Islands in the Stream (9 page)

“That’s a lot better than names of streets,” Andrew said. “Were you scared, Tommy, when he was eating him?”

“No. The big cat was the best friend I had then. I mean the closest friend. I think he would have liked me to eat the pigeon too.”

“You ought to have tried it,” Andrew said. “Tel some more about slingshots.”

“Mother gave you the other slingshot for Christmas,” young Tom said. “She saw it in a gun store and she wanted to buy you a shotgun but she never had enough money. She used to look at the shotguns in the window every day when she went past the store to the Epicene and one day she saw the slingshot and she bought it because she was afraid they would sell it to somebody else and she kept it hid until Christmas. She had to falsify the accounts so you wouldn’t know about it. She’s told me about it lots of times. I can remember when you got it for Christmas and you gave me the old one. But I wasn’t strong enough to pull it then.”

“Papa, weren’t we ever poor?” Andrew asked.

“No. I’d gotten over being poor by the time you guys were born. We were broke lots of times but never really poor the way we were with Tom and his mother.”

“Tell us some more about in Paris,” David said. “What else did you and Tommy do?”

“What did we do, Schatz?”

“In the fall? We used to buy roasted chestnuts from a roast chestnut man and I used to keep my hands warm on them too. We went to the circus and saw the crocodiles of Le Capitaine Wahl.”

“Can you remember that?”

“
Very
well. The Capitaine Wahl wrestled with a crocodile (he pronounced it crowcodeel, the crow as in the bird of that name) and a beautiful girl poked them with a trident. But the biggest crocodiles wouldn’t move. The circus was beautiful and round and red with gold paint and smelled of horses. There was a place in back where you went to drink with Mr. Crosby and the tamer of lions and his wife.”

“Do you remember Mr. Crosby?”

“He never wore a hat nor an overcoat no matter how cold it was and his little girl had hair that hung down her back like Alice in Wonderland. In the illustrations I mean. Mr. Crosby was always very very nervous.”

“Who else do you remember?”

“Mr. Joyce.”

“What was he like?”

“He was tall and thin and he had a moustache and a small beard that grew straight up and down on his chin and he wore thick, thick glasses and walked with his head held very high. I remember him passing us on the street and not speaking and you spoke to him and he stopped and saw us through the glasses like looking out of an aquarium and he said, ‘Ah, Hudson, I was looking for you,’ and we three went to the café and it was cold outside but we sat in a corner with one of those what do you call thems?”

“
Braziers
.”

“I thought that was what ladies wore,” Andrew said.

“It’s an iron can with holes in it they burn coal or charcoal in to heat any place outside like a café terrace where you sit close to them to keep warm or a race track where you stand around and get warm from them,” young Tom explained. “At this café where papa and I and Mr. Joyce used to go they had them all along the outside and you could be warm and comfortable in the coldest weather.”

“I guess you’ve spent the biggest part of your life in cafés and saloons and hot spots,” the youngest boy said.

“Quite a bit of it,” Tom said. “Haven’t we, papa?”

“And sound asleep in the car outside while papa has just a quick one,” David said. “Boy, I used to hate that word
quick one.
I guess a quick one is about the slowest thing on earth.”

“What did Mr. Joyce talk about?” Roger asked young Tom.

“Gee, Mr. Davis, I can’t remember much about that time. I think it was about Italian writers and about Mr. Ford. Mr. Joyce couldn’t stand Mr. Ford. Mr. Pound had gotten on his nerves, too. ‘Ezra’s mad, Hudson,’ he said to papa. I can remember that because I thought
mad
meant
mad
like a
mad dog
and I remember sitting there and watching Mr. Joyce’s face, it was sort of red with awfully smooth skin, cold weather skin, and his glasses that had one lens even thicker than the other, and thinking of Mr. Pound with his red hair and his pointed beard and his nice eyes, with white stuff sort of like lather dripping out of his mouth. I thought it was terrible Mr. Pound was mad and I hoped we wouldn’t run into him. Then Mr. Joyce said, ‘Of course Ford’s been mad for years,’ and I saw Mr. Ford with his big, pale, funny face and his pale eyes and his mouth with the teeth loose in it and always about half open and that awful lather dripping down
his
jaws too.”

“Don’t say any more,” Andrew said. “I’ll dream about it.”

“Go on please,” David said. “It’s like werewolves. Mother locked up the werewolf book because Andrew had such bad dreams.”

