A Heart for the Gods of Mexico

I

“Ommernous, that’s what it is, ommernous, every bit of it is ommernous.”

Six o’clock.… The tall man with the Jewish nose, and lean as he was tall, and with clothes that were too large for him, avoided looking at his reflection in the glassy water of the Frog Pond — which he was circling for the fourth time in Boston Common — but thought of it just the same, and, as always, with cynical amusement. He enjoyed walking as close as possible to the pond’s edge, along the familiar granite curbing, and enjoyed the notion of his image there, stalking angularly among budding boughs against a twilight May sky. Blomberg the crane, he thought. Blomberg the derrick — Blom the steam shovel.

“Ommernous,” he muttered again (thinking at the same time how characteristic it was of Key to be late); “need money, always need money, and as soon as they need money I’m supposed to find it; what’s the good of being a Jew if you can’t find money! And even to bargaining with a ticket agent, by God, and him with the name of Albumblatt.…”

He smiled grimly, and looked up at the fading sky over the spire of the Arlington Street Church, and the empty roof garden of the Ritz — bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang — and the image of the snow, but recently melted on the roof, and the awnings and box trees which would soon replace it, came to him as one thing. Where are the snows of yesteryear? and if winter comes, can spring be far behind? He turned once more towards the tall soldiers’ monument, rounding the toe end of the little granite-paved pond, and there before him was Key, coming towards him cockily on his short legs, the derby hat set crookedly like a tiny peanut on the tiny head, the dark glasses looking blind above the already smiling mouth.

“So you want some money, and is that a surprise.”

“It’s not for me. Now look here, Key—”

“You’re wasting your time. Why in hell don’t you go to work? I mean, at a job that pays you something.…”

They turned and walked slowly towards Charles Street, went off the path on to the grass, moved slowly side by side down the slight slope in the twilight. Blomberg smiled at the amusing and cynical little face which leered up at him with affectionate hardness from under the hat’s brim, and took Key’s arm. He quickened his pace.

“Now listen, Key. What I said on the phone is straight: it’s not merely an emergency, it’s a matter of life and death.”

“Where have I heard those words before?”

“Yeah. She wants to take him away on the one o’clock train tomorrow—tomorrow—and me too. To Mexico. Mexico, of all places! It costs money. What can I save out of my twenty-five bucks a week? I’ve got a little over a hundred, laid up against the rainy day and the dentist. And Noni’s got maybe four hundred and fifty.”

“And the boy friend, I suppose, won’t put up a nickel!”

“Don’t be nasty. I like Gil, I admire Gil, you’ve got to hand it to him, he’s an idealist, a real dyed-in-the-wool Puritan, self-sacrificing, honest, everything. Jesus, that man makes me mad! He gives everything away, every cent. Right now, God damn it, he’s probably sitting up there in Joy Street thinking up novel ways of giving away what little money he has left, as if it wasn’t enough that he gives all his time for nothing to the Legal Aid Society! God.…”

They veered by tacit agreement to the left, towards the gravel expanse of the baseball field in the Boylston Street corner of the Common, now beginning to look gray in the vanishing light of evening. The sweet sound of a batted ball, tingling and round and willowy, floated up to them, and they turned their eyes towards the gray-flanneled figures which moved there in the dusk. Even as they watched, one of the players, with arms raised as in some ritual, and small white face lifted to the sky, performed an absurd little crablike balance dance under the heaven-descending ball, until the sharply lowered elbows, and the barely heard clop, showed that it had been caught. Beyond the field, lights were beginning to come out in the Boylston Street shops.

“Well, but why do you come to me? I don’t even know them.”

“I come to you, because you’ve got a heart of gold.”

“No kidding?”

“No kidding.”

“Heh, heh, it is to laugh!”

“No.”

Blomberg frowned a little, looking down at their feet, their four feet moving synchronously on the spring grass, and thought the beginning was not too auspicious. But it was as well to avoid undue pressure at the outset, even though his own sense of the shortness of time was becoming so stifling. And especially with Key, who really enjoyed the preliminaries of maneuvering: the trout playing the angler. He said, a shade too nervously, half smiling:

“It really ought to interest you. It’s absolutely the damndest situation I ever heard of, much less got myself involved in! It’s a wonder.”

Key looked up at him speculatively, his face sobered, his guard for the moment relaxed.

“You’ve known Noni for a long time — but what about this Gil? I never heard much about Gil before, did I?”

“She wants to marry him.”

Blomberg pretended not to notice the sharp look which Key gave him on this. His face stiffened, impervious to scrutiny. Key said:

“I thought she was married already. But of course nowadays—”

“She is. That’s the point. You see—”

“God, look at the traffic. Let’s go down through the subway to the Little Building. And then, of course, we’ll be in the alert position for a quick one at the Nip. Would you like a quick one?”

“Does a camel?”

Emerging from the Tremont Street entrance, by the post office branch, they paused a moment on the curb to survey the slowing traffic between themselves and the gay windows of the Nip, with its hospitably open door, then walked swiftly across, to an accompaniment of squealing and squawking brakes.

“Not too far back,” said Key. “I don’t like the odor of sanctity at the back! Dry martinis?”

