The Turquoise Mask

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  Clarita and Gavin came in moments, but I was the first one up the balcony steps. Juan’s study was dark and as I fumbled for the switch, the scene sprang to life to show Eleanor, fully dressed, standing beside Juan’s desk. Evidently he had been sleeping on the couch, for it was covered with rumpled bedclothes, but now he stood grasping Eleanor by one arm, and he held the Toledo dagger in his other hand.

  “He was going to stab me!” Eleanor wailed. “I felt the knife!”

  The old man tossed the dagger onto the couch and reached for Eleanor with both hands.

  “Hush, querida, hush. I would never hurt you. But when I heard someone come close to my couch, I grasped the dagger and sprang up. I thought you meant me injury. I didn’t know until I touched you who it was.”

  She pressed her head against his shoulder, still sobbing, clinging to him, letting him smooth her hair, comfort her. She was no longer the woman I had seen in Madrid. Since those moments when she had threatened me, all the venom had gone out of her, and the adventurous spirit with it.

  Clarita stood proudly back, somehow giving the impression that she could take charge if she chose, but did not wish to.

  Gavin waited for only a little of Eleanor’s sobbing. “What were you doing here in the dark?” he asked her. “At this hour?”

  She hid her face against the old man’s shoulder and would not answer. One hand flicked behind her, and I heard a tinkle that was familiar. When I picked it up from the carpet and held it out, the ring of keys was still warm from her hand.

  Gavin took it from me gingerly. “What did you want with these, Eleanor?”

  Again she would not answer, and Juan Cordova looked at us over her head, recovering some of his authority.

  “Let her be. I have frightened her badly. I left my bed to sleep here, so my enemy would not find me where expected. I did not know it was Eleanor—but thought it was someone who meant me harm.”

  “Was it you who came that other time and stood by Grandfather’s bed?” I asked Eleanor.

  She recovered herself slightly so there was a hint of defiance in her voice. “I came once before. I didn’t think he knew.”

  Again Gavin tried to question her. “Where have you been? We’ve been looking for you since early afternoon.”

  This time she chose to reply. “I stayed in Paul’s study. He let me stay there while he worked. Not even Sylvia knew I was there. I didn’t want to see any of you.”

  This, I knew, was a lie. Paul had not been in his study. But Sylvia and I had. So why this stealthy visit to Juan’s study, and why the filching of his keys?

  “Come, Eleanor.” Clarita spoke with decision. “You have caused enough trouble today.”

  “Go with her,” Juan said, and Eleanor walked away from him and let Clarita put an arm about her shoulders. Her eyes looked a little glassy, whether from tears or because she was staring so fixedly at nothing, I couldn’t be sure.

  Juan returned to his couch and picked up the dagger, thrust it once more beneath his pillow. “No one will get to me,” he said. “You can see that I am able to protect myself.”

  “Against what?” Gavin asked. “Against whom?”

  The old man did not answer. “Tell Clarita to stay away,” he said, and settled himself beneath the covers. Gavin helped to pull up the blanket, but at Juan’s request we did not turn off the lights when we went away.

  Gavin put his arm about me as we descended to the living room. “Are you all right, Amanda?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I feel as if I were walking a ridge with a precipice on either side. Walking it blindfolded. Perhaps I’m the one playing Blind Man’s Buff behind the turquoise mask. If I could take it off, I’d see everything clearly. But I can’t remove it. If I look into a mirror I’ll see it on my face.”

  “No, you won’t,” he said, and turned me about gently to face the fireplace.

  I saw it then—where someone had hung it against the rounded chimney. The mask looked out over the room, and I shivered, turning away from it, clinging to Gavin.

  He held me close, kissed me. “I’ve wanted to tell you,” he said. “I’m leaving this house late tomorrow. I’m taking the first steps.”

  Cold waters seemed to close over my head. His presence was my security. No matter which way I had turned, he had been there to guard me. The steps he was taking had to be—yet now I would be vulnerable, open to any one of them who wanted to attack.