“Did Mr. Pound ever bite anybody?” Andrew asked.

“No, horseman,” David told him. “It’s just a way of talking. He means mad out of his head mad. Not hydrophobia mad. Why did he think they were mad?”

“I can’t tell you,” young Tom said. “I wasn’t as young then as when we used to shoot pigeons in the gardens. But I was too young to remember everything and the idea of Mr. Pound and Mr. Ford with that dreadful slaver coming out of their mouths all ready to bite, drove everything out of my head. Did you know Mr. Joyce, Mr. Davis?”

“Yes. He and your father and I were very good friends.”

“Papa was much younger than Mr. Joyce.”

“Papa was younger than anybody, then.”

“Not than me,” young Tom said proudly. “I figure I was probably about Mr. Joyce’s youngest friend.”

“I’ll bet he misses you a lot,” Andrew said.

“It certainly is a shame he never could have met you,” David said to Andrew. “If you hadn’t been hanging around Rochester all the time he could have had the privilege.”

“Mr. Joyce was a great man,” young Tom said. “He wouldn’t have wanted to have anything to do with you two punks.”

“That’s your opinion,” Andrew said. “Mr. Joyce and David might have been pals. David writes for the paper at school.”

“Papa, tell us some more about when you and Tommy and Tommy’s mother were poor. How poor did you ever get?”

“They were pretty poor,” Roger said. “I can remember when your father used to make up all young Tom’s bottles in the morning and go to the market to buy the best and the cheapest vegetables. I’d meet him coming back from the market when I would be going out for breakfast.”

“I was the finest judge of
poireaux
in the sixth arrondissement,” Thomas Hudson told the boys.

“What’s
poireaux
?”

“Leeks.”

“It looks like long, green, quite big onions,” young Tom said. “Only it’s not bright shiny like onions. It’s dull shiny. The leaves are green and the ends are white. You boil it and eat it cold with olive oil and vinegar mixed with salt and pepper. You eat the whole thing, top and all. It’s delicious. I believe I’ve eaten as much of it as maybe anyone in the world.”

“What’s the sixth whatever it is?” Andrew asked.

“You certainly hold up conversation,” David told him.

“If I don’t know French I have to ask.”

“Paris is divided into twenty arrondissements or city districts. We lived in the sixth.”

“Papa, can we skip the arrondissements and you tell us something else?” Andrew asked.

“You can’t stand to learn anything, you athlete,” David said.

“I want to learn,” Andrew said. “But arrondissements is too old for me. You’re always telling me things are too old for me. I admit that is too old for me. I can’t follow it.”

“What’s Ty Cobb’s lifetime batting average?” David asked him.

“Three sixty-seven.”

“That’s not too old for you.”

“Cut it out, David. Some people like baseball and you like arrondissements.”

“I suppose we don’t have arrondissements in Rochester.”

“Oh cut it out. I just thought papa and Mr. Davis knew things that would be more interesting to everybody than those damn—Oh hell, I can’t even remember the name of them.”

“You’re not supposed to swear when we are around,” Thomas Hudson corrected.

“I’m sorry, papa,” the small boy said. “I can’t help it that I’m so damn young. I’m sorry again. I mean so young.”

He was upset and hurt. David could tease him pretty successfully.

“You’ll get over being young,” Thomas Hudson told him. “I know it’s hard not to swear when your feelings get working. Only don’t swear in front of grown people. I don’t care what you say by yourselves.”

“Please, papa. I said I was sorry.”

“I know,” Thomas Hudson said. “I wasn’t bawling you out. I was just explaining. I see you guys so seldom it makes a lot of explaining.”

“Not much really, papa,” David said.

“No,” Thomas Hudson said. “It isn’t much.”

“Andrew never swears in front of mother,” David said.

“Leave me out, David. It’s over, isn’t it, papa?”

“If you boys want to really know how to swear,” young Tom said, “you ought to read Mr. Joyce.”

“I can swear as much as I need,” David said. “At least for now.”

“My friend Mr. Joyce has words and expressions I’d never even heard of. I’ll bet nobody could outswear him in any language.”

“Then after that he made up a whole new language,” Roger said. He was lying on his back on the beach with his eyes closed.

“I can’t understand that new language,” young Tom said. “I guess I’m not old enough for it. But wait until you boys read
Ulysses
.”

