Islands in the Stream полностью

Thomas Hudson was unhappy as soon as the boys were gone. But he thought that was normal lonesomeness for them and he just kept on working. The end of a man’s own world does not come as it does in one of the great paintings Mr. Bobby had outlined. It comes with one of the island boys bringing a radio message up the road from the local post office and saying, “Please sign on the detachable part of the envelope. We’re sorry, Mr. Tom.”

He gave the boy a shilling. But the boy looked at it and put it down on the table.

“I don’t care for a tip, Mr. Tom,” the boy said and went out.

He read it. Then he put it in his pocket and went out the door and sat on the porch by the sea. He took the radio form out and read it again. YOUR SONS DAVID AND ANDREW KILLED WITH THEIR MOTHER IN MOTOR ACCIDENT NEAR BIARRITZ ATTENDING TO EVERYTHING PENDING YOUR ARRIVAL DEEPEST SYMPATHY. It was signed by the Paris branch of his New York bank.

Eddy came out. He had heard about it from Joseph who had heard about it from one of the boys at the radio shack.

Eddy sat down by him and said, “Shit, Tom, how can such things happen?”

“I don’t know,” said Thomas Hudson. “I guess they hit something or something ran into them.”

“I’ll bet Davy wasn’t driving,” Eddy said.

“I’ll bet so too. But it doesn’t matter any more.”

Thomas Hudson looked out at the flatness of the blue sea and the darker blue of the Gulf. The sun was low and soon it would be behind the clouds.

“Do you think their mother was driving?”

“Probably. Maybe they had a chauffeur. What difference does it make?”

“Do you think it could have been Andy?”

“Could be. His mother might let him.”

“He’s conceited enough,” Eddy said.

“He was,” said Thomas Hudson. “I don’t think he’s conceited now.”

The sun was going down and there were clouds in front of it.

“We’ll get a wire to Wilkinson on their next radio schedule to come over early and for him to call up and save me space on a plane to New York.”

“What do you want me to do while you’re away?”

“Just look after things. I’ll leave you some checks for each month. If there are any blows, get plenty of good help with the boat and the house.”

“I’ll do everything,” Eddy said. “But I don’t give a shit about anything any more.”

“I don’t either,” said Thomas Hudson.

“We’ve got young Tom.”

“For the time being,” Thomas Hudson said and for the first time he looked straight down the long and perfect perspective of the blankness ahead.

“You’ll make it all right,” Eddy said.

“Sure. When didn’t I ever make it?”

“You can stay in Paris a while and then go to the Cuba house and young Tom can keep you company. You can paint good over there and it will be like a change.”

“Sure,” said Thomas Hudson.

“You can travel and that’ll be good. Go on those big boats like I always wanted to go on. Travel on all of them. Let them take you anywhere they go.”

“Sure.”

“Shit,” said Eddy. “What the fuck they kill that Davy for?”

“Let’s leave it alone, Eddy,” Thomas Hudson said. “It’s way past things we know about.”

“Fuck everything,” Eddy said and pushed his hat back on his head.

“We’ll play it out the way we can,” Thomas Hudson told him. But now he knew he did not have much interest in the game.

On the eastward crossing on the Ile de France Thomas Hudson learned that hell was not necessarily as it was described by Dante or any other of the great hell-describers, but could be a comfortable, pleasant, and well-loved ship taking you toward a country that you had always sailed for with anticipation. It had many circles and they were not fixed as in those of the great Florentine egotist. He had gone aboard the ship early, thinking of it, he now knew, as a refuge from the city where he had feared meeting people who would speak to him about what had happened. He thought that on the ship he could come to some terms with his sorrow, not knowing, yet, that there are no terms to be made with sorrow. It can be cured by death and it can be blunted or anesthetized by various things. Time is supposed to cure it, too. But if it is cured by anything less than death, the chances are that it was not true sorrow.

One of the things that blunts it temporarily through blunting everything else is drinking and another thing that can keep the mind away from it is work. Thomas Hudson knew about both these remedies. But he also knew the drinking would destroy the capacity for producing satisfying work and he had built his life on work for so long now that he kept that as the one thing that he must not lose.

But since he knew he could not work now for some time he planned to drink and read and exercise until he was tired enough to sleep. He had slept on the plane. But he had not slept in New York.