“Two dry martinis.”

Key swiveled towards him on the stool, his hands in his side pockets; looked up at him smiling, his head tilted to one side. His attitude was one of amused expectancy.

“Well, go on, tell me about the boy friend. Where does he come from at this late day? Kind of a dark horse, I’d call it!”

“Oh, no. Gil has always been around — he’s the old faithful. They’ve known each other since the year one; I guess they played marbles together in the Public Gardens, while their nurses knitted, at the age of two. And then he wanted to marry her, but she wouldn’t and married Giddings instead—”

“Giddings?”

“Here’s mud in your eye. Yeah. Giddings. A first-class A-number-one bastard; full of charm, but without an honest bone in his body. He began as a society bond salesman, one of those pretty pink college boys that they have by the hundred at all the best brokerages, with the social register written all over them, and ended by being something damned like a crook. Ran a little private investment pool of his own, and got a lot of Noni’s money into it, and a lot of other people’s as well, and then slipped out from under when it went flooey. And of course it was all very nicely hushed up, and he just went gracefully out West, where, as far as anyone knows, he still is.”

“Ah. One of those. And how long has this been?”

“Ten years.”

“And being a nice Boston gal she didn’t do anything about divorcing him, of course. Of course not! As you were saying.”

“No. She didn’t want to remarry — why should she? She was fond of Gil, but not enough — you see—”

“Christ, there’s that goddamned tune, what is it, the Chapel in the Moonlight — I wish they’d lay off it.”

They turned their heads towards the machine at the back, the little glass coffin full of records, listened to the gross throbbing of the music — like a bad heart, thought Blomberg, and winced — then turned back again to their drinks.

“But she was always sorry for him. You see, he had had a bad time of it. Made what Boston called a mismarriage.”

“You mean to say he’s got a wife?”

“No. No. She’s dead. It really was a sad business, at that. He never would tell anyone about it, but from what one can gather she got some sort of hatred or dislike of him right after the marriage; maybe she fell in love with someone else — damned beautiful, too; I’ve seen photos of her. Which raised hell with him. Noni says he nearly went crazy. Nice to him in society, you know, when they went out together, but wouldn’t have anything to do with him at home. And always going away, somewhere or other.”

“Ahem. A marriage in name only. So what?”

“So of course he enlisted as a private when the war broke out, hoping to get himself honorably killed with a bullet in his eye or something; and then, by God, what do you think she did?”

“See if you can surprise me, Blom — and let’s put this down and go an’ get a clam. Or an oyster.”

“Yeah, sure, Key, but listen!..”

They lifted their glasses simultaneously; Key was again smiling a little, but with obvious sympathy. It began to look hopeful. Just the same, you never could tell with Key, he could be as stubborn as a mule, and he hated to admit his feelings. Better soft-pedal the sobstuff, and take it easy.

They slid off their stools, and turned to the left as they went out. Key had a toothpick in his mouth, and the jaunty angle at which it wagged was amusingly in character — like, in fact, everything he did. As for instance, his habit of looking over the tops of his dark glasses, the blue eyes suddenly very bright and mischievous. Like minnows. And of course the very quaint hat. The neat small derby, on the neat small head, was perfect, like something out of a comic strip.

At the oyster house they were in luck: the two first seats at the bar were vacant.

“What a break!” said Key. “And, by God, there are Fairhavens, too.”

“Baby! and big enough to go skating on. Two half dozens?”

“This place gets me. What with all them fee-rocious red lobsters about, and that bowl of tomalley, and old George here opening oysters as easy as winking — sometimes I just can’t bear it.”

“There’s something about marine life, and the fruits of the sea — it must be an atavism. When you were a tadpole and I was a fish.”

“Yeah. But now, go on and surprise me. With what Mrs. Gil did.”

“Well, it seems that Mrs. Gil, when she saw Gil off for the front—”

“What was the old song? He left her to go to the front!”

“Never mind, Key. It seems she repented of what she had done, and how she had treated him; maybe she was tired of her lover, if in fact she had ever had one — my own theory about it was, she was just one of them queer psychological ‘cases,’ with a funny kink or squeam or something — and anyway, whatever it was, she told him before he went that if he got back alive she would reward him by having a child. See?”

“You could knock me down with a lily!”

“Yes. Isn’t it nice? He came back; and she kept her word; and she had a child. And it killed her. And the child died too.… A very handsome little specimen of poetic injustice; one of those magnificently generous gestures of the oversoul or destiny or the universal time machine that make so much sense that you want to turn handsprings of joy. For six months Gil wouldn’t even go outdoors: it was Noni that saved him.”

“I take it this was some time ago.”

“Oh, sure! Years.”

“Okay. But it doesn’t quite explain, does it, why she should up and want to marry him now. You can be sorry for someone, but dammit, Blom, you ain’t got to marry them, have you? Oh, look what George has done! And shall we say, fair haven?”

He looked down at the noble dish of oysters, beaming.

“Fair haven! You know, that’s funny — she used to go there, or near there, in the summer, when she was a kid.… Nonquitt.… I went there once myself, and you never saw such wild roses in your life.… Gosh, aren’t these good!”

“Don’t talk — eat!”

