The Garden of Eden

Chapter Fifteen

HE HEARD THE BUGATTI start and the noise came as a surprise and an intrusion because there was no motor noise in the country where he was living. He was completely detached from every thing except the story he was writing and he was living in it as he built it. The difficult parts he had dreaded he now faced one after another and as he did the people, the country, the days and the nights, and the weather were all there as he wrote. He went on working and he felt as tired as if he had spent the night crossing the broken volcanic desert and the sun had caught him and the others with the dry gray lakes still ahead. He could feel the weight of the heavy double-barreled rifle carried over his shoulder, his hand on the muzzle, and he tasted the pebble in his mouth. Across the shimmer of the dry lakes he could see the distant blue of the escarpment. Ahead of him there was no one, and behind was the long line of porters who knew that they had reached this point three hours too late.

It was not him, of course, who had stood there that morning, nor had he even worn the patched corduroy jacket faded almost white now, the armpits rotted through by sweat, that he took off then and handed to his Kamba servant and brother who shared with him the guilt and knowledge of the delay, watching him smell the sour, vinegary smell and shake his head in disgust and then grin as he swung the jacket over his black shoulder holding it by the sleeves as they started off across the dry-baked gray, the gun muzzles in their right hands, the barrels balanced on their shoulders, the heavy stocks pointing back toward the line of porters.

It was not him, but as he wrote it was and when someone read it, finally, it would be whoever read it and what they found when they should reach the escarpment, if they reached it, and he would make them reach its base by noon of that day; then whoever read it would find what there was there and have it always.

All your father found he found for you too, he thought, the good, the wonderful, the bad, the very bad, the really very bad, the truly bad and then the much worse. It was a shame a man with such a talent for disaster and for delight should have gone the way he went, he thought. It always made him happy to remember his father and he knew his father would have liked this story.

It was nearly noon when he came out of the room and walked barefoot on the stones of the patio to the entrance of the hotel. In the big room workmen were putting up a mirror on the wall behind the bar. Monsieur Aurol and the young waiter were with them and he spoke to them and went out in the kitchen where he found Madame.

"Have you any beer, Madame?" he asked her.

"Mais certainement, Monsieur Jeourne," she said and brought a cold bottle from the ice chest.

"I'll drink it from the bottle," he said.

"As Monsieur wishes," she said. "The ladies drove to Nice I believe. Monsieur worked well?"

"Very well."

"Monsieur works too hard. It's not good not to take breakfast."

"Is there any of that caviar left in the tin?"

"I'm sure there is.

"I'll take a couple of spoonsful."

"Monsieur is odd," Madame said. "Yesterday you ate it with champagne. Today with beer."

"I'm alone today," David said. "Do you know if my bicyclette is still in the remise?"

"It should be," Madame said.

David took a spoonful of the caviar and offered the tin to Madame. "Have some, Madame. It's very good."

"I shouldn't," she said.

"Don't be silly," he told her. "Take some. There's some toast. Take a glass of champagne. There's some in the ice box."

Madame took a spoonful of caviar and put it on a piece of toast left from breakfast and poured herself a glass of rose.

"It is excellent," she said. "Now we must put it away.

"Do you feel any good effect?" David asked. "I'm going to have one more spoon.

"Ah, Monsieur. You mustn't joke like that."

"Why not?" David said. "My joking partners are away. If those two beautiful women come back tell them I went for a swim will you?"

"Certainly. The little one is a beauty. Not as beautiful as Madame of course."

"I find her not too ugly," David said.

"She's a beauty, Monsieur, and very charming."

"She'll do until something else comes along," David said. "If you think she's pretty."

"Monsieur," she said in deepest reproof.

"What are all the architectural reforms?" David asked.

"The new miroir for the bar? It's such a charming gift to the maison."

"Everyone's full of charm," David said. "Charm and sturgeon eggs. Ask the boy to look at my tires while I put something on my feet and find a cap, will you please?"

"Monsieur likes to go barefoot. Me too in summer."

"We'll go barefoot together sometime."

"Monsieur," she said giving it everything.

"Is Aurol jealous?"

"Sans bla gue ," she said. "I'll tell the two beautiful ladies you've gone swimming."

"Keep the caviar away from Aurol," David said. "A bientot, chere Madame."

"A tout l'heure, Monsieur."

On the shiny black road that mounted through the pines as he left the hotel he felt the pull in his arms and his shoulders and the rounding thrust of his feet against the pedals as he climbed in the hot sun with the smell of the pines and the light breeze that came from the sea. He bent his back forward and pulled lightly against his hands and felt the cadence that had been ragged as he first mounted begin to smooth out as he passed the hundred-meter stones and then the first red-topped kilometer marker and then the second. At the headland the road dipped to border the sea and he braked and dismounted and put the bicycle over his shoulder and walked down with it along the trail to the beach. He propped it against a pine tree that gave off the resin smell of the hot day and he dropped down to the rocks, stripped and put his espadrilles on his shorts, shirt and cap and he dove from the rocks into the deep clear cold sea. He came up through the varying light and when his head came out he shook it to clear his ears and …