It was an ordinary sunny day, one I never did pin down exactly. July, maybe June, maybe even May. What I was more or less sure of was the number of the year. Nineteen ninety-nine, I think. Well, never mind.
It was an ordinary day with no number and no name. I was enthroned, as befits me, in a lounge chair, keeping one eye on the surf and squinting the other sideways at the youngish woman next to me, a neatly made-up brunette. In my hand a highball of Long Island clinked its ice cubes… In short, I was enjoying life and, in between times, laying plans for the evening. My neighbor, it appeared, was likewise entertaining illusions about spending that time in my company. Her gaze, hidden behind sunglasses and apparently fixed on the horizon, kept sliding my way. A familiar story. Forty years old, divorced, came to a resort to blow off some cobwebs, and the moment something male turned up beside her she started wanting something immoral…
– Cowboy, damn your hide! – Romanych’s cold-thickened voice cut short my line of reasoning.
Romanych (Ramon Luis Maria Esteller by passport) was the owner of the hotel where I’d dropped anchor. On the side, this old Latino discharged the honorable duties of my best friend and personal manager. He was also marking me down as his heir. In a word, a first-class old boy. At our first meeting he knocked out four of my teeth with a stool. And him sixty years old! I didn’t stay in his debt either – shifted Romanych’s kidneys five centimeters lower and broke a couple of ribs. Now the old man predicts the rare storms better than any barometer.
Yes, we made our acquaintance in a merry way.
It happened a little over a year ago, when I turned up entirely by chance on San Marco, a small island a thousand miles southeast of Florida. In those days I was traveling from resort to resort, recovering my strength and, along the way, pricing real estate. Clever thoughts wandered through my head about investing funds in something reliable and profitable, such as the hotel business, tourism and similar swill. In a couple of days I had crawled over every corner of San Marco and succeeded only in frightening the locals with my muddled questioning. I recall grilling hotel bosses about profit margins and the size of their tax deductions. How was I to know that every hotel on the island was run by former crooks from the mainland, meaning from the States? The local people had settled down, sure, but they had their own notions of privacy. They recognized me as a bad man from the place where the hated FBI is located. Naturally they sent the most bull-headed customer in the district over to me so that this head – a head with fists attached – could conduct a debriefing. And so, one evening in a tavern, a droopy-mustached old man sat down beside me, the spitting image of a Mexican bandit out of a prewar western. This black-and-white (very tanned and very toothy) old fellow settled at my table like the owner of the place and announced for all to hear that I was something along the lines of a fluffy. My English at the time was weak and the elaborate fifty-word sentence went past my ears entirely. All that stayed in my head was: «Aha, I’m being insulted!» It seemed to me that the word «fluffy» could in no way be a compliment. So I had to crack my companion over the noggin. His answer didn’t take long coming. By means of a stool that came to hand, the old man relieved me of four front teeth. One word led to another, and the old man went flying out of the tavern. The local muchachos promptly sent me flying after him. But they had recognized me as one of their own. As it was explained to me the next morning in the dentist’s chair, FBI agents do not behave that way and do not scatter their teeth around at random. Not because they’re so quick on their feet, but because they don’t like fighting. They vanish in an unknown direction…
Naturally I struck up a friendship with the colorful old man. Ramon (for it was he) turned out, to my great surprise, to be the owner of a fashionable five-story hotel, a dozen bungalows and half a kilometer of beachfront. The whole establishment was called «Sunny Club» and was intended for the recreation of solid people, mostly single ones. How a Mexican cutthroat had worked his way up into the big time I still cannot fathom. So then. In honor of our peace treaty, Romanych and I held a banquet, which toward the end turned into a friendly drinking bout. By the middle of it my new friend had grasped what had brought a simple Russian lad into his wake, what grand plans had led the lad to the island, and what sort of business the lad wanted to plunge into. Romanych immediately explained to me that I was a mutton donkey (a donkey mutton?) who wanted to plunge into a shitty swamp of stink… a swamp of stinking shit?… swampy shit and stink?… Hm… My grasp of the local variety of English, I repeat, was weak, all the more so in the elaborate rendering of Romanych, a simple man unburdened by education. In short, he explained to me in plain terms that owning a hotel means digging your horns in and plowing from morning to morning. Whereas I, a lazybones and a sybarite, resembled a hardworking ox in one place only. And so, coming to myself in the morning and recalling the general drift of what I’d heard the night before, I hunted down Romanych and settled with him on the following arrangement: I lend the old Latin ape fifty grand of the green stuff, in exchange for which the humanoid allots me a two-room suite for permanent residence. I am also granted free and entirely unpaid access to the hotel restaurant. Drinks at my own expense. All reasonable, yes?