They ate the oysters in silence; sat still for a moment, as for the completion of a ritual; then Key paid at the desk (as usual) and they went out. Without a word they crossed Tremont Street, and proceeded slowly to the foot of the marble stairs, in the middle of the next block, before Blomberg said:

“I take it we are once again going up these stairs to the Greeks?”

“It kind of looks like it, doesn’t it? Two minds with but a single thought.…”

In a front booth, from which they looked out at the fantastic lamplit rear walls — smooth and sinister as precipices — of the Metropolitan Theater — a view which unaccountably always made Blomberg think of Hamlet and Elsinore — they studied the pale blue mimeograph of the menu.

“I think while we’re thinking, Henry, we’ll have a couple of those nice big dry martinis. And then we can think even better.”

“Yes, Mr. Key.”

“Ha! I see lamb with okra, Blom. And I see stuffed vine leaves. And I see chicken livers en brochette! My God, it’s awful! What are you going to have?”

“Lamb with okra, every time. That little hexagonal vegetable is what I don’t like nothing else except.”

“Lamb brochette for me; I like the taste of the hickory wood.”

“Yes, the hickory wood.”

“Hang your clothes on a hickory limb! But you see, what I don’t get in all this, Blom, is why the rush to Mexico; why the hurry to marry a man she never wanted to marry before, and doesn’t love anyway; and above all why all the panic about it, when there’s so little cash that it’s got to be borrowed. Don’t think I’m being suspicious, because I am!”

He lit a cigarette, snapped the small silver lighter shut with a very competent little thumb, blew smartly on the lighted cigarette tip to make it glow, then removed the dark spectacles and placed them on the linen tablecloth. The question, in the tired blue eyes, was candid but friendly.… And this, Blomberg, thought, was the moment at which to go slow; the necessity must now come almost as if reluctantly from the circumstances of the situation; it must be in a sense as if he himself were only now making up his mind. And where to begin? At what obscure corner? Northeast or southwest? And with Noni, or Gil, or himself? Not himself, certainly, for it was apparent that Key was already sufficiently suspicious of his own connections with the affair. He stared out of the window at the mysterious blue-red lamplit brick of the walls of Elsinore, whistling softly a little ghost tune while he did so as if to gain time. Then he said gravely, and at once aware of the power of his dark face and conscious eyes on the quick receptivity of Key’s:

“She’s got to die.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s got to die. The doctors have given her six months — maybe a year at most — and maybe much less.”

“No!.. You don’t mean it.”

“Yes. Heart. Something wrong about the heart. She won’t tell me the details — won’t talk about it at all. Except for the main fact. She got the final confirmation day before yesterday, and called me up, and I went down to the Hull Street house — you know, she lives in a little wooden house down there in the slum by Copp’s Hill burying ground — and, my God, Key, I can tell you I never want to go through such a night in my life again.”

He stopped abruptly, to regain control of his voice, which had begun to sound a little queer — how odd, he thought, to find that one’s voice does tremble at such moments — and then resumed, speaking very slowly, very solemnly.

“All night, mind you, watching a woman, an ineffably lovely woman, and a wonderfully intelligent one, suddenly at battle with the idea of death. And conquering it, by God, Key. She didn’t rave — she didn’t cry, though I’ve seen her cry, many times — she just became an embodied question. Embodied suffering. I’ll never forget the expression of her face as long as I live. It was as if she were looking around me all the time, looking past me, trying to get through to something on the other side, or even seeing something there. It was curiously childlike — a persistent, baffled, hurt, uncomprehending, but perpetually questioning stare, as if I had become for her the only living evidence of a world of evil, or mystery, which she couldn’t accept. Do you see what I mean?”

“Jesus!”

“Yes. The incarnated ‘Why?’ of all tragedy, all human misery. All night she was that. And facing, of course, as if in me, that was the awful part of it, the fact that there was no answer. I was the pitiless and unanswering void; the whirlwind; the trap; the six-foot pine box; the gallows; the run-over child. No arguing about it, mind you — not much talk; she would sit perfectly still, and look at me for half an hour, then suddenly get up and walk out into the little garden at the back and stand there, staring up at the catalpa tree. We would just stand there for a while, looking up at the tree and the sky — my God it was extraordinary — I never saw the sky or a tree before — the sky was rushing away above us at a million miles a second, rushing away to annihilation; the tree was dying before our eyes, like one of those quick-motion movies when it all shrivels up like melting tinsel — and she was holding them there together, holding them to herself, by an effort of will which I could feel going out to them. Living out into the void with all her senses; that’s what she was doing; and making me do it with her.…”

Key lifted his cocktail glass, turned it so that the olive stirred. He said quickly:

“Blom, have a drink. How!”

“How! That helps.”

“And here’s Henry. One lamb brochette, Henry, and one lamb with okras. And some beers. And I guess a little rice, just for fun!”

“Yes, Mister Key. The lamb is very good tonight.”

“Fine!.. Now go on, Blom.”

