Crowned Heads

by Thomas Tryon

  She went toward the pool, undoing her halter. She kicked off her shoes, pulled off her shorts, then undid her wrist watch and unfastened her earrings. She folded her clothes and placed them on a rock, and keeping on her bra and panties, she stepped out into the icy pool. She could not suppress a shivery cry, then she was in all over and it felt actually good, revivifying. She didn’t swim, but floated, arms and legs making an X outward from her body. She looked up at the sky, past the lacy green edges of the forest canopy, and it occurred to her that no one, not a single person in the world, knew where she was at that moment.

  She thought it was the horse, and at first she paid no attention. Then she realized it wasn’t and she lifted her head out of the water to see what was making the sound. A donkey. A pair of them, with cages hung on their backs. The sun was behind the two men leading them, so she saw them only in silhouette, their faces darkly obscure, staring placidly down at her in the clear water, idly curious, one with a hand angled on a hip, the other chewing on a piece of grass, just watching her. Looking up at them, she felt not only embarrassment, but unaccountable fear. She made her way awkwardly under the rocky overhang where she could touch bottom, then submerged to her chin, arms crossed over her breasts. One of the men laughed and said something in Spanish to the other one. That one laughed and replied. They both stood looking down and not saying anything.

  Go away, she said, gesticulating and swirling the water about her. Vaya, vaya. She tried to sound angry, but her voice trembled.

  Okay, lady, the first man said placatingly. He tugged at his donkey and moved on. The second remained for a last look, then started off behind the first. As he turned into the light she recognized him. It was the man called Ávila.

  She waited, crouched under the rocky outcropping, and when her ears told her they had gone she came out. She wrung out her hair and combed it back with her fingers, then tied the folded scarf around it. Her nylon panties were still damp as she slipped into the shorts, and the halter clung to her wet bra. She put on her high heels, untied the horse, and led it to the trail; it made an Oof sound as she slung into the saddle, dangling feet groping their way into the stirrups. They moved forward and up, through the steaming jungle. Why up? she asked herself. Because she could not go down, she answered.

  She wondered how far it was to the top. She had no idea, and looked to the river to see if its course had narrowed at all, since she had been told it was fed by a spring somewhere high upon the peak they called the Sleeping Maiden.

  There was a grove of large-trunked trees with peeling bark, with half-broken branches that had gone dead, and beyond them, past the rough trunks, she saw something move. A flash only, but she remembered the men with the donkeys. She had thought they were going down the mountain, but now it occurred to her that perhaps they were going up instead. They were there ahead, waiting for her. Under her, the horse heaved dreadfully, its belly expanding and contracting like a leathery bellows, head dog-hung from the neck, patiently waiting with her. She listened, indecisive, fearful; heard nothing; went on.

  She became increasingly afraid, not only of the men, but of the horse. It seemed to her it might give out at any moment, and she got off and led it; the reins drooping back over her shoulder. She could feel its hot jolting breath on her back, could smell it. Turning, she saw a greenish foam forming around the steel bit. She remembered there were little berries on the bush it had been chewing. She turned to feel the horse’s forehead. A silly thing to do; there was no flesh there, only a layer of hide with matted hair. She remained undecided for some moments, hearing the rattle of breath in her chest, then tugged the horse after her, walking this way until, fatigued, she had to get back on. She felt the rough, chafed spots where the stirrups rubbed her ankles. She looked for a place where the jungle cleared, with a view to the sea, but there was none, only the ceiling and the floor and the walls, all green; it was like being in a great green room. It grew less stifling as they went up. A breeze riffled the green leaves, not a warm, but a cold one, and she felt herself shivering again. The horse as well. It was wet under the edges of the saddle and where the bridle went around the head, and its movements grew more and more pronounced, more jerkily annoying. From ahead she heard a noise of rocks or stones being dislodged, a trickle of pebbles, then silence. She made a low, quavering sound in her throat, and undid the Hermès scarf and tied it around her neck. The trail had left the river some time ago, but now rejoined it. Finding a shallow place, she let the horse wade out and drink. It dropped its head against the slack reins and sucked greedily, then, head still down, it shook all over. Each of its limbs trembled with shock, until she felt the shuddering beast collapse under her. She cried out as it fell heavily into the water, and she pitched sideways and out of the saddle, one leg pinned under the horse’s back. She sat in horrified surprise, pushing at the withers, trying to get the animal to move, but it remained lodged against her.

