“I LOVE the ocean,” said Negra, standing on top of the wooded ridge beyond which the mountainside fell away almost vertically for some eleven hundred meters to a sea sparkling in the morning sunshine.
“That’s the Caribbean Sea,” said Ivy, correcting her.
“Ocean, sea, it’s the same thing. One of these days I’m going to sail. I’ve already been sailing.”
“With Victor?”
“Yes.”
“On a sailboat?” asked Ivy.
“On freighters.” Negra looked at the photographer uncertainly. “Never on a sailboat. But on freighters when we changed countries.”
“You never went on a yacht?”
Negra shook her head. Her dark curly hair was clean but too long.
“I’ve seen yachts sometimes in ports,” she said. “But that’s all.”
Late that night, when Negra had gone off to bed in the shelter and Ivy and the man were dallying by a good fire at the photographer’s campsite, Ivy asked Victor: “Did you ever sail a yacht?”
“On occasion. I am a fair sailor when necessary.”
“Did you ever sail with Negra?”
“On a yacht? Was it she who told you that? She must be dreaming. We did go to sea two or three times, the two of us, on cargo boats. That was all.” Victor took a swig of rum, wiped the mouth of the bottle with his palm, and offered Ivy a drink, and she shook her head as usual. The man took another swig and put the bottle down beside him. “I have worked as a hand on yachts, and on cruises,” he went on, “but that’s it. Before I started taking care of Negra.”
The man was sitting on a flat rock in nothing but his raggedy shorts. The light from the flames played over the muscles of his torso, on the terrible scar on his chest, on his face. Every moment, on account of its flickering, his expression seemed to change. Ivy sat fairly close to Victor, wearing blue jeans and a khaki shirt, sleeves rolled up and feet bare. The temperature was 22ºC. It had rained briefly in the afternoon and a succession of clouds had been breaking up on the eastern side of Pico Turquino.
“Since I began taking care of Negra,” said Victor, “I have known very few women. And none over the two years we have been in the Sierra Maestra. Not until I met you.”
Ivy looked at him. He placed his hand on her thigh.
“Take your mitt off me,” said Ivy.
Victor withdrew his hand and sighed. He stood, picked up the bottle of rum, bowed courteously and walked away without speaking. The next morning when she went up to the shelter Ivy heard Negra shouting at the man in English, but the adolescent peppered her English with the word pilo or pilé, Gypsy or slang for a drunkard. Ivy knitted her brow and stood for a moment still and pensive beneath the pine trees.