Drum by Kyle Onstott Read Free Book Online

back in Havana. He was fed

    up with Africa and rum and black wenches and slave trading worn out with carrying the whole responsibility of the fac tory on his shoulders. What did he have Jonathan out her for? How could the young squirt learn the business if h never knew what to do without being told? But no, Jonathai was a good lad and learning fast. Akeady he had relievei him of much of the work. By the bleeding wounds of Chrisl he was sick of it all! His mind stretched ahead to som future morning in Havana when he could wake up in civilized bed in a civilized room beside a civilized whit woman—or at least an octoroon—who didn't smeU of vege table butter and sweat. They could eat a civilized breakfas together and then he would leave her and devote the rest o his day to his painting. Absently he scratched at the re< incrustations on his legs until the blood came.
    Dammit! He'd never last another year in this hell-hole Fever and scabs and wasting away! Rum and slaves and hag gling slave captains! Arabs and more slaves and mor haggling! Heat and malaria and dirt, no matter how hard on tried to keep the place clean. And now, on top of all thes other things, a day's work ahead of him. The Augustus Ta was due to anchor in a day or two and that Bible-shoutin Captain MacPherson would soon be coming ashore in hi long boat, preaching out of his mouth one minute and fingei ing the wenches all over the next. Wanted to see if they wer fit! Wanted to see if they were virgins! Ay, la virgL sanctissima, the only virgins they ever had were those unde ten years old and one couldn't be too goddam sure aboi: them, either. The Uttle sluts started spreading their legs bac in their native villages when they were about twelve and afte that not a one of them could pass any virginity test. All th Captain wanted was an excuse to finger them. Oh, to he with it all! And to make matters worse, runners had com the night before from Ama-jallah, that goddamned Ara princeling. He would arrive today, expecting to be kowtowe to like the King of Spain.
    Ama-jallah, the half-breed son of the Sultan of Zindei Sultan of Shit! Half Arab and half Negro, living in a mu palace and calling himself a Sultan. And his high-nosed so with all his affectations of elegance—his embroidered sli{ pers, his robes of white muslin and his strings of pearl; Bah! The bastard—and he probably was a bastard—wouldn know an El Greco from a Velasquez!
    Velasquez, El Greco, Goya! Boucher, Fragonard, Largi

    liere! How Mongo Don loved the names and the great paintings they stood for. He looked at the half-finished canvas propped up on an easel in the comer. Yes, he hated that too. How could a man paint a white woman when he had not seen one in seven years? Velasquez? Bah, he couldn't have painted one either. Seven years of thick lips and wide nostrils and hair like wool! What was that verse his English mother had taught him?—"Bah, bah, black sheep, have you any wool?"
    No need to ask the stinking blacks that question. All they had was wool—wiry, close-cropped and rough. Nothing a man could run his hands through and let cascade through his fingers like strands of silk; nothing he could sink his face into and smell the faint and indescribably delicious aroma that exists only in the beloved's hair. Wiry wool and stinking armpits. Mongo Don shuddered. How he hated Africa. And yet, did he? Africa had eluded him, escaped him. There was something grand and wonderful, something regal and majestic about Africa but he had never been able to find it. There was strength and beauty if he could just glimpse it, if he could....
    He was daydreaming again and there was work to do. Get
    the guest house ready for Ama-jallah! Probably the bastard
    :had the same kind of kinky wool on his head but he knew
    iTsnough to keep it covered with a turban of white muslin. Oh
    iwelll What was it he had to do? Get the guest house ready;
    ^oave it swept and garnished. Spread the divan with new
    cloths. Take