The Night Manager полностью

Wet Eye watched him, no smile. Jonathan gave him a lazy salute like a wiping clean, and felt Wet Eye's tight gaze follow him up the path. If ever I wake up dead it will be what Wet Eye likes to call his cutlash that has slit my throat, he thought. Then he remembered that he didn't expect to be waking up too many more times on Hunter's Island, dead or otherwise. He took another mental reckoning of the Pasha's position. She had started to turn. She needed a lot of sea.

"Mass' Lamont, you's a lazy white Canadian slob, hear me? You the laziest white slob a poor nigger ever had to hire, an' that's God's truth. You not sick no more, Mass' Lamont. I'm goin' tell that Billy Bourne you just plain fuckin' lazy."

Mama Low sat on the veranda beside a tall and very beautiful black girl in plastic curlers known only as Miss Amelia. He was drinking beer out of a can and yelling at the same time. He was "twenty-two stone tall," as he liked to say of himself, "four feet across and bald as a light bulb." Mama Low had told a vice president of the United States to go fuck himself, Mama Low had fathered children as far off as Trinidad and Tobago, Mama Low owned serious real estate in Florida. He wore a cluster of gold skulls round his huge neck, and in a minute, when the sun set, he would don his church-going straw hat with paper roses and "Mama" done in mulberry needlework across the crown.

"You gon' cook them stuff' mussels o' yours tonight, Mass' Lamont?" he yelled as loudly as if Jonathan were still down at the water's edge. "Or you gon' lie about a-fartin' and a-pullin' at your little white fancy?"

"Mussels you ordered, Mama, mussels you get," Jonathan replied cheerfully, as Miss Amelia with her long hands delicately patted the outlines of her hair.

"So where you reck'nin' get them mussels from? You thought o' that? The shit you have. You jus' brim full o' white man's bullshit."

"You bought a fine basket of mussels from Mr. Gums this morning, Mama. And fifteen crawfish, special for the Pasha."

"From Mr. Gums the kinkajou? I did? Hell now, maybe I did so. Well, you go stuff 'em, hear me? Cos we got royalty comin', we got English lords and ladies comin', we got rich little white princes and princesses comin', and we're gon' play fine nigger music to 'em, and we're gon' give 'em a taste of gen-u-ine nigger livin', yes baass." He took another pull of his can of beer. "Swats, you gon' push that fuckin' table up them steps or you gon' die of old age?"

Which, plus or minus, was how Mama Low addressed his troops each evening when a half-bottle of rum and the attentions of Miss Amelia had restored his humour after the trials of another day in Paradise.

Jonathan walked round to the washrooms behind the kitchen and changed into his whites, remembering Yvonne, which he did each time he put them on. Yvonne had temporarily supplanted Sophie as the object of his self-distaste. The bubble of nervousness in his stomach had a sexual urgency. His fingertips kept tingling as he chopped the bacon and the garlic. Charges of expectation like electric shocks ran across his back. The kitchen was spotless as a ship's galley and as trim, with stainless steel worktops and a Hobart steel dishwasher. Glancing through the barred window while he worked, Jonathan observed the Iron Pasha's advance in framed shots: her radar mast and satcom dome, then the Carlisle and Finch search lights. He could make out the red ensign winking on her stern and the gold curtains in the stateroom windows.

"Everyone you love is aboard." Burr had told him in a call to the third public phone cabin on the left as you walk out to sea on Deep Bay pier.

Melanie Rose was singing-along gospel music to the radio while she scrubbed sweet potatoes at the sink. Melanie Rose taught Bible school and had twin daughters by someone called Cecil ― pronounced Ceesill ― who three months ago had taken a return ticket to Eleuthera and thus far had not used the second half. Ceesill might come back one day, and Melanie Rose lived in the cheerful hope he would. Meanwhile Jonathan had taken Cecil's place as second cook to Mama Low, and on Saturday nights Melanie Rose consoled herself with O'Toole, who was cleaning grouper at the fish table. Today was Friday, so they were starting to get friendly.

"You goin' dancin' tomorrow, Melanie Rose?" O'Toole enquired.

"Ain't no point to dancin' alone, O'Toole," said Melanie Rose with a defiant sniff.

Mama Low waddled in and sat down on his folding chair and smiled and shook his head, as if he were remembering some damned tune he couldn't shake out of it. A voyaging Persian had recently made him a present of a set of worry beads, and he was swinging them round his enormous fingers.

The sun had nearly set. Out at sea the Pasha was sounding her air horns in salute.