The Empty Trap

by John D. MacDonald

  Slowly then, the cold began to leave his body. The continual shivering turned to spasms that came less frequently, and were less severe. His teeth no longer chattered. And he feared that when at last he was warm, she would leave him. He wanted her to be with him in this way, to feel the lift and touch of her unbraided hair on his forehead as she breathed, to feel the pressing firmness of the warm body. His hand was on her waist. He wanted to caress her, but did not dare for fear she would leave. Moment by moment he became more conscious of her as a woman in his arms. He had not held a woman in a long time. In a previous existence he had held a woman, but never in this one.

  Slowly he began to sense that she was as aware as he was, that there was a controlled tension about her. He dared then, to make the hand that rested on her waist tighten slightly. Her breathing changed, seeming to become slightly deeper as it quickened. He could not tell if it was something he imagined. And then there was an odd sensation against his chest, a curious sort of movement that at first he could not identify. Then suddenly, with joy and knowledge and certainty of what would come, he realized that her breasts were swelling and tightening against him. He kissed her throat and she uttered a long whispering sigh with a catch in her breath at the end of it.

  The children slept. The moon came down through the hole in the thatch. The straw of the shared pallet shifted, rustled. There came from her lips a quick thin sound of shock and pain, a sharp intake of breath. There was a long silence in the night. Then, slowly, there began a pattern in the barely audible rustle of the pallet, a rhythm as old as the earth and as old as the sea, the rhythm of fruitfulness and the deep promise of life.

  In the remote glow of the false dawn he heard the flap of the hanging goat skin, and he opened his eyes. Armando stood three feet inside the door and looked toward him. It seemed to Lloyd that Armando was looking directly into his eyes, though the light was so vague he knew that could not be possible. He was painfully aware of the sleeping dark head so close to his own, her breath in his ear, a shock of the black hair across his throat. And there was enough light to see the emptiness of her pallet.

  Armando then walked, without sound, into the next room.

  When Lloyd awakened again the sun was well up, the hut empty. He got up. He felt slightly weak, but recovered. The episode with Isabella did not seem entirely real. But there was blood on the coarse cotton pallet cover that testified to its reality. He was shocked at himself, deeply ashamed at this terribly trite and time-honored method of rewarding hospitality.

  When Isabella and Concha came back to the hut to give him his noon meal, it was evident there was strain in the air. Neither of them would look directly at him. There was a small amount of stilted conversation and small rigid smilings. He ate without appetite. He could not get Isabella alone. Finally he went off to his private place in the rocks. He could feel the mountain sun baking the illness out of him. Afterward he risked the icy torrent of the waterfall, scrubbed himself half raw on the harshness of the serape.

  As he walked toward the hut, he saw Armando coming from the far fields much earlier than usual, and alone. He waited for him and said, “I would like to talk to you about a certain thing.”

  “Yes. We must talk. It is necessary.”

  “I must say that—”

  Armando stopped him with a wave of his hand. “First I will talk to Isabella and to Concha, Señor Lloyd. If you would await me at the private place where you take the bath of the sun?”

  “Of course.”

  He waited for an hour. Armando appeared and sat beside him on a flat rock where they both looked out over the valley.

  “Señor, I have done a bad thing.”

  “Por favor, I will talk. I will speak of what is a bad thing and what is a good thing and what is a thing of no importance. Here.” He took out a pint bottle of muddy mescal, pulled the cork with his teeth, handed it to Lloyd. Lloyd drank and passed it back. Armando drank, offered it again, and when Lloyd refused, recorked it and put it on the rock between them with care.

  “You have no wife.”

  “No.”

  “Here we cannot give Isabella the life a woman should have. In Pinal Blanco she would be a wife of two years, perhaps heavy with a second child.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “She cared for you the most of anyone. I am a selfish man. I did not want this problem in my house. But to her it was necessary. The love came from the caring, I think.”

  “The love?”

  “She has loved you deeply. Only a fool would not see that. You have become strong. This thing has been expected.”

