Bella

by C M Blackwood

  Lucie simply sat down on her bed, and awaited the return of Robert’s lucidity.

  It wasn’t long in the coming.

  “This is what we’ll do,” he said finally, with his eyes lighting up like hot firecrackers. “We’ll go there – we’ll go there, and we’ll get it back. I’ll be damned if he’ll make a fool of me! I’ll just be damned!”

  And so he reached down into his belt – and pulled out a pistol. It was now Lucie’s turn to scream.

  “Oh – just hush up, will you?” he cried, slapping his hands over his ears. “Get up! Follow me!”

  Lucie sighed. “Can I get dressed first?”

  Her brother looked her over, tugging again at his hair. “Oh – all right!” he said. So much hair-pulling had seemed to remind him that he was without his hat; and so he snatched it up. “But hurry up. I’ll be outside.”

  Not three minutes later, they were speeding away down the street. Robert kept one hand on the wheel, and the other wrapped round his gun. Lucie couldn’t keep herself from glancing over at it, every now and then; first out of the corner of her eye, and then out of the full front of it.

  But when Robert pulled haphazardly alongside the curb, Lucie looked out of the window, and saw that they were parked beside the Vicentes’ apartment building.

  “What are we doing here?” she asked.

  “Shut up!” Robert hollered. “Get out, and follow me.”

  He dragged her towards the thick metal door; and then used a finger of the hand which held the gun, to press the buzzer next to the faded word, Vicente.

  A cheerful voice answered him in Spanish.

  “Let me speak to your son,” he said loudly.

  “Qué?”

  “Tu hijo! César!”

  “Un momento, por favor.”

  A few seconds later, the chipper tones of César were flowing through the speaker. “Good morning, amigo! What brings you here so very early?”

  “Don’t you fuck with me, you ugly spic,” Robert hissed. “Don’t you fuck with me! You give me my money – or I’ll shoot you dead. Do you hear me?”

  By the time he had finished with this threatening demonstration, he was very nearly shouting.

  “I would be a little more careful, if I was you, amigo,” César said seriously. “A little more careful! Talking like that, you will never see your money again.”

  Robert turned away from the speaker; then turned back to it, and began to pound his fist against it. He screamed and stamped, waving the gun all around his head. Quite the impressive array of obscenities flew forth from his chapped and foaming lips.

  “Amigo?” César called after a little. “Amigo? Are you still there?”

  Robert screamed once more, for good measure; and then leaned close to the speaker. “What do you want from me?” he demanded.

  “There are things that I have heard about you, Mr. Benoit,” answered César, very matter-of-factly. “Very bad, very suspicious things. Before we can go on with our business – well, you must prove yourself to me. When – and if – I am satisfied, you will get the money back. I am afraid that I gave it to you too quickly, perhaps thinking wrong that you were an honorable businessman. I will keep the money for now; and you will remove your pale, sickly, disgusting, lying fucking face from my –”

  Lucie moved up beside her brother, nudged his hand away, and pushed the button on the speaker. “César?” she said doubtfully.

  “Miss Lucie!” César exclaimed. Then, very angrily to Robert: “Why, you – you did you not tell me that your sister was there! That was very bad manners, amigo.”

  “What’s going on?” Lucie asked.

  “Oh, nothing – nothing at all, Miss Lucie! You come on upstairs, and have some breakfast with me. All right?”

  “All right,” Lucie said slowly, pulling on the door handle as the buzzer sounded. Robert tried to precede her through the doorway; but she shot him a dark look, and pushed him out of the way.

  César was awaiting her outside the apartment. He welcomed her inside, and ushered her down the hall, leaving Robert to navigate his own sullen way.

  “My father and brother have left already for work,” he said, as they came to the kitchen table. “But my mamá and sisters are here, for Mamá and Maríbel do their linen-work at home. Clara works in the nighttime – and Alejandra is, ah, between occupations.”

  Here Alejandra made a very snappish rejoinder.