I decided it was very reasonable too. I peeled off fifty large for the old man and settled down to live and prosper. Before long the nickname «Cowboy» attached itself to me – why, I don’t know. The old codger, having gotten himself pickled on whiskey one evening, shared his own secret with me: back in his day, in the jails of Texas and Arizona, he had gone by the handle «Monkey». Though the old man was convinced it meant «Monkey-wrench», something along the lines of «Flint». But I know perfectly well what the American cons had in mind.
So then, on that ill-starred day Romanych called out to me in his cold-thickened voice (from yet another bender, most likely):
– Cowboy, so-and-so you and so-and-so you through this-here, crawl on over.
I made as though the indecent phrase had nothing to do with me. A lady was reclining nearby, the possible keeper of my heart for the coming week. Dignity had to be maintained. I clinked the ice in my cocktail, took a small swallow and closed my eyes. It came off looking quite aristocratic.
The surf foamed, as always, mightily. The girls tumbled in the incoming waves, as usual, merrily. My neighbor kept glancing at me, as she ought, with interest. I was melting in anticipation of the first minutes of acquaintance, courteous and sweet:
– You look wonderful, miss.
– Thank you. You’re in fine shape yourself.
– Ah, stop it… Judging by your tan, you haven’t been here long.
– Yes, I flew in yesterday.
– Oh, I envy you. It’s all still ahead of you.
– And what exactly is, if it’s not a secret?
– Cow-bo-o-oy! – an inhuman bellow hauled me back out of the romantic future into the prosaic present. Hauled me back politely, without obscenities. I sighed: «This introduction is going to be nonstandard. Well, there’s always room in life for improvisation,» and turned to my neighbor:
– A pity, but I’ll have to leave you.
My neighbor finally shifted her gaze onto me and, lifting her glasses, ironed over my musculature – running to fat, but impressive as ever. My God, she ironed with eyes of unnatural blueness and depth! An ocean! Two oceans!
– Leave? – she said, surprised.
– Yes, I’m Cowboy. A stupid nickname. Stuck to me back in Hollywood, no getting rid of it.
– Hollywo-o-ood? – the black bangs swayed and the magical little eyes went unnaturally round. If I’d added: «By the way, my name is Arnold,» those eyes would simply have fallen out of their sockets and spread across the beach in bottomless blue. Luckily, I’m a modest fellow, so I merely reported:
– Three years in westerns. Alas – a fall from a horse, a serious injury…
I got up awkwardly from the lounge chair, turned to face the lady square on and… Very pleasant indeed. Her gaze glued itself to the heroic scar on my right shoulder. I smiled charmingly:
– I hope this isn’t the last I see of you.
– Yes, yes, – she said, batting her lashes as they fluttered back and forth.
– Do you dance in the evenings?
– I don’t know. Probably, yes.
– Then until we meet in the dancing hall.
I gave the lady a little wave and, limping ever so slightly (don’t think anything of it, I’d just sat my leg numb), walked over to Romanych. The old gypsy was standing on the veranda of his hacienda, or whatever it’s called, his little office in short, clearing his throat for a fourth bellow. He didn’t manage it.
– What are you yelling about?
– Cowboy, I need a hand. Here’s the thing…
I snorted: «You’re a master of things, no private life at all,» and then choked. My breath jammed as though someone had swung a length of rail into my stomach. Ten meters or so behind Romanych, unloading her luggage, was…
…M A G D A !!!!!
My hair stirred, my head clouded, my chest went paralyzed, my stomach growled, my knees shook, my heels drummed. In short, the whole of my physiology went off the rails…
How long the disorder in my organism lasted I don’t remember. I came to myself a little only at the words:
– …Well, ready? Come on then.
Romanych clapped me on the shoulder and headed for the taxi to help his new guest sort out her luggage.
