A Heart for the Gods of Mexico

III

“What is man that thou art mindful of him? What is time, and what is reality? And what on earth ever put it into the mind of man that any god or gods were mindful of him? As you see, Clint, I’m on my way; and as you doubtless also observed, I didn’t get to Cambridge to see you before I left. As you can imagine. And I was sorry, too, for, among other things, I wanted to ask you a favor. Key, as you will surmise as soon as you see the St. Louis — or wherever — postmark, came across with a hundred dollars, and made it possible. But only barely possible; that’s the point. Now, if things go wrong, or it takes longer than we had thought, or anything of that sort, we’ll need more money; and I’m afraid Key is the only chance. So, if I should wire you from Mexico just the one word ‘Key’ would you be an angel and do what you can? Another hundred, for a guess — but if I have any more definite idea of our exact needs I’ll perhaps add the figures. I hope you don’t mind — and in fact I’m sure you won’t or I wouldn’t ask it. It’s only that we may really need a watchdog in Boston when we get way off there in the wilderness.… Wilderness — my God, as if we weren’t already in a wilderness! You must come and see this country of ours — it’s a wonder. Talk about your wastelands — it’s purely and simply, I’m afraid, a spiritual desert. These faces! They’re made of a kind of pale and pasty leather, no ray ever touched or lit them, and the eyes are blind as stones. Arid, dry, withered, there’s nothing left of them; they’re like old corn shucks hung up in a barn and forgotten. All the faces, mind you — and everywhere. There’s simply no trace of refinement, or sensitiveness, or subtlety of awareness; and I can’t begin to tell you how wonderfully depressing it is. Not, of course, that in a way it’s not a godsend, if only as a diversion from the matter in hand! As to that — well, by God, you see me for once not reading novels for a publisher, but actually in one. It really is a novel. Talk about Hart Crane or D. H. Lawrence or whoever, going to Mexico to die, going down to the everlasting dark! What about Blom the embalmer? Blom the undertaker? Blom the best man at the funeral? Blom the chief, if not the only, mourner? No, that’s not fair — for Gil does, in his dry wounded way, love Noni; he really does. But just the same he’s spared, unlike Noni and myself, the burden of foreknowing, and there are times when in spite of myself I can’t help being irritated with him. Poor old Gil! At the bottom of his heart he must simply hate my being here at all, and he must certainly wonder himself sick as to why Noni insisted on my coming. But he’s a sport about it, I must say, and I admire him for it. As for Noni — well, you know Noni! She’s a good soldier. She just marches up against the battery as if it wasn’t there; and she hasn’t changed her behavior by a hair’s breadth. And so far, anyway, she’s standing it better than I feared she would. Next to no sleep at all last night — we found out only when we were halfway across New York State that we had to change at a place called Galion, Ohio — think of it — at half past four in the morning. You can imagine what it was like, trying to sleep with that hanging over us! Gil really slept — I did fairly well — but Noni was awake pretty much all night. And the change itself wasn’t too good, in pitch dark, a hell of a hurry the whole length of two trains, and Noni was in some distress. In spite of which she really seems pretty well today, and has actually been enjoying this odd city very much. And the river. The river moved her deeply — obviously meant something very private to her. You know how she is about such things; I’ve often thought Noni ought to have been a poet. We took a walk down to see it, through a very fine slum section, much against Gil’s will; she insisted she must put her hands in it, and did so. It was nice! One of those things you like Noni for. Then we came back and had a drink at a café which looks to me remarkably like a bagnio, if you know what I mean, and it’s there that I’m sitting to write this.… It’s funny; half the time I can’t really believe a word of it — it doesn’t seem actual at all. Of course journeys are a little like that, anyway — but this more so, I suppose, because it all happened so suddenly and with so little time for thinking about it. And then, naturally, the situation about Noni makes it all even harder to believe. The truth is, I can’t admit it to myself; it just doesn’t make sense. Things like this don’t happen, do they? People don’t have to die like that — and we all know that there is a God, and there is justice, and there is beauty — or do we? Noni is here, alive; I saw her stooping to wet her hands in the muddy water of the Mississippi an hour ago. I shall see her again at five, and yet we both know that this is coming to an end, that she will presently — well, vanish. It beats me, Clint! I can’t make head or tail of it. How explain such cruelty away? It’s enough to make you really hate the whole nature of existence: but then, the joke is, the existence of Noni, and the way she takes this business, makes me really believe in something extraordinarily good—she’s herself a sort of proof of the divine excellence of things. A very subtle reversal!..