Blomberg looked down at his half-emptied glass, saw nothing, resumed:

“Yeah. You can imagine what it was like. I’d never seen anyone dying before — and that’s of course what she was doing. Dying! Dying with her eyes wide open, looking at death. It’s changed my feeling about life, Key, believe it or not — God knows I’ve sneered often enough at the messy and muddled and horrible business that life for the most part seems to be — so much of it so dirty and ignoble — but here was Noni all by herself, and with no one to give her a cue, setting such an example of courage as I shall never forget. And so simply. No bravura about it, no melodramatics — just herself.”

Key lifted his glasses from the table, held the bridge pinched between finger and thumb, his head a little on one side.

“You like her a lot, don’t you?” he said. “I’m damned sorry.”

“I’ve always liked her. Yes.”

“I suppose there’s no mistake, possibly?”

“Oh no. Not a chance.”

“I see.”

There was a pause; they finished their cocktails, and presently Henry brought the two glasses of beer. Blomberg stared out at the walls of Elsinore, his eyes fixed and unseeing. What he was seeing, once more, was the catalpa tree in starlight, the stars showing frostily through the bare branches, and Noni’s white face uplifted beneath it, so intense, so still. He could see her there; he could see her leaning against the doorjamb, with her hands tightly clasped behind her; he could see her suddenly turning to go back into the little basement sitting room. And he could hear her saying quietly, as she learned slightly forward towards him from the low chair: “It seems so ridiculously random, Blom — it’s that that’s so puzzling!”—for all the world as if the problem were a purely metaphysical one, and herself the person in the world least involved.…

Key was saying:

“Well, I’m damned sorry. But I still don’t see where Mexico comes in — it makes less sense than ever. You’d think, with a bad heart, and the chance of cashing in any second, the sensible thing was to stay where she is and take it easy. What’s the idea?”

He gave a little half smile, slightly cocky, as if to say, “Let’s keep it light, for God’s sake, if we can!” and put on his glasses. The effect was in a sense as if he had disappeared.

“Ah,” said Blomberg, slowly, “that’s the most interesting part of it. Mind you, when I talked with her, she’d only known the full facts for a few hours — she saw the doctor at four; she saw me at eight. But in that time, in that small interval, when most people would have been simply blind with self-pity, or in a state of complete collapse, she had made her plans; discussed it with her lawyer; called up Gil to tell him about it, and had him to the house for half an hour; called up me; and several other people as well, who she hoped might help out with the money problem. She had decided at once, you see, that she owed it to Gil, after holding him off all these years, to get a divorce, and marry him — she wanted to make it up to him, all that lost life, she wanted to give him something — in fact the best thing she had: herself.”

Key simply stared.

“But, good God, Blom, it’s insane!”

“Yeah. I thought so too. I said so. I still think so and say so; and I’ve done every conceivable thing I could to prevent it. Not an atom of use, Key; she won’t argue with me; she just stands there and tells me. You see, the idea is this. A Mexican divorce, for what it’s worth, apparently is much quicker than any other, and cheaper. Twice as quick as Reno, and twice as cheap, and just as good. But the quickness is the main point. She’s not only counting the days — she’s counting the hours. She wants to give Gil as much time as she can. And so, God help us, off we go, the three of us, to Mexico City.…”

“Ah, here’s the food.”

“Good. Let’s eat. The little hexagonal okras, by gum!”

“Somehow, I always feel like whinnying, when I see Henry bringing food — guess I must have been a horse in a previous incarnation. And this here beer, Henry, is very nice, only there ain’t enough of it. Two more, please.…”

“Sure, certainly, Mr. Key!”

“It’s crazy. And do you mean to sit there and tell me you’ll go? And that Gil will go? My God, I’d have thought Gil, at any rate, if he’s in love with her—”

Blomberg lifted a long finger, held it before him, glared.

“Yeah! But you don’t know this, my dear Key: Gil, believe it or not, will not know a thing about it. Not a thing. She won’t tell him, and she won’t let me tell him. She puts it simply that for a year or more — and it’s partly true — she’s been planning to take a trip like this, somewhere to the south, and that now the doc’s told her she needs a change—”

Key was dumbfounded.

“Gil won’t know she’s going to marry him?”

“Oh, sure, that — of course. The divorce and marriage. But the reason for it, just now, and in all this rush!”

“I see; she’ll marry him and then drop dead on the wedding night! That’s my idea of a swell break for Mister Gil, if anyone was to ride upstairs on a policeman’s horse and ask me! Yeah. Swell. Has she thought of that?”

“Don’t be a fool — of course she has! And sure it’s crazy — don’t I know it? It might be unspeakably cruel to Gil — Christ, when you think of what happened to him in his first marriage, it’s everything you can say about it. I wanted to yell it at her — I almost did. I even wanted to beat her. But she won’t budge. She says she knows the risk, and will run it, and that Gil’s damned well got to run it, too.”

“That’s nice.”