  “I want you out of this house too,” Gavin went on. “And you will be soon. But for the moment you’ll be all right. I’ve talked to Clarita.”

  I looked up at him. “Clarita?”

  “Yes. I’ve made her understand. She doesn’t approve of divorce, but she knows that neither Eleanor nor I can be held any longer in this marriage. Juan can’t have his way, and I think in a sense she’s glad to oppose him. But now she’ll watch out for you. I doubt that there’ll be any danger from Eleanor again. In fact, now that you’ve faced them all down, I don’t think anyone will try to threaten you.”

  I didn’t know this for sure. I didn’t know it at all, but he had never believed in what I was trying to prove. That someone else had killed Kirk, and not my mother.

  He raised my chin and kissed me again, not tenderly this time, but roughly, so that I felt a sense of rising storm in him—and liked it. Here was a man who would respect me as a person—some of the time. And he would dominate me some of the time, so that I might have to fight him for my own existence. If I chose to fight. Perhaps I wouldn’t always, and yet I knew that he would never hurt me when my defenses were down. And he would always want me to paint—so the rest didn’t matter.

  He turned me about and faced me in the direction of my room. “Go back to bed. You’ve stood enough for today.”

  Without looking back, I fled up the stairs to my room. Once more, I propped the chair beneath my doorknob before I got into bed, and then I went quickly, deeply, sweetly to sleep.

  In the morning it was Clarita who awakened me, rapping sharply on the door and demanding that it be opened to her. I slipped out of bed and removed the chair, so that she could come into the room prow first like a battleship in full array.

  “Gavin has talked with my father, and he has gone to the store for the last time today,” she told me. “From now until the time you leave, you are to go nowhere without me. Gavin wishes it to be so.”

  I remembered a gold earring on the floor of the garage, and was silent, making no promises. Perhaps Gavin trusted her, but I did not. Yesterday I had seen Juan afraid of her and I knew it was against her he would defend himself with that dagger.

  “What plans have you made for today?” she demanded.

  “None. Perhaps I’ll paint for a while here in my room. I have a picture to be finished. Perhaps I’ll spend some time with my grandfather if he wants to see me.”

  “He will not want to see you. He is ill today. Dr. Morrisby has already come and he wants him to be very quiet. The last few days have been too much for him.”

  “I understand,” I said meekly, not trusting her.

  “Our doctor has had two visits to make here,” she went on. “Sylvia is ill as well, and staying home from her shop. I have already been over to see her.”

  I could guess what might be wrong with Sylvia. She hadn’t taken lightly my word that the Velázquez had been stolen. I suspected that she knew very well that her husband and Eleanor were involved, and today she had gone to pieces. But I said none of this to Clarita, merely murmuring my sympathy.

  With a regal nod, Clarita went away, and I marveled at the change in her. Always she had been kept under the thumb of Juan Cordova. But now somehow their roles had been reversed, and I had the feeling that while he was afraid of his older daughter, she was no longer afraid of him. The change, I suspected, was more psychological than real, and it had something to do with that baby bonnet.

  When I had breakfasted alone and returned to my room, I set up Juan’s easel. My room that had once been Doroteo’s wa
s high and light, and would serve me well. When my painting of an imaginary desert village was in place, I set out the colors on my palette. I knew exactly what I was going to do to finish the picture. Coming up from the end of that narrow, winding road I would paint a burro, and on his back would be riding a Franciscan brother in a brown robe, with a knotted white belt about his waist. I could see him vividly in my mind, and he would add exactly the right touch to my ageless New Mexican painting.

  But when I went to work, that rare and mysterious magic which sometimes occurs took over. One never counted on it. One worked with or without it. But sometimes when it came the work prospered beyond the means of an artist’s talent, and he surpassed himself. Sometimes he even painted what he had not at first intended. It was like that now, and I knew the colors on my palette were wrong. I scraped them off and started fresh because accumulations of wrong colors could be a distraction and a discouragement.