“Next day. I’m finishing this on the train, so forgive the rocky handwriting. The Sunshine Special is rushing us into Texas, and all day, think of it, we shall do nothing but cross Texas. Noni and Gil are washing — I’m waiting for breakfast. These so-called De Luxe Coaches aren’t bad: but none of us did much sleeping, I’m afraid. We were grieved when they took away an extremely nice smoking car, with adjustable seat backs — very comfortable; but damn it, after we’d got our bags into it we found they were going to yank it off during the night. Almost the best thing so far was coming down the river from St. Louis — really magical. I wish there’d been more of it. We followed the river for about half an hour, at dusk — very fine — it’s an astonishing river — dark little bayous with flat-bottomed rowboats tied up under tropical trees — nice old farmhouses with lawns going down to the shore — levees, islands, ragged trees sticking up out of deep water where islands or points use to be — the general impression of something marvelously untamed. Noni ate it alive. Here come Noni and Gil now — I’ll finish this, and put it off at the next station — Arp, or Troup, or something. And I’ll of course drop you a line when we get to M. Remember, please, Clint, all this under your hat. Yrs., B.

“If any of this letter doesn’t make sense, remember, too, that I haven’t had any sleep to speak of for two nights. We’re all beginning to feel very odd and vague — as if we’d somehow stepped right out of time. Damned funny! It’s a sort of dream state you get into, everything telescopes and foreshortens — something like a fever. Not unpleasant, in a way, either, for in some respects your faculties actually seem sharpened — perhaps only fitfully, and perhaps it’s an illusion!..”

Dream state. The dream state of Missouri, or Arkansas, or Texas.…

The dream state of Mexico.…

In the smoking car Gil talked about Little Rock. He was not sure whether he had really seen it, in the middle of the night, or had only had a dream about it. On the deserted platform, talking to a man with a broom, a Negro porter had taken his visored porter’s cap out of a paper bag, replaced it with the straw hat which he had just been wearing. Then there had been stately buildings of marble, a glowing capitol on a hill, palladian lamplit walls, miles of lights, along a river, and the train turning west.…

“It sounds like a dream.”

“The town does. But the porter with the paper bag—?”

“And anyway, at least we didn’t have to change. We were left alone to not sleep.”

“Yeah. To not sleep.…”

They closed their eyes and opened them again; again closed them, again opened them. Thou hast nor youth nor age, but, as it were, an after-dinner sleep. The rich country divulged hills, the hills divulged an oil-derrick or two, then others; suddenly like a blond angel in the bright sunlight, unbelievable, the tall fierce flame of a natural-gas well blazed pale yellow in the morning, and another, and a third. The fantastic landscape of skeletal derricks, singly or in groups or rows, stretching away as far as one could see in the broken country, had a sort of natural beauty, it was like something which had actually grown out of the earth. Of some, the pumps were motionless; of others they worked slowly, at the bottom of the derrick, like the lazy kicking of a grasshopper’s leg. Oil lands. The surface of the ground looked brown and rusty here and there, as if oil-soaked; pools of shallow scum lay among blighted trees and bushes; junk-heaps of scrap metal, oil tanks like immense mushrooms, bright ugly little towns as new as varnish. And Gil was reading aloud, his ascetic face wrinkled with amusement:

“The picture is a reproduction of William Harden Foster’s famous painting—”

“Famous—?”

“Yes, famous painting, ‘The Sunshine Special.’ The floral border combines the State Flower of each of the eleven States—”

“It’s very pretty, all except the chu-chu.”

“The Apple Blossom for instance — listen! — is a beautiful pink and white flower chosen by Arkansas because of its outstanding value, both commercial and esthetic. It is described by the legislature as a delight to the eye that ripens into a joy to the palate.”

“Just the same, my darling, I think it’s a very pretty plate.”

“The Wood Violet was chosen by Illinois because of its great beauty and appeal, its modest retiring nature — like Noni — and because it grows so profusely in the State.”

“It’s very beautiful English!”

“And you may not know it, but the Passion Flower, or Maypop — don’t you like Maypop? — was selected by the State Horticultural Society of Tennessee as its representative flower. It bears a fruit as large as an egg and very sweet, whose taste pleases exceedingly or repels very strongly.”

