To the Ends of the Earth

“I got sick,” he said. “There was this nurse in the hospital, about fifty or so, a bit fat, but very nice. At least, I thought so. But you don’t know people unless you live with them. She had never been married. There’s our pipeline. I wanted to go to bed with her right away—I suppose it was me being sick and her being my nurse. It happens a lot. But she said, ‘Not till we’re married.’ ” He winced and continued. “It was a quiet ceremony. Afterward, we went to Hawaii. Not Honolulu, but one of the little islands. It was beautiful—jungle, beaches, flowers. She hated it. ‘It’s too quiet,’ she said. Born and raised in a little town in New Hampshire, a one-horse town—you’ve seen them—and she goes to Hawaii and says it’s too quiet. She wanted to go to nightclubs. There weren’t any nightclubs. She had enormous breasts, but she wouldn’t let me touch them. ‘You make them hurt.’ I was going crazy. And she had a thing about cleanliness. Every day of our honeymoon we went down to the launderette and I sat outside and read the paper while she did the wash. She washed the sheets every day. Maybe they do that in hospitals, but in everyday life that’s not normal. I guess I was kind of disappointed.” His voice trailed off. He said, “Telegraph poles … pig … pipeline again,” and then, “It was a real disaster. When we got back from the honeymoon I said, ‘Looks like it’s not going to work.’ She agreed with me and that day she moved out of the house. Well, she had never really moved in. Next thing I know she’s suing me for divorce. She wants alimony, maintenance, the whole thing. She’s going to take me to court.”

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “All you did was go on honeymoon, right?”

“Ten days,” said Mr. Thornberry. “It was supposed to be two weeks, but she couldn’t take the silence. Too quiet for her.”

“And then she wanted alimony?”

“She knew my sister had left me a lot of money. So she went ahead and sued me.”

“What did you do?”

Mr. Thornberry grinned. It was the first real smile I had seen on his face the whole afternoon. He said, “What did I do? I countersued her. For fraud. She, she had a friend—a man. He had called her up when we were in Hawaii. She told me it was her brother. Sure.”

He was still looking out the window, but his thoughts were elsewhere. He was chuckling. “I didn’t have to do a thing after that. She gets on the witness stand. The judge asks her, ‘Why did you marry this man?’ She says, ‘He told me he had a lot of money!’ He told me he had a lot of money! Incriminated herself, see? She was laughed out of court. I gave her five grand and was glad to get rid of her.” Almost without pausing he said: “Palm trees,” then, “Pig,” “Fence,” “Lumber,” “More morning glories—Capri’s full of them.” “Black as the ace of spades,” “American car.”

The hours passed; Mr. Thornberry spoke without letup. “Pool table,” “Must be on welfare,” “Bicycle,” “Pretty girl,” “Lanterns.”

I had wanted to push him off the train, but after what he had told me I pitied him. Maybe the nurse had sat beside him like this; maybe she had thought, If he says that one more time I’ll scream.

I said, “When was this abortive honeymoon?”

“Last year.”

I saw a three-story house, with a veranda on each story. It was gray and wooden and toppling, and it reminded me of the Railway Hotel I had seen in Zacapa. But this one looked haunted. Every window was broken and an old steam locomotive was rusting in the weedy front yard. It might have been the house of a plantation owner—there were masses of banana trees nearby. The house was rotting and uninhabited, but from the remainder of the broken fence and the yard, the verandas and the barn, which could have been a coach house, it was possible to see that long ago it had been a great place, the sort of dwelling lived in by tyrannical banana tycoons in the novels of Asturias. In the darkening jungle and the heat, the decayed house looked fantastic, like an old ragged spider’s web, with some of its symmetry still apparent.

Mr. Thornberry said, “That house. Costa Rican gothic.”

I thought: I saw it first.

“Brahma bull,” said Mr. Thornberry. “Ducks.” “Greek.” “Kids playing.” Finally, “Breakers.”

In the Zone