Going Ashore Read Online Free PDF Page B

anything from strange men” rose to her lips. She checked it.
    “For Christmas,” the man said, still looking amused. “Think of me on Christmas Day, and make a wish.”
    “Oh, I will,” Emma said, suddenly making up her mind. “Thanks. Thanks a lot.” She put the tiger in her purse.
    “Here, baby, try this on,” Mrs. Ellenger said from across the shop. She clasped the bracelet around Emma’s wrist. It was too small, and pinched, but everyone exclaimed at how pretty it looked.
    “Thank you,” Emma said. Clutching her purse, feeling the lump the tiger made, she said, looking toward the man, “Thanks, I love it.”
    “Be sure to tell your friends,” he cried, as if the point of the gift would otherwise be lost.
    “Are you happy?” Mrs. Ellenger asked kissing Emma. “Do you really love it? Would you still rather be with Eddy and these other people?” Her arm around Emma, they left the shop. Outside, Mrs. Ellenger walked a few steps, looking piteously at the cars going by. “Oh, God, let there be a taxi,” she said. They found one and hailed it, and she collapsed inside, closing her eyes. She had seen as much of Tangier as she wanted. They rushed downhill. Emma, her face pressed against the window, had a blurred impression of houses. Their day, all at once, spun out in reverse; there was the launch, waiting. They embarked and, in a moment, the city, the continent, receded.
    Emma thought, confused, Is that all? Is that all of Africa?
    But there was no time to protest. Mrs. Ellenger, who had lost her sunglasses, had to be consoled and helped with her scarf. “Oh, thank God!” she said fervently, as she was helped from the launch. “Oh, my God, what a day!” She tottered off to bed, to sleep until dinner.
    The ship was nearly empty. Emma lingered on deck, looking back at Tangier. She made a detour, peering into the bar; it was empty and still. A wire screen had been propped against the shelves of bottles. Reluctantly, she made her way to the cabin. Her mother had already gone to sleep. Emma pulled the curtain over the porthole, dimming the light, and picked up her mother’s scattered clothes. The new bracelet pinched terribly; when she unclasped it, it left an ugly greenish mark, like a bruise. She rubbed at the mark with soap and then cologne and finally most of it came away. Moving softly, so as not to waken her mother, she put the bracelet in the suitcase that contained her comic books and Uncle Jimmy Salter’s
Merchant of Venice
. Remembering the tiger, she took it out of her purse and slipped it under her pillow.
    THE BAR, SUDDENLY , was full of noise. Most of it was coming from a newly installed loudspeaker. “Oh, little town of Bethlehem,” Emma heard, even before she opened the heavy glass doors. Under the music, but equally amplified, were the voices of people arguing, the people who, somewhere on the ship, were trying out the carol recordings. Eddy hadn’t yet returned. Crew members, in working clothes, were hanging Christmas decorations. There was a small silver tree over the bar and a larger one, real, being lashed to a pillar. At one of the low tables in front of the bar Mr. Cowan sat reading a travel folder.
    “Have a good time?” he asked, looking up. He had to bellow because “Oh, Little Town of Bethlehem” was coming through so loudly. “I’ve just figured something out,” he said, as Emma sat down. “If I take a plane from Madrid, I can be home in sixteen hours.”
    “Are you going to take it?”
    “I don’t know,” he said, looking disconsolately at the folder. “Madrid isn’t a port. I’d have to get off at Gibraltar or Malaga and take a train. And then, what about all my stuff? I’d have to get my trunk shipped. On the other hand,” he said, looking earnestly at Emma, talking to her in the grown-up, if mystifying, way she liked, “why should I finish this ghastly cruise just for spite? They brought the mail on today. There was a letter from my wife. She says I’d