want water. 'rVe want books." Swiftly the strike had
crawled over the back of the evil island, coiling in
the deathly green of the ripening sickly sugar cane.
She had got to Havana just before the big busses
quit running. At night "the man" had come with
news of her friends. She looked at her w~tch again,
stepped firmly under the edge of the iron shutter
that hung like a blade above her. Noone else moved.
They were watching her now with speculative indif-
ferent eyes.
In
the greenish reflection of a light a
few doors away, faces were 'suety pale. Shots began
somewhere in different points of the city. The rattle
of a machine gun sounded in a nearby street. She
stepped out and began walking, erect and leisurely,
close to the houses that leaned together in the night
away from her. Hugging the dark side of the street,
she crossed the now empty streetcar tracks,
in
shadow reached the Cuban hotel.
A little group
cluttered the doorway.
"Senora," said the clerk pushing forward.
"You
shouldn't be out. Didn't you read the proclamations?
It's dangerous.
They're shooting."
The faces of the Cuban guests that had become
familiar at mealtimes now appeared changed and
distant. "Is it as bad as that?" said Mrs. Sidney in
an unseemly gay voice feeling the disapproving eyes
of the fat woman who sang in the vaudeville house
on Sundays. Going up in the elevator the boy point-
ed to women gabbling together on the landings.
"They afraid," he said using his bad student Eng-
lish proudly.
"Won't
go downstairs.
You not
afraid?" He arched his brows pleased with himself
and anxious to identify his own braggadocio,
the
cover of his alarm, with her recklessness.
For the first time she realized that she was not
really afraid and her lack of fear set her apart as if
she had been a victim of leprosy. She took no pride
in it. A sense of nerves crippled by personal disaster
humbled her. The deadly blow had already fallen
and she continued to live. The thoughts that were
terrible as hopeless disease pounced down on her as
she entered her own room. She stood with her back
to the door, looking at the snapshot of her husband
tucked in the mirror over the dresser.
A sudden
burst of firing in the street lit up the towers of a
nearby hotel as if fireworks were going off on some
holiday celebration.
She began to change her
clothes, hastening,
the need to do something racing
as with some impending disaster.
The shots came
rapidly from beneath her window but no one scream-
ed. Explosions far oft scattered into deadly quiet.
The streetcars had stopped except for an occasional
one run crazily by at frightened scab with guns of
guards at his back. Her hands were shaking as she
fumbled with the dresses in the wardrobe.
The green
silk Tom had bought her on their last time in New
York together stuck to her fingers. There it hung
mournfully like a headless woman. When a knock
came, she stared stupidly. The little game she some-
10
times played with herself that Tom had come back
to her reminded her only of her incompleteness.
She
said quietly, "Just a moment," and dressed.
The man came in jauntily dressed in a white suit
that since he had known her was washed and pressed
frequently.
His homely face with the brush of mous-
tache beamed with a too familiar intention. She tried
to smile cordially, disliking him for reasons that she
was ashamed of, his stiff hair and small eyes. She
tried to tell herself that he was to be trusted, tha:
the friends now in jail had trusted him, were
tr
ll
sting
h:m, but a memory of an afternoon in the office of
the paper now guarded by police diluted her
tolerance.
They had smiled with impatience at his
impractical enthusiasm.
On his part, distrust of her
was coated with a fine appearance of amiability. He
entered the room now as if she had been a mistress
and a rather humble one.
Mrs. Sidney bore it quietly moving lightly away
from him. The homely bed jutted out between them
in the narrow room. He walked up and down burst-
ing with importance and a pure impersonal joy that
the strike was moving rapidly. His heedless optimism
struck her as dangerous but she held her tongue.
"Didn't I tell you?" he began. "What do you think
now? No, you believed the embassy crowd. They
knew better. Pretty good."
"I only said that they didn't believe a general
strike could or would be pulled."
"Well this will show them. Did you see Murphy?
Is he going to get you an interview with Bertolli?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Sidney.
"Tomorrow.
Today
Bertolli is too tired. 'Poor Bertolli,'
he said, 'he was
up till four this morning'."
"He knows that. You see, they are working hand
in glove."
"At first he wouldn't
hear of it. Said the most
important
people couldn't see Bertolli.
I said, look
here I've got to get off this island and I can't go
without an interview with Bertolli.
I pretended I
was getting nervous and wanted to get off the island.
He almost shouted at me. 'You getting nervous,'
he
said. 'What about me? If I didn't hold to myself
just like that, I'd go to pieces'."
"He said that?" The man was looking at her
delightedly now and began to walk toward her. She
backed away from him and picking up a brush off
the dresser began brushing her short hair. Coming
close to the mirror she took down the kodak picture
and hid it under the dressercloth.
"Oh yes," she went
on talking fast. "He said he was nervous and he
looked it. He was wearing a checked suit like a race
track man and he had the nervous air of a man who
thinks maybe he has put a big bet on the wrong
horse and can't afford to lose. He asked how'd I like
an interview with Mendoza? I said it was too late
for Mendoza who had moreover been nothing but
president and a tool. Also a fool. Murphy grinned
OCTOBER,
1936
