by Jane Bowles
One of the Indian servants appeared in the doorway. She looked to be about forty and she was nursing a baby at her breast and smiling. "What do you want, Luz?" asked Señor Gutierres.
"I have come for the chicken, Señor. He must feel very sad for he is estranged from the other chickens, his brothers and his sisters, and the poor little thing cannot find anything to eat here." She started to chase it. The chicken spread its wings and ran as fast as it could around and around the room. The baby started to howl.
"Stop it, stop it!" shouted Señor Gutierres. "You can come and get him later."
"No, wait a minute, man," said Señor Ramirez, climbing down from his stool. "I will get this chicken." He spread his arms out and chased it from corner to corner, making terrible scratches in the wooden floor with the heels of his shoes, to the horror of Señor Gutierres, who began to rub his nose nervously with the back of his hand. Señor Ramirez was quite red in the face by now and beginning to lose his balance. He made a lunge toward the chicken and managed to corner it, but in so doing he fell sideways onto the floor and managed to crush the chicken beneath him.
"Ay," said the servant. "Now it is dead we shall have to cook it for tomorrow night's supper."
"Take it away, for the love of God," said Señor Gutierres, lifting his friend to his feet and handing the bloody chicken to the servant.
"What a shame, what a shame." The servant shook her head and left the room. They had another brandy together and did not bother to clean up the blood and the feathers which stuck both to one side of Señor Ramirez' coat and to the floor.
Señorita Cordoba meanwhile had had enough of waiting around the patio for the problematic return of Señor Ramirez. "My God," she said to herself, "I have no time to lose. I am behaving like a person with not a brain in her head." Besides, it had begun to rain and it was incredibly gloomy sitting there under the eaves, which projected a little bit from the house for the purpose of protecting one from the sun and from the rain. She went into her room, painted her face a bit more, and changed to a short dress. Then she decided to knock on Señora Ramirez' door and by some ruse try to find out where this lady's husband was likely to be. This she did and at first received no answer.
She knocked a little harder. "Come in," said Señora Ramirez in a voice that was caught in her throat. Señorita Cordoba opened the door and saw that Señora Ramirez and the two girls were lying on their beds, in a row. Consuelo's dark eyes showed intense suffering as she rolled them slowly in the direction of the door. Lilina, seeing that it was Señorita Cordoba, pulled her pillow out from behind her head and buried her face beneath it. Señora Ramirez' eyes were swollen with sleep and she looked very much as though nothing would ever interest her again. Señorita Cordoba decided to ignore the mood that was in the room and she went hastily to the foot of Señora Ramirez' bed.
"I thought perhaps that you would be feeling rather badly as a result of this afternoon's events, and I came in to tell you more or less not to brood about it, and to ask you whether or not I could help you with anything."
Señora Ramirez nodded her head, and closed her eyes. Señorita Cordoba was growing impatient. She looked down at Consuelo. "You, young girl." she said, "You should apologize to me." Consuelo shook her head from side to side. "No," she said, "no, you are a very bad woman." She patted her heart.
"Well, Señora Ramirez, your daughter is a maniac. I am a religious woman and I am a very busy woman. That is all that anybody can say of me."
"Certainly," agreed Señora Ramirez, opening her eyes. "That is all anyone can say. And of me they can say that I am a mother of two children, and also a woman with a great many heartaches."
"I suppose you are wondering where your husband is at this very moment."
"No, no," said Señora Ramirez. "He is always outside somewhere."
Señorita Cordoba was exasperated. "But where? Where could he be?"
"With Gutierres, drinking."
"Who is Gutierres?"
"He is the owner of a hotel. It is called the Hotel Alhambra. My husband has never taken me to meet him and I shall probably never meet him before the day that I die."
Having gathered the information that she had been seeking, Señorita Cordoba hurriedly took her leave, warning Consuelo at the door that she had better repent shortly. And then she was on her way, with an even and decided gait, like someone who has been sent on an important mission by the head of an organization. She was not a person who envisioned failure often, but only the interminable steps towards success.