“Yes.…”

They ate in silence. The little Italian newsboy came by as usual with his Evening Records, and Key bought one; the noisy party of undergraduates and girls at the long table got up, pushing back their chairs. They were all a little tight, and they looked cheap. Blomberg had noticed that the German girl at the end of the table, the one with the dog — its lead was fastened to her chair — and the young fellow who sat next to her, the only sensitive-looking face in the crowd, hadn’t spoken more than two words to each other in all this time. Shy? Or a quarrel? He glanced away from them, and briefly out over Stuart Street, thinking idly, even in this fleeting connection, of the wonderful multiplicity of life, its inexhaustible richness. Then he said, looking hard at Key:

“So now you see. What I said, that it’s an emergency. And the most extraordinary situation in which I ever got myself inadvertently involved. It’s an emergency, Key, get that through your mulish head. And it’s got to be gone through with. As soon as I realized that, I went to work. I’ve been to see everyone I know in Boston, that might be the slightest use, or telephoned to them, and I haven’t found a red cent. Not a cent. Even if we go in day coaches — which Noni insists on, the idiot — we’ll need another hundred bucks, at the very least. And Noni ought not to do it. She ought to go in a Pullman. Three and a half days — sitting up in those god-damned chairs—”

He shook his head.

“So I suppose you expect me to put up the hundred bucks.”

“Yeah.”

“Try and get it!”

“Once we get down there it won’t be so bad. It seems Gil’s got a friend, or friends, in Cuernavaca who will put us up.”

“What I don’t see,” and Key put his head on one side, and half closed his eyes, “is why you’ve got to go. Or what the hell Gil thinks you’re going for, if he doesn’t know the situation. Kind of a fifth wheel, aren’t you? Which will take a lot of explaining. Unless, of course, this Gil is the kind of guy who likes an extra man on his honeymoon!”

“Don’t make me moan, Key! Noni’s like that, that’s all. And I know it, and Gil knows it. Though of course Gil—”

“—doesn’t know a thing about it, the poor fish!”

“If only Noni hadn’t made me swear, I’d tell him.”

“I think you ought to. I don’t think he ought to be allowed to go, if he isn’t told. No, sir.”

“No, Key, it can’t be done.”

“Well, then, how are you going to explain your presence, may I ask?”

Blomberg hesitated.

“That’s up to Noni. She can say I’m a sort of chaperon — and there’s something in that, too — or that she’s suggested the trip a long time ago, and didn’t want to break her promise — or simply that I helped to raise the cash. Or a little of all of it. It might get by. I think it will. Gil, damn his funny puritan little soul — my God, Key, my blood boils when I think of him, not lifting a finger, while Noni and I sweat blood to make the whole thing possible — Gil is queer. Sometimes I don’t think he’s got any feelings at all. One of those cold-roast dry-cleaned Bostonians you read about in the books, who may be a roaring volcano within, but certainly never shows it. I suppose he’s been hurt so much that he waits a long time before he makes a move; so Noni says, anyway, and she may be right.”

Key, leaning forward on the table with his elbows, sat with lowered eyes. What was he thinking? The small face was composed and unreadable. Certainly the quick reference to the hundred dollars had come in rather too soon, and not too happily — and Key’s laconic “try and get it” hadn’t sounded too promising. But that he was interested and curious, even if incredulous and disapproving, was perhaps evident; there were even traces of sympathy. But what train would he be taking for Concord from the North Station? And how much time was left? Better not raise the point, of course. He said, feeling a little false:

“Yeah. I’m the money-raiser. They always pick a Jew when they want money! As I was saying to myself just before I met you …”

“And incidentally, what happens to your job, while all this goes on! Not to mention Gil’s. It seems to me your gal Noni expects quite a lot.”

“Easy. I’m only on piecework now, and I can always pick it up, any time. And Gil doesn’t get paid, anyway, not for his work with the Legal Aid; he volunteers. He’s got a little income; I don’t know how much. I could even take some reading down there with me — not that I’d get much done.”

“What does she look like?”

“Noni?”

“Yeah.”

“Noni.…”

He spoke the name as if in a sort of bemused, almost incredulous, evocation; then continued:

“Not pretty, Key — too irregular a face for that — cheekbones too high — but sometimes beautiful as all get-out. Medium height to smallish — slender;—very fair skin, very white hands. A Norse look about her; very blonde; eyes like the fringed gentian, if that means anything to you — bluest things you ever saw. But as a matter of fact you don’t know quite what she looks like, somehow, because what you always notice in her face is the movement, the light. The naughtiness, and the courage. She laughs simply delightfully; and when she does, she always turns her face just a little, just a little away from you, but keeps her eyes towards you — very shy and very bright. She is shy. But the shyness gives her a lovely abruptness and boldness. You feel that she’s got to see and tell the truth, or her feelings, or whatever — and she does. My God, what honesty! I’ve often thought, you know, that she’s the nakedest soul I’ve ever met.…”

“Good Lord, Blom!”

“What do you mean!”

“I’m beginning to understand. I think I’m beginning to understand.”

