Islands in the Stream полностью

This isn’t getting anywhere, Thomas Hudson thought. Isn’t there anything else you could do that would produce the same effect rather than sit with beat-up old Honest Lil in La Floridita at the old tarts’ end of the bar and get drunk? If you only have four days couldn’t you employ them better? Where?, he thought. At Alfred’s Sin House? You’re doing all right where you are. The drinking couldn’t be any better, nor as good, anywhere in the world and you’re down to the drinking now, kid, and you better get just as far in it as you can. That’s what you’ve got now and you better like it and like it on all frequencies. You know you always liked it and you loved it and it’s what you have now, so you better love it.

“I love it,” he said out loud.

“What?”

“Drinking. Not just drinking. Drinking these double frozens without sugar. If you drank that many with sugar it would make you sick.”

“Ya lo creo. And if anybody else drank that many without sugar they’d be dead.”

“Maybe I’ll be dead.”

“No, you won’t. You’ll just break the record and then we’ll go to my place and you’ll go to sleep and the worst thing that will happen is if you snore.”

“Did I snore last time?”

“Horrores. And you called me by about ten different names in the night.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No. I thought it was funny. I learned two or three things I didn’t know. Don’t your other girls ever get upset when you call them by so many different names?”

“I haven’t any other girls. Just a wife.”

“I try hard to like her and think well of her but it is very difficult. Naturally I never let anyone speak against her.”

“I’ll speak against her.”

“No. Don’t. That is vulgar. I hate two things. Men when they cry. I know they have to cry. But I don’t like it. And I hate to hear them speak against their wives. Yet they nearly all do. So don’t you do it, because we are having such a lovely time.”

“Good. The hell with her. We won’t speak about her.”

“Please, Tom. You know I think she is very beautiful. She is. Really. Pero no es mujer para ti. But let us not speak against her.”

“Right.”

“Tell me another happy story. It doesn’t even have to have love in it if it makes you happy to tell it.”

“I don’t think I know any happy stories.”

“Don’t be like that. You know thousands. Take another drink and tell me a happy story.”

“Why don’t you do some of the work?”

“What work?”

“The goddamned morale building.”

“Tú tienes la moral muy baja.”

“Sure. I’m well aware of it. But why don’t you tell a few stories to build it up?”

“You have to do it yourself. You know that. I’ll do anything else you want me to. You know that.”

“OK,” Thomas Hudson said. “You really want another happy story?”

“Please. There’s your drink. One more happy story and one more drink and you’ll feel good.”

“You guarantee it?”

“No,” she said and she began to cry again as she looked up at him, crying easily and naturally as water wells up in a spring. “Tom, why can’t you tell me what’s the matter? I’m afraid to ask now. Is that it?”

“That’s it,” Thomas Hudson said. Then she began to cry hard and he had to put his arm around her and try to comfort her with all of the people there at the bar. She was not crying beautifully now. She was crying straight and destructively.

“Oh my poor Tom,” she said. “Oh my poor Tom.”

“Pull yourself together, mujer, and drink a brandy. Now we are going to be cheerful.”

“Oh, I don’t want to be cheerful now. I’ll never be cheerful again.”

“Look,” Thomas Hudson said. “You see how much good it does to tell people things?”

“I’ll be cheerful,” she said. “Just give me a minute. I’ll go out to the ladies and I’ll be all right.”

You damned well better be, Thomas Hudson thought. Because I’m feeling really bad and if you don’t quit crying, or if you talk about it, I’ll pull the hell out of here. And if I pull the hell out of here where the hell else have I got to go? He was aware of the limitations, and no one’s Sin House was the answer.

“Give me another double frozen daiquiri without sugar. No sé lo que pasa con esta mujer.”

“She cries like a sprinkling can,” the barman said. “They ought to have her instead of the aqueduct.”

“How’s the aqueduct coming?” Thomas Hudson asked.

The man next to him on his left at the bar, a short, cheerful-faced man with a broken nose whose face he knew well but whose name and whose politics escaped him said, “Those cabrones. They can always get money for water since water is the one great necessity. Everything else is necessary. But water there is no substitute for and you cannot do without some water. So they can always get money to bring water. So there will never be a proper aqueduct.”

“I’m not sure I follow you completely.”

“Sí, hombre. They can always get money for an aqueduct because an aqueduct is absolutely necessary. Therefore they cannot afford an aqueduct. Would you kill the goose that lays the golden aqueduct?”