When she arrived at the hotel she found a servant in the patio and inquired of her where she could find Señor Gutierres. "He is in the bar," said the servant, leading the way slowly.
"Good evening," said Señorita Cordoba, entering the room. "I hope that I have not interrupted a serious business conversation. Women have a very bad habit of doing this."
"Women have no bad habits," said Señor Ramirez, climbing down from his stool and taking her by the arm a little roughly.
"I got it into my head," said Señorita Cordoba, "that I would like to look at some rooms here."
"I am sure you will take great pleasure in seeing them." Señor Gutierres had bounded to the door in his eagerness, but Señor Ramirez held his hand up in the air.
"Before the rooms," he said, "we are all going to have a drink together to celebrate the arrival of a lady. Champagne for her, Gutierres. Sit down, Señorita."
Señorita Cordoba complied with this request only too willingly and took her seat at the bar.
"How delightful," she said. "I always like to drink champagne because it reminds me of Paris, where I belong."
"Paris is a very gay city. The night life there is very beautiful," said Señor Gutierres, believing that he was dealing with an elegant client. "Here in this hotel there is everything to remind you of Paris. I have letters from there asking for reservations. Your father no doubt owns a finca, and you no doubt have lived all your life in Paris and in Biarritz. And now you find this country strange, like the jungle—bien?"
"This lady," said Señor Ramirez, "lives in the pension where I always put my wife and my two girls. That is how I know her."
Gutierres' face fell. He had hardly expected to draw his customers from Señora Espinoza's pension, which he considered a step below the large touristic hotels.
"I know the lady who owns the pension," he said sadly, "but very little, only to speak to. I know very few people in this town. My servants buy for me, so why should I speak to anyone?"
"You are better off keeping your life to yourself," said Señorita Cordoba, "than having companions that are doing nothing but just sitting and trying to find someone to laugh with."
A shadow seemed to pass across the face of Señor Ramirez. For a moment he thought of going back to the capital right away. "Here, here," he shouted. "What is all this about your life alone? Let's be together, friends—like baby chickens under the wings of the mother hen."
Señor Gutierres was now just a little bit drunk, and he was beginning to wander on to things that he scarcely knew he thought about. "No," he said, "no—no chickens under one wing. Each man alone, proud, acting as he has been taught to act by his family, never living in a house that is lower than the house in which he was born. Each man remembering his father and his mother and what he has been taught is sacred."
"The only thing that is sacred, my poor boy, is money," said the pleasure-seeking Norberto.
"No, it is one's class," insisted Señor Gutierres. "We must love our own class. I cannot talk and be friendly with people whose childhood I know has been different from mine, who did not have the same silver on the table when they sat down to eat."
"You would be glad to talk with me, Gutierres, even if I ate with pigs when I was a little boy."
"No, no, I would not. There is real friendship only between men who have always been used to the same things. Between two such men no words need be spoken, because each one knows that the other will do nothing to disgust him or up
set him, and the pleasure of being with such a friend is quite enough. I have such a friend here, who knows the value of every piece of furniture in the Alhambra. And there is no wine that is familiar to me that is not familiar to him. We don't have to say anything to each other. Each of us remembers the same things. His family and my family come from the same part of Spain. I feel so close to him that I might say that I would even wear his underclothes. Forgive me, Señorita." He bowed his head.
"But my underwear you would not put on for five thousand quetzales, eh, senor?" said Ramirez, throwing his chest out.
Señor Gutierres, having started off talking about his thin code which he considered to be a universal and important ideology, had necessarily to go on further. His astute business sense was completely obliterated by the fanaticism that all men feel about whatever it is they believe makes the world an orderly and respectable place in which to live. "No, senor," he said, "I would not wear your underwear, for your education is far below mine and your family, as I know, were not much more than peasants before they came to this country."
"Oh, how rude you are," said Señorita Cordoba, taking hold of Señor Ramirez' hand. "And I am sure it is not true."
"Certainly it is true," said Señor Ramirez, "and this monkey will soon find out what else is true." Señorita Cordoba was surprised that Señor Ramirez had as yet not kicked the bar stools over, but apparently his family was not a sensitive point with him, and perhaps also he was having a very pleasurable reaction from the drinks and was not inclined to fight.
"Let him kiss his chairs," continued Señor Ramirez, "and see how many women he will get to kiss. He is probably a miserable eunuch anyway. Kiss me." He put his hand under Señorita Cordoba's chin and kissed her full on the mouth. Señorita Cordoba wondered whether or not she should resist this kiss, and decided very quickly that it was wiser to pretend to enjoy it. She passed a fluttering hand over his ear, which was one of the few love gestures she knew about.
"This woman is a trollop," said Señor Gutierres in a trembling voice. Señor Ramirez could not possibly let this remark pass so he stopped kissing Señorita Cordoba and gave Gutierres a sock on the jaw that knocked him off his stool and onto the floor, where he lay unconscious.
"Now," he said to Señorita Cordoba, lifting her down from her stool, "let us find an agreeable place in this beautiful Alhambra Hotel." He spat on the floor.
"Oh, well," said Señorita Cordoba, deciding that it was time for her to be a little bit shy. "Shall we stand in the patio a little bit and then go home?"
"No," he said. "I want to go where I can see your beautiful face." He led her upstairs, and with his foot he kicked open the door to one of the bedrooms, and turned on the light. She went and sat down on one of the chairs which Señor Gutierres considered to be beautiful and folded her hands in her lap. "I have always been interested to know a man like you," she said, "with such a wonderful way of knowing how to live."
"There are no disappointments in my life," said Señor Ramirez, "and I love it. I can show you some wonderful things."
"My life is a terrible disappointment to me," said Señorita Cordoba, and her heart beat very quickly as she felt she was approaching her goal.
The room was badly lighted and she searched his eyes avidly to see what effect her words had made on him. It seemed to her that they had a slightly blank look, like the eyes of anyone who is gazing at a particular object without really seeing it.
"You have not had the right kind of love," he said.
"That is not the only reason," said Señorita Cordoba, shaking her head vigorously. Señor Ramirez was feeling suddenly very drunk and he threw himself down on the bed.
"You must not go to sleep," she said nervously, rising to her feet.
"Who in the devil is going to sleep?" Señor Ramirez leaned on his elbows and looked at her like an angry bull.
"Listen," she said, "I'm so miserable on that finca where I am living that I think that if it goes on any longer I will certainly drown myself in the river."
"Drowning is no good," said Ramirez. "That's only good for scared fools, like those little dogs that shiver all the time—they have them in Mexico. You are not on your finca now. Come here on the bed and stop talking so much." He put his arm out and caught at the air with his hand.
"I want to go away to Paris, where I have friends, and start a dress shop."
"Sure," said Señor Ramirez.
"But I have not got any money."
"I have so much money."
"I need five thousand dollars."
He started to unbutton his pants. Señorita Cordoba remembered that many men were not interested in ladies nearly as much after they had made love to them as they were beforehand, so she decided that she had better make sure that she received a check first. She did not know how to do this tactfully but her own greed and the fact that he was drunk, and that she thought him a coarse person anyway, made her believe that she would be successful. She walked quickly to the window and stood with her back to him.
"What are you looking at outside the window?" asked Señor Ramirez, in a thick voice, smelling trouble.
"I am not looking at anything. On the contrary, I am just thinking about you, and how little you are really interested in whether or not I will open a dress shop."
"You can open a thousand dress shops, my beautiful woman. What is the matter with you?"
"You lie. I cannot even open one dress shop." She turned around and faced him.
"Wildcat," he said to her. She tried to look more touching.
"You will not help me to open a dress shop. Must it be someone else that will help me?"
"I am going to help you open fifty dress shops—tomorrow."