  It was dead. It had stopped breathing almost immediately, and she felt annoyed that it should have done such a thing, there in the jungle, under such circumstances. She hadn’t been hurt, she would be all right if she could only free her leg, and she dug at the sand and rocks, trying to release herself. When she lifted her head again she was looking at Ávila.

  He was in half-light at the bank, staring down at her. He signaled over his shoulder and the other one appeared and they waded out and both tugged at the horse until she could extricate her leg. She got up and staggered to the bank, feeling her wet clothes pressing against her, revealing her body. The two men continued heaving at the horse until they had dragged it out of the water. Flies were already circling, large green buzzing ones. She looked at the men and said, What should I do?

  Ávila shrugged and smiled. His gold teeth shone as he thoughtfully scraped the palm of his hand along his unshaven chin. He watched her, his smile fading, and she heard the other one moving behind her. Before she could turn he had her around the waist; her shoes flew off as she kicked, and he lifted her from the ground and held her. Ávila came up to her and began undoing her halter.

  There are only two kinds of women, she had often told herself, those who fight and those who submit. She had wondered which category she fitted, thinking of course that she would fight, that she would somehow hurt them as they hurt her. She did not fight. She went limp in the other one’s arms while Ávila continued working at her clothes. They had lowered her onto the grass in the shade, and Ávila got her out of the halter and skinned her shorts down and off, and she heard his harsh breath as he knelt over her, and his anticipatory sounds of wonder and appreciation. The second one grasped her hands while she lost first her nylon panties, then her bra, Ávila clumsily fingering under her back to undo the hook and eye and then snapping the bra away and staring at her breasts.

  The second one waited until he saw she was offering no resistance, then she heard him walking away. Ávila was standing over her, undoing his belt buckle. She turned her head to the side, staring at the cadaver, the head angled grotesquely, the eyeballs staring from their sockets, the large flies all over it, shining green-gold in the sunlight. She closed her lids, flung her bent arms across them as she heard the sound of buttons being worked, urgent, determined, then his steel buckle being unfastened, and the rustle of his jeans as they dropped. She winced but did not cry out when he touched her. She opened her eyes again.

  He had a small medal around his neck and it hung down on a chain, swinging before her, and she could see the stamped form of the madonna moving as he moved. She kept her eyes on it, the swinging disk in front of her; it was, she supposed, a form of hypnotism, which produced a certain mental state, and she told herself it was this that got her through the act without screaming or fighting.

  It was worse with the second one. He wore no medal and she doubted he even went to church. He hurt her badly. It was in no way a religious experience, nor one of knowledge or enlightenment, merely of endurance. She couldn’t have borne it if he had tried to kiss her, those lips
on her mouth. He didn’t try.

  She had lived through worse things, she told herself afterward. She lay back in the shade, feeling cold instead of warm, and reached for her clothes. They had taken her wrist watch and pearls, and were now a short distance away, hunkered down like cowboys, smoking and watching her. She got up and went to the river and squatted and washed herself. She wondered if anything inside had been damaged. She blessed her hysterectomy and the doctor who had done it. She moved behind a tree, into the sun, drying off. The horse lay frozen in ghastly death, fly-covered, its belly grossly swollen. She paid no attention to the men as she dressed, slowly and methodically. She wanted to bind her hair back again with the scarf, but it was tightly knotted around her neck. Ávila had hung on to it, gripping it in his hands and pulling her up to him, and now she had trouble undoing the wet knot. When she was dressed she moved from behind the tree. She found her sunglasses; one lens was shattered, but she put them on. Overhead she saw birds circling, large, dark ones.

