A Heart for the Gods of Mexico

IV

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

And not least the alien sky, with those gizzard-colored thunderheads already piling up, as Hambo said they always did in the evening, now that it was the rainy season; and not least the smells of these filthy little streets, if streets they could be called; and not least the stinking green-gray water that flowed down the gutters. The landscape, with its great red and brown mountains, everywhere visible round the sprawling white-walled mountain town, was all very handsome; and so — when it came flashing out through the clouds — was Popocatepetl; and so were the savage unfamiliar trees and flowers. It was everything that Hambo said for it. Yes, indeed! But also, it was ommernous. As for Noni—!

He had been walking a long time; exploring, with an indifferent eye, the sights of Cuernavaca; getting himself lost in the narrow streets, and finding himself again. Twice he had arrived at the same odd little church, apricot-colored, its stiff little façade framed (as if parenthetically) by two tall curved cypresses. Twice he had stumbled down to the bridge — and this was indeed fantastic! — which crossed that incredible tree-filled gorge. The fernlike trees were so interlaced across it that one thought of course it must be very shallow; only when one looked a second time did one glimpse — far below — and with a sudden contraction of the heart — tiny rocks and ripples in the filtered sunlight, knotted roots on the dank sides of the narrow little canyon, and the sinister suckers of the creepers, venomous and dark, hanging down hundreds of feet in search of a foothold. The barranca. To turn away from that was a relief; but what was there to turn to? The streets were all alike, the Indians were all alike; the truth was that he hated everything, everything was wrong. The market bored and irritated him; so did the sound of a foreign language, Spanish; so did the rows of stalls and barrows in the two little squares that formed the center of the town. Who the devil wanted pots or laces or belts or bead necklaces, or those dreary little messes of food — a few beans, peppers, peanuts, pods, squash seeds — on a tray? Or ears of corn simmering in little pans — so, anyway, it looked — of hot axle grease!.. No, it was all hateful. And to come upon that sign, that mysterious sign — Quo Vadis? Inhumaciones—and to wonder what it meant, and to find out—that had been the last straw! For when he had reached the open door of the little shop, and had peered in, it was to discover that it was an undertaker’s. A tasteful display of coffins — all sizes and colors — neatly stowed on shelves — and a young man in the act of tacking gray satin, very tenderly indeed, to a small kite-shaped coffin lid. And the cynical question, “Quo Vadis?”…

The truth was, they never should have done it. The midnight drive out over the mountains, immediately after getting off the train — the abrupt changes in altitude, so that even Gil and himself had been quite deafened — this had been absolute madness; they should never have listened to Noni and Hambo. Never. Though of course nobody had thought it was as far as all that, or as high; and Hambo had been in entire ignorance of the situation, and he himself powerless to speak. It was a trap. Nothing but a trap! “Only an hour,” Hambo had said, grinning and patting the steering wheel; but Christ, he hadn’t mentioned that you had to climb over the backbone of the continent to do it! And suddenly then, in the dark car, to feel Noni stiffening beside him, stiffening and gasping, thrusting her hands out desperately as if to find something to hold on to, then turning her face fiercely downward against his arm, lest the look of agony be seen, be seen by Gil — the terrible strong shudders of the body, in its powerful instinctive struggle against the enemy within — and all the while the pathetic heroic effort to minimize the convulsion, and to protect poor frightened Gil. “No,” he said aloud; “no, things can’t be like that, no.…”

Turning a corner at random, he stumbled a little on the cobbles, saw the square with the fountain once more before him, and decided he might as well go to Charlie’s at once — where he was to meet Hambo — and wait there. It was nearly time anyway — or wasn’t it? And besides, his teeth were chattering — which was damned funny, as it was very hot — and a drink would do him good. Charlie’s, anyway, was unmistakable — you could see the sign a mile off, a little corner café with open stone arches and red-covered tables, facing the palace square. Cafés, in fact, were everywhere. There was another one next door, and outside this was a crowd of Indians, in their white and pink cottons, trying to get into — or out of, it was difficult to say which — a ramshackle bus. The driver was racing the engine, which rose to a shattering but somehow decrepit roar, a bell began clanging rapidly in the porch of the café, a bird, a really extraordinary bird — at that moment he saw it in its cage, over the gunny sack partition between the two cafés — began simultaneously to scream a contrapuntal and Bachlike thing, which ascended by concealed half tones, and suddenly the bus shot away around the corner of the square, on two wheels, two young men running after it and swinging up on the rear step as it went. The astonishing bird song had stopped as abruptly as it had begun — after a brilliantly complicated climb of perhaps half an octave — and the entire separate uproar attending the departure of the bus had ceased. He ordered his whisky and sat down.