“Well, which?”

“And surely the sunflower can’t be, as it says here, the only genuine American flower — what about goldenrod, Noni? what about Indian pipes? what about the lady’s slipper—?”

“Just the same, it’s a very pretty plate, and I like the magnolias, even if they do look like water lilies—”

She was smiling down at the plate, her two hands laid at either side of it, she was smiling, but now she was looking very tired, very white, and it seemed odd that Gil should not have noticed it — or had he? It was absurd, the whole thing was crazy, saving money like this — sitting up all night for three nights — just in order that she might die, and perhaps even hastening it by the very economy. It was cruel. And it was not the less cruel for being self-imposed by Noni herself. He said:

“And now it’s San Anton. And then it’s Laredo. And then it’s Mexico. All I can say is I hope to God there’ll be a letter from Hambo telling us how to get there, and all about the lawyers. And gosh, how I wish we spoke Spanish! Noni, if you’d only spent less time on Bach and more on education—”

They finished the Scotch: they finished the bourbon. The paper cups leaked, even when doubled and trebled, they fell from the window sills and rolled on the floor, to be swept up by the porter with a reproachful eye. “The Megha Duta is throughout in the measure called Mandakranta, from the word ‘Manda,’ slow, and ‘kram,’ advance; in fact, it may be rendered by ‘Slow Coach’ in English. The following is the extract above alluded to: ‘If the four first syllables at the beginning of the verse (O thou sweet lotus-smelling little flirt), then the tenth, eleventh, and afterwards the two which come after the twelfth, and the two others which are last, are long, with a caesura after the fourth, sixth, seventh syllables, the best poets (my plump little darling), call it a MANDAKRANTA.’” A Mandakranta to Mexico, Noni said, a winding Mandakranta. And what sentences! “The women there are with the lotus in the hand.… In the locks is interlaced the new-blown jasmine; the beauty of the face is colored a pale white with the pollen-bearing Lodra; the fresh Kuravaka is twined in the luxuriant hair; behind the pretty ear is placed the Sarisha; and, at the hair-parting, the Nipas, which spring up at thy approach.… Where, having women for companions, the Yakshas revel on palace terraces inlaid with precious stones, so bright with stones indeed that they look as if they were paved with flowers; where, in the starlight, they grow drunk on the aphrodisiac juice of the kalpa tree, while drums, soft and deep as thine, are gently beaten; there — O Cloud! — by the Mandara blossoms fallen from the hair in agitation, by the golden lotus broken in pieces and dropped from the ear, by the pearls on their bright breasts, and the necklaces, at the rising of the sun are disclosed the nightly ways of loving women.… In vain do they, covered with shame, throw a handful of churna on the jewel lamps with lofty flames.…”

“When you take a taxi in Mexico City, you say toston to the driver and you get it for half price—”

“Must be a superstition—”

“And the Hotel Canada, or there’s another cheap one, near the station—”

“Maybe they’ll meet us—?”

“In the month of the diminishing of waters! Isn’t that nice? The month of the diminishing of waters. A procession of priests with music of flutes and trumpets, carrying on plumed litters infants with painted faces, in gay clothing, with colored paper wings, to be sacrificed on the mountains or in a whirlpool in the lake. It is said that the people wept as they passed by; but if so—”

“Mounted the stairs, breaking an earthenware flute against each step—”

“Then seized by the priests, his heart torn out, and held up to the sun, his head spitted on the tzompantli—”

“Tzompantli?”

“Tzompantli. My God, what a people; the whole land bathed in blood—!”

The flat lands, the cotton lands, mule teams on the long flat roads, cotton gins and cotton warehouses, and the interminable fields, stretching away to the sea, the gulf, the waters of the barracuda and the sea trout — time became a meaningless embroidery which unfolded and folded again its gliding greens and grays, a bizarre arrangement of light and sound. Noni was asleep with her cheek against the windowpane; Noni was awake, and holding a book, but without seeing it; Noni was coming back slowly along the littered aisle with a paper drinking cup held steadily in her hand against the lurch of the car. At San Anton, when they crossed the platform to the funny new little train, with its Jim Crow car, she walked painfully, slowly, with her hand against her side; she was biting her lips. At Laredo, after dark, he turned again, as they carried the bags forward to the Mexican car, to see with what careful slowness she followed them, the feeble ceiling lights emphasizing the hollows under her eyes, her hand resting on each chair back in turn as she entered the new world. Mexico! And then the sudden squalling and chattering rush of Indians into the dirty car, the slamming of bags and boxes, the overturning of chair backs, the human uprush as of a dark current from the underworld, inimical, violent, and hot — and Noni lying back indifferent and inert in her corner, but as if somehow really pleased — her face now a little flushed again — and after a little the inspection of the Tourist Cards—

Whoooo — whoooo — whoo — whoo—!

