Seagulls in My Soup (9 page)

Her movements were sudden and jerky, as if she were under electric-shock treatment, and her face, with teeth protruding from her lips as if they were out to dry, carried an expression that said she had just remembered something, but couldn't think what it was.

Alonzo, beaming, introduced Sissie and me. “Meess Pomeroy.”

Her voice was just like a bird twittering, and she ran all her words one into the other. “OhgoodnessgraciousEnglish? PleasedtomeetyouI'msure,” she chirped. It sounded like a metal spatula being dragged quickly, under great pressure, across a frying pan.

When I had recovered from the shock of this apparition I realized that something was blocking the sunlight from the door and making the bar even darker than usual. I looked toward the obstruction, and there, seeming to fill a good quarter of the area in the room, was one of the biggest people I have ever come across. At first I thought it was a yeti, because of the shaggy long hair, but when my eyes became accustomed to the gloomy shadow that the figure cast, I discerned that it was, in fact, first of all human, and then—a man.

Alonzo ran behind the bar. The huge man—he was at least seven and a half feet tall, with shoulders about three feet wide—made for Sissie. With each footstep the whole bar vibrated. He stood to attention before the Dragon of Devon and bowed from the waist. “Madam,” he said in thick English, “I am Sven Knutsen—at your service, charming lady!”

Sissie looked as if she was about to have kittens. The giant turned to me, took my proffered hand with what seemed to be a side of beef, and wrung it as if it were a dishcloth. Even Sissie winced at my pain.

Sven's hair was the blondest of blond. It was almost albino. It fell in long white strands from the top of his head all the way down to the small of his back. It covered most of his face, so that it was difficult to see his small, button nose and his bloodshot, pale blue eyes. Around his neck he wore a chain of shields, and over his shoulders was thrown an Ibizan poncho of flannel, with stripes of a hundred different shades. Below the poncho, which drooped fore and aft, his pants were so streaked with multicolored paint that it was impossible to see of what material they were made. His huge feet were bare and dirt-encrusted. Studying them during the ensuing conversation I found myself somewhat surprised, upon counting the toes, to see that he had the usual complement of five on each. Again, making a wild guess at age, I would say he was around forty.

Suddenly, after staring at me intently in silence for a full half-minute, he turned and thudded over to the bar, behind which Alonzo was still smirking at the two foreign females as if he were imagining all kinds of exotic sexual delights.

Miss Pomeroy was smiling at me, slyly, with her Cupid's bow.

“You're a writer, Miss Pomeroy?” I enquired civilly.

“Ohyesbutonlyforchildren,” she giggled. I found that she giggled after almost everything she said. It seemed to me that she would have giggled after declaiming a churchyard elegy.

“Have you had anything published?” asked Sissie

Miss Pomeroy glanced nervously at Sissie. “Ohnonotyet . . . I'mhalfwaythroughmyfirstbookatthemoment.” She giggled again.

“How long have you been at it?” I asked gently.

“OnlythreeyearsandIshouldhaveitfinishednextyear.” Another giggle. Her accent was posh English, but with Northern undertones. Charlotte Brontë probably had the same accent.

“Really?” said I. “How did you get into that line of business?”

“OhIwasonceEnidBlyton'ssecretarybutonlyforthree weeks.” Giggle.

By this time Sven had collected four bottles of the rough house-wine from Alonzo, and scrawled his name and four chalk strokes on the slate behind the bar. He turned and thudded over to our table. As he walked, he thrust one shoulder at a time ahead of him, as if he were forcing his way through thick, head-high undergrowth. His roll reminded me of a destroyer in a full gale.

Sven slammed the bottles down on the table and bent his head over until it almost collided with the bottles. Then he reached over to Sissie, gently took her hand, raised it to his lips, and gave it a great, slobbering kiss. “For you, charming English lady, nothing but the best is good enough,” he murmured. His hair had fallen over his face. He looked like a giant, insane polar bear. Sissie almost turned liquid.

Alonzo set four (for once) clean glasses on the table. He reached for a wine bottle, but Sven was at it before him. With a hand like a gorilla he splashed the thick, dark-red, bitter plonk into the glasses without pausing between pouring, so that wine ran all over the table. One stream trickled onto Sissie's khaki hiking shorts and she pushed herself back quickly.