“I only wish you did, Key. She’s the sort of woman you’d do anything for. And I don’t know — it’s funny. That stuffy little house of hers has been like a home to me — and I guess it’s been that for a good many others. It’s alive. It glows. It’s got a heart. Everything in her life has gone into it, onto the walls — it’s all Noni, all the way from tomboy and pigtails, and Nonquitt in the summer, and dances and orchids at the Somerset, and the disaster with Giddings, down to the secretarial work, and the social service, and the music, and now the broken heart. She plays the piano very badly, but more movingly than anyone else I ever heard, bar none. Always Bach, nothing but Bach. Gil can play rings around her — Gil could have been a professional if he’d wanted to — but it doesn’t mean a thing by comparison. You ought to see her at a concert — her face opens like a flower — she clasps her hands flatly together, and leans her face sideways on them, and goes a million miles away. I just sit and look at her, it’s as good as the music. Better! How do some people do that — doesn’t seem quite fair, Key, does it, that some people have that astonishing integrity of living or loving, or seeing and feeling—really love and feel — while the rest of us poor guys have to wait and be told when to love. Not Noni. She goes to it like the bee to the flower, absolutely as if she and it were the same thing. I’ve stood outside the house in the dark, when she didn’t know I was there, and listened to her playing, without lights — and I can honestly say that it was about as near the pinnacle of happiness as I could get.… A pity you never would come down there, Key — you and your notions.”

“Yeah. Me and my notions. What about yours.”

“What.”

“It’s all becoming blindingly clear, like a sunrise in a melodrama in the best Woolworth style, complete with a noble sacrifice. You know, you almost make me sick.”

“Speak.”

“So you’re willing to do all this, at the drop of a hat, and on a shoestring — practically give up your job, spend all your savings, run yourself ragged to raise money, work your head off and generally worry yourself to death, and all to provide a goody-goody little husband for the gal you’re in love with!”

Off came the dark glasses: Key’s blue eyes were laughing. Blomberg felt his own smile expand and contract, forced into his staring eyes the expression he willed, a far and shrewd foresight, a contemplative wisdom superior to the absurd antics of time. This could be turned to advantage. It was nearly eight o’clock, Key would now move towards the North Station, something must be done, or decided, soon. He must call up Gil, call up Noni, get, or not get, the tickets from Mr. Albumblatt at the South Station — he had promised the little man that he would be back before ten — and after that, packing, or helping Noni to pack. Time with its hundred hands, Time with its thousand mouths! The vision of a train came sharply, too, before him — all trains that he had ever seen or known; the melancholy, slow ylang-ylang, ylang-ylang, of the little switch engine in the frost-bound train-yard; the profound cries of freight trains climbing dark defiles of mountains at midnight; rows of phantom lights sweeping across a lonely station-front. And the transcontinental track, the curved parallel rails embracing the three-thousand-mile-long curve of the submissive and infinitely various earth, from night into day, into night again — this, too, he saw, deep in Key’s eyes. And Noni, solitary as a bird, on the great circle to Mexico.… He said, as if he were only formulating these very things:

“Not in love with her, Key, no.”

“Yes.”

“Not in love with her, no. I love her, yes — I’m not in love with her, it’s been for years. Do you love sunsets and sunrises? Or your own left hand?”

“You don’t convince me.”

“You don’t listen.”

“I’m listening.”

Their voices had insensibly softened, and it was on a quieter note still that Blomberg went on.

“It’s been for years, and always just like that; just like this — even, and calm, and leisurely, and serene, on both sides. There never was anything else, not a trace. I never wanted to make love to her, and she never made the slightest sign that she wanted to be made love to. In a way, it was really too good and too deep for that — don’t smile, such things do happen. I love her, I think in a sense she loves me, just as I think she loves Gil. But she has very odd and individual, and perhaps old-fashioned, views about sex — she gave me a lecture once, when I was a little tight and tried to kiss her, and it was one of the most moving things I ever heard. I wish I could remember it. It was like being talked to by Emily Dickinson, or the sunny slope of a New England pasture in spring. Something about the soul’s election, the soul’s eligibility — said very quietly, but with intense conviction, said very shyly, too, as if it were something infinitely precious to her. As I’m sure it was.”

“You interest me strangely.”

“Yes. For the whole doctrine of sex as pleasure, and promiscuity as a kind of loving kindness to all — you know, the preachings of the shabby little bedroom philosophers of Greenwich Village and Beacon Hill, who under the guise of brotherly love turn all their womenfolk into prostitutes — she has nothing but contempt. Not even contempt. It just doesn’t mean anything to her. It just seems to her a little dirty. But Noni loves. Everyone who knows her knows that, and everyone who knows her loves her. I’m damned if I know what it is, Key. I suppose sex must play a part in it, but if so it’s so deep and anonymous as to become in effect spiritual. You don’t have to believe me, but it’s true.”

“Okay, just for fun I’ll believe you, Blom! And what about some coffee.”

“Turkish coffee medium.”

“Make it two, Henry. And bring me the bill.”

“Yes, sir; certainly, Mr. Key.”

“And to go back to what you said, about my being a fifth wheel, and raising the question of my going with them at all — and the effect on Gil — well, that’s the answer. Noni needs me. Noni loves us both, and knows that we both love her, in our very different ways, and what she needs right now is love. She wants to take all — I was going to say, all she loves — with her — for she’s going off to die. What could be more natural? Do pretend to try to understand it, Key — it scares me and horrifies me, the whole thing, I can’t tell you how much, but all the same I think it’s wonderful, it’s like the creation of a work of art, a piece of superb music. What can I do but say yes, and try to do everything I can to help her?”

“Work of art!.. If it’s a work of art, I’m a horse thief. And you’re a sucker!”