The train cried as it climbed, its voice whirling through the brown and blood-soaked sierras of this dark nocturnal Spain. At every station—Anahuac — Lampazos — Villaldama—the lighted platforms were crowded, swarming, violent with fruit vendors, vendors of cakes, trays of green leaves on which were small messes of food, trays of little pottery jugs, trays of drinks; the aisle of the car became jammed with purposeless going and coming, suitcases and boxes were shoved out of hastily opened windows, dramatic and feverish farewells were taken, tearful farewells, groups of soiled men hurrying forward to the crowded car ahead, where drinks seemed to be sold, and then the prolonged shrilling of the conductor’s whistle, the sudden laughing stampede of visitors out of the car, vying with one another to see which could be the last to get off, as the train once more gathered speed for its climb into the mountain darkness. Sleep was out of the question — sleep was the last thing any of these Indians would think of, when they had the good fortune to ride on anything so exciting as a train. The conversations on all sides rose at times positively to a scream, as if the idea were to dominate, if possible, the sound of the train itself, or at any rate to assist it in conquering the dreadful silence of the wilderness that lay outside. Derisive and demoniacal laughter, full of fierce and abandoned hatred, the pride of pridelessness, the arrogance of the self-condemned; and the often-turning reptile-lidded eyes, which slowly and malevolently scrutinized the three strange Americans, the gringos—with what a loving and velvety pansy-darkness of murderousness they glowed at these natural victims! How they laughed for pure hate of this helpless and comical and so naked but nevertheless so dangerous awareness! They looked and laughed, looked and laughed again, openly, softly, mockingly, with every hope of reducing the interchange as quickly as possible to that level of frank enmity in which the more quickly and absorbedly animal of the two natures would have all the advantage. Gil was already angry and distressed, he blushed and stared back, he had become acutely self-conscious. Ah, the advantage of being a Jew, dark-skinned and impervious, as inscrutable in its way as this Indian darkness—! More so, in fact; for it was a fluid and directible thing, could flow around and into any other kind of awareness, like the starfish on the oyster. But what about Noni? What about poor Noni? This violence of life, this sheer violence—

The Indian girl who sat stiffly beside him, in her pink cotton blouse, with her hands folded on the dirty wicker basket, was careful not to touch him, leaned carefully away from him, and pretended elaborately not to be looking, but nevertheless eyed the timetable (which he had opened once more) with obvious fascination. And especially the outline map, which gave in profile the altitudes from Laredo to Mexico City. They had already, it seemed, been climbing mountains; but this as yet was nothing, absolutely nothing. Nobody had warned them about it — not a soul. At Monterey they would be almost half a mile up; by morning, they would be a mile. As drawn on the little map, the ascent from Monterey to Saltillo was practically perpendicular, it was up a precipice. And Mexico City itself a mile and a half above sea level — but wasn’t this bad for a bad heart? Had nobody warned Noni? Not even the doctor? It seemed impossible that no one should have thought to tell her. But then, perhaps everybody, like himself, had simply not stopped to think. One thought of Mexico as a jungle; and if one thought of mountains, too, one didn’t think of them as anything very formidable. Or, if high, as not having the ordinary attributes of height.… Was that it?…

At Monterey, the car half empty — everybody having rushed out to the platform to eat and drink, and the Indian girl gone with her basket, after a last long inquisitorial stare for the purpose of storing her memory — Gil came wearily, sat sidelong, turning the unshaven blond face, the heavy eyes. It was like a dream; he must have been asleep; for a moment he couldn’t listen to what Gil was saying. A half starved dog hurried along the aisle, foraging. A pretty blonde girl, a Mexican, had sat down opposite, and the smart young man with the cowboy hat had quite obviously and unnecessarily taken the seat beside her to pick her up.

“—a little alarmed!”

“What?”

“—frightened. Had you known of anything?…”

“No, Gil! What do you mean?”