  “In due time,” César answered cheerfully. He looked to Lucie, and explained, “She wants to know why I do not simply tell you everything about us. So I answer – in due time! But now it is time for breakfast.”

  Perhaps foolishly, Lucie tried to smile at Alejandra; and was rebuked with a harsh, thick silence. So she sat down at the table beside César.

  Apparently forgetful of his behavior the night before (as well as his rudeness at the speaker), the good-natured Mrs. Vicente tried to begin a broken conversation with Robert. Still obviously fuming, but showing a greater effort on this occasion at civility, Robert made his best attempt at a polite exchange.

  Maríbel was chatting animatedly with Clara. Lucie couldn’t help glancing frequently at the latter from under her lashes; but the object of her admiration didn’t seem to notice. Not once, so far, had she even looked towards Lucie. So finally Lucie let her eyes drop, and went to work on her breakfast. It seemed that everyone was talking except her; but it wasn’t long before she ceased altogether to be upset by this fact, and was thoroughly mollified by three divinely greasy strips of bacon.

  7

  A Walk with Clara

  After breakfast, Josefína and her youngest daughter went to their work in a back room of the apartment. Meanwhile, the five remaining young people went to sit in the parlor. Lucie couldn’t for the life of her understand why Alejandra condescended to bless them with her presence; but nonetheless she did. And, even more strangely, she chose her seat directly beside Robert, on the small loveseat pushed up under the windows. Robert glanced subtly towards her out of the corner of his eye. It was very clear, by the way he positioned himself almost in the middle of the short couch, that he had intended to sit there alone.

  César settled himself into an old stuffed armchair, while Clara took a seat on the sofa. For the first time that morning, she looked at Lucie, and smiled, patting the cushion beside her. So Lucie sat.

  “This is very nice,” said César, reaching into his shirt pocket for a cigarette. “To pass a little sunshine with my sisters and my friends – it is a wonderful thing.”

  “César,” Clara scolded. “You know Mamá doesn’t want you smoking in the house.”

  “Truthfully,” rejoined César, smiling with the cigarette between his lips, “this is not a house. So I break no rules!”

  “You know better,” Clara persisted.

  “Ah, I do,” César admitted. He went to the window, which was without a screen, and propped it open. “But let this be our secret! Or else I will have to go downstairs.”

  Clara laughed, and pointed to the small paunch that pressed just a little against the hem of César’s shirt. “It’s not as though it would hurt you, brother,” she declared.

  After this exchange, Lucie realized that by then she had heard the voices of each of the Vicentes. She had heard them all speak in English; and the thing was without doubt, that Clara’s mastery of the language was by far the best. By far the worst was her mother’s – and in succession, there came an equality, perhaps, between Alejandra and her father, followed thereafter by Eduardo and Maríbel, and then César. At the present moment, however, it was still somewhat difficult to decide whose influence worked most to bring the family so close to the language in the first place. Lucie saw that César practiced it for his “business,” but she wondered whether it was he who passed it to Clara, who simply proved more proficient; or whether Clara passed it to him, and it was really only very lucky, because he had never known how useful it would someday be for him.

  Concerning Alejandra, though, Lu
cie wasn’t entirely certain. The young woman spoke almost entirely in Spanish; and yet Lucie received the impression that this wasn’t for any want of knowledge concerning the other language, but rather out of a sort of spite which she seemed to hold unusually near to her heart.

  And yet, when Lucie looked over at her, she was surprised to find that she was carrying on a by no means reluctant conversation with Robert. Her mouth had finally bent into the smile that it wouldn’t shape for Lucie.

  Lucie turned away, shaking her head. She looked to César; but he was dozing in his chair, with the burning cigarette hanging from his loose fingers. She dashed forward, and, little to his own observation, took it from his hand. Clara, who had been gazing absently out of the window, turned to her.

  “Good catch,” she said, eyeing the cigarette. “Throw it outside.”

  Lucie obeyed. In doing so, she needed pass very near to the loveseat; but neither of its occupants paid her the least bit of attention. They were still very consumed in their talk.

