The Atlas

by William T. Vollmann

  A ruby, from her mother. (The idol told them that.)

  In that lighted plaza dazzled by trumpet-sounds, the trees so garden-green and fresh beneath the purple sky that smelled like cigarettes, boys waited in line just to see the Red Song. The mariachi musicians with golden skeleton-bones up the sides of their black trousers played for no one but her. Whenever she tossed a cigarette from between her breasts, the boys shouted and fought for it, jostling like balloons on ropes, cursing and weeping with desire until the cigarette had been torn to pieces. The boys in white shirts and the girls in black dresses could not see each other. (As they stared at the Red Song, the corners of their eyes were sharper than knives.)

  But the madam kept sight of the idol. Whimpering with greed, she made her supplicating embrace, her swollen hands not unlike the two broad ribbons ponytailing down the back of the soda girl who'd come from the corner of the fence where the hedge began, staring into heat and light all day, dreaming of the dance to come when she'd toss her lipsticked cigarette into the crowd of handsome boys who'd marry her.

  Before laying down her wares that morning on their bed of fresh ice, the soda girl had gone to the zócalo. It was so early that nobody was there except for an old man feeding rows of pigeons. The soda girl leaped up onto the plinth and danced, the only one there at the center of the world. The old man smiled. He was the idol. That day she scarcely saw her thirsty customers; when they crowded her she stood up and wheeled her cart halfway around the bandstand, looking for less sunshine so as to diminish her trade. She needed no pesos, only dreams. The idol squatted on her head and whispered: Under the night I'll help you, my little amiga. I'll sharpen the ends of your cigarettes so that they'll pierce the boys' hearts! Boys have no minds. — The poor soda girl believed. Bending over her aqua-colored cart, fondling ice, she dreamed herself so deeply into the dance that not even the most lucrative thirst could reach her although she was the nun consecrated to orange fizz.

  But that night she danced stamping her foot, soaking her lemon wedding-cake dress with tears. No boy looked at her. Her mouth downturned; her face became a clay mask. To her the Red Song was as unholy as some leather-lashed idol of worm-carved wood. The soda girl threw her cigarettes, and boys' heels ground them on the dirty night's stones. She screamed. She became a clay figurine holding up her breasts.

  The other girls stopped dancing. They were stone giants of anger against the sky.

  When at last the Red Song threw the lipstick-stained cigarette into that mob, every eye saw its red smudge like the flash of her cheekbone from far away, and it rose above the moon, then tumbled faster than a witch's bone while the madam leaned close to the idol whispering, her hand on the idol's chest, and the cigarette began to come down as the madam's and the idol's legs moved together; they were the only couple dancing; they bobbed, swung and whirled while the idol's starched shoulders swam closer to everything in the balloon-light (his head a little raised so that the white teeth in his yellow death's head could gape down the snake of itself, of its vertebrae and incised ivory counters; the idol had removed his ribs for the occasion and spread them around himself in a fan of rays); the cigarette was falling like death now so that the madam trembled, but she couldn't stop clutching for it and the idol grinned, threw his fingers behind his head, caught the cigarette, and placed it in her hand.

  The other girls, the jealous ones, let out a joyous scream like boiling ice.

  Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico (1992)

  Slender, so slender, she let her hair down beneath the trees. The madam opened the notebook.

  On a gasoline-smelling night of blue walls, the peacock shadows of her dress swayed from side to side. When she spread the colors of her dress, men crawled after her like worms. Bars of darkness, tiger-darkness and tiger-light walled widely shadowed concrete into the nowhere, where she became an icon prisoned in gold. The ice cream man, pushing his stand home to darkness, stopped to catch armloads of red papier-mâché fishes that shot from her as she danced. He wanted to sell them, but they exploded like fireworks.

  She was playing with a drop of blood, a little red drop of blood which other people thought to be a ruby. She let it be a secret inside her cupped hands.

  Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico (1992)

  Slender like a candle, she let her hair down beneath the trees. Every night men gathered, heads high, hands high, feet and shoulders wide, to watch her arrive. The bandmaster powdered the faces of the dark-suited musicians who anticipated in her the white eyeshine of sexual intelligence.

  Round faces, mustachioed and laced, puffed at the silver trumpets. When her hair tumbled down, the red-uniformed man beat his silver drum. Every time she smiled, three mandolins played by themselves. A blind man tinged his triangle when she stretched her whitestock-inged legs beneath the black skirt. She cocked her hip, and an admirer brought alive his tuba like a gleaming snail. She blinked, and the guitar-player sang.

  The other whores stood a little apart from her. This was at the madam's wish. They were the second-best.

  A boy was walking by. All at once he began to sleep an endless dream of luminescent pears caged in marble. He needed the sugarcane taste of her sweat when she laid her black hair down on the white bone of his shoulder. Her armpits tasted like ginger, almonds, sugar, and, above all, sweating cocoa butter.

  He searched his pocket for pesos. The head turned knowingly; silver earrings whirred across black hair-space to flicker for a moment in front of that reddish-brown face. Her eyes, her eyes—blacker than blood!

  The boy remembered how boys practice bullfighting in the park, how the one who is the bull bows low, snorting, as he holds a pair of bull's horns to his forehead. He snorts again, kicking dust as the matador wheels the red cloth in slow motion, the knife hidden behind. Afterward he can lay his horns down, wipe the sweat from his nose, and stand. But the boy could not become human again.

  Will you go with me, Red Song?

  Where?

  Under the darkness.

  Yes, I'll go there. That's a good place.

  He took her hand, which was as hot as a Mexicali night. The madam made a cross in her notebook. The blind man tinged his triangle like eyes funneling down into the bullring. As she walked away beside her lover, past the smiles of backpointing boys, past all the padrotes sitting in the park, the madam lowered her pencil, the bandmaster raised his baton, and the musicians made a new song that no one had ever heard before.

  Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico (1992)

  She hid in her skirt of starched-white froth, her new skirt as delicious as wedding cake, turning her face away, giggling when his mouth pursued her. He'd married her for each of thirteen nights. But not yet could he hope to draw a slow kiss out of her.

  Under the night I'll help you, his friend said. His friend was a new friend, an old friend, a brown rain idol with holes in his mouth.

  I can help myself, said the boy. Tonight for me she'll let down her dark hair. Tonight she'll undo the silver buttons of her black dress.

  She's nothing but a pair of buttocks, the idol said. Remember, in this world no one has a mind but you and me. Tell her that, when you buy her lighted shopwindow breast.

  In this world only the Red Song has a mind! the boy said fiercely. Are you my friend or only your own?

  Ask for the ruby, the idol whined. Remember it when she takes you under the night.

  The idol was gone. The boy's arm slipped, hard and brown, around the Red Song's neck, cutting her hair in two.

  He walked her quickly past the National Palace, where less lucky men stood in front, raising sheets tied to two sticks, two men to a stick, red flags and umbrellas and bullhorns, dust, a man selling Pop-sicles; the sheets said: GIVE US THE RED SONG. He walked her between the hedges of the Alameda, his smile in her eyes, his hand on her neck. (He was as gaudily unstable as the colored parasols in the park.) He craved the way she could grab handfuls of her blouse and offer it to the breeze.

  Red Song, show me
your little ruby this night.

  I have no ruby. I only have a mind.

  The round lamps came on as fragrantly yellow as lemons, hovering among the trees. The hurdy-gurdy attendant, attired like a sixteen-star general, cranked the air full of sweetness. The fountains jetted their eternal orgasms. Suddenly the attendant's identically uniformed triple-secret double marched to the boy and asked to be paid. The boy's heart vomited. He did not pay, because he needed every peso for the Red Song. The man went away whispering: You listened, but you did not pay. You stole the fruit of my mind.

  The wet statues in the fountain had become as black as whaleskin. Everyone took ease in the benches that bound the nested circles of cobblestones whose center the fountains owned. Couples promenaded in step. There was still enough light to gleam on the backs of the women's high heels. But now it got dark quite suddenly, like tolling bells.

  The boy swallowed and said again: Red Song, please let me take your ruby, your pretty little ruby . . .

  Across the street, the madam opened her notebook.

  I have no ruby! the Red Song cried.

  But across the street the madam smiled, reached into her stony bosom, pulled out a cigarette, a shining cigarette.

  Then the Red Song swayed and said: Give me a million in silver and gold.

  The boy grasped her fiercely. — You swear?

  I swear I'll show you my ruby. But I'll never show you my mind.

  Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico (1992)

  The idol was not gone. The idol was the tooth in the dark ceiling, the little child at table whom others must serve. The next night was as dark as the inside of a woman's skirt. Behind wide yellow crosswalk-lines the Red Song stood waiting. The musicians blew their silver trumpets; other whores breathed the Red Song's breath, hoping to steal beauty's luck. Already he'd leaped the cemetery wall, and his new friend, his old friend, brought the spade and was gone. (The idol was not gone. The idol was young earrings in an old woman's face.) Now the boy dug deeper than fungus and urine-smelling dirt. Guided by the light of scarlet worms, he opened sleep's barred windows. His shoveltip rang! He'd struck her mother's skeleton, sounded the long curve of the silver bird's neck veined with shadows, spangled with light!

  He boiled the money clean: gray coins, yellow coins, he scraped out their maggoty marrow. A million pesos!—smooth and wet, incised with numbers and naked women. As soon as he'd heaped them into the Red Song's arms, the soda girl screamed with envy and stabbed herself in the breast, the musicians played all their tunes at once, the madam sprouted new teeth to lengthen her grin; and then the Red Song took the boy's hand. They went off together.

  Now she let him touch the flowers that fringed her underchemise. He undid white ribbons and lace, white sashes like weeds around her ankles. Ruffles struggled at her shoulders like wings. He touched the buttons that went down her back. Each rang with its own note. Slender like a candle, she began to let down her hair. Then she pinned it up again. That much the madam had taught her—oh, the madam had a mind! — I ask but a thousand more, the Red Song said. The million is for the madam. The thousand, ah, the little thousand is for me.

  Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico (1992)

  The next night was as dark as the dirt beneath a corpse's fingernails. Her mother having now been stripped, he went to his mother and sang to her of his death, squeezed a thousand pesos' worth of tears from her eyes. His mother wept: All for your amiga, your little amiga—how she's stolen your mind!

  Outside the house the Red Song stood waiting. The madam was not there, but one man in red livery beat the silver drum. The boy came running out with liquid silver scalding his cupped hands, and the drummer smashed the drum in a single stroke of triumph. Now the boy baptized the Red Song with those tears which cooled and became sacred as they rolled down her hair, becoming not pearl but mother-of-pearl—shell-coins engraved with numerals and mermaids. Once she was thoroughly studded with these precious beads, she sat herself up on a wall so that her face was as high as his face. He put his hands on the wall, one on either side of her. (Already up her dress, his fingers were families advancing on their knees across the Basilica's marble floor, the little children not knowing how to balance themselves.) Rending the calm gold darkness, he played her breast like a dark hand stroking a guitar as she locked her legs around him. His head fell forward into his dreams. Her hands stroked his back; her arms pulled him closer. Their kisses rang beneath their heels as they hurried to the idol's altar; their kisses were tiles like cream, tiles like cream in coffee; tiles like custard. — But I'll beg you for a hundred more, she whispered. The thousand is for new ribbons. The hundred, ah, only the little hundred is for me.

  Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico (1992)

  The next night was as dark as an Indian woman's hair. For the little hundred nothing attended her—not even the spastic grin of a redfaced trumpeteer. The boy no longer knew how to appease her demands, but another skull gazed into a skull-shaped pot still faintly spiraled with ocher; the other skull was his new friend, his old friend, who served him lust on spiderwebbed plates of black slate. The Red Song waited. He tiptoed past the sorrowful shadow of her tanned cheek, past the softly resigned look of the sleeping woman's mouth.

  In the Alameda his dear friend called helpers: frogmasked, kiln-baked women with spread legs. For him they quickly caught a hundred pesos in crickets. Why sell their songs? This live money was precious, being sought by every soft brown hand heavy with rings. He came back guided by the light of marble on her cheekbones. Hopping onto her sleeping belly, they became obsidian counters carved with hieroglyphs and scowling slant-eyed girls. The Red Song woke smiling. As soon as she'd caressed those smooth black counters of preciousness, she stood up and took his hand.

  She took him down the tunnel of fingernails between two churches windowed with dripping eyelashes. Following those ants which resemble triple beads of amber, she led him down blueflower-tiled stairs, down dark stone stairs guarded by moonmaned iron monsters, square-tongued gargoyles, down into the cave-smell beneath the rock-lobed ceiling, and her tongue thrust inside his mouth, dripping with saliva that burned like lemon juice. Then she brought him to the place like the twining roots of shadow on a trumpet's bowl, like the white grooves of dress shirts between black-suited shoulders. — Now give me just ten pesos more, she said in his ear. The hundred you gave me is nothing. Ten pesos, ah, ten little pesos is less than nothing, just a ghost to keep nothing good company.

  Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico (1992)

  The night was as dark as a beetle's belly. He held out his hand in the darkness, and the idol put ten pesos in it. So she led him to a deep chamber in the earth, where the idol's skeleton with its jade deathmask lay inside an immense sepulcher of white stones, the corner slab inscribed with designs. Then she let down her hair. — One peso more is all I ask, said the Red Song. A single peso, not even for me. It's only the ten pesos that asks it.

  Desperate in the darkness, he snatched the idol's coin back, clenched it between his teeth and bit it until it burst and one more peso spurted out. Then she led him to the chapel of paper animals. He became the paper lion.

  Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico (1992)

  When a woman's head rides a man's heaving shoulder, there's a certain dark bird carved in lava that screeches. That sound the idol always hears; there's no escape. The idol flew down between the Red Song's breasts and said to her: He stole everything. Every night now until you die, you'll have to let your hair down beneath the trees.

  The boy did not hear. So proudly and joyfully he watched the turquoise earrings still trembling at the edges of her dark face, the pale, downcurving fingernail of light below her eye, the other crescent, very tiny, just under her lower lip. Yawning, he waited for the darkness between her eyelashes to widen. Her ruby glittered on his tongue. Then he swallowed it.

  The Red Song pushed him away from between her breasts. (His head was the idol's head.) He stared with sleepy eyes. She sai
d to him: I know I have no mind. I'm nothing but a pair of buttocks. I heard you say that. And you, your mind lies under the night! Where's my ruby?

  The boy smiled abashed and said: I threw it in the river.*

  You have no mind! she cried. You're only a child who wanted ice cream in the shivering of the bells.

  With sunny hair and spider-legs, the idol came to drink down her frothy hair. She did not see, but the boy did. The idol said to him: She claims that you have no mind! She means to eat your mind! You'll be darkness if you stay with her.

  The Red Song sobbed out: You have no mind. And you made me bleed for your mind's sake.

  Just as the beggar-woman jerks her baby awake upon the rich man's approach, so the idol woke the boy's anger, which was a little idol clutching and scratching at the grilles on the window of his heart, the grilles like square gold claws. So long she'd tormented him! His anger was the matador's silver dagger hidden always behind the red cloth.