can say? No lines in his face, but—thirty, forty, fifty. And on his feet he was wearing—’

‘Green booties!’ I cried.

‘Qué?’

‘Shoes, boots!’

‘
Sí
.’ He blinked, stunned. ‘But how did you
know
?’

I exploded, ‘Shelley Capon!’

‘That is the name! And his friends with him,
señor
, all laughing—no, giggling. Like the nuns who play basketball in the late afternoons near the church. Oh,
señor
, do you think that they, that he—’

‘I don’t think, Antonio, I
know
. Shelley Capon, of all the writers in the world, hated Papa. Of course he would snatch El Córdoba. Why, wasn’t there a rumor once that the bird had memorized Papa’s last, greatest, and as-yet-not-put-down-on-paper novel?’

‘There was such a rumor,
señor
. But I do not write books, I tend bar. I bring crackers to the bird, I—’

‘You bring me the phone, Antonio, please.’

‘You know where the bird is,
señor
?’

‘I have the hunch beyond intuition, the big one.
Gracias
.’ I dialed the Havana Libre, the biggest hotel in town.

‘Shelley Capon, please.’

The phone buzzed and clicked.

Half a million miles away, a midget boy Martian lifted the receiver and played the flute and then the bell chimes with his voice: ‘Capon here.’

‘Damned if you aren’t!’ I said. And got up and ran out of the Cuba Libre bar.

Racing back to Havana by taxi, I thought of Shelley as I’d seen him before. Surrounded by a storm of friends, living out of suitcases, ladling soup from other people’s plates, borrowing money from billfolds seized from your pockets right in front of you, counting the lettuce leaves with relish, leaving rabbit pellets on your rug, gone. Dear Shelley Capon.

Ten minutes later, my taxi with no brakes dropped me running and spun on to some ultimate disaster beyond town.

Still running, I made the lobby, paused for information, hurried upstairs, and stopped short before Shelley’s door. It pulsed in spasms like a bad heart. I put my ear to the door. The wild calls and cries from inside might have come from a flock of birds, feather-stripped in a hurricane. I felt the door. Now it seemed to tremble like a vast laundromat that had swallowed and was churning an acid-rock group and a lot of very dirty linen. Listening, my underwear began to crawl on my legs.

I knocked. No answer. I touched the door. It drifted open. I stepped in upon a scene much too dreadful for Bosch to have painted.

Around the pigpen living room were strewn various life-size dolls, eyes half-cracked open, cigarettes smoking in burned, limp fingers, empty Scotch
glasses in hands, and all the while the radio belted them with concussions of music broadcast from some Stateside asylum. The place was sheer carnage. Not ten seconds ago, I felt, a large dirty locomotive must have plunged through here. Its victims had been hurled in all directions and now lay upside down in various parts of the room, moaning for first aid.

In the midst of this hell, seated erect and proper, well dressed in velveteen jerkin, persimmon bow tie, and bottle-green booties, was, of course, Shelley Capon. Who with no surprise at all waved a drink at me and cried:

‘I
knew
that was you on the phone. I am absolutely telepathic! Welcome. Raimundo!’

He always called me Raimundo. Ray was plain bread and butter. Raimundo made me a don with a breeding farm full of bulls. I let it be Raimundo.

‘Raimundo, sit down! No…fling yourself into an
interesting
position.’

‘Sorry.’ I said in my best Dashiell Hammett manner, sharpening my chin and steeling my eyes. ‘No time.’

I began to walk around the room among his friends Fester and Soft and Ripply and Mild Innocuous and some actor I remembered who, when asked how he would do a part in a film, had said, ‘I’ll play it like a doe.’

I shut off the radio. That made a lot of people in the room stir. I yanked the radio’s roots out of the wall. Some people sat up. I raised a window. I threw the radio out. They all screamed as if I had thrown their mothers down an elevator shaft.

The radio made a satisfying sound on the cement sidewalk below. I turned, with a beatific smile on my face. A number of people were on their feet, swaying toward me with faint menace. I pulled a twenty-dollar bill out of my pocket, handed it to someone without looking at him, and said, ‘Go buy a new one.’ He ran out the door slowly. The door slammed. I heard him fall down the stairs as if he were after his morning shot in the arm.

‘All right, Shelley,’ I said, ‘where is it?’

‘Where is
what
, dear boy?’ he said, eyes wide with innocence.

‘You know what I mean.’ I stared at the drink in his tiny hand.

Which was a Papa drink, the Cuba Libre’s very own special blend of papaya, lime, lemon, and rum. As if to destroy evidence, he drank it down quickly.

I walked over to three doors in a wall and touched one.

‘That’s a closet, dear boy.’ I put my hand on the second door.

‘Don’t go in. You’ll be sorry what you see.’ I didn’t go in.

I put my hand on the third door. ‘Oh, dear, well, go ahead,’ said Shelley petulantly. I opened the door.

Beyond it was a small anteroom with a mere cot and a table near the window.

On the table sat a bird cage with a shawl over it. Under the shawl I could hear the rustle of feathers and the scrape of a beak on the wires.

Shelley Capon came to stand small beside me, looking in at the cage, a fresh drink in his little fingers.

‘What a shame you didn’t arrive at seven tonight,’ he said.

‘Why seven?’

‘Why, then, Raimundo, we would have just finished our curried fowl stuffed with wild rice. I wonder, is there much white meat, or any at all, under a parrot’s feathers?’

‘You wouldn’t!?’ I cried.

I stared at him.

‘You would,’ I answered myself.

I stood for a moment longer at the door. Then, slowly, I walked across the small room and stopped by the cage with the shawl over it. I saw a single word embroidered across the top of the shawl:
MOTHER
.

I glanced at Shelley. He shrugged and looked shyly at his boot tips. I took hold of the shawl. Shelley said, ‘No. Before you lift it…ask something.’

‘Like what?’

‘DiMaggio. Ask DiMaggio.’

A small ten-watt bulb clicked on in my head. I nodded. I leaned near the hidden cage and whispered: ‘DiMaggio. 1939.’

There was a sort of animal-computer pause. Beneath the word MOTHER some feathers stirred, a beak tapped the cage bars. Then a tiny voice said:

‘Home runs, thirty. Batting average, .381.’

I was stunned. But then I whispered: ‘Babe Ruth. 1927.’

Again the pause, the feathers, the beak, and: ‘Home runs, sixty. Batting average, .356. Awk.’

‘My God,’ I said.

‘My God,’ echoed Shelley Capon.