  “It would not have happened if—”

  “Then of course it would have happened in some other way for some other reason. I must act as a father in this, you understand.”

  “I understand.”

  “But I am not a fool. I know a little of the world. Often I marveled at the norteamericanos, those of the pale faces and the great gleaming automobiles and the millions of pesos and the boxes for the taking of pictures. They have stopped in the village. I am a peasant from a tiny village, Señor Lloyd. I am a man of truly great ignorance. I thought they could not be of the race of man, those pale ones. Not a man as I am a man. That discloses my ignorance. You are the first I have known and have spoken to. You live in my house. You are sympatico. You have the courtesy. You do not fear work. You do not weep when in pain. You are a man as I am a man.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Why is there thanks for telling a true thing? I have learned you are a man. I am ignorant, but there are certain practical things I can find in my head. This is not your world. You fell into this world. You will return to your place, in time. So I would be more than ignorant to say to you that it is necessary for you to marry Isabella and live here with us all your life, no? What type of marriage is that? An important norteamericano, tall as a tree, and of many years of education to marry a little peasant girl from a tiny and unimportant village! No. It is unthinkable. But there is this problem. She is the girl who loves you. To be with you, as in the night, is a good thing for her. A child would be a good thing. She knows you must go, and we all know of the thing you must do. It makes a problem. I could say to you and to Isabella, live with each other until he must go. Then what? We are cut off from the church it is true. But we are a good people. Such a thing is only right if, as in the village, marriage must be delayed. Now I do not beg. I only ask. I have spoken of this to Roberto, Rosario, Concha and Isabella. There could be here this thing we call a marriage. A place could be built for you. Then when you leave and go back to your own place, it can be in your mind that it never happened. It is not a thing of law. The reading of the words by Roberto does not make something to hold you here, or keep you from making a marriage in your own country. Do you understand. It will be easier for everyone. She is a good strong girl. It will give her a part of life perhaps she could not have in any other way. And, after you have left, if it is done this way, then the other women cannot make her feel shame. Her or the child. Before you speak, there is one more thing, Señor Lloyd. It will make cause for a fiesta. Do not answer. Drink from the bottle. Then think. And then answer.”

  It was a curious and eminently fair proposition. Armando had thought it out well. It could not be more fair to all concerned.

  “Yes,” Lloyd said.

  Armando beamed at him. “I will tell her,” he said.

  “No, Tio. No es correcto. I will ask her. And first we shall drink this small amount remaining. There is not enough to save, do you think?”

  “Not enough.”

  It was the wrong time of year for the building of huts. Yet, after Lloyd and Isabella selected the spot, everyone stopped all other tasks and worked together, and it was finished in a week. They had the wedding the day after the completion of the hut. Isabella was in white, her braids gleaming, her eyes downcast, her hand locked in Lloyd’s. Roberto read the words in impressive and sonorous fashion. Concha wept. After the pronouncement, they got up from the
ir knees and he kissed her. Before the kiss was finished, they heard the first tentative strum of the guitar. Roberto had made a special trip and brought in pulque, mescal and tequila. Lloyd got extremely drunk. He remembered reciting to all of them, in English, and with gestures never used before, the only two poems he knew by heart, ‘The Lady of Shalott’ and ‘The Wasteland’. He remembered deciding that the Eliot line about the thousand lost golf balls had probably never been recited under more incongruous circumstances. Both contributions were enthusiastically applauded. Later, when he demonstrated the American custom of carrying the bride across the threshold, he lurched and thumped her head solidly against the edge of the door. She said, rubbing her head, that under those circumstances she could not understand how American women could endure to be married so many times.

  In the next two months he told himself that this was just a peasant girl, a village girl. But there was no peasant dullness to her mind or her wit. When angered or hurt—and that was seldom—she changed utterly. Her face lost all expression. It became a round Indio mask, implacable as though carved in stone, with only the glint of obsidian eyes to show the quick life behind the mask. She could be monstrously stubborn. She had a great loyalty to him. It was clear she would die for him if it should become necessary, yet this devotion in no way turned her into a serf. She had both dignity and a sense of honor. She was not a paragon. She was a most human person, an individual, with depths that defied complete knowing. She moved quickly, and with such a deftness that he could not tire of watching her.