  Lucie couldn’t understand it.

  She returned to the sofa, and sat quietly for a little, occupying herself at first with surveying the room; but growing quickly tired of the survey, given the smallness of her area of scrutiny. So she leaned her head back against the cushions.

  Shortly thereafter, however, Clara’s voice roused her from her half-sleep.

  “Lucie,” she said, “would you like to go for a walk?”

  Lucie glanced towards her brother, who was speaking more expressively than ever with Alejandra – more expressively, even, than Lucie could remember him ever having spoken to anyone. So she sighed, and then nodded in response to Clara’s inquiry. They rose up together, and passed by a snoring César; went down the short hall, and then out the door; down the steps, and out into the street.

  Lucie took her place on the sidewalk, and moved along beside the wall of the apartment building, allowing the space nearer the street to Clara herself. But the latter seemed not in the least afraid of the dark cars, with windows redoubtably tinted, which went frequently past; and not in the least perturbed by the shady-looking individuals who passed now and then on her left-hand, nearly all clad in black hoods, with opaque sunglasses covering their eyes. Lucie shivered; but Clara only smiled.

  As they walked along, they passed speedily from a block of interwoven apartment buildings, into a quiet neighborhood of tiny houses. In appearance, they were no more appealing than the decrepit brick towers, ramshackle and tumbling as they were; but still there was a sort of stifled peace in that quarter, which had been absent from the last. The windows of the cars in the streets became suddenly transparent, and the passers-by began to traverse the sidewalk with bright faces, and uncovered heads.

  During the time that elapsed (approximately half an hour), neither of the women said anything to the other. If you could have seen them (as indeed we are allowing you to do), you would have noticed that, despite the silence, Lucie looked now and then towards Clara; and sometime later, after Lucie had put her eyes safely away, Clara turned her own head in the direction of the quiet accompaniment to her step.

  But after a while, Lucie’s thoughts spun off into their customary disorder, and she forgot her nervousness and discomfort. She began asking after their current position, and upon receiving specifics concerning it, fell to examining the blueness of the sky, which hung so strangely innocent over a city of some imperfect level of purity. This demonstration of her usual behavior, unknown as of yet to Clara, afforded that woman with a chance to scrutinize her most thoroughly; after which exercise she left off smiling, while Lucie tripped on oblivious.

  There was perhaps a greater quantity of said oblivion present this day, than was present on most other days – though surely its presence, in any amount, could always be depended upon. This surplus was on account of the unconscious energy it required to resist the faint electricity which started up over the skin of the Egyptian queen beside her (quite unbeknownst to the queen herself), and came to flow mercilessly across her own. The back of her neck, and the tops of her arms began to prickle; her heart thudded, her face flushed, and her eyes grew rather moist. To counteract these effects, Lucie stared all the more deeply into the sky, and wholly ignored the world through which she was wending, so that Clara needed perform a goodly number of times in the space of less than an hour, the small heroism which Robert himself was subjected to perhaps once in every seven days. This, of course, was the shielding of Lucie from the hazards of oncoming traffic, as the young woman blundered on with that strange sort of careless grace that was hers. There were a couple of times, even, when Clara thought that she couldn’t act quickly enough to save Lucie from the cruel chrome of an approaching bumper.

  As Clara snatched at Lucie’s hand, and tugged it firmly to divert her path towards the opposite sidewalk, an old woman on the street corner (with a cart full of aluminum cans, and a mouth void of teeth) began to laugh at them.

  “Lucie!” Clara exclaimed. “Watch where you’re going!”

  But Lucie didn’t even seem to hear her. She was thinking her own thoughts; and if they had anything at all to do with Clara Vicente, queen of Mexico (which of course they did), then she gave no sign to betray the fact.

  “What business,” she asked finally, “do my brother and yours have together?”

  Clara looked to her for a moment, grinning as if she doubted the sincerity of the question. But she saw immediately that Lucie was quite unconscious of her brother’s state of affairs; and though Clara was more well-versed in the subject than she would have liked to be, she found it difficult to expound upon such a topic, with such an audience as Lucie Benoit – whose eyes were large and blue, and whose face was smooth and unassuming. So she answered that she didn’t know, and watched as Lucie turned away without further questions. She took a little time to wonder, if perhaps the girl was daft (as we know very well that she was not); but as she couldn’t at present divine an accurate answer, considering the smallness of her pool of evidence, she abandoned the debate.

  When Lucie declared that she was hungry (a discomfort which it wasn’t in her constitution to ignore), Clara led her into a little park, and requested two sandwiches from an old man with a red metal cart. His name was Pepito (so his cart said), and he was the uncle of a fellow with whom Mr. Vicente and his son worked at the printing press. He smiled at Clara, and took her affectionately by the hand, as he inquired after the health of her family. Clara kissed his cheek, and tried to offer him money for the food; but he wouldn’t take it.

  So they took the path away from Pepito and his cart, and sat down on a marked-up bench beneath a small tree. Lucie bit without pause into her sandwich, and occupied the silent moments of mastication by examining the assorted vulgar phrases on the bench. She would have thanked Clara, or she would have thanked Pepito (certainly she would have thanked someone) for the food, but she was still thoroughly lost in that aforementioned, rather-deeper-than-was-usual oblivion, and honestly she couldn’t remember to do any such thing.

  While she was thus engaged, therefore, in a multitude of silent mental occupations, Clara fell to the diversion which had so absorbed Lucie herself, just the night before; and she began surreptitiously to study her companion.

  She saw much the same thing as we ourselves saw, at the very beginning of this narrative. Dark hair; soft blue eyes; and a fine pale face. But all this was somewhat different for her. Her objectivity, you see, was spoiled by a sort of immediate partiality; though of course there was no way for Lucie to know this. We will go so far, however, as to grant ourselves license to become privy to the thoughts of one Clara Vicente, in respect to one Lucie Benoit.

  While Lucie had thought Clara a resplendent, noble enchantress descended from the most royal blood of ancient Egypt, Clara thought Lucie the absolute fairest, most perfect image of unaffected beauty, innocence and grace that ever may have inhabited the grand drawing-room of a French castle. This opinion, of course, didn’t eradicate her alarm and confusion co
ncerning Lucie’s strange and erratic behavior; but it did its work in disconnecting such bewilderment from her favor.

  Though all these thoughts did originate upon that very day, on a graffiti-stained bench in a dying square of grass in Juárez, perhaps Clara herself wasn’t so aware of them, as we find ourselves now to be. It would take a little time before she understood the quick beat of her heart, that only grew quicker when she sat down beside Lucie.

  So she wasn’t entirely sure why she didn’t want to leave, when she interrupted the circuits that she and Lucie had begun to make round the little park, by announcing that she had to go to work. But still, she led Lucie immediately into the streets, and they started off in pursuit of a small cantina which was called “El Diablo en El Vestido Negro.” When finally they had arrived, and she was about to ask if Lucie could rightly recollect her way back (with a great deal of anxiety on her own part), they heard a shout from within the building; and they looked through the open doorway, to see César sitting at a little round table, with Lucie’s brother, as well as an unidentified fellow in a large hat.

  They passed inside, and stopped before the table their brothers occupied. César smiled warmly as was his wont; and Robert scowled darkly as was his own. The third fellow, whom César introduced to Lucie merely as “Manolo,” wore a hat even more grandiose (if this was possible) than Robert’s, and its straw brim hid a full half of his face. His partial invisibility was accompanied by full silence.

  Clara stooped to kiss César. She nodded familiarly to Manolo, and then politely to Robert, before quitting the table; and took Lucie completely by surprise, by kissing her, as well.

  After she had gone, Robert rose up from the table, and bade his associates good day. Lucie had hardly the time to respond to César’s farewell, and the rasping adieu of Manolo, before she was dragged full out of the bar by Robert’s persistent hand.

  8