"I would not ask you for fifty, only for one. Would you make me happy and give me a check tonight so that I know when I go to sleep I will have my dress shop? I would like to sleep in peace just for once and know that I am not going to have to go back to that terrible finca, and listen to the dogs howling and my mother praying out loud. This one check would banish all these horrible things from my mind right away and I would be eternally grateful to you. I would be so glad that it had been you who did it, too."
"Well, then, come here."
She sat down on the bed beside him and he kissed her, but while he was kissing her she pushed him away and said to him, "Give me the check now."
"What is this?" asked Señor Ramirez. "Are you still talking about this damn foolish check?"
"Yes," said Señorita Cordoba, seeing that it was no use any longer to employ tact. "I will not go to bed with you unless you first give me a check for five thousand quetzales, or a piece of paper saying that you owe this sum of money to me."
Certainly this remark was not having the right effect on Señor Ramirez, who struggled with difficulty down from the bed and buttoned his trousers. She watched him attentively and noticed that the glands in his neck were moving. "Angry again," she said to herself, but she could think of nothing to say that would calm him except "Where are you going?" which she asked in a rather ironical tone of voice, all her false ardor dampened now by her own conviction that she would fail to get her money. Señor Ramirez was trembling and very red in the face. She stood still and appeared to be very calm even when he finally stumbled out of the room, but when she heard him clambering down the stairs she walked out onto the balcony and looked down over the railing into the patio. One light was burning and in a moment Señor Ramirez came into the patio and picked up what she saw was a large urn with a tall plant growing out of it. This he threw to the ground not very far from his feet, because it was very heavy. It smashed in many pieces, but made less noise than she expected to hear because the dirt inside the urn muffled the sound that it would otherwise have made.
She could not understand his fury, knowing so little about deeply outraged feelings and the fact that so much of people's violence is spent in the elaborate and grim protection of a personality as underdeveloped as a foetus yet grown quickly to tremendous prop
ortions, like a giant weed. Being stupid herself, she did not recognize the danger inherent in all those whose self-protective instincts are far greater than the personality they are protecting, because their armor can only be timeworn and made up of the most stagnating of human impulses. Señorita Cordoba was unwounded if unintelligent, and her rages were unimportant nervous discharges.
Señor Ramirez was struggling with the big wooden doors that led into the street and making a terrible racket shaking the heavy iron chains, but it was to no avail because the doors were locked from the inside. She could only hear him now without being able to see him, since the bulb threw no light into the front of the patio. Suddenly he stopped rattling the chains and she heard him walking back in the direction of the staircase.
"My God," she thought, "he has murder in his heart, certainly," and she sneaked around to another side of the balcony. Fortunately the servant who had before been looking for the chicken was awakened by the noise and she now came into the patio to find out what the trouble was. "The door is locked," Ramirez shouted at her.
"Yes," she whispered. "I'll fetch the key."
She returned with the key and let Señor Ramirez out of the patio into the street. Señorita Cordoba decided to wait a litde while before returning to the pension herself. She was thinking very hard of a way to redeem herself on the following day. She was like certain mediocre politically minded persons upon whose minds failure leaves no deep impression, not because of any burning belief in the ideal for which they are fighting, but rather because they are accustomed to thinking only of what to do next. These people are often valuable but at the same time so removed from reality that they are ridiculous. After sitting a while in the gloomy Spanish bedroom Señorita Cordoba went downstairs and in turn awakened the Indian servant, who let her out.
Laura and Sally
Laura Seabrook was lying in her bed at four in the afternoon. She lived with Sam Brewster, a mechanic trained as an engineer who helped in many different ways around Camp Cataract. He often drove the truck into town for provisions, or the bus that fetched those people who had no cars from the railroad station. He ran the wood-chopping machine and tended all the roofs and defective screens. He was very happy at his different tasks and did not seem to regret his engineering studies. He regretted having disappointed his mother, but he was usually satisfied with what he was doing, as long as his life was among friendly people and out of doors. He could not bear to live in cities but he did not out of this dislike make a cult of nature.