Somehow I dispersed the fog in my eyes and focused on Magda. Two steps sideways put me behind a palm tree, from where I watched, spellbound, as evil incarnate in a skirt, as death’s girlfriend and misfortune’s sister, loaded up poor Pepe. The hotel boy nearly collapsed under the weight of two suitcases, a hefty cluster of bags and some frivolous little box with a bow on it. Luckily Romanych sprang over to the kid in time and relieved him of one of the monster cases. Handy fellow, my friend – not for nothing is he Ramon, Luis and Maria all in one. Romanych exchanged a couple of words with Magda and trotted off toward bungalow number eight, the nearest one. Poor Pepe, wobbling on his matchstick legs, plodded after him. Magda brought up the rear of the procession. Her frivolous outfit – a pale pink dress with bows and ruffles, a wide-brimmed white hat and sandals on towering heels – sat poorly with my notion of her animal essence. What suited Magda better was a torn striped undershirt, a sailor cap shoved back on her head and a grenade clenched in her teeth. Or a black SS uniform with runes on the collar tabs, a peaked cap with a little skull over the visor and a riding crop in kidskin gloves. A shudder went through me. Brrr!
The moment Satan’s walking message vanished from my field of view, I started to think.
Magda hadn’t dragged herself out here for five o’clock tea, that was a fact, nor for a vacation. What for, then? The answer was clear – to turn Crossbow into beachfront sandstone, into dust, into subequatorial powder. Not cheering. The music didn’t play long, the sucker didn’t sunbathe long. Time to concern myself with the preservation of my own person.
I went quickly up to my room, locked the door and looked around. A fever of frantic thoughts came over me.
I’ll shoot it out! Russians don’t surrender! Banzai!
There ought to be a pistol lying around somewhere. Where? I think the last time I saw it was when I was moving the wardrobe. That’s right. Over New Year’s the wardrobe’s leg came off and I had to use the pistol as a temporary prop. Right. The weapons problem appeared to be solved.
I yanked the pistol out from under the wardrobe. The much-respected structure crashed straight down on me, hit me painfully on the shoulder and turned into a heap of boards. I reflected sourly that Romanych would be voicing his displeasure very long and very loudly. Never mind. Time to act, not to regret what’s done.
While that idiot woman was getting the bazooka out of her suitcase and loading it up by the book, I’d have ten times over to pack my things, slap a magazine into the pistol and clear off to the airport. There ought to be two flights this evening. On one of them we’ll be departing far, far away… To New Caledonia, to Franz Josef Land, anywhere at all, even the Ocean of Storms… And the money? For the money I need to swing by the bank! At a run!
I cast a farewell glance over my ransacked chamber, swallowed the lump that had duly risen in my throat, and raced off to the bank. Raced off cursing myself for the unspeakable laziness that had kept me from bothering to get a plastic card. I’d been sure, idiot that I am, that on this island it would never come in handy.
The run took twenty minutes, at the end of which I ran my nose into a locked glass door.
Closed. Saturday, afternoon.
Greetings, everyone. The escape is canceled.
I knocked my forehead against the armored glass, caught my breath and made an attempt to suppose that Magda’s appearance was chance, an absurd coincidence. That the little blond fool had dragged herself out here not on my account but simply to rest, to unwind. Such things do happen. A person decides to blow off some cobwebs, turns it over this way and that, drops in at a travel agency and falls for the fairy tale about the paradisal Caribbean, exactly as I once did. What next? The tour is bought, the deluxe bungalow paid for, and Romanych, the sole Caribbean partner of a German travel firm, is rubbing his hands with satisfaction. Incidentally, it was I who put him up to dealing with the Krauts. A moronic idea. In a whole year no more than fifteen burghers had passed through the «Sunny Club». And the beer on the island, I have to report, is exclusively canned «Coors» and «Budweiser». What kind of vacation can that be? Scheissen!
And all the same – what is Magda doing here?
Or maybe it isn’t Magda at all? Maybe some little blond girl won the «Magda Look-Alike 98» contest and took home the prize – a romantic journey to somewhere far out of sight. Such things do happen, don’t they?
Coincidences were hard to believe in. Impossible to believe in, actually. But what was to be done? Forget that there were any convolutions in my brain and rely on blind chance? Believe in a fatal chain of accidents and coincidences that insulted the reason of anyone acquainted with probability theory? Suppose that Magda’s appearance was one more smirk from Fate, in no way connected with my own doings? Yes! Yes!! Yes!!!
The money in my pocket amounted to next to nothing, and leaving the island in a hurry was not going to happen. In any case, until Monday I could get nowhere, neither in a hurry nor slowly. One thing remained: calm down and lie low.