“No, it’s the most heroic thing I ever encountered. And the noblest. She’s taking this pitiful little tag-end of her life, this handful of days with already a shadow across them, and making of them, and of us — herself and Gil and me — a farewell symphony; like that one of Haydn’s, which you probably don’t know—”

“—keep the bouquets—”

“—where, as the orchestration thins, towards the end, the different sections of the orchestra rise, as soon as they finish their parts, and go quietly out, and the lights in the hall are extinguished one by one, to the last note and the last light. Just like that. I’m being used like Gil, in the making of a piece of music; I’m being used; and if nothing else ever happens to me again in all my life, this will have been enough to justify it, and to give it dignity.… To change the subject, Key, I’ve got some first editions I could sell you.”

“First editions! What would I do with them?”

“Or you could have them as security on a loan.”

“No, Blom, I don’t want no first editions; I want a train to Concord. What about taking the subway down, and stopping for a nightcap at the Manger.”

“Yeah, sure. But I can warn you, Key, I’m going to curse your conscience like the very devil! You wait and see.”

“Henry, you can keep the change out of that — if they’ll give it to you. And good night.”

“Good night, Mr. Key, and thank you, sir. Good night! Good night.”

Key lit a cigarette as he rose, Blomberg took out his pipe and held the bowl of it in his hand, reflecting that he would not have time to light it until they got to the North Station. Eight-twenty. As they descended the marble stairs, the sound of time once more came around him, oppressive and rich and nostalgic, and again as if in the form of the train itself, the train to Mexico. They would be taking a train. This time tomorrow, where in God’s name would they be? In a strange world, on their way to a strange world, on their way to the unknown. And Noni, above all—! He closed his eyes to that notion, the notion of that terminus, and watched Key precede him into the street and the mild May evening. Was it going to be all right? He smiled grimly, looking down at the funny little man, and wondered. “The odds are even,” he muttered to himself, “the odds are even, the odds are about even.” He might give twenty-five, he might give fifty — he might give nothing at all. But the fact that he had suggested the drink at the North Station — and something in the persistence of his attention, his dwelling, even though it was in itself somewhat hostile, on the circumstances of the situation, was just possibly indicative of a latent sympathy and desire to help. If he didn’t — but the idea was unthinkable, it was to plunge at once into chaos again, a swarm of irreconcilables and accidentals and impossibles, exactly like the senseless hurry and confusion of Washington Street, which they were crossing towards the subway station. There was no one left to turn to now; no one. Except possibly Edes at the office. But no.

In the crowded subway train, they stood close to the door, Key reading his paper, which he held before him with one hand, the other reaching up for a handhold. His absorption was complete: it was as if he had already forgotten the whole thing, wiped the slate clean. Nothing — not even life and death — could be allowed to come between Key and the stock market. For a moment, Blomberg felt himself becoming angry and bitter, it distressed and shamed him to be thus helpless and at the mercy of another, and so appallingly dependent, moreover: particularly as in the very moment of his self-indulgence he could so sharply visualize, in advance, his telephone call to Noni, and her terrible disappointment. “Hello, Noni — it’s no good.” “Oh no, Blom; no, oh no!” “Yes, Noni, it’s no good. It’s absolutely no good; I can’t raise a single solitary cent more. We’ll have to put it off. We’ll have to wait. We’ve got to think of something else …” “But Blom, we can’t wait, we can’t, you know we can’t, we’ve got to go now!..” And then the dreadful waiting silence, in which they would both listen, as it were, for the sound of comfort, relief, or some impossible reprieve, some sudden and wonderful Christmas tree of an idea which would make everything as simple as daylight. But in vain. They would know that it was in vain. Mexico, that fabulous land, that land of savage ghosts and bloodstained altars, began to swirl and vanish like smoke, undulated once more away from them, foundered like a red cloud. And with it, Noni’s dream.

The train had climbed up out of the subway into the bright light of Canal Street, swaying lightly, the noise died behind them, now they were stopping. Key folded his paper, looked up with amused and primmed mouth. He said:

“Where were you.”

“I was in Mexico already. And enjoying every minute of it.”

He said it bitterly, as they went out on to the elevated platform, and until they had descended the wooden stairs and emerged into the street, Key made no answer. They walked, side by side, toward the far corner of the station front, past the drugstore, the florist, the shoe shop.

“I’ve got fifteen minutes,” Key said, “just time for a nice little nightcap. Not that I won’t have to have another when I get to Concord. Gosh, when I think of Dooley and that car—”

He smirked, and chuckled, remembering; they turned sharp right and entered the horseshoe-shaped bar. As they swung themselves on to the stools, the little white-mustached bartender nodded smiling, and said:

“Whisky?”

“Two!”

The hand was already on the bottle; the glasses were already on the mahogany. Key sipped water through the sparkling cracked ice, then neatly tipped into it the bright jigger of liquor. He said:

“And when do you think you’ll get back?”

“Don’t know. That’s one of the catches. Nobody here knows exactly how long it takes. Might be two weeks, might be a month or more. It’s wonderful, Key, how little anyone knows here about Mexico. Even the railway tickets, they don’t know about — apparently nobody ever dreamed of going down by day coach, without a Pullman, before — I’ve had three different quotations on the cost, and chosen the cheapest: Mr. Albumblatt, at the South Station. Bargaining for railway tickets is a new one! Jew against Jew.”