“That’s not for boys,” Thomas Hudson said. “It isn’t really. You couldn’t understand it and you shouldn’t try to. Really. You have to wait till you’re older.”

“I read it all,” young Tom said. “I couldn’t understand practically any of it when I first read it, papa, just as you say. But I kept on reading it and now there’s part of it I really understand and I can explain it to people. It’s certainly made me proud that I was one of Mr. Joyce’s friends.”

“Was he really a friend of Mr. Joyce, papa?” Andrew asked.

“Mr. Joyce always used to ask about him.”

“You’re damn right I was a friend of Mr. Joyce,” young Tom said. “He was one of the best friends I ever had.”

“I don’t think you better explain the book much yet,” Thomas Hudson said. “Not quite yet. What part is it that you explain?”

“The last part. The part where the lady talks out loud to herself.”

“The soliloquy,” David said.

“Have you read it?”

“Oh sure,” David said. “Tommy read it to me.”

“Did he explain it?”

“As well as he could. Some of it’s a little old for both of us.”

“Where did you get hold of it?”

“In the books at home. I borrowed it and took it to school.”

“You what?”

“I used to read passages of it out loud to the boys and tell them how Mr. Joyce was my friend and how much time we used to spend together.”

“How did the boys like it?”

“Some of the more devout boys thought it was a little strong.”

“Did they find out about it at school?”

“Sure. Didn’t you hear, papa? No, I guess that was when you were in Abyssinia. The headmaster was going to expel me but I explained Mr. Joyce was a great writer and a personal friend of mine so finally the headmaster said he’d keep the book and sent it home and I promised I’d consult him before I read anything else to the boys or attempted to explain any classics. First, when he was going to expel me, he thought I had a dirty mind. But I haven’t got a dirty mind, papa. That is, not any dirtier than anybody else’s.”

“Oh yes. He was going to confiscate it but I explained it was a first edition and that Mr. Joyce had written in it for you and that he couldn’t confiscate it because it wasn’t mine. I think he was very disappointed not to confiscate it.”

“When can I read that book by Mr. Joyce, papa?” Andrew asked.

“Not for a long time.”

“But Tommy read it.”

“Tommy is a friend of Mr. Joyce.”

“Boy, I’ll say I am,” said young Tom. “Papa, we never knew Balzac, did we?”

“No. He was before our time.”

“Nor Gautier? I found two swell ones by them at home too. The
Droll Stories
and
Mademoiselle de Maupin
. I don’t understand
Mademoiselle de Maupin
at all yet but I am reading it over to try to and it’s great. But if they weren’t friends of ours I think they would expel me sure if I read them to the boys.”

“How are they, Tommy?” David asked.

“Wonderful. You’ll like them both.”

“Why don’t you consult the headmaster as to whether you can read them to the boys?” Roger said. “They’re better than what the boys will dig up for themselves.”

“No, Mr. Davis. I don’t think I’d better. He might get that dirty-mind idea again. Anyway, with the boys it wouldn’t be the same as though they were friends of mine like Mr. Joyce. Anyway I don’t understand
Mademoiselle de Maupin
well enough to explain it and I wouldn’t have the same authority explaining it as when I had Mr. Joyce’s friendship to back me up.”

“I’d like to have heard that explanation,” Roger said.

“Shucks, Mr. Davis. It was very rudimentary. It wouldn’t have interested you. You understand that part perfectly well, don’t you?”

“Pretty well.”

“I wish we would have known Balzac and Gautier, though, as friends the way we knew Mr. Joyce.”

“So do I,” said Thomas Hudson.

“We knew some good writers, though, didn’t we?”

“We certainly did,” Thomas Hudson said. It was pleasant and hot on the sand and he felt lazy after working and happy, too. It made him very happy to hear the boys talk.

“Let’s go in and swim and then have lunch,” Roger said. “It’s getting hot.”

Thomas Hudson watched them. Swimming slowly, the four of them swam out in the green water, their bodies making shadows over the clear white sand, bodies forging along, shadows projected on the sand by the slight angle of the sun, the brown arms lifting and pushing forward, the hands slicing in, taking hold of the water and pulling it back, legs beating along steadily, heads turning for air, breathing easily and smoothly. Thomas Hudson stood there and watched them swimming out with the wind and he was very fond of the four of them. He thought he ought to paint them swimming, although it would be very difficult. He would try it, though, during the summer.