“Just after we changed at San Antonio, she said. I knew there was something — she was such a long time in the lavatory — and perhaps you didn’t notice — I think you were in the smoking car — but when she came back she looked like the very devil, she was white as a sheet, and she seemed to be weak and in pain. And ever since, have you noticed—”

“I thought at Laredo she walked — when we were coming from the other car forward to this one, you know — in a rather odd way—”

“Yes.”

Gil’s face was drawn, tired; he was nodding quite unnecessarily, without meaning; suddenly it was impossible not to feel very sorry for him. The fatigue had somehow emphasized the essential goodness of Gil’s face; he had time to think, vaguely and quickly, that of course it was this that Noni loved, this essential helplessness. He was like a child.

“But I don’t suppose it could be anything serious? Have you talked to her about it, Gil?”

“I asked her if there was anything wrong; yes.”

“What did she say?”

“Frankly, Blom, I thought she was a little evasive. It’s that that scared me. She just said she was tired, and that perhaps it had upset her a little—”

He stopped, as if himself so tired that he could hardly remember what he was saying, or give it the importance he remembered its deserving. He was frowning down at the fingernails of his left hand, and the onyx signet ring on the fourth finger.

“Has she been sleeping?”

“Yes, a little.”

“I daresay she’ll be all right. You know, we’re climbing very fast, and that might affect her — it does some people.”

“Oh. That might be. I hadn’t thought of that.”

He looked unconvinced. A little.

“Well, don’t worry. It won’t be long now!”

“No, it won’t be long now.”

And he was gone again, smiling faintly; and the train was once more pouring itself through space; or no, not that, but climbing, crying and climbing, climbing snail-like up the face of the rock of night, climbing moonlike up the smooth mirror of the sky. The blonde girl had withdrawn as near to the window as she could get, shrinking angrily away from the young man in the cowboy hat, who was looking down at her knees. Behind them, in the two corner seats, facing each other, three Indian women with babies talked in a steady birdlike rush of Spanish, a shrill and endless flood of sound, punctuated now and then with screams of laughter. Nobody wanted to sleep, there would never be any sleep again. He tried his legs to one side, then to the other, the feet wedged down against the footrail, his forehead pressed into the corner of the windowpane, the vibration of the warm glass deep in the bone, deep in the very brain. Whoooo-whooooo-whoo-whoo—the powerful oil-burning engine was shouting again for a crossing — but what crossing, save the eagle’s, could there possibly be here? Or the cloud’s? Or the buzzard’s? The blonde girl had said something: very short and severe. The young man had said something: very ingratiating and suggestive, apologetic. The sleeve of Noni’s blue jacket was dangling over the edge of the rack, empty, like the sleeve of a one-armed man, a mute protest at horror and injustice, and Gil’s fair head was just visible, the top of it, over the back of the seat. The man with the tray of beer bottles again: he seemed to be semiofficial. The young man bought one, drank the beer out of the bottle: the blonde girl stared out of the window with fiercely averted face. Monterey to Saltillo — a half mile straight upward, as the crow flies; and after that it was practically child’s play, of course, to get to Mexico City. And with all these sinister looking Indians, too, these lynx-eyed cut-throats, looking at Noni like that, with that look that stripped a woman down to sex and nothing else, exactly as you’d flay a fox! Jesus! What madness it had been, how in God’s name had they ever dreamed they could do it, and what an astonishing thing that as if by a sort of instinct Noni should have projected herself — with her consciousness of death, death as immediate as a hand at the throat — into a scene of such basic fertility and filth and cruel vitality! There was something terribly right in it; it was a marriage. A marriage of what? The beer man again, he seemed now a little drunk, or was it the train only; and then he was gone and back again, and again gone.… And Noni was saying, close at hand, her voice so close to his ear that it might have been, but wasn’t, a dream:

“Are you awake, Blom dear?”

She was leaning toward him, her two hands (one on top of the other) resting in the arm of his seat, the gold braids across the top of her head shining in the pale lamplight. For a moment they looked at each other without a word, motionless, Noni still leaning on the arm of the seat, himself turning his face from the corner where his head still rested against the window; an exchange oddly serene and unsearching, as if they had not bothered even to assume expressions, expressions of any sort. There was no guard up between them, there never had been; and it was like Noni, now, to let him see, for all her serenity, and the faint beginnings of an affectionate smile, the trace of beginning tears as well.

