Deception Read online

  Man from the South

  First published in Collier’s (4 September 1948) as ‘Collector’s Item’; also known as ‘The Smoker’

  It was getting on towards six o’clock so I thought I’d buy myself a beer and go out and sit in a deck-chair by the swimming-pool and have a little evening sun.

  I went to the bar and got the beer and carried it outside and wandered down the garden towards the pool.

  It was a fine garden with lawns and beds of azaleas and tall coconut palms, and the wind was blowing strongly through the tops of the palm trees, making the leaves hiss and crackle as though they were on fire. I could see the clusters of big brown nuts hanging down underneath the leaves.

  There were plenty of deck-chairs around the swimming-pool and there were white tables and huge brightly coloured umbrellas and sunburned men and women sitting around in bathing suits. In the pool itself there were three or four girls and about a dozen boys, all splashing about and making a lot of noise and throwing a large rubber ball at one another.

  I stood watching them. The girls were English girls from the hotel. The boys I didn’t know about, but they sounded American and I thought they were probably naval cadets who’d come ashore from the US naval training vessel which had arrived in harbour that morning.

  I went over and sat down under a yellow umbrella where there were four empty seats, and I poured my beer and settled back comfortably with a cigarette.

  It was very pleasant sitting there in the sunshine with beer and cigarette. It was pleasant to sit and watch the bathers splashing about in the green water.

  The American sailors were getting on nicely with the English girls. They’d reached the stage where they were diving under the water and tipping them up by their legs.

  Just then I noticed a small, oldish man walking briskly around the edge of the pool. He was immaculately dressed in a white suit and he walked very quickly with little bouncing strides, pushing himself high up on to his toes with each step. He had on a large creamy Panama hat, and he came bouncing along the side of the pool, looking at the people and the chairs.

  He stopped beside me and smiled, showing two rows of very small, uneven teeth, slightly tarnished. I smiled back.

  ‘Excuse pleess, but may I sit here?’

  ‘Certainly,’ I said. ‘Go ahead.’

  He bobbed around to the back of the chair and inspected it for safety, then he sat down and crossed his legs. His white buckskin shoes had little holes punched all over them for ventilation.

  ‘A fine evening,’ he said. ‘They are all evenings fine here in Jamaica.’ I couldn’t tell if the accent was Italian or Spanish, but I felt fairly sure he was some sort of a South American. And old too, when you saw him close. Probably around sixty-eight or seventy.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It is wonderful here, isn’t it?’

  ‘And who, might I ask, are all dese? Dese is no hotel people.’ He was pointing at the bathers in the pool.

  ‘I think they’re American sailors,’ I told him. ‘They’re Americans who are learning to be sailors.’

  ‘Of course dey are Americans. Who else in de world is going to make as much noise as dat? You are not American, no?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I am not.’

  Suddenly one of the American cadets was standing in front of us. He was dripping wet from the pool and one of the English girls was standing there with him.

  ‘Are these chairs taken?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I answered.

  ‘Mind if I sit down?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. He had a towel in his hand and when he sat down he unrolled it and produced a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He offered the cigarettes to the girl and she refused; then he offered them to me and I took one. The little man said. ‘Tank you, no, but I tink I have a cigar.’ He pulled out a crocodile case and got himself a cigar, then he produced a knife which had a small scissors in it and he snipped the end off the cigar.

  ‘Here, let me give you a light.’ The American boy held up his lighter.

  ‘Dat will not work in dis wind.’

  ‘Sure, it’ll work. It always works.’

  The little man removed his unlighted cigar from his mouth, cocked his head on one side and looked at the boy.

  ‘All-ways?’ he said slowly.

  ‘Sure, it never fails. Not with me anyway.’

  The little man’s head was still cocked over on one side and he was still watching the boy. ‘Well, well. So you say dis famous lighter it never fails. Iss dat you say?’

  ‘Sure,’ the boy said. ‘That’s right.’ He was about nineteen or twenty, with a long freckled face and a rather sharp birdlike nose. His chest was not very sunburned and there were freckles there too, and a few wisps of pale-reddish hair. He was holding the lighter in his right hand, ready to flip the wheel. ‘It never fails,’ he said, smiling now because he was purposely exaggerating his little boast. ‘I promise you it never fails.’

  ‘One momint, pleess.’ The hand that held the cigar came up high, palm outward, as though it were stopping traffic. ‘Now juss one momint.’ He had a curiously soft, toneless voice and he kept looking at the boy all the time.

  ‘Shall we not perhaps make a little bet on dat?’ He smiled at the boy. ‘Shall we not make a little bet on whether your lighter lights?’

  ‘Sure, I’ll bet,’ the boy said. ‘Why not?’

  ‘You like to bet?’

  ‘Sure, I’ll always bet.’

  The man paused and examined his cigar, and I must say I didn’t much like the way he was behaving. It seemed he was already trying to make something out of this, and to embarrass the boy, and at the same time I had the feeling he was relishing a private little secret all his own.

  He looked up again at the boy and said slowly, ‘I like to bet, too. Why we don’t have a good bet on dis ting? A good big bet.’

  ‘Now wait a minute,’ the boy said. ‘I can’t do that. But I’ll bet you a quarter. I’ll even bet you a dollar, or whatever it is over here – some shillings, I guess.’

  The little man waved his hand again. ‘Listen to me. Now we have some fun. We make a bet. Den we go up to my room here in de hotel where iss no wind and I bet you you cannot light dis famous lighter of yours ten times running without missing once.’

  ‘I’ll bet I can,’ the boy said.

  ‘All right. Good. We make a bet, yes?’

  ‘Sure. I’ll bet you a buck.’

  ‘No, no. I make you very good bet. I am rich man and I am sporting man also. Listen to me. Outside de hotel iss my car. Iss very fine car. American car from your country. Cadillac –’

  ‘Hey, now. Wait a minute.’ The boy leaned back in his deck-chair and he laughed. ‘I can’t put up that sort of property. This is crazy.’

  ‘Not crazy at all. You strike lighter successfully ten times running and Cadillac is yours. You like to have dis Cadillac, yes?’

  ‘Sure, I’d like to have a Cadillac.’ The boy was still grinning.

  ‘All right. Fine. We make a bet and I put up my Cadillac.’

  ‘And what do I put up?’

  The little man carefully removed the red band from his still-unlighted cigar. ‘I never ask you, my friend, to bet something you cannot afford. You understand?’

  ‘Then what do I bet?’

  ‘I make it very easy for you, yes?’

  ‘OK. You make it easy.’

  ‘Some small ting you can afford to give away, and if you did happen to lose it you would not feel too bad. Right?’

  ‘Such as what?’

  ‘Such as, perhaps, de little finger of your left hand.’

  ‘My what!’ The boy stopped grinning.

  ‘Yes. Why not? You win, you take de car. You looss, I take de finger.’

  ‘I don’t get it. How d’you mean, you take the finger?’

  ‘I chop it off.’

  ‘Jumping jeepers! That’s a crazy bet. I think I’ll just make it a dollar.’