“Well, I wish you luck. And send me a postcard of the doings.”

“Thanks for nothing.”

“Keep the change.”

“Which reminds me. They don’t even know how often we’ve got to change. Or where. You’d think we were going to the South Pole, or an uncharted jungle! All we know is we’ve got to change at St. Louis, one o’clock the next day, and wait there four hours. After that, we seem to be in a desert. We’ll be like the babes in the wood — none of us ever went west of the Hudson before.…”

Something, in the way he had spoken the last two sentences, sounded a shade too despairing; he hastened to correct the impression, by giving a little laugh, adding:

“But I suppose it will be kind of fun. I’ve always wanted to see my own country first!.. Hadn’t you better be moving, Key?”

“Yeah. I’d better be moving.”

Key looked up sidelong at the clock, finished his drink, then with every appearance of leisure took out his wallet, opened it with an air of faint surprise, his eyebrows slightly raised, and extracted from it what looked like a folded check. The perforated edge! He proffered it between two fingers, and smiled cynically.

“You don’t deserve it, Kid, but there’s your hundred. Buy yourself some candy on the train! And if you could get some sense into the head of that crazy woman—”

He was already in easy motion towards the door which led from the bar into the hotel lobby.

“Thanks, Key.”

“Forget it.”

“I can’t tell you what this will mean to Noni.”

They passed through the lounge bar, entered the vast sonorous hall of the station. A truck passed with chattering bell. Key turned, putting out his hand.

“Good luck, Blom. I’m going to run. But I wish to God it was you she was marrying!”

They shook hands silently, then Key began to lope towards his platform, with a final sidelong grin, and wave of the arm, which were somehow almost derisive. In a moment, the absurd little figure was out of sight; and in another Blomberg was standing in an illuminated telephone booth, still smiling to himself while he dialed. Mexico came round him like a cloud of strange voices and faces, swarmed into and over him, he felt himself trembling a little; it was all beginning, despite everything, and despite his own profound incredulity, to be true. It was true! Fantastic, but true. Noni’s voice, very light and bright, very warm and near, came over the telephone:

“Hello?”

“Noni! Blom speaking. Now be calm. Do you understand? Calm. Be nothing but calm, for I’ve got good news.”

“I’m already calm, Blom. I knew you had.”

“Hell, you mustn’t take the wind out of my sails like that, you confounded woman, you! What fun do I get out of life?”

“Well, I can’t help it, can I, if I know? What have you got.”

“I’ve got, to be exact, one hundred, one hundred, bucks. Count them.”

“Key gave it? Bless his heart.”

“Key gave it, bless his heart!”

“That’s lovely.”

“It is, and I’m now on my way to the South Station to get the tickets from my dear friend Mr. Albumblatt. Did you hear? Albumblatt. Sounds like a piece of music by Bach! The latest quotation was about sixty-four, so I’d better take it. Now do you want me to come and help you pack? Or shut up the house, or anything? Or do you want to see me. And will you tell Gil, or shall I.”

“Gil’s here now.”

“Oh!”

“He’s downstairs.”

“Oh! Then I suggest we meet at the train, South Station, or rather at the platform entrance—the entrance, mind you — at twelve-thirty. O.K.?”

“O.K. And listen, Blom—”

“Listening, Noni.”

“This is important, Blom, dear—”

“Shoot.”

“I said it before, you remember, but I’ll say it again—”

“Speak, my lamb.”

“We must keep the whole thing just as cheerful, and normal, as we can. There mustn’t be the slightest sign — on either your part or mine — to make Gil uneasy. I think we can do that, don’t you? As a matter of fact, it’s going to be rather a lark!”

“Of course, Noni. Word of honor, and cross my heart, and hope I die.…”

Die: he bit his tongue. Damnation! But the clear silver of the reply came without hesitation, and with a little laugh:

“Faux pas number one!”

“Yeah, kick me.”

“I guess that’s all, then. You’ve got the tourist cards—”

“I have, and I’ll have the tickets, and I’ll have my little bag, and I’ll try to pick up a guidebook.”

“Bless you, Blom dear — so we’re off to Clixl Claxl — and a new world!”

“A new world.”

“Good night!”

“Good night.”

He heard the click with which she had hung up the receiver, the little sound of cessation itself, and suddenly a feeling of anguish possessed him; a powerful cramp of pain, shutting about his heart, his vitals, his whole body. It was with just so slight a gesture, at last, that she would finally have taken her leave of them, hung up her receiver on the world. The wire was dead, he listened in vain, then he hung up his own receiver and strode forth into the station again. He smiled grimly, and whistled a ghost of a Bach tune, and thought of the walls of Elsinore, and Key, and Gil; and once more the sound and swiftness of the journey came around him, palpable almost as a stream of light or water. The wheels, the bells, the whistles, the sliding and whirling land, the centripetal and tumultuous descent into the Inferno, the descent into Mexico — Oh God, how were they ever going to endure it? It was as cruel as forgetting, or like throwing flowers into the sea. Flowers into the sea.