  By the standards of his prior life, her body was not attractive. She was perhaps five foot three inches tall and weighed one hundred and twenty five. In no place was she fragile or delicate. Yet there was no part of her where she was too heavy or thickened. There was a rubbery suppleness about her—a texture of work muscles knit tightly over bone and overlayed with an even distribution of fat to give her a woman’s softness. She could be as playful as a brown bear cub, and at those times she was like a child. Her body was the shade of strong coffee with cream, and downy as any peach. He would think of her as a squat and chunky little woman, and then, in the wavery yellow light of the precious kerosene flame he would see the bold and thrusting roundness of a breast, or the modeling of a haunch, or the smooth rounded flow of belly into loins and know this figure was classic in the heroic and historical sense. This was the very essence of woman, more enduring than the bloodlessness of Vogue, more vital and meaningful than the self-induced anemia of Harper’s Bazaar.

  After an initial shyness, physical love was, to her, as natural and as necessary as the clean mountain air she breathed, the food she fixed for them. She made her need known to him with a frankness that was neither boldness nor impudence. He would walk out and watch her in the last light of day, washing clothing in the cold brook, braids swinging, face closed in her Indian mask of determination, and he would think her a stranger, someone he could not possibly understand. Then later in darkness she would be in his arms, and her body would be a complete miracle, and he would think that never had he been closer to another human being.

  With the change of the season and the coming of the first warmth, the tempo of work increased as they began the planting. He had become as tireless as the others, muscles tough as braided leather, brown of hide. He had never been more fit. With his bigger frame, he was stronger than the others. And took a curious primitive pride in his strength. He wondered if he was turning into a vegetable, willing to forego the lack of any mental stimulation. He had no idea of what was happening in the world, and no special desire to know. Sometimes in the evening he would sit with the men and they would look out over the valley and talk of the great and simple mysteries.

  One night Isabella took his hand and placed it on the round warmth of her belly and said, “We have created a small creature.”

  “After great labors,” he said, smiling into the dark of the room.

  “Which, of course, were not enjoyed. I am wondering about him. He is maybe the size of a beetle, or perhaps even as huge as a mouse.”

  “Does he have a name?”

  “Not yet. He is too small for a name. But he has a great ugly beard and a taste for mescal.”

  After a long silence she said, “How soon will you leave?”

  “Soon.”

  “But when?”

  “When the planting is finished.”

  A day or so later, as she was cooking, he said, after much thought, “I could stay here until he is born, Isabella.”

  She whirled and stared at him. He expected gladness. She spoke in a voice of shrillness and tension. “Ah, yes! And then wait for the next one also. And perhaps their children too. And that beard will be white and you will say to the other men, ‘One day I will leave to do this thing I must do.’ Then they will grin behind your back and they will say to their women that Isabella prevented Lloyd from living as a man. Go! Go soon, and do not come back to this place. It is my child. One day when he can understand, I can tell him a true thing about his father and make him proud.”

  He left three days later, dressed in the suit Isabella had saved, hair carefully cut, beard trimmed, feet uncomfortable in shoes, and carrying a suitcase, the one that had survived with least damage. He felt ridiculous straddling the small burro which followed Roberto’s burro. He looked back at them standing there and lifted an arm in salute. Isabella stood with closed face, with the Indian look. Their stormy farewell had been said in private. A moment later they were around a corner of rock.

  They reached Talascatan just before dusk. Lloyd said, “I never asked you, Roberto. How is it you are able to come here without trouble from the people of Pinal Blanco?”

  “I was not involved in the trouble. I am never involved in any trouble. This is for you. It is from the people of the valley. It is a very old thing.”

  It was a dagger with ornate handle, dull silver sheath, slim and deadly blade. There was an inscription on the blade, difficult to read. Roberto said, “It says there, ‘I tickle the heart of wickedness.’ ”

  “Thank you. And thank all the others.”