  The men had come to standing positions beside the donkeys, blocking the trail. As she moved, Ávila laughed; his hands fumbled at his fly and he stood exposed again. She cried out then, turned and ran. She stopped a short way up the trail, clutching at her stomach, sobbing. She heard them talking, then heard the chink of the donkeys’ harness and gear as they moved. They went down the trail and the green room was silent except for her whimpering. She waited until she heard another noise, the rush and flapping of wings, and turning back she saw three vultures drop onto the carcass of the horse, their beaks stabbing into the hard flesh. One of them swiveled to gaze at her, bald, crowned with a ring of dirty fuzz, the beak dripping red. She turned away and her scream seemed to shake the very leaves of the trees. From below, through the green, came the sound of laughter. She couldn’t tell if it was Ávila or the other one. She screamed again, and felt that she might never stop.

  Still she went up instead of down. The trail continued clear and open, and the only difficulty was her fatigue. The last time she had looked at her watch, before Ávila had pocketed it, it had said four o’clock. It must be five by now. Would they miss her at the hotel? Certainly not before dinner, and by then it would be dark. The Tashkents hadn’t seen her leave. She had been a fool not to tell anyone of her plan. Or to leave a note. Well, she had been a fool before and had survived. She would survive this. The cigarettes in her bag were wet, but the matches had dried. When she got to the top she would make a fire and pray they saw the smoke before nightfall.

  She went on, making her feet move, her arms swinging at her sides as if disconnected, moving with her shoulders, but somehow unnaturally, as if they didn’t wish to be a part of her. She wanted to stop crying, but couldn’t. Every part of her hurt, her head ached, and she had pulled muscles in the backs of her legs; whether from the horse or the men she couldn’t tell. When she thought, really thought, about what could happen, was going to happen, to her, she felt the greatest terror of her life. She tried to think of Carrie, of Jeffrey, of Richard, but their names, faces, beings, only frustrated her and made her more afraid. She realized she might be close to never seeing another human being again, ever. She would turn and go down. Then she thought of Ávila and the other one, on the trail below, she thought of the dead horse and the vultures, and she continued climbing.

  The way was narrower, the river lost to view. She saw that other trails branched off, small tunnels into the green darkness. She became confused, not at all sure that she hadn’t left the main trail for one of the side ones. She stopped, wondered what to do, cried again, continued on. Most of the other trails sloped away downward, and she thought that if she stayed with the one that went up she would be all right. But the trail appeared no less confused than she; it couldn’t seem to make up its mind which way to go. Overhead the foliage grew lower and lower and she often had to stoop to pass. Long vines hung down and she pushed through their tangling loops and twinings, urgent and more terrified than ever.

  Then, inexplicably, she could go no farther. The jungle had closed in around her, the passage narrowing until she was confronted on every side by moving, waving green. The trail had ended, she had no idea when. She cried out again, loudly, and the sound hurt her to make it, hurt her to hear it, her own spoken terror. She turned and started back down. Everything looked different from the way it had been coming up and she had no idea which trail to take. There was some grass and, her knees giving way, she collapsed on it, falling in a slow graceful movement. She lay panting, then rolled over with a quick motion as something moved under her; what it was she couldn’t tell, but something alive. Her head struck something and the green became black.

  There was blood all across her eyes when she came to again, she could feel it, wet and sticky. She put her hand up and took it away red. She felt gingerly with her fingertips, trying to ascertain the extent of the wound. It was on her temple, a gash which she bandaged with the scarf. She stared at the blood on her fingers, then put them in her mouth and licked them. She was talking, to whom she had no idea, or even what she was saying. How could she feel so cold, so chilled, when she was in the jungle? She looked around. It was all unfamiliar, but she was certain it was not the place where she had fallen. Had she come to it before without knowing it, had she walked there without being aware? Had she gone up, or down, or to the side? She couldn’t tell. She started out again, turning to her right because the ground there seemed to slope down. She let herself be drawn by the pull of gravity, slipping and sliding, touching her bandaged head, pushing the yellow hair from her eyes. She ducked low again under some branches and passed through a green tunnel and came out into sunlight.

