“Weird, isn’t it?”
“It sounds exciting and interesting.”
“That’s what I said. Weird.”
They sat up and listened. The sound of the song or chant or whatever it was came to them distantly, rising and falling. For a while it seemed to be coming near, then it began to die away as though going in the opposite direction. “Do you think,” Sarah began, “that it sounds like that wonderful little tootsie music we saw in the parade tonight?”
“No. No, it doesn’t. Much more weird. Barbaric. But I see what you mean. Hmmm….”
Sarah’s mind had meanwhile started on another track. Tootsie. Evans. Where was cunning little Evans, the tootsie little cat? “Evans?” she called, hopefully, hoping to hear his answering preep and the sudden scamper of paws and then his leap onto the bed and the thrust of his little head against her hand, demanding to be petted and stroked and scratched. “Ev-ans …?”
“What’s hap-pened to him?” she asked, her voice faltering.
“I can see it now. There he is, shacked up with the convent cat. And he says, ‘Well, time to split, babe. See you.’ And she — the convent cat — she says, ‘Just one more time, lover-poo?’ And he says, ‘Well, now that you come to mention it, why not?’”
Sarah snuffled and laughed, said that, well, she hoped so. But she could not be reassured. Jacob had inclined his head and even twisted it about and cupped his ear so as to catch the odd and vanishing strains of curious sound. But Sarah continued to fret about the missing Evans. He had never been away this long. The Mexicans didn’t understand about cats. They thought they were just animals. Suppose he were sick. Suppose he was lying, hurt, somewhere?
“Where are you going? You’re getting dressed? Why?”
In a choked voice she answered, “Evans!” He understood immediately, and swung his legs over the side. “Oh well … one more bunch of nudniks wandering through this town tonight won’t hurt it, I guess. And” — the thought occurred to him in mid-shoe — “maybe while we’re looking and paging, we might trace down the troubadors.”
It was cold outside, and Sarah muffled her head up warm into the reboza which she had bought in the Langunilla market their first day in “Mexico.” A sense of hopelessness came over her, not knowing where to look, and so she simply followed behind Jacob, who was trying to track down the sound of the archaic chanting which continued to rise and fall upon the shifting wind … or so it seemed. And about two or three times in every block she called out, tentatively, distressfully, “Evans …? Evans …?” But no answering “preep” came, anymore than they ever seemed on a definite track for the music. And then —
A number of blocks away, barely visible in the light of the exceedingly rare street lamps, which was, moreover, a number of blocks further away, a figure slipped around a corner and went shuffling rapidly across the road. Sarah clutched Jacob and gestured. He said, “Huh?” She said, “There — there — Lupita — ” and then, recollecting herself and her purpose, raised her voice. “Lupita! Lu-pi-ta!” She trotted forward, turned her foot, fell heavily against Jacob. By the time they had recovered their balance, the figure was gone. The street, studded with stones and lined with the usual stone-and-adobe houses with peaked, tiled roofs, some of which (with their massive, though worm-eaten, wooden gates) antedated the original Mexican Revolution, was silent and empty.
“Are you sure it was Lupita? And if so, so what?”
“Yes, yes — Lupita — she knows Evans — find her — find her and ask her!” Ask her precisely what, Sarah was not certain of. Ask her if she’d seen Evans, if she’d heard news of Evans, if she had any idea of where he might have gone….
She and Jacob quickened their pace. They were looking for Lupita; they were looking for Evans; they were looking for the singing and chanting … gradually the town fell away behind them … and all three quests seemed to be leading them in the same direction.
Wherever that was.
V
The last landmark which they recognized was the tottering archway with its weathered Latin inscription, leaning against the one still-standing and still-sturdy wall of the old ruined convent, and straddling what was once part of the Royal Road … and was now no more than one of the back alleyways of town. The Clays had seen it before, but had never gone under it or passed it. Three hundred years of continual traffic — before the route was shortened and redirected by Santa Anna in a rare act of public benefit — three hundred years of iron-shod mules laden down with silver bars en route from the mines to Madrid — three hundred years of lumbering wagons with iron-rimmed wheels — had worn the road down below the level of the surrounding land until it seemed rather like the dry bed of an abandoned canal.