  “We will remember you.”

  “There are some small things I would send them. How can that be arranged?”

  “Send them to a man with the name Osvaldo Morella of Talascatan. That is his store over there. He is honest. I shall tell him something will be sent.”

  “I was not blindfolded, Roberto.”

  He grinned. “It was not considered necessary.”

  “On that highest part where it is narrow, I would have preferred a blindfold.”

  “One merely closes the eyes. The burro has no fear. Go with God, my friend.”

  He spent two nights at Zimapan. On the second night he was able to move into the room where he had hidden the money. He recovered it without incident. He moved into a small cheap hotel in Mexico City. He could not become entirely accustomed to the way people looked at him on the street, the men with curiosity, with slight shock, the women with revulsion. He learned finally the name and address of the man he should see, and made an appointment.

  Dr. Eric Hausmann was an old man. He was heavy, slow and asthmatic. There were brownish blotches on his naked head, and his face fell into mournful folds. But small grey eyes were keen behind the polished lenses, and the thick white hands were steady. He studied Lloyd with professional interest, sat him under strong light, fingered the bones under the broken face. He snapped the light out and they went back to his desk. Lloyd’s Spanish was far better than the doctor’s English.

  “You speak well,” the doctor said.

  “Thank you.”

  “You speak in the idiom of the mountain villages. It is not a cultured tongue.”

  “I have lived with the villagers.”

  “These injuries are old. Perhaps a year.”

  “Six days less than a year.”

  “No doctor attended you.”

  “No.”

  “You have remarkable recuperative powers, Mr. Smith.�
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  “Thank you.”

  “No one can make of you a handsome man.”

  “I accept that. I want to become less conspicuous.”

  “There are three major things to be done. The left cheek bone is badly crushed. After X-ray I can tell if the bone can be cut free and pinned in place. The nose is simpler. I can take a flap of flesh from your shoulder. Then it would be best if another man can work on the teeth while you are under anaesthetic. What more will you require?”

  “What more can you do?”

  “The jaw has healed crookedly in two places. But not much would be gained. It has knitted well. The beard disguises the crookedness. There is minor surgery that could be performed on the lips. I can make the forehead scar less apparent.”

  “Perhaps just the scar on the forehead, and this one place on the upper lip.”

  “That can be done. It will be expensive. And you must expect pain.”

  “I have become accustomed to pain.”

  “That is understandable, Mr. Smith. Do you have a picture of yourself, taken before your … accident?”

  “I would prefer not to be recognized as myself.”

  Hausmann nodded as though he had expected that answer. He wrote figures on a piece of paper. He added the figures. “Depending on how quickly you heal, Mr. Smith, you will be in the hospital—a small private institution where I do most of my work—from six to eight weeks. This figure I will give you includes that time, and my fee, and the estimated fee of the dental surgeon, including the dentures you will need. Thirty-five thousand pesos will cover everything.”

  Below the edge of the desk, Lloyd counted out a thousand dollars. He put it on the desk. “May I give you this now?”

  “Thank you. When will you be prepared to enter the hospital? The X-rays will be taken there.”

  “Will Monday be convenient?”

  Hausmann wrote the name and address of the hospital. “Be at this place at nine o’clock on Monday morning. I will make all of the arrangements.”

  During the three days he had allowed himself, Lloyd made extensive arrangements to provide essentials for the settlement in the valley. It would have been impossible for him to manage without his fluency in the language. He knew what was needed. All of his purchases were packed into twenty-two wooden crates, of a size Roberto could transport by burro over the mountain trails. He found a man of honesty who owned a truck and he paid him well to take the crates to the store of Osvaldo Morella in Talascatan to be held there for Roberto to pick up. And, through the truck driver, he sent a gift of money to Morella. He could imagine the excitement that would accompany the opening of each crate as Roberto brought them, one or two at a time, from Talascatan. Two of the crates were for Isabella and the unborn child, and were so marked. At the very last, he added a twenty-third crate containing tequila, mescal and fireworks, the raw materials for fiesta.