“Yes, Noni,” he said, “sit down.”

“I will, for a little. Gil’s fast asleep. I’m glad.”

“Yes, he was looking all in. And what about you, my lamb?”

“Oh, I’m all right.”

“No, Noni.”

“Yes, Blom.”

Sitting beside him, with her fair head turned calmly toward him, she smiled as if with an extraordinary and quite deliberate sense of security, and put her hand on his. How ill she looked, he thought — he noted all the physical signs, one after another, at the same time thinking how little it matters, when one loves, whether the known face looks ill or well. That she looked ill, in fact, even perhaps deepened his feeling for her, sharpened his feeling of what was essential in her. The bracelet of bright hair about the bone! He said, firmly:

“You’re a bad liar! Gil told me.”

“What did he tell you?”

“That you were ill after the change at San Antonio.”

“It was nothing.”

“Noni!”

“No, really, Blom, it was nothing.”

“Noni, you aren’t telling me the truth.”

“It was all right, Blom, dear, it was only a little one — and I have something I can take — no Blom, truly, it wasn’t bad—!”

She had clutched his hand, she was shaking it almost fiercely, as if it were of passionate importance that she should convince him. And she was laughing a little in a way that he didn’t like at all, hurried and anxious, breathless, a little insincere. He said:

“Tell me, please, Noni — was this the first?”

She drew back a little, was still for a second or two, her eyes all the while on his — he noted now how wide and dark were the pupils — then very slowly, and almost imperceptibly, she shook her head. She withdrew her hand, folded it with the other in her lap. At once, awkwardly, he patted her knee, smiling, and said:

“All right, darling; that’s all I want to know. I don’t want to know a thing more about it, or a thing more than you want, of course, to tell me; all I want to feel sure of — and absolutely sure, confound you! — is that you’ll let me and Gil take all the strain off you that we possibly can. That’s understood.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

“And now what about holding my hand, like the naughty gal you are, and trying to get a little nap. And if I snore, I give you permission to leave me flat.”

“That would be lovely. Yes.”

“Incidentally, I told Gil—”

“What?”

“That it was the altitude. Quite forgetting that at San Antonio there wasn’t any altitude! And incidentally, what about the altitude?”

“It doesn’t matter. It won’t matter.”

“Sure?”

“Sure.”

“Okay, go to sleep. In two hours, we’ll be at Saltillo. And in the twinkling of an eye—”

“At Mexico City!”

“How’d you guess it! Sleep tight!”

“Good night.”

She gave him her hand and settled herself, leaning just a little against his arm and shoulder, he saw that she had put her head back and closed her eyes, her other hand lay relaxed and half open on her knee, stirring a little with the everlasting motion of the train. Time with a hundred hands, time with a thousand mouths! The blonde girl had again said something short and severe to the young man in the cowboy hat: the young man in the cowboy hat had again said something apologetic and insinuating to the blonde girl. Blah — blah — blah — blah. What is man that thou art mindful of him? And was it today or yesterday that he had written to Clint? Far away and long ago; way back there in Arkansas. And now Noni was in Mexico, Noni was climbing the great circle to the mountain altar, Noni was trying to sleep in this infernal clamor of confusion and speed, while her hand lay in his, warm and alive. What was she thinking? She lay at peace beside him, of that he was certain; she was happy with Gil and himself, happy to be doing what she was doing. And perhaps that was all that mattered. But did she think about it at all? Did she take the trouble or the time to formulate it? No, she was allowing herself, simply — he felt absolutely sure of this — to be carried like a leaf down the torrent, lost herself in the last swift rush of living, without terror or gratitude, as also without forethought: with nothing, in fact, but a kind of pure acceptance. She was living — and the thought made him tighten ever so gently his hold on the hand that lay in his own — she was living — as how few people dare! — her death. She was living her own death.…

And abruptly, almost as if she had known what he was thinking, she was saying, with sleepily turned head, her cheek pressed against the chairback:

“You don’t regret it, Blom, do you—?”

“Of course not, darling. I never was so happy in my life.”

“Neither was I! And now you must be very nice to Gil.”

Her eyes were wide open again, and still; again they exchanged a leisurely look of unhurried understanding, in which all the future lay between them like a long-familiar landscape, every beloved feature of which was wonderfully known to them. It was all there, every bit of it: the years like seed, the years like furrows, the years like sheaves. Noni at Nonquitt, freckled, sailing an eighteen-footer; Noni in Boston, bringing back a basket of daffodils and music from Faneuil Hall, or standing in line for the symphony concerts; Noni climbing the dark mountains of Mexico. Noni with himself and her devoted Gil, and then — Gil and himself alone, looking back.… And as they gazed at each other, motionless, save for the quivering of arm against arm, or hand in hand, with the everlasting vibration of the train, it was as if, in that wide landscape of all life, they could see themselves, now here, now there; now in one part of the landscape and now in another; by the rocky shore of a sea, on a hillside, in a park, in a dark street; walking quickly side by side, walking always in swift unison, their faces turned towards each other, their hands now and again touching, but always, where ever they happened to be going, with perfect knowledge of a shared purpose and view, a known and accepted destiny. This was their life. This had been their life.… And then, quickly, the Norse-blue eyes were laughing in the tired face, and he himself was laughing, and they shook their heads at each other for rebuke of such silliness, and Noni once more composed herself for sleep, gave a little wriggle for comfort, and turned her face away.

Whoo-whoooo-whoo-whoo—!

But he was not awake at Saltillo, although he thought he had been awake all night; he could have sworn that he had known each separate time that each of the babies had cried, and the voice of each, and the voice of each of the mothers; but when he awoke, and saw the great gray fan of dawn behind and over the mountains, and the brown twilight close against his window, it was to find that the train had stopped at a tiny little station, a mere adobe hut, white-walled and deserted in the wilderness, and on its front, painted in large black letters, the incredible name: Encantada. Encantada! Enchanted, the Enchanted Town. It was the enchanted mesa of Krazy Kat. He turned quickly to tell Noni, but of course she was gone, she had gone back to Gil. In the profound stillness of early morning, the train then began to move, glided away from the forlorn and deserted station, where not a soul was to be seen. A little mud-walled town was now visible, on the dark scrubby slope of the mountain, as forlorn and deserted as the station; and then, standing alone in the desert, his back to the sharply outlined mountains in the east, a solitary shrouded figure came into view, an Indian, wrapped closely in his sarape, standing immovable and secret as a rock to watch the passage of the train. It was incredible; it was a dream. It was exactly, to be sure, what he had just been dreaming — that landscapes are like states of mind, like feelings, like apprehensions. The little town called Encantada, deserted by all save that brooding and inscrutable hooded figure — and at this, of all hours, the morning twilight of a desert among mountains — all this was obviously much more intimately a part of himself than a mere geographical section of a continent.… He had known it before; as now, too, he felt that he had known before the miles and miles of sagebrush and mesquite, the straggling rows of broken prickly pear beside the railway line, the Spanish bayonet, the iron and copper-colored mountains saw-toothed against the cloudless and burning sky. It was no surprise to see a wolf loping unhurriedly away towards the foothills, nor the citadels of prairie dogs, nor the buzzards sailing in pairs, sailing and wheeling, their wide moth wings almost motionless. It was a dream, a continuous dream; all day it unfolded in identical character; and at breakfast and at lunch, in the peculiar Mission dining car, with its black oak beams and gaudy Mexican pottery, they agreed that it was something they had all dreamed, all three of them, long ago, and many times.

“And those date palms, walking up and down the hills like sad little families,” said Noni.

“Or like men charging a hill in open formation.”

“But so attitudinizing, so tragic and comic! And so compassionate!”

“Yes. They’re really absurd.”

“The little ones, especially!”

It was all a dream: and in it now, too, were the manifest distortions of fatigue; the rocks too angular, the soil too red, the Indians too many and too sullen, the train too crowded. The suave violinist from San Luis Potosi gave Noni cards to his maternal “ont” in Mexico City: she ran a pension. They must go to see Roberto Soto, the Charlie Chaplin of Mexico; and a bullfight; and a cockfight. He had learned his English in school; he had played in the symphony orchestra in Mexico City; he knew Chavez. The Spaniards despised the pure-blooded Spaniards of Mexico. Pulque was the ruin of the peons. Pulque? Yes, pulque. And these desert stretches, with the maguey, and that other gray brushlike bush, from which it was possible to make rubber — but farther south the country would be more beautiful. Yes.