  On the other side, she collapsed again. It was like having walked through a wall of green and come into another room altogether. She felt dizzy and light, the same feeling she had in airplanes, up there above the world, disconnected, cut off. Perhaps it was that feeling alone that produced the sight, like a mirage in the desert, for what she now saw appeared to be a stone gateway rising out of the jungle growth, surrounded by green and covered with vines. There were wide steps leading to a low platform, on it crude square pillars, with carvings. Beyond and through the apertures they formed was more green. The sun shone on the stones; they stood out in the light like giant blocks of gold, brilliant against the green. She stayed where she had dropped, leaning on one arm, holding her head with the other, staring at the sight. She wasn’t sure she was really seeing it at all, it seemed so unreal, so movielike, such a figment of her mind, yet it surely was there. Turning her head slightly, she saw, through the glaze that clouded her vision, a flight of stairs on the righthand side of the platform, between two of the columns, rising upward to the top, where they broke off, leading into space. She sat staring at them for a long time, still holding her head, then she got to her knees and rose unsteadily. She walked across the clearing until she came to the first long step at ground level. She reached down with her hand, felt the sun-warmed stone. When she lifted her head she felt dizzy and the pain was terrible. She sat and rested for a moment, then got up again and continued to the platform. It, too, was made of stone blocks, pitted and cracked like ancient buildings she had seen in Europe, like the statues in the Tivoli gardens, like a deserted movie set. She stepped among the green vines half covering it and went to the next stairway. She started up, feeling dizzier and trying to keep her balance. When she came close to the top she crouched and moved upward step by step by sitting on each one. Then, as her head came level with the top one, she looked down.

  The view past the trees was that of the small end of the telescope, so far away was the beach and the hotel. Yet she could see them, the infinitesimally tiny thatched roofs, the spread of the lagoon, which even now was cutting its way through the sandbank, and as usual people had gathered to see it break into the bay. She could see the burned church and the palapa where the horses were tethered, and smoke came from the kitchen chimney. She could see the roof of Bob and Joan’s house, and the end of the yacht club, buil
t out on pilings, and the boats bobbing at their moorings. There were the usual ones, the Molly g and the Paradiso and the Alrae, and there was another. A large sailboat, with a tall mast and a reefed sail. She recognized it: the MorryEll. She even thought she could make out figures sitting on the fantail. One, one of them must be Richard. She drew farther up on the last step but one, and sat staring down, holding her head with one hand, the other flattened against the pain in her breast. It was funny, so she laughed. It didn’t sound like her laugh, but she recognized it as someone’s laugh. She tottered up and waved her arms over her head. She called and cried and laughed; surely they must see her if she could see them. She screamed as loudly as she could, but the sound seemed to go no farther than her own ears. Then, having strained on tiptoe, she was falling, and the green all around her seemed to catch and swallow her up.

  When she came to again, she was not herself; she did not know who she was or where she was or why she was there. Her head hurt, and other parts of her body; she was thirsty. She had come here with some vague desire or purpose in mind; she did not know what this was. She was lying halfway down the stone steps, on her back, staring up at the blue sky. She lay still, in pain, sucking hot air through her open mouth. Somehow she got herself around to a sitting position, and looking up, she saw the steps leading nowhere, only into the sky. Shade; she wanted shade. She moved downward, to where a pillar cast a long shadow, and sat against it. Something bound her head tightly and she felt the fabric of a bandage; no, a scarf; but whose she had no idea, or how she had injured herself. She undid the scarf and spread it on her lap. There was dried blood all over the blue flowers; she knew their name but couldn’t remember. Anemone? She sang snatches of a song—“The Dove,” was it that?—thinking she really had a pretty voice. She held the scarf up and watched the chill breeze ripple the silk from the corners, then she let it go altogether, and it flew across the stones and caught on the corner of the opposite column. She tried to think, feeling she must come to some resolution regarding something, some problem, but she couldn’t. The shade felt nicer than the sun. She was thirsty and wondered when they would bring her something to drink; water would do. Inner sounds seemed to catch in her chest and throat, refusing to issue through her dry lips. Then she saw the bag.