Sven thrust himself upright and reached over toward Sissie. “My dear charming English lady, do please accept my most humble apologies . . .”

“Oh, it's
quaite
all right.” Sissie smiled bravely at the giant.

“But please let me . . .” A hand came from under the poncho, bearing a grubby, paint-flecked, once-white handkerchief.

“Oh, no, I
assure
you, Sven,” Sissie blushed, “it's
eb
solutely all right. I assure you, I
really,
honestly
do!”

Sven sat down, grabbed a glass of wine, and swallowed it in three gulps. He refilled his glass, then looked at me as if nothing at all untoward had ever occurred in this world or any other.

“You met Miss Pomeroy?” he asked in a flat voice.

“YesMisterJonesandIhavejustbeenhavingalittlechat,” giggled Miss P.

The giant turned to the tiny woman at his side. Slowly, thickly, he said, “Shut up. I didn't ask you. In bed you talk. At the table you shut up.”

“Yesdearohmy!” Giggle.

The giant refilled his glass again and drank the wine. Actually he didn't drink; he literally
poured
the stuff into his gullet.

“Hey, Englishman,” he bellowed at me, “you know Copenhagen?”

“Well, I've been there a few times, years ago. To tell you the truth I can't remember much about it,” I said casually.

“You don't remember Copenhagen? What are you, stupid?”

“I've told you, I don't remember it much . . .”

“You sailing?” Sven bawled, as the two women sat paralyzed.

“Yeah.”

“How long you been sailing?”

“Oh, a couple of years.”

“Where you been?”

“Here and there . . .”

“Here and there,” he mumbled to himself. “Here and there? Here and there? Where the fuck you
been?”

“I told you. Here and there.” I took a sip of the most vinegary wine south of the Pyrenees. I was astonished at how steady my hand was, though inside I was raging and trembling at the same time.

“You never sailed into Copenhagen?”

“As I told you, I've been there a couple of times.”

“It's the Paris of the North!” he bellowed at the top of his voice. “We got everything there. We make the finest pottery, we make the best furniture, the best paintings, the best of anything—the best in the world!”

“Your marine diesel engines aren't bad, either,” I said, quietly, as Sven gulped down another glass of wine.

“Engines? Engines?” He poured another glass and drank it. Then he grabbed another bottle and drank a third of it from the neck. He leaned his head between his hands, with his elbows on the table. “What about the fuckin' Royal Palace?”

“I saw the town hall on the main square.”

There was silence for a full minute, except for Sven gurgling down another third of the bottle. By now a small crowd of locals had gathered at the door of the bar to watch the strange foreigners. Fascinated, they inspected us as carefully as scientists would some new-found biological specimens.

Sven hammered the bottle down on the table. He looked at me. His eyes closed to mere slits behind the mop of blond hair. He saw me watching the crowd at the door. He reached over with his huge mitt, grabbed a glass and, without turning to aim, flung it at the crowd. The dozen or so people, mostly children and youths, scattered in retreat.

“Hey, Alonzo!” Sven shouted. Alonzo ran from behind the bar, trembling, but still as humble as ever. The Dane reached into his pocket, brought out a dirty fifty-peseta note, and thrust it into Alonzo's hand. “For the glass,” he said in English. Alonzo nodded and smiled anxiously. He took the note with a shaking hand and put it in his pocket.

The Dane turned to me again. “Hey, Englishman,” he snarled, “you know anything about painting?”

“Well,” I replied quietly, “Sissie and I have just finished painting the insides of our boat.” I looked at Sissie and grinned. “Haven't we?”

Sissie was too frightened to reply. She merely nodded with a weak smile.

The giant's eyes almost popped out of his head. He choked on the wine he was swallowing, crashed the bottle down, and glared at me. He wiped the back of a huge fist across his lips, belched, and scoffed. “Huggh!” He banged his fist on the table. The bottles and glasses jumped. “Engelsman, you don't know a damned thing. You don't know one fuckin'
thing.”

Both Sissie and Miss Pomeroy were holding onto their glasses and staring at the Dane, like rabbits hypnotized by a cobra. He had their full attention now, just as a crying, spoiled child would have his mother's.