But it had also beaten the surface so hard that even a hundred-odd years of neglect hadn’t destroyed it; so that, while the Clays could not see where they were going they had only to follow their feet in order to go there. And by and by their eyes adjusted to the darkness which, of course, began to appear less dark. When the road eventually “surfaced” it seemed to the two of them that they were moving through a light mist suffusing and diffusing a subdued light the source or nature of which was unknown.
Now and then a line of wall ran parallel to the road or went off at an angle, sometimes a palisade or a grove. The scent of the open night was all about, night-flowering blossoms and the sweet suspiration of the trees, the strong and fresh sweetness of growing corn, and, over everything, the powerful odor of the relaxing soil itself.
From somewhere ahead the sound of chanting began once again, a deeper and faster note. “Where are they?” Sarah asked. Turning her head from right to left, she called, “Evans? Ev-ans …?”
“Maybe it’s another procession,” Jacob suggested. “Or — maybe even the same one. Hey? Maybe that’s why we don’t catch up with it … it’s keeping ahead of us. Well … they’ll have to stop sometime. What — ?”
She clutched his arm. “Didn’t you hear him? Evans! Evans!”
After a moment he said, “I think I did hear a cat…. But I can’t say that I’m sure it’s that cat….”
Sarah, however, had no doubts. Of course it was “that cat!” Maybe he was following the procession, too! Thinking that it contained his people — trying to catch up with it/them! She quickened her pace, panting, for they were now going uphill. At just what point they left the old main road behind and branched off onto the increasingly narrower path, Jacob did not notice nor Sarah care. Now and then the luminescent mists seemed to part a moment, they could see fires and other lights up ahead, and even once, bathed in the rays of an invisible moon, they saw the incredible heights of Ixtaccihuatl, the serenely sleeping Woman, shrouded forever in her snowy cowl and mantle.
Sarahstopped, breathing heavily. “I … I’m not sure … that I can go much further….”
“The air does seem a lot thinner up here. Well … you want to turn around and go on back?”
Distress and indecision played upon her face. “Well … oh … just a little bit farther. Now, don’t say anything. I … want to be able to hear….” Her sentence faded off into a laboring breath. But he understood: to hear if the cat sounded again. He nodded, they started off again, this time much more slowly. But each wondered, secretly, if the sound of the blood pounding in their ears would not prevent their hearing anything so slight as the plaintive mewing of a distant cat.
Sarah, finally, dragged one foot after another, clutched at Jacob, and leaned against him, her mouth open and her breath now a painful gasping. And with that, the winds drove the mists into their faces, wet and chill and pallid. The winds drove the sound of the strange and eerie singing louder than ever to their ears. The winds parted the mists in front of them: and quite a ways away across the more-or-less level land where they now stood, unable to go on, Jacob and Sarah saw a circle of fires burning … evidently fed with some quickly combustible fuel, the thin dry fallen twigs of the pine or piñole perhaps, for here at one point one would die down to a gl
ow and there at another point one would leap up and flare as some stooping figure replenished it. There were two groups involved, one inside the incomplete circle formed by the individual fires, and one outside. This latter band was nearer to them, more quickly recognizable, but not very much less puzzling for any of that.
The first, hasty, and not a little frightening impression which they had was that those inside were seeking refugue from the coyotes outside the circle…. Coyotes circling around and around and back and forth, coyotes suddenly howling … coyotes…. But even before the matter of distance and perspective adjusted itself they both realized that coyotes would not be doing a to-the-rear-run maneuver whereby each turned and reversed direction and all did so at once, now loping clockwise and now of a sudden loping widdershins. And they realized, too, that coyotes do not chant, and certainly do not chant words, not even in a totally unfamiliar language….
They were prepared, then, for the moment when the “coyotes” suddenly reared up and revealed themselves to be human figures clad (or partly clad) in coyote skins. Still, it was marvelous — and eerie, frightening — the way that in stooping and even erect there still remained something so sinuous and animal-like in all their movements….