The blonde girl had joined the three married women with their babies: the young man with the cowboy hat sat alone in the seat, sulking. He was listening, but pretending not to listen, to the loud conversation, the sallies of wit, the screams of laughter, behind him. Parrot laughter: cold and fierce. Monterrrrrey, the blonde girl was saying, rolling the r brilliantly and mercilessly, Monterrrrrey, something about Monterey, and they all rocked with uncontrollable and malicious laughter. She was punishing him now; she had become the life of the party: the demure young thing whom he had tried to seduce was keeping the whole train in an uproar. The conductors — there seemed to be two of them — came and joined them, so did the beer man; so did an Indian woman with a hen in a basket. And always they were coming back to that everlasting Monterrrrrey.

Sure enough, the landscape had changed, was changing; and while the mountains still kept their indomitable stations, color of slate, color of bronze, stained with dark blood, the valleys opened outward and downward in richer greens, in corn fields, in grain fields, and here, too, were mountain streams, the land was no longer waterless, and now a small river running and sparkling, where before were only dried beds of rock. Pink churches stood among the trees, and yellow churches; far below the turning train the wide-hatted white-clad little figures of laborers could be seen, stooping in the rich fields. And here, by the tracks, grew goldenrod, already in bloom, strayed all the way from New England.… It was in the dusk that Noni discovered it, with her hand on the pane — Noni looking down into the purple valley below them, where now the lights had already begun to twinkle. Time with a hundred eyes, time the star spider! — the train had increased its speed once more, it was on the last stretch, it was hurrying home.

“Do you suppose he’ll meet us? Do you suppose Hambo will be there?”

“God knows, Noni; I suspect the train’s already late—”

“Quite a lot, I think—!”

“And we don’t know how far Cuernavaca is—”

“No. I suppose, at this hour of the night — it’s unlikely?”

“And this day of the month, and this year—”

“Where are we anyway? I wouldn’t be in the least surprised if I woke up in Boston—!”

“Yes, it doesn’t exist.…”

Gil tried to read the detective magazine: Noni nodded over the Megha Duta. Noni tried to read the detective magazine: Gil nodded over the Megha Duta. I Cover the Death House. Guns, Blondes, and Speed. Burning legs, burning lips, the singed smell of the executioner! And gilded Lil, tossing off nickel beers in the bar, after her farewell visit to her condemned husband! Guns, Blondes, and Speed.

“Well, I hope he’s there. Otherwise we’ve got to try to get into a hotel.”

“O God, our help in ages past.”

“And I wonder what kind of a house he’s got — did you say he was Bohemian, Gil?”

“Bohemian? No, I wouldn’t say Bohemian. I met him on a ship.”

The echoes of the past came around them briefly, with faint evocation; Noni was looking at her hands, her fingernails, with fatigued amusement; Noni came back from the lavatory a little distressed (for it was filthy), but making a weary joke of it; Noni lay back with her hand over her eyes, tired, while Gil gazed beyond her at the darkening landscape. Nightfall, nightfall; the train falling around the curve of the world—

And in fact the train had now become positively suicidal. It was at last rushing downhill, hurling itself precipitately down the mountainsides, down gorges, down tunnels and valleys, lurching in breakback fashion around screaming bends, falling and then checking momentarily in the pitch darkness, only to resume its headlong disastrous plunge to Mexico City. It was unbelievable. Noni was a little frightened: so was Gil. So for that matter was himself. Gil said:

“And when you remember how that rail at Queretaro bent down two inches—you saw it, Noni — you just kind of wonder.”

“They might as well jump straight down and be done with it!”

“Just about.”

“It’s as good as Coney Island!..”

But abruptly, and as if with purpose, the blonde girl had come back to her seat, had put on her hat with firm fingers, was getting down her bag; the train was slowing; passengers were rising, peering out of windows; another train passed them going north, at a switch point; there were rows of lights, there were buildings. Could it be?… Half past eleven; they were an hour late. And now the tolling bell, melancholy and slow, ylang — ylang, ylang — ylang, and the slowing train still slower, and the long platform with running figures; and suddenly Gil was exclaiming — as he stared down through the window—

“It’s Hambo — look, it’s Hambo — Noni — with a stick as tall as himself!”

“He’s come to meet us — isn’t he a darling?”

The round red face glared up at them affectionately, the fat fist lifted a forked stick towards them in signal; he was walking slowly alongside the train, grinning. So this was Hambo; and now everything would be simple.… And this familiar world, this train, would be lost forever.