Again he stared at me. “The base of religion, that's what art is. Look at them—look at the Buddhists, the Christians, the Jews, the Catholics—look at any of them!” he shouted. The crowd had gathered at the door again to see the show.

“You know when religion started to die?” Sven slammed another bottle down. “You know?”

“About the time of the Vikings, wasn't it?” I said.

“Shut up. I'm serious, Englishman.” He took another gulp. “You know when the faith started to die?”

“No idea.”

“Of course not. Well, I'll tell you. It was when they discovered
perspective.”
He brought his fist down on the table with each syllable as he repeated in a loud roar, “PER . . . SPEC . . . TIVE!” His voice dropped, almost to a low moan. “Perspective—bullshit!” He almost spat the words out. He grabbed yet another bottle and gulped again.

“You know what we do?” he shouted. “All of us, from Giacco to Picasso, from Ma Yuan to Hokusai?”

I shook my head.

“We express . . . aspirations. That's what we do! We express the whole of human experience, the whole of philosophy!” He slugged at the bottle again, slammed it down, and shouted,
“Alonzo!”

Alonzo ran to the table and stood trembling at attention. Sven laid a huge arm across tiny Miss Pomeroy's shoulders. It seemed as if it would compress her frail body into one of her silver shoes. “Tell this idiot to go upstairs and fetch my latest painting.” He poked a massive thumb at me. “He's buying it.”

Alonzo sped away to do as he was bid. Sissie started to say, “But Tristan doesn't have any . . .”

“Shut up!” the giant roared. I grinned at Sissie, who was almost in tears.

“That's all right, Sissie,” I said. “We can have a look, anyway.”

About three minutes later, with the mad Dane still ranting and raving and slamming the table, Alonzo returned carrying a framed canvas, about three feet long and two feet wide. Smiling now, like a pleased child, Sven took the canvas and held it in front of him for us to see.

Sissie's eyes bulged out. I looked at the canvas and could barely stop myself from laughing. There, on an otherwise completely empty canvas, were two small splashes of red paint in one corner. It was as if the giant had dipped a small paintbrush into vermilion paint, flicked the hairs of the brush at the canvas, and quit.

Sven beamed through his hair. Suddenly he flung his arms out to both sides violently, and with a crash he fell forward, his head thumping the table. He gave a great snore, like a dinosaur in pain.

I stood up. “Well, that's that,” I said. “Sissie, if you want to catch the last ferry over to Ibiza we'd better start walking back to the port.”

Miss Pomeroy was weeping bitterly. Sissie looked at me. Great dollops of tears fell down her rosy cheeks. “Ai'm certainly not going to leave
deah
Miss Pomeroy in the hands of thet . . . thet . . .
brute!”

“Well, take her with you, then. She's a big girl now.”

“Why don't you come to Ibiza with me, Miss Pomeroy?” Sissie said.

The tiny body shook; then, with her make-up streaked down her face and tears descending onto her baby-blue dress, La Pomeroy wept aloud to me, “ButIcan'tleavehim . . .” Her body heaved. “He'smyman . . . he'smyman . . . he'sallI'vegotintheworld. . . .”

“You've got your writing. You shouldn't give that sod another minute of your life,” I said to her.

Miss Pomeroy shook and heaved and wailed in utter despair. “But he's my man and he's such a baby and I love him so much oh dear oh dear lord what shall I do . . .” No giggle; only a sob.

I took Sissie's arm and firmly led her past the sad-faced watchers at the bar-room door. As I followed her out into the bright afternoon sunshine I turned momentarily to see Miss Pomeroy with one thin, frail arm over the senseless mountain of flesh prostrate on the table. She was still sobbing and wailing, like a soul damned to eternal hell.

We walked back in silence to the boat. I was never so pleased in my life to see Nelson's tail wagging. Sissie caught the nine o'clock ferry to Ibiza, where she was to collect mail for us both and draw a minute sum from her diminishing bank balance. I set to making supper for myself and Nelson, anticipating for once a quiet evening's repose alone under the clear, star-laden night sky, and a good night's sleep.

Sissie came back the next day on the noon ferry. I had one letter from the British Income Tax Authority, telling me that one third of my naval pension was being stopped for payment of back taxes on some money I had earned years before delivering a yacht to Jamaica.