That was what was outside the fiery circle.
Inside, was something else altogether.
The darkness of night, the slant and diluted rays of moonlight, the flickering-flaring-spurting-blazing-dazzling-dying of the firelight: none of this was designed to help give any clear picture of what was there … and the exertion of climbing in the rarified air now tended to obscure their vision from within their eyes…. There was a first impression of flashing colors and of odd, misshapen design — as though great grotesque birds had been dressed up by a gifted, but insane, child and set to hopping about in agony upon a great, hot griddle — but, of course, there was no fire within the circle of fire, as there is said to be no wind within the eye of a hurricane. The things moved and jerked about and flashed with gold and brilliant plumes and iridescent ornaments, great grotesque and asymmetrical bifurcated and trifurcated blunted muzzles out-thrust and huge eyes glaring like gigantic burning coals —
“Oh, I don’t like this,” Sarah whispered.
He said, “Sh….”
The things within the circle took up the chant in deep and discordant voices distorted by their masks and danced and jerked and moved about. The coyote skins flapped, naked human flesh gleaming as though oiled. Only the smoke of the wood fires, mixing in with the mist, seemed normal or natural. And then smoke and mist closed in once more and the sound fell low once more.
Jacob muttered, “Let’s go — ”
“Evans — ”
“Let’s go!”
She obeyed, yielded to his commanding arm. He could hear her subdued weeping.
Afterwards, he said, “Look, I know that you’re worried about the kittykat, but that was no time and no place to break in and say, Dispenseme, yo busco mi bicho-gato….”
“I know,” she said, with a snuffle.
“Boy! Are the natives ever restless tonight!”
They didn’t say anything more for a very long time, and by the time they came again to the tottering old archway it was already daylight, though still misty, And here they paused. That is to say, Sarah stopped, and as she had been using Jacob as a sort of staff or crutch, he perforce stopped, too. “Whats-matter?” he grunted.
“So are we going home now?” she asked, in a pity-me-for-surely-you-can-suggest-a-better-notion tone of voice.
“Not necessarily…. We can go to the Los Remedios-Hilton, if you prefer? What kind of a question is that? Where else would we go?”
In a teeny-tiny voice she said, “I thought we might go to Mac’s house….”
“At this hour?” But a look at her woebegone and teary face stopped his sarcasm. “Well … he did invite us for breakfast … but even for breakfast it’s darned early. What say we go home awhile and rest up? — then we can go to Mac’s house. Okay?”
But she, in a voice which was almost inaudible, said that she didn’t want to go home … because it was full of dirty dishes at home … And so he, knowing that her stubbornness was often in inverse proportion to the reasonableness of her request, and that if balked she was perfectly capable of simply sitting down under the archway until she took root, he said, “Let’s go to Mac’s….”
Fortunately, the menage at Mac’s also included an aged aunt who retired and rose with the poultry; Tía Epifania had just returned from the molina de nixtamal with fresh-ground lime-boiled cornmeal for the breakfast tortillas, and greeted them as though it was the most natural thing in the world for anybody to be up and around at that hour. “Pass, Yourselves!” she cried, cheerily. “This is Your House!”
Some question as to the house’s ownership evidently troubled her niece, however, from behind whose bedroom door a sleepy and puzzled “¿Quien?” proceeded.
“Los paisanos de Roberto,” shrilled the ancient, and blew on an ember. The niece-landlady, after an astonished invocation to the Virgin of Guadalupe (whom she addressed, companionably, as “Sweety!”), dug Roberto in the ribs with an audible thud. He broke off in mid-snore, and presently appeared, rather rumpled and sleepy-looking, but as amiable as usual. He looked at Sarah’s face and blinked.
“Let me perform some quick hydraulics,” he said, “and I’ll be at your entire disposal.” He did and was. Then, tapped and drained and washed and combed, he sat down and lit a brown-paper cigarette and began to talk of some light and humorous matter until he thought that they were sufficiently relaxed for him to ask if anything was the matter.
