Love, Let Me Not Hunger (28 page)

They all looked at Rose as though somehow it would be she who would cast the deciding vote, and that they knew from the softness of her heart what the vote would be.

“No,” said Rose, “the kids’ll never know. Who knows how long our jobs’ll last or how much we’ll make? I was lucky today.”

Little Janos chuckled. “That’s right, that’s right. It’s meat.”

Toby was shocked and stared at her as though he could not believe his ears.
Christ,
he thought,
but she’s tough! What’s got into her? Can’t she see how the old man feels? How hard can you get?

“No,” Rose repeated, “She’s gone. It ain’t Pockets any more. It’s just meat that’s left. Everybody—all of us have got to do what’s got to be done—what’s best for them, no matter what.”

This sudden callousness, the iron glimpsed beneath the gentleness, shook Toby, and Mr. Albert, too, appeared stunned but he said nothing. He made no further protest but only regarded Rose curiously over the tops of his spectacles, for he thought or had thought that he knew every cranny of her warm and loving heart and he was puzzled. But even as he regarded her, another notion crossed his mind and suddenly revealed something so startling that he hardly dared look any longer and he blinked his eyes and dropped them. For he was an old man, experienced in the ways of life, perceptive, and, for all of his age and disappointments, no fool, and he was wondering, amongst other things, how Rose, who spoke nothing but English, managed to take orders from patrons of a Spanish roadside restaurant.

That night Toby did not go to Rose’s bed, for he was as ashamed and repelled by the toughness she had shown and there had been some damage suffered to the image of her that he had constructed. He lay wondering and brooding in his bunk, when the compartment door opened and she stood in the doorway in her flowered cotton nightdress. Her smooth hair touched her shoulders. There was enough light for him to see the pale sweetness of her features, the purity of her temples, the youthful and endearing softness of her mouth, and the exultant sweep of her throat. With her hands clasped at her breast and the gown falling to her toes, concealing her, she looked like a little girl.

She whispered, “Aren’t you coming, Toby?”

There was no art or guile in her expression—the face of a rueful angel—the carriage of a child—and beneath the concealing garment all of the exciting means for “loving it up.”

“Go back to your bed,” Toby growled, “I’ll be there in a minute.”

He lay for another few moments rebuilding and repairing the damaged concept of her, denying what had happened earlier that evening, restoring her and himself too. She was his girl. He wanted her. What was he waiting for? He got up, went in and joined her in his father’s bed.

C H A P T E R
1 9

I
t was, of course, only a stop-gap, a dragging out of the slow starvation that was taking its toll of the strength of both animals and humans, for there was never enough. If for a day or so there was meat for the carnivores, then there was insufficient fodder for the elephant and the horses. Or if they amassed sufficient
pesetas
to buy alfalfa and a few fruits and vegetables and some milk for the other creatures, then the big cats again went short of food and sent up their moaning.

They were caught in an economic, fiscal, and social trap from which there was no escape. The officials of the town of Zalano might indeed have made another effort to help their enforced and unwelcome guests, and actually were engaged in discussing ways and means of doing so since assistance from Madrid did not seem to be forthcoming, when the news reached them that three of the four remaining caretakers of the hungry zoo had secured jobs and were working.

Pleased at this solution of the problem, the matter then had forthwith been dropped. By nature warm-hearted, friendly, hospitable, and ever helpful to strangers, the people of Zalano had no way of knowing of the gulf between what was being earned and what it cost per week to maintain the animals.

The two worlds were thus separated from one another. They circled within their own orbits, passing close to one another but no longer impinging. The law was satisfied, the widow compensated, and the affair was at an end.

The four continued to wage their losing battle with gallantry and persistence since there was nothing else to do. The passage of ten days had proved Rose correct. There had been no word from Deeter and they knew there would be none. They no longer had any faith in Sam Marvel or his return.

