Ask The Dust (9 page)

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She turned around, her eyes ablaze, and shook her fist at the collegians in the roadster. By now every eye was on us, and everyone smiled. I nudged her.

'Pull it in at stop signals, at least.'

'Oh shut up!' she said.

I reached for Hackmuth's letter and sought refuge in it. The boulevard was well-lighted, I could read the words, but the Ford kicked like a mule, rattled and jerked and broke wind. She was proud of that car.

'It's got a wonderful engine,' she said.

'It sounds good,' I said, hanging on.

'You ought to have a car of your own,' she said.

I asked her about the Camilla Lombard written on her owner's certificate. I asked her if she was married.

'No,' she said.

'What's the Lombard for?'

'For fun,' she said. 'Sometimes I use it professionally.

I didn't understand.

'Do you like your name?' she asked. 'Don't you wish it was Johnson, or Williams, or something?'

I said no, that I was satisfied.

'No you're not,' she said. 'I know.'

'But I am!' I said.

'No you're not.'

After Beverly Hills there was no fog. The palms along the road stood out green in the bluish darkness, and the white line in the pavement leaped ahead of us like a burning fuse. A few clouds tumbled and tossed, but there were no stars.

We passed through low hills. On both sides of the road were high hedges and lush vines with wild palms and cypress trees scattered everywhere.

In silence we reached the Palisades, driving along the crest 74 JOHN FANTE

of the high cliffs overlooking the sea. A cold wind sideswiped us. The jalopy teetered. From below rose the roar of the sea. Far out fogbanks crept towards the land, an army of ghosts crawling on their bellies. Below us the breakers flayed the land with white fists. They retreated and came back to flay it again.

As each breaker retreated, the shoreline broke into an ever-widening grin. We coasted in second down the spiral road, the black pavement perspiring, fog tongues licking it. The air was so clean. We breathed it gratefully. There was no dust here.

She drove the car into an endless stretch of white sand. We sat and watched the sea. It was warm below the cliffs. She touched my hand. 'Why don't you teach me to swim?' she said.

'Not out there,' I said.

The breakers were tall. The tide was high and they came in fast. A hundred yards out they formed and came in all the way. We watched them burst against the shore, foamy lace exploding like thunder.

'You learn to swim in still water,' I said.

She laughed and began undressing. She was brown underneath, but it was natural brown and not a tan. I was white and ghostlike. There was a blob of heaviness at my stomach. I pulled it in to hide it. She looked at the whiteness, at my loins and legs, and smiled. I was glad when she walked towards the water.

The sand was soft and warm. We sat facing the sea and talked of swimming. I showed her the first principles. She lay on her stomach, paddled her hands and kicked her feet. Sand sprinkled her face and she imitated me without enthusiasm. She sat up.

'I don't like learning to swim,' she said.

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We waded hand in hand into the water, our fronts caked with sand, it was cold, then just right. It was my first time in the ocean. I breasted the waves until my shoulders were under water, then I tried to swim. The waves lifted me. I began diving under oncoming breakers. They poured over me harmlessly. I was learning. When the big breakers appeared, I threw myself at their crests and they coasted me to the beach.

I kept my eye on Camilla. She waded to her knees, saw a breaker coming, and ran towards the shore. Then she came back. She shouted with delight. A breaker struck her and she squealed and disappeared. A moment later she reappeared, laughing and shouting. I yelled at her not to take such chances, but she staggered out to meet a white crest that rose up and tumbled her out of sight. I watched her roll like a hamper of bananas. She waded to the shore, her body glistening, her hands in her hair. I swam until I was tired, then I waded out of the water. My eyes stung from salt water. I lay on my back and panted. After a few minutes my strength returned and I sat up and felt like smoking a cigarette. Camilla was not in sight. I walked to the car, thinking she was there.

But she wasn't. I ran down to the edge of the water and searched the foamy confusion. I called her name.

Then I heard her scream. It came from far out, beyond the surge of breakers and into the fog bank over choppy water. It seemed a good hundred yards. She screamed again; 'Help!' I waded in, hit the first breakers with my shoulders, and started swimming. Then I lost the sound of her voice in the roar. 'I'm coming!' I yelled, and I yelled again and again, until I had to stop to save my strength. The big breakers were easy, I dived under them, but the small waves confused me, 76

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slapped my face and choked me. Finally I was in choppy water. The little waves leaped for my mouth. Her cries had stopped. I churned water with my hands, waiting for another cry. It did not come. I shouted. My .voice was weak, like a voice under water.

Suddenly I was exhausted. The little waves leaped over me. I swallowed water, I was sinking. I prayed, I groaned and fought the water, and I knew I should not fight it. The sea was quiet out here. Far inland I heard the roar of the breakers. I called, waited, called again. No answer save the slush of my arms and the sound of the little choppy waves. Then something happened to my right leg, to the toes of the foot. They seemed lodged. When I kicked the pain shot to the thigh. I wanted to live. God, don't take me now! I swam blindly towards the shore.

Then I felt myself in the big breakers once more, heard them booming louder. It seemed too late. I couldn't swim, my arms were so tired, my right leg ached so much. To breathe was all that mattered. Under water the current rushed, rolling and dragging me. So this was the end of Camilla, and this was the end of Arturo Bandini — but even then I was writing it all down, seeing it across a page in a typewriter, writing it out and coasting along the sharp sand, so sure I would never come out alive. Then I was in water to my waist, limp and too far gone to do anything about it, floundering helplessly with my mind clear, composing the whole thing, worrying about excessive adjectives. The next breaker smashed me under once more, dragged me to water a foot deep, and I crawled on my hands and knees out of water a foot deep, wondering if I could perhaps make a poem out of it. I thought of Camilla out there and I sobbed and noticed my tears were saltier than the sea water. But I couldn't lie there, I had to get help ASK THE DUST 77

somewhere, and I got to my feet and staggered towards the car. I was so cold and my jaws chattered.

I turned and looked at the sea. Not fifty feet away Camilla waded towards the land in water to her waist. She was laughing, choking from it, this supreme joke she had played, and when I saw her dive ahead of the next breaker with all the grace and perfection of a seal, I didn't think it was funny at all. I walked out to her, felt my strength returning with every step, and when I got to her I picked her up bodily, over my shoulders, and I didn't mind her screaming, her fingers scratching my scalp and tearing my hair. I lifted her as high as my arms and threw her in a pool of water a few feet deep. She landed with a thud that knocked the breath out of her. I waded out, took her hair in both my hands, and rubbed her face and mouth in the muddy sand. I left her there, crawling on her hands and knees, crying and moaning, and I walked back to the car. She had mentioned blankets in the rumble seat. I pulled them out, wrapped myself up, and lay down on the warm sand.

In a little while she made her way through the deep sand and found me sitting under the blankets. Dripping and clean she stood before me, showing herself, proud of her nakedness, turning round and round.

'You still like me?'

I stole glances at her. I was speechless, and I nodded and grinned. She stepped upon the blankets and asked me to move over. I made a place and she slipped under, her body sleek and cold. She asked me to hold her, and I held her, and she kissed me, her lips wet and cool. We lay a long time, and I was worried and afraid and without passion. Something like a grey flower grew between us, a thought that took shape and spoke of the chasm that separated us. I didn't know what it was. I

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felt her waiting. I drew my hands over her belly and legs, felt my own desire, searched foolishly for my passion, strained for it while she waited, rolled and tore my hair and begged for it, but there was none, there was none at all, only the retreat to Hackmuth's letter and thoughts that remained to be written, but no lust, only fear of her, and shame and humiliation. Then I was blaming and cursing myself and I wanted to get up and walk into the sea. She felt my retreat.

With a sneer she sat up and began drying her hair on the blanket. 'I thought you liked me,' she said.

I couldn't answer. I shrugged and stood up. We dressed and drove back to Los Angeles. We didn't speak. She lit a cigarette and looked at me strangely, lips pursed. She blew smoke from her cigarette into my face. I took the cigarette out of her mouth and threw it into the street. She lit another and inhaled languidly, amused and contemptuous. I hated her then.

Dawn climbed the mountains in the east, gold bars of light cutting the sky like searchlights. I took out Hackmuth's letter and read it again. Back East in New York Hackmuth would just now be entering his office. Somewhere in that office was my manuscript
The Long Lost Hills.
Love wasn't everything. Women weren't everything. A writer had to conserve his energies.

We reached the city. I told her where I lived. 'Bunker Hill?' She laughed. 'It's a good place for you.' 'It's perfect,' I said. 'In my hotel they don't allow Mexicans.'

It sickened both of us. She drove to the hotel and killed the engine. I sat wondering if there was anything more to say, but there was nothing. I got out, nodded, and walked towards the hotel. Between my shoulder blades I felt her eyes

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like knives. As I got to the door she called me. I walked back to the car.

'Aren't you going to kiss me goodnight?'

I kissed her.

'Not that way.'

Her arms slipped around my neck. She pulled my face down and sank her teeth into my lower lip. It stung and I fought her until I was free. She sat with one arm over the seat, smiling and watching me enter the hotel. I took out my handkerchief and dabbed my lips. The handkerchief had a spot of blood on it. I walked down the grey hall to my room. As I closed the door all the desire that had not come a while before seized me. It pounded my skull and tingled in my fingers. I threw myself on the bed and tore the pillow with my hands.

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All that day it was on my mind. I remembered her brown nakedness and her kiss, the flavour of her mouth as it came cold from the sea, and I saw myself white and virginal, pulling in the pudgy line of my stomach, standing in the sand and holding my hands over my loins. I walked up and down the room. Late in the afternoon I was exhausted and the sight of myself in the mirror was unbearable. I sat at the typewriter and wrote about it, poured it out the way it should have happened, hammered it out with such violence that the portable typewriter kept moving away from me and across the table. On paper I stalked her like a tiger and beat her to the earth and overpowered her with my invincible strength. It ended with her creeping after me, in the sand, tears streaming from her eyes, beseeching me to have mercy upon her. Fine. Excellent. But when I read it over it was ugly and dull. I tore the pages and threw them away.

Hellfrick knocked on the door. He was pale and trembling, his skin like wet paper. He was off the booze; never would he touch another drop. He sat on the edge of my bed and wrung his bony fingers. Nostalgically he talked of meat, of the good old steaks you got back in Kansas City, of the wonderful T-bones and tender lamb chops. But not out here in this land of the eternal sun, where the cattle ate nothing but dead weeds and sunshine, where the meat was full of worms and they had

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to paint it to make it look bloody and red. And would I lend him fifty cents? I gave him the money and he went down to the butcher shop on Olive Street. In a little while he was back in his room and the lower floor of the hotel was fragrant with the tangy aroma of liver and onions. I walked into his room. He sat before a plate of the food, his mouth bloated, his thin jaws working hard. He shook his fork at me. 'I'll make it good with you, kid. I'll pay you back a thousand times."

It made me hungry. I walked down to the restaurant near Angel's Flight and ordered the same thing. I took my time having dinner. But no matter how long I loitered over coffee I knew I would eventually walk down the Flight to the Columbia Buffet. I had only to touch the lump on my lip to grow angry, and then to feel passion.

When I got down to the buffet I was afraid to enter. I crossed the street and watched her through the windows. She was not wearing her white shoes, and she seemed the same, happy and busy with her beer tray.

I got an idea. I walked quickly, two blocks, to the telegraph office. I sat down before the telegraph blank, my heart pounding. The words writhed across the page. I love you Camilla I want to marry you Arturo Bandini. When I paid for it the clerk looked at the address and said it would be delivered in ten minutes. I hurried back to Spring Street and stood in the shadowed doorway waiting for the telegraph boy to appear.

The moment I saw him coming around the corner I knew the telegram was a blunder. I ran into the street and stopped him. I told him I wrote the telegram and didn't want it delivered. 'A mistake,' I said. He wouldn't listen. He was tall with a pimply face. I offered him ten dollars. He shook his head and smiled emphatically. Twenty dollars, thirty.

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