Jacob hesitated. “Well … we had a rather curious experience last night. Or, early this morning, to be more exact … maybe … I’m not sure of the exact time.” And he proceeded, with help from Sarah, to tell what had happened. The account took a while; Mac nodded and nodded, lighting a second Negrita from the first before they were finished.
Then he laughed. “Well, if there were such a thing as a local chamber of commerce, they’d have printed leaflets which I’m sure would have taken a load off your mind … if you’d read them in advance.”
“What do you mean?”
He shrugged. “Simply that it’s customary to dress up in costume at this time of year. The hills around here have got more old customs and costumes and dances and fiestas and fieras of one sort and another than just about any area of comparable size in the country. You just happened to stumble across one of them without realizing it, that’s all.”
Jacob, though somewhat relieved, was still somewhat dubious. “Dress up like the old Aztec gods, too, you mean?”
Macauley shrugged again and smiled again. “Well, I hadn’t heard of that particular one. Or of the coyote skin one, either. But, Lord! I don’t know all of them, there are so many. About the only one which is well-publicized is the one that’s attached to the Holy Hermit … and that one, of course, even though it’s technically theologically irregular, well, still, it is attached to the church. But most of these others are purely pagan. Which is to say that for the whole length of time of the Spanish rule, they were at least in theory illegal. And hence tended to be clandestine. Then when the Roman Catholic Church was disestablished and some measure, some varying measure of governmental anti-religious pressure came along, varying from disapproval and ridicule down to outright persecution — why, a lot of the pagan cults and ceremonies got it in the neck, too. It didn’t make much difference to them if they were suppressed in the name of Catholicism or of Freemasonry — which reminds me” — he chuckled — “no, I’ll mention that later. Anyway, so they went right on being underground, so to say.
“Nowadays very few of them have got anything to fear, actually, from the law. But, well, these things are looked upon as silly things which only ignorant Indians engage in. And even ignorant Indians don’t want to be laughed at, mocked. So they go right on going off into the woods, you see. Sometimes whole families sort of split up over it. Sa
y that one family has a son in the secondary school, well, they know he’s bound to be too modern to strip down to a loincloth and dance around, say, a post with homemade hootchemacallits pinned onto it. So the afternoon before the thing is due his father may slip him a few pesos and say, ‘Why don’t you go visit your cousin in Amecameca — tell him we’d like to come, but we can’t get away.’ Then, with the kid out of the way, they can troop out to the boondocks and carry on the way Grandpa used to do.
“That’s all there is to it, really….”
Jacob was weakening, but was still not convinced. “This wasn’t any mere poor-Injun bare-assing around,” he said. “Why, those costumes must have cost a fortune! Besides … besides … I don’t know just how to put it without sounding corny and pulp-fictionary — but — well, damn it! Yes! There was an atmosphere of evil about whatever was going on back up there last night! I had the definite feeling that if I’d let on that I was there I might have wound up a patient in what you called the Aztec Cardiectomy Clinic! Really, Mac, no kidding around: that was very bad medicine there.”
He was about to enlarge on it, seeing that Macauley was at last becoming at least a little bit impressed that this was no mere rustic frolic — but then Lenita appeared. She had so thoroughly repented of her earlier brusqueness that she clearly neither remembered it nor desired it to be remembered — a plump, dark woman of general good nature and not a single word of English. She bustled Sarah away from the two men with an oh-you-poor-thing manner, reclaiming her for the Improved Benevolent Order of Women — local branch consisting of Lenita, Aunt Epifania, and now, of course, Sarah — and impressed her into service at the business corner of the kitcheii. Sarah, as soon as she saw that (a) she was not merely allowed, but encouraged, to take samples of the sundry goodies, and (b) that there were no dirty dishes to be washed, no, not a one, Sarah abandoned the discussion without a pang. She even fell spontaneously into Spanish. “What quality of article will we you were to have making thereunto?” she inquired cheerfully.
Clash of Star-Kings Page 5