An enormous white butterfly — preposterous — went by, on soft, slow wings — it was like the leisurely waving of a handkerchief. These tropics certainly did things in a big way. Over the red palace of Cortez, on the far side of the square, the clouds had become of an unbelievable purple — there could be no doubt that they meant business, and soon. Not that anybody minded. The hubbub went on just the same; Indian boys on shiny new bicycles rode round and round the square, bumping in and out of the dusty holes, and displaying a positive genius for falling off. A blind beggar, with white slits for eyes, and as evil a face as he ever had seen, was led into the café, and out again, by a frightened little girl. A starved dog with a broken back, the hind quarters twisted, dragged itself crookedly to the little parapet of flowerpots by the entrance, and lay there, mutely begging. No attention was paid to it. The eyes, tender and trusting, beseeching, were enough to break one’s heart; and when at last it gave up hope, and began to drag itself away, it heaved such a sigh of pure and beaten despair as ought rightly to have ended the world. He watched its pitifully slow progress all along the side of the darkening square, towards the palace, and then out of sight round a corner. He felt quite sure that it was going away to die; that sigh could have meant nothing else. And it was an indictment of mankind. Or of God? It came to the same thing.… Meanwhile, the Bach-bird had again broken out into song, fought its way up that furious contrapuntal cataract of glittering and savage semitones, made once more the final leap of triumph. And just then, round the very corner where the little dog had disappeared, Hambo came into sight, in the dusk, walking slowly with his tall forked stick, for all the world like St. Christopher. The swimming pool had given him lumbago; and the forked stick had been borrowed from one of the rose trees in the garden. Good-natured and solemn, the fringe of blond beard making the round face look a little odd, he approached self-consciously and shyly.

“It’s going to rain like hell,” he said. “I see you found it.”

“Yes, I found it.”

“I’m not sure we oughtn’t to get back pretty soon, you know — it’s late, and it goes dark suddenlike, and when it rains here, it rains. Not to mention lightning. Also, I didn’t as a matter of fact like to leave Gil and Noni alone in the house, not speaking any Spanish — Noni doesn’t seem very well, does she? It seemed to me that Gil was a little worried. And there’s this goddamned fiesta on, you know, San Manuel, with a marimba band in the house across the road, and everybody drunk — they’re making a hell of a row, and usually it means trouble. Christ, yes, the gardener’s woman — Pablo, the gardener, you know — just came reeling up the drive and flung her arms around my neck and kissed me. She was drunk, of course.”

“Has Noni got up yet?”

“No, she’s still in bed, I think. I haven’t seen her. I was thinking, you know, that if she’s ill, that row must upset her. And they’ll keep it up all night. They always do. And Pablo will get pretty drunk, too.”

“Is there a good doctor here?”

“There’s a funny little Mexican fellow, who’s quite good — he mostly treats the soldiers in the barracks for syphilis, you know — an army doctor, but good. I hope it’s nothing serious?”

“I think I ought to tell you that it is, but that Noni doesn’t want Gil to know. It’s her heart.”

“Oh.”

“Which makes it very awkward.”

“It does! Yes.”

“So that about all we can do is wait and see. I don’t like to send for a doctor, or urge Noni to let me send for one, until I get my cue from her — but of course, if things took a turn for the worse, I would.”

“I see.”

Hambo protruded his lower jaw, bared his lower teeth in a grin of embarrassed preoccupation, hissed through them softly. He tipped the little glass of pale tequila into the tumbler of cracked ice, squeezed half a green lime into it with awkward fingers. He said, sidelong:

“I’m afraid, by Jesus, I haven’t been very helpful. I bring her the glad news that the divorce is going to take months instead of weeks, and cost twice as much as she thought — and provide a house full of scorpions, with beds that not even a Chinaman could sleep in. And worst of all, I drag her over the mountains at midnight, after she’s been three and a half days without sleep, instead of taking her straight to a hotel. I really thought, you know, that you fellows would like to get it over with, get out here and get settled, instead of having the trouble of digging yourselves into a hotel and then out again. Besides, the hotels in Mexico City are god-awful holes, and there’s nothing to see there anyway. Only churches. But I guess I was a damned fool.… Will you try a tequila?”

“It wasn’t your fault at all. It was nobody’s.… Yes I will.”

He had a tequila, and another, and a third; he thought they tasted a good deal like prohibition alcohol. The approaching storm had formed an immense purple-black canopy over the city, and against it now the electric lights showed an uncanny and brilliant white. In the tall eucalyptus trees over the illuminated fountain — or were they a kind of laurel? — hundreds of large birds were quarreling and screaming, darting to and fro as meaninglessly as the small boys on their bicycles. Hambo was talking about the niño—an insect like a cricket, he said, only paler in color — Pablo, the gardener, had brought him one, holding it up by one of its antennas, and tickling the sting in its tail with a stick — and it was so deadly poisonous, yes, that there was no known antidote for it. Your throat swelled up until you died of suffocation. Suffocation, yes. The scorpions were quite easy — though every night it was as well to have a look around, knock them off the ceiling. Then there were the salamancescas, the little lizards with red pouches under their throats; beautiful little things; you would see them sitting on the rosetrees — deadly poison too—

“My God, everything here seems poisonous!”

“You never said a truer word, Blomberg. Nature red in tooth and claw. The ants here would as soon as not pick your eyes out while you sleep. And as for the Indians — here comes the rain.”

A surge of wind over the tall trees announced its coming, a quick wrinkle, of lightning, succeeded almost instantly by a stinging crash of thunder, and at once the rain was falling in a massive downpour, as if it had been raining forever. Across the little side street, the cannon-shaped waterspouts along the eaves of the Café San Marco poured solid round streams of water in a series of loud cataracts on to the sidewalk. The proprietor, in shirt sleeves, a toothpick in his mouth, stared gloomily across at them from his table, very cross-eyed; he looked like a brigand. Hambo nodded towards him, and said:

“Quite a nice chap, though he doesn’t look it. His daughter was one of the waitresses here, until she got pregnant. And even then! In fact, I began to be worried about it.… If we stand at the entrance, we can signal a taxi. I don’t think we’d better walk. There’s a taxi sitio just up the line, and they may see us.”

He stood on the step, waving his ridiculous stick, and grinning, and sure enough in no time at all they were in a smart and glittering but dripping taxi, had plunged down the precipitous road towards the bridge over the gorge, but instead had then turned to the right below the palace, and had slowly crept along the bumpy road which led out of town into the wilderness. They had passed the row of little shops; a bare wooden dinner table set out in the street, covered with empty bottles; a tethered goat; a drunk leaning back helplessly against a white wall.

“Pulque,” said Hambo, significantly. And then after a while he added: “I’m afraid there’s only a cold bite of tongue for supper — Josefina’s been in a bad temper today, and is frank about not liking company. But at least she doesn’t drink.”

“I’m afraid we’re rather a handful.”

“Oh gosh, no, it’s fun. I’m only too glad. But I certainly hope poor Noni isn’t going to be—”

He broke off, to lean forward and say something in Spanish to the driver. Presently the car swerved to the left, the headlights lighting brilliantly a white wall hung with bougainvillia — Blomberg had time to see that the two houses on the other side of the road were brightly lighted — and then they had come to a stop. Now, above the steady sound of the rain on the taxi roof, they could hear loud laughter, and then the marimba band, behind them. Hambo was studying the loose silver in the palm of his hand. The headlights rested on that extraordinary little tree, outside the gardener’s shed — the little tree which was covered with inverted lilies. He had never seen anything like it in his life. It was quite unreal, a sort of dream — but so, then, was everything; and he found himself wondering, while he waited for Hambo to figure out the change, whether indeed the whole strange expedition, and their presence here, and even Noni’s illness, were not just as improbable as this lamplit tree. It was the first thing he had seen, in the morning, out of his window — with hummingbirds flexing their sensitive little bodies for entrance to the hanging white blossoms — and then, too, as now, he had been inclined to read into it some esoteric meaning. Something wildly improbable, the kind of thing one thinks when in despair, or the last stages of exhaustion: as, for example, that the little tree simply meant that Noni would not die. And not only that, but also that Noni, and himself, and Gil, had never, any of them, existed at all. Everything, in short, was all right — the tree proved it.

An electric flashlight had come jerkily up the path towards them; it was Gil with an umbrella — good old Gil! But then Gil was saying to Hambo, through the swung door of the taxi — leaning forward, and rather white—

“I’m damned glad you’ve come — there’s something wrong, something’s happened — they’ve been shouting their heads off—”

“Who have!”

“Josefina and Pablo.”

The taxi door had slammed, they were running down the slippery path in the welter of rain toward the open dining-room door. In the dining room the table was set, and beyond this, on the long verandah, they could hear the steady, angry shouting of the two voices. They were at the far end of the verandah — Josefina leaning her back to the wall, her hands folded behind her, Pablo rocking before her, very drunk, with pools of water on the tiles round his bare feet. Hambo, stick in hand, approached them slowly, his voice rising; suddenly he had shouted them down. Pablo stared sullenly, swaying; his eyes were bloodshot, he was breathing heavily. Josefina turned her bland, wrinkled face, smiling with a sort of polite cunning, the neat black braid hung forward over her shoulder. She began a long, deliberate, unexcited explanation, always smiling, her hands always clasped behind her: now and then Pablo interrupted with a violent interjection or drunken gesture, began to address Hambo, “Señor!” only at once to give in.…

It was money — his wages — but it was also his woman.… After he had gone, pocketing the few pesos Hambo had given him, and muttering to himself angrily as he lurched away among the slatting banana trees toward the English Consul’s badminton court, and the barranca beyond, the confused story was partially cleared up. But only partially. He was so drunk — Josefina made this very apparent — that he was incoherent. But he wanted his back wages, for he wanted to leave, he was in trouble. He couldn’t remember — Josefina told Hambo in Spanish — whether or not it was so, but he thought perhaps he had drawn a knife on his woman; the police would be after him; it might be better if he went to Mexico City for a few days. He had a cousin there, but he needed the pesos to get there, and for food.…

It was while Josefina was saying this once more, with glee, and just as Hambo had explained it to Gil and himself, and just, too, as Noni, with the back of one hand against her mouth, had come to the door of her room, behind them — Hambo was repeating that in all probability Pablo, being full of pulque, had simply imagined the whole thing — it was just then that they heard him coming back. They heard him still cursing, saw him stagger toward them up the dark slope of irrigated earth under the banana trees, the white figure looking very insubstantial, almost as if it drifted, and then he half fell up the tile steps, and they saw that in his hands he held a knife. Josefina screamed: Noni stood exactly as she had before, quite still, with her hand against her mouth: Hambo took a step forward. But Pablo was merely explaining — he just wanted to see his knife in the light — that was all — turning it, he moved towards the open door of Hambo’s room, he lowered it so that it might catch the rays of the lamp; and it was then that they all saw two things: one, that his trousers had been slit all the way down one leg, from waist to ankle; two, that his knife was covered with blood. While they were still standing speechless with astonishment at this, Pablo himself had already turned and gone down the steps, stooped for a moment to wipe the long blade in the grass by the path, talking to himself, and once more vanished under the banana trees towards the barranca.

“By God, I believe he’s killed her!”

Hambo turned to Gil, grinning, as he said this; and it seemed to Blomberg that he said it too loudly, too much with an air as of some symbolic meaning. The sort of theatricality he seemed rather given to — though certainly the scene itself had lacked nothing of the theatrical. The attitude, too — the forked stick held upright in the air, for all the world like a druid’s wand — seemed a shade overdone, and the characteristic embarrassed grin. A pity, almost, that there couldn’t have been a flash of lightning just then, a particularly bright one, to make the thing more spectacular still; and still further to emphasize Hambo’s obvious implication that it was all very trivial, very commonplace, and that even if he had killed her it didn’t much matter. It was life in the tropics, life in the jungle, nature red in tooth and claw! Of course. It was the heart torn from the victim’s breast, the head spitted on the tzompantli, the dark underworld current of destructive and creative blood — just as simple as that, no more complex than that. Damned funny!

And he did think it funny; until, beginning to smile at the dark current of his own thoughts, and turning his head towards Noni for an exchange of the unspoken, he saw her, with her hand still against her mouth, but her eyes now closed, start to slide down the edge of the doorjamb in a queer, hesitant, slowly freer way, which he couldn’t for a fraction of a second understand. He caught her just as her head fell forward, lifted the slight figure in his arms. The beloved golden braids shone in the lamplight immediately under his eyes. But no sooner had he touched her than he knew that her heart had ceased to beat; and he read a swift confirmation of his own surmise in the stilled faces — where the same surmise seemed to be frozen — of Hambo and poor Gil.