The futility of my life in Mexico City was never more apparent to me than on that morning. I had nothing to do. I knew no one except Marietta and wanted to know no one. In contrast to this nothingness, the trip to Taxco seemed almost inviting. At least it was something definite to do. I called Marietta again. They told me she had come in with an American man and gone out almost immediately, saying she would not be back until the next day. She’d left no message for me. I asked what the American man looked like. They said he was big and redheaded.
The news staggered me. Last night Marietta had been shivering with disgust at Jake. This morning she had left my apartment and gone straight to him. I felt a frustrated indignation. I felt anxious too. Where was she going with her dubious citrus-grower? To Taxco?
Urgency came on me. I went to the garage for my car. I’d reach Taxco too early for my date with Sally. That didn’t matter. I wanted to be there. It seemed important now.
I swung up into the mountains, dust-brown and parched from the lack of rain. At startling intervals, the two great volcanoes that brood over Mexico slid in and out of view, Popocatepetl’s snow-lonely peak, the Sleeping Woman, quiet and ominous with a scarf of cloud. A single Indian led a burro loaded with taffy cornhusks. A yellow butterfly flapped nowhere. There was nothing else. Up here the whole world seemed empty.
In Mexico, climate isn’t north and south. It’s up and down. I toppled from barren highland into sudden valleys lush with chartreuse sugar cane and the cool jade of bananas. I had lunch in Cuernavaca in a patio that was hot with bougainvillