Castle of Water: A Novel(37)
26
Barry awoke half an hour later to a throbbing pain in his left cheek, an incessant whacking, and the sound, if he was not mistaken, of singing. A few tentative pokes revealed that his face was thoroughly bandaged, stirring a few hazy recollections of Sophie tending to his wounds and helping him put in a fresh pair of contacts. A dizzying emergence from the shelter showed that the source of the whacking was Sophie beating severed tentacles against the nearby rocks, a trick for tenderizing octopus that she had learned from Corsican fishermen during a high school trip to the island. And as for the singing, she was belting out the tune to “Alouette” as she worked, but with slightly altered lyrics—she had changed the refrain to “Pieuvrette, gentille pieuvrette,” and the familiar “je te plumerai la tête” to “je t’enleverai les bras.” Of course, Barry didn’t pick up on the clever alteration, but he smiled wincingly at the girlish sweetness of her song.
“You have the voice of a meadowlark, Sophie. You should join the Vienna Boys Choir.”
“For that, I think I would need a pair of testicles.”
“Well, you have plenty of tentacles at your disposal.” Barry prodded one of the severed, sucker-covered limbs before sitting down beside her. “How’s the octopus coming?”
“Almost ready to be cooked.” Sophie pushed the hair from her face with the back of her tentacle-smeared hand. “And you’re crazy, by the way. You could have been killed.”
“Well, we might have died of starvation if I hadn’t. This should last us for at least a week. And besides”—he cleared his throat and poked her playfully—“Portuguese octopus salad isn’t exactly easy to come by around here.”
“It’s going to be grilled Polynesian octopus salad, but still, thank you.”
“Well, there’s more. That’s not your only present.”
“It isn’t?”
“Nope.”
Barry finally revealed the hand he had been conveniently hiding behind his back, presenting to Sophie the clamshell earrings and cake of pure white soap.
“Wait, is that—”
And then Sophie screamed, perhaps even louder than she had when he was being attacked by the octopus, but with joyful disbelief rather than fear. “C’est du savon? C’est vraiment du savon?”
“Oui, oui, it’s soap. I made it out of coconut oil and ash lye. And if you want, you can use the other rainwater pool for a bath. I think one drinking pool is enough.”
Octopus slime and all, Sophie threw her arms around Barry and laid a smarting kiss on his bandaged cheek.
“Ouch, be careful!”
“Sorry.” She grinned with contrition. “How does it feel?”
“It hurts pretty bad. How did it look?”
“Pfff. The octopus took a big chunk out of your cheek. The wound isn’t very long, but it’s deep. And you’re very lucky, he just missed your eye.”
“Well, shoot. To think I could have had an eye patch.”
“I think the scar will give you character enough.”
“God knows I need it.” And he winked at her, although with the bandage covering most of his right eye, Sophie didn’t notice.
“What you really need are stitches. I cleaned the cut with the alcohol wipes and antibiotic cream from the first-aid kit, but you should keep the bandage on until it closes up.”
“I will. And you should go try out that soap and get ready. I think I can handle Balthazar from here.”
“D’accord. Merci, Barry. Pour tout.”
“De nada.”
Sophie giggled again. “That’s Spanish.”
“Crap. I thought it was Portuguese.”
“It’s the same in Portuguese.”
“See?” he replied, teasing, “Maybe us Americanos aren’t as dumb as you think.”
Sophie set down the octopus tentacles, wiped off her hands with a strip of wool rag from what once had been a pair of Brooks Brothers slacks, took the earrings and the cake of coconut soap, set off toward the rainwater pool to take her first real bath in over a year, and couldn’t help thinking that maybe there was some truth to that, and perhaps more to that particular American than she could have ever imagined. Well, either way, the presents were a very nice thought.
As for the bath, it was, in Sophie’s own words, vraiment extraordinaire. She soaked her body for a good half hour in the smaller of the two collection pools, to loosen a long year’s worth of salty grime. Then she worked up a lather, thick as the foam on a cappuccino, and proceeded to scrub every inch of her body with it. And it was just as marvelous as she expected, the sensation of all that filth sloughing off from her skin, to be replaced by an otherworldly sort of cleanliness. She completely submerged herself on several occasions, holding her breath as long as she could in that baptismal warmth, feeling the volcanic rock press roughly against her bare bottom, and letting a fluttering stream of bubbles escape gradually from her lips. When at last she climbed out, she felt pruny as a newborn and just as pure. She welsh-combed the tangles out of her damp hair and braided it up into a sleek French twist. She slipped her new clamshell earrings into her lobes and refastened her loincloth with a jaunty knot. She felt slightly more exposed than usual without her hair hanging down over her breasts as it generally did, but, well, merde—Barry had probably earned an unobstructed view of her nichons after all he had done. She let what lingered of the evening’s trade winds dry off her body and allowed her lips to part into an alluring smile—in the absence of her preferred Yves Saint Laurent #13 lipstick, she would have to wear it instead. As for the wedding ring that still hung about her neck on a translucent string of filament line, she debated for a moment if she should wear it or not but decided in the end to keep it. She wasn’t ready to part with it yet.