Sometimes they had euphoric moments when it seemed as though they might be gaining a little, as when Rose brought home three hundred
pesetas
one night and almost as much a few days later, due to the fact, she explained, that there had been two banquets staged at Las Flores, one an outing from Toledo and the other a passing American bus tour, and this had been her share of generous tips. But immediately they were on this clover, Toby and Janos lost their jobs with the farmer. They were workless for almost a week and finally found some on the other side of town where the municipality was laying a new sewer and needed manual labour; but the pay was meagre and the hours long and hard. Spanish economy was not organised for the poor and the unskilled.

All of this weighed most heavily upon Mr. Albert who was the one who kept the accounts and visited the market place to buy what sustenance he could for man and beast, and who saw his animals fading daily before his eyes.

They were all doing the best they could, but it was he who saw that they were only fooling themselves and that this could not go on. Something further was needed if the situation were not to disintegrate into total disaster. Whenever, despairingly, he contemplated their dilemma, his mind would turn to one who was something of a legend in the environments of Zalano whom he had once actually seen, and with whom in some strange way that he could never explain to himself he had formed a connection as well. This was the rich, gross, ugly woman who lived ten kilometres outside the town on the flat plain in a state of luxury befitting one of the sixteenth-century queens of Spain. She was surrounded, one gathered, by a petty court and courtiers. Her word was law. She was known occasionally to dispense bounty, but mostly people feared her.

Mr. Albert was far from useless. Someone had to care for the animals, apportion fairly what food there was, do the marketing, searching out bargains, making the
pesetas
stretch as far as they would, buying stale bread to soak in milk half diluted with water for the bear, fruit and vegetables so nearly “off” that they had to be eaten immediately or there would have been danger of colic and diarrhoea. Someone also had to go on with the work of cleaning the cages, cosset the beasts, and jolly them along, give them hope where no hope seemed to exist. He was doing his share indeed, and more, working long hours for little food and no pay, but it seemed to him that he was failing in the most important thing of all—the earning of money.

What they most desperately needed if their animals were to survive, if anything was to be left of them, was money—or its equivalent in food. With cash his mind’s eye saw the meat carcasses dumped, timothy, alfalfa, bran, oats, all the vitamin-nourished fodder needed by the hay burners delivered, and the fruits and vegetables and rich milk that would drive away the clouds that were misting the eyes of the monkeys, restore texture and sheen to their fur.

Often in his long and feckless life Mr. Albert had been hungry—very hungry—empty-bellied, not knowing where his next meal would come from, but never actually starving. Somehow he had always managed to find a new job or a hand-out, earning a night’s pay here, catching on to another job for a week there; in short, making out. But with the valuable menagerie on his hands the situation was different. Years of time, money, and effort had gone into its training, and the loss if destroyed would be more than just that of a few animals valued at so much per pound on the hoof. Besides which, they were his life, what was left of it.

The more he thought of all this and fussed and wondered and worried how he might manage to make some tangible contribution towards the improvement of their situation, the more his thoughts turned to the legendary
finca
of the equally legendary Marquesa de Pozoblanco. If there were any money at all in that region it was she who had it and might possibly be persuaded to part with some in the name of charity, the love of God and His creatures.

If one only knew the right approach to the matter, and above all to her.

His mind turned back to the fatal last performance of Samuel Marvel’s Marvel Circus and his own weird and humiliating part in it. He remembered how she had looked with her red wig towering in tiers, the small, carmined mouth, and her eyelids painted silver, her fingers ringed, and her ears and arms bejewelled like a Babylonian whore’s, for somewhere this simile stuck in Mr. Albert’s mind from a picture he must have seen.

He remembered little of the indignities he had suffered, for it had all happened so quickly, but he did recall that when it was over and he was being hustled from the ring he had caught a glimpse of her bursting her sides with laughter, her little eyes almost lost in the purple flesh of her broad face, her jowls shaking, as, roaring with mirth, she pounded the raised ring before her with jewelled fists. If he had ever seen a creature drunk and delirious with laughter, it had been she. And then afterwards there had been that transfer of the fat purse from her to Mr. Marvel via the grave dignitary in black coat and striped trousers who had spoken such perfect English. He had no doubt that it was the public abuse and humiliation and sloshings of water he had suffered that had so entertained her. Fearful, hideous, frightening, monstrous creature!