  The burro was not a burro. It was a palomino. And the man who rode it was not a Franciscan brother, but a Mexican charro in dark blue suede, with silver buttons and white braid and a broad white sombrero. He rode jauntily up into the foreground of my picture, his left hand light on the reins, and his face—tiny though it was—was Eleanor’s.

  I worked intently for an hour or more. The figure was small, not dominating the scene, but done in greater detail than its surroundings. And all the while I was telling myself something—something I knew with my feelings, but not with my conscious mind.

  When the figure in dark blue riding his spirited horse was completed, I picked up the painting and carried it carefully downstairs. There were three people I wanted to show it to—Sylvia, Clarita and Juan. Strangely, Eleanor didn’t matter. That inner thing that had caused me to paint was still ruling me, and it must be obeyed. First Sylvia—whether she was ill or not.

  Clarita was not about, and I was glad to postpone that confrontation.

  This time I found Sylvia Stewart lying in a deck chair where the sun slanted across the portal, a light Indian blanket tossed over her. She greeted me without pleasure and I told her I was sorry she wasn’t feeling well, and asked if Paul was home.

  “I’ve done a picture,” I said. “I’d like you to see it.”

  She nodded languidly, and I turned the small canvas about. Sylvia stared at it with no great interest, and I brought it close so that she could focus on the rider of the palomino. At once she closed her eyes and turned her head away from me.

  “You’ve caught the way he used to look,” she said helplessly. “How did you know? That jaunty air of Kirk’s, the expression on his face.”

  “I painted Eleanor,” I said. “You weren’t telling me the truth out at the rancho—none of you was telling the truth. Juan was Kirk’s father, wasn’t he? Kirk was Eleanor’s uncle. The Cordova likeness is there in all of them.”

  Sylvia opened her eyes and stared at me. “You don’t know, do you?” she said. “You truly don’t know.”

  I remembered Paul saying those very words to me before, when they had concerned my mother.

  “Hadn’t you better tell me?” I asked.

  “No. Never. It’s not up to me.”

  She would be adamant, I knew. There was granite in Sylvia when she made up her mind.

  “There’s something else,” I said. Carefully I set up my painting against a table, where nothing would smudge the wet portions. “There’s the Velázquez.”

  She made no attempt at evasion. “What about it?”

  “Do you think Paul and Eleanor have taken it away to sell?”

  With a deep breath that seemed to strengthen her, she sat up and threw off the blanket. “I don’t think so. Let’s go and see.”

  “Did they tell you about taking it?” I asked, following her into the house.

  “No. I guessed after you were here. And I checked to make sure. They didn’t worry about how well they hid it.”

  Crossing the living room, she opened the door of a closet and rummaged about inside. When she didn’t find what she was looking for, she dropped to her knees and padded about into the corners and over the floor with her hands. There was alarm in her eyes when she looked up at me.

  “This is where Paul must have put it when he rolled it up. It was here yesterday.”

  Neither of us had noticed that the typing in the room beyond had stopped, and neither was aware of Paul until he stood behind us at the closet door.

  “Put what?” he asked.

  Sylvia didn’t trouble to look up at him. “The Velázquez,” she said from her creeping position.

  I saw his face change. The green in his eyes had an angry glitter as he leaned over to grasp his wife’s arm and pull her to her feet. Sylvia cried out and began to rub her arm when he released her.

  “What are you talking about?” he demanded.

  She continued to rub, but she answered him with spirit. “Oh, Paul, you’re better at this sort of thing when it’s done on paper. I’m sure everyone has guessed by now about your plotting with Eleanor. I suppose it was safe enough, because Juan would never punish her. But what have you done with the painting? You couldn’t simply take it away and sell it. Not as quickly as this!”

  Pushing past us both, he searched the closet himself. When he couldn’t find the rolled-up canvas on the floor, or standing in a corner, he pushed things off the shelves, turned everything upside down and emerged at last in a rage.

  “What’s she trying now?” he demanded, and walked to a table where a telephone stood. In a moment he had dialed the Cordovas’ number and was talking into the receiver. “She must be there, Clarita. Do look for her.”

  The phone at the other end was put down and for a time there was silence. Sylvia and I sat on the couch, waiting, not looking at each other. Paul’s face was dark with anger and I would not have liked to be Eleanor at that moment.

  “Everyone’s guessed by now,” Sylvia told him. “There’s nothing you can do but return the painting. Why did you do this wild thing anyway?”

  He turned his angry look upon her, and she winced away. Then Clarita was back on the line, and Paul listened.

  “Thank you,” he said in a dull voice, and hung up. “Eleanor can’t be found. Her car’s in the garage, but she’s nowhere about. And apparently the Velázquez has disappeared with her. I suppose she could have taken a taxi. I suppose she could be halfway to Albuquerque by now.”

  “Then it’s not your responsibility,” Sylvia said. “There’s nothing Juan can do about it, if Eleanor has the painting. You’re lucky if you can get off so easily.”

  He rushed out of the room and onto the portal, his eyes searching the patio, the area about the house, as though he might still discover her. By chance his look fell upon my painting—and was arrested. He picked it up to hold it at arm’s length, studying the small adobe village, the cottonwood trees, and winding road with that small meticulously painted figure riding up it.

  “Why Eleanor?” he asked me.

  “It’s not supposed to be Eleanor,” I said. “It’s Kirk.”

  He stared as if the picture hypnotized him, but when he spoke, it was not of my work.

  “No, she hasn’t skipped out and taken the painting with her. I think I know what she’d do. Yesterday we were together awhile, and she was vacillating, uncertain—not like herself. She mentioned once that she’d like to go out to Bandelier again, to think things through. She has some sort of affinity for the place. This time she must have taken a taxi all the way—to throw us off by leaving her car behind.”

  “Then I hope you all let her go,” Sylvia said fretfully. “She only does it so someone will chase after her and plead with her to come home.”

  “That’s not what she wants,” Paul said grimly. “But this time I am going after her. I’m going to bring her back.”

  Sylvia was up from the couch in a flash, flinging herself upon him, “No, Paul, no! Don’t go now while you’re angry. Wait awhile—wait!”

  I stared at her in surprise, but Paul p
aid no attention. He was already heading for the garage. When I had picked up my painting, I left without either of them noticing me. It didn’t matter. What Eleanor did now, or what happened to the Velázquez, no longer interested me. My own direction was clear. I could mark Sylvia off the top of my list. Clarita was next.

  All was dim and quiet in the bedroom wing, and the first door—Clarita’s—stood open. I paused on the threshold to call her name, but there was no answer. Just as I was about to leave, something I saw stopped me. A yellowed streamer of satin ribbon hung from beneath the lowered lid of a camphorwood chest.

  In a moment I was across the room, lifting the lid of the chest. The baby bonnet lay on top of the piled contents, and something else lay there too. Eagerly I reached in to pick up the top sheet of a sheaf of papers. Fading script seemed to spring at me from the page, and I saw the ragged inner edge, where the sheet had been torn from a book. All the pages beneath bore similar tears. So it had been Clarita out at the rancho that day, speeding away in a car, Clarita who had tumbled. Katy’s room in her search, and torn out the diary pages. Here beneath my hand lay Katy’s words, and the answer to everything.

  I began to read, standing where I was, following down the page the strong handwriting now so familiar to me. The words dealt, not as I had expected, with the day of Doro’s death, but with reminiscence. She had been writing of the past.

  It rained all that day. When I remember it, I always think of rain beating on the roof of that little house in Madrid. It was all we could do to climb the slope of hill and get her to the cabin because her time was already upon her. Clarita came with me, and old Consuelo, who knew about such matters. We boiled water for sterilizing, and listened to her moaning. All the while Clarita muttered angrily. I tried to hush her, but that day she was made only of anger against both of them. I did my best. My darling was frightened and needed affection, and I could give her that at least. She was my youngest and I had no blame for her, no anger in me. But we all knew Juan must be dealt with after it was over.

  I’d reached the bottom of the sheet, and I set it aside in the chest and picked up the next page. I knew what the baby bonnet meant now. It had never been intended for me. I wasn’t born until five years later.