The Delicate Prey: And Other Stories

She poured the whisky and added water from the carafe in the wall bracket over the washbowl.

“You realize what you’re doing, of course.”

She glared at him. “What am I doing?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing, except just giving in to a passing emotional state. You could read, or lie down and doze.”

Holding her glass in one hand, she pulled open the door into the passageway with the other, and went out. The noise of the slamming door startled the monkey, perched on a suitcase. It hesitated a second, and hurried under its master’s bunk. He made a few kissing sounds to entice it out, and returned to his book. Soon he began to imagine her alone and unhappy on the deck, and the thought cut into the pleasure of his reading. He forced himself to lie still a few minutes, the open book face down across his chest. The boat was moving at full speed now, and the sound of the motors was louder than the storm in the sky.

Soon he rose and went on deck. The land behind was already hidden by the falling rain, and the air smelled of deep water. She was standing alone by the rail, looking down at the waves, with the empty glass in her hand. Pity seized him as he watched, but he could not walk across to her and put into consoling words the emotion he felt.

Back in the cabin he found the monkey on his bunk, slowly tearing the pages from the book he had been reading.

The next day was spent in leisurely preparation for disembarking and changing of boats: in Villalta they were to take a smaller vessel to the opposite side of the delta.

When she came in to pack after dinner, she stood a moment studying the cabin. “He’s messed it up, all right,” said her husband, “but I found your necklace behind my big valise, and we’d read all the magazines anyway.”

“I suppose this represents Man’s innate urge to destroy,” she said, kicking a ball of crumpled paper across the floor. “And the next time he tries to bite you, it’ll be Man’s basic insecurity.”

“You don’t know what a bore you are when you try to be caustic. If you want me to get rid of him, I will. It’s easy enough.”

She bent to touch the animal, but it backed uneasily under the bunk. She stood up. “I don’t mind him. What I mind is you. He can’t help being a little horror, but he keeps reminding me that you could if you wanted.”

Her husband’s face assumed the impassivity that was characteristic of him when he was determined not to lose his temper. She knew he would wait to be angry until she was unprepared for his attack. He said nothing, tapping an insistent rhythm on the lid of a suitcase with his fingernails.

“Naturally I don’t really mean you’re a horror,” she continued.

“Why not mean it?” he said, smiling pleasantly. “What’s wrong with criticism? Probably I am, to you. I like monkeys because I see them as little model men. You think men are something else, something spiritual or God knows what. Whatever it is, I notice you’re the one who’s always being disillusioned and going around wondering how mankind can be so bestial. I think mankind is fine.”

“Please don’t go on,” she said. “I know your theories. You’ll never convince yourself of them.”

When they had finished packing, they went to bed. As he snapped off the light behind his pillow, he said, “Tell me honestly. Do you want me to give him to the steward?”

She kicked off her sheet in the dark. Through the porthole, near the horizon, she could see stars, and the calm sea slipped by just below her. Without thinking she said, “Why don’t you drop him overboard?”

In the silence that followed she realized she had spoken carelessly, but the tepid breeze moving with languor over her body was making it increasingly difficult for her to think or speak. As she fell asleep it seemed to her she heard her husband saying slowly, “I believe you would. I believe you would.”

The next morning she slept late, and when she went up for breakfast her husband had already finished his and was leaning back, smoking.

“How are you?” he asked brightly. “The cabin steward’s delighted with the monkey.”

She felt a flush of pleasure. “Oh,” she said, sitting down, “did you give it to him? You didn’t have to do that.” She glanced at the menu; it was the same as every other day. “But I suppose really it’s better. A monkey doesn’t go with a honeymoon.”

“I think you’re right,” he agreed.

Villalta was stifling and dusty. On the other boat they had grown accustomed to having very few passengers around, and it was an unpleasant surprise to find the new one swarming with people. Their new boat was a two-decked ferry painted white, with an enormous paddle wheel at the stern. On the lower deck, which rested not more than two feet above the surface of the river, passengers and freight stood ready to travel, packed together indiscriminately. The upper deck had a salon and a dozen or so narrow staterooms. In the salon the first-class passengers undid their bundles of pillows and opened their paper bags of food. The orange light of the setting sun flooded the room.