Then he remembered the large block of tickets which had been bought for the children of the poor of Zalano and paid for by this same black-coated dignitary, and the joy and laughter of those children. And he wondered again about this grotesque woman who was so extraordinarily wealthy—one of the richest women in Spain, they said, with vast estates in every part of the country—who lived like a queen, and who throve on cruelty, oriental, savage, bloodthirsty, and awe-inspiring. For Mr. Albert had not forgotten either the incident of the clown who had been injured by the snapped wire and the expression upon the face of the Marquesa when he had retired screaming, clutching his white-silk-covered buttocks with the blood oozing through his fingers.

Might one appeal to her? Would she care about animals who were suffering and dying helplessly, and those who loved them and suffered with them? What if one day in the morning when he had done his marketing he made his way out to her domain, asked to see her and begged for help?

Even as he had these thoughts and somehow saw himself in the heroic light of rescuer of them all, Mr. Albert was frightened. He was not a very brave individual, though he was steadfast and could bear reverses courageously—since his life had been one whole series of them—but he was timid about putting himself forward; he had no command or presence; he was only a silly-looking old man who had no collar to put around the neckband of his shirt, and whose only shred of dignity consisted of the long tail of the black coat that flapped about the back of his knees.

For the Marquesa de Pozoblanco had been discussed amongst them often. She was something of a mystery and Deeter, during his visits to the town, had picked up gossip about her. She was respected in Zalano as being a just woman, who dealt fairly with those who served her, worked for her, or leased neighbouring land from her, but she was also feared and disliked. And here Deeter had never been able to penetrate beyond closed-mouth head waggings, shrugs, and gestures that he did not understand. All he had been able to gather from this was that the old girl was a queer one and, as he had put it, “A lot of funny business went on around her.”

Her
finca
lay hidden behind high, white-washed stone walls. Entrance was by a massive wrought-iron gate that took two men from the lodge to open and close it. None of the townspeople to whom Deeter had talked had ever been inside. There was a small door at the rear where deliveries were left. This made it easier to spread tales of “funny business,” but never to the point of what it was or how it was conducted. Zalano stayed away from the Finca de Pozoblanco. Not even the priest went there for she had her own chaplain and acolyte for her private chapel.

“One feller,” Deeter had said, “kept making the go-away-devil sign with his fist, thumb, and little finger, like horns, when he was talking about her. The old girl must be a lallapaloosa.”

All these stories, hearsays, and hints worried Mr. Albert. Yet he thought to himself, after all, he was an old man and there was not much more anyone could do to him.

And then there was Rose, who had been on his mind and his heart like a deep, all-pervading, ever present sorrow. He had come to cherish this girl for her courage and warmth. Perhaps he saw something of himself reflected in her. She was sister to him in suffering and failure.

He knew and saw many things, did the old man, her love for Toby and Toby’s use of her to free himself from his mother’s apron strings. It was all there to be read, just like a half-finished book, to fill one with a sense of dread and apprehension that all might not end well. And this it was, and that other thing he thought he knew and to which Toby was blind, which left him with the weight of sadness while yet he admired and valued her the more.

One afternoon, when he had finished his chores early, he trudged through the town and out the other side the half kilometre to the cross-roads where squatted the roadhouse known as Las Flores. He approached it cautiously, circling it from behind at a distance first, then coming closer. There were no charabancs or bus tours visible. A limousine and two sporty cars were parked outside the bar. He peered through the window of the verandah into the restaurant, which was dreary-looking and almost deserted. Only one couple, an elderly man and a woman with dyed hair, were dining there. They were looked after by an old and tired waiter in a spotted white jacket with a dirty napkin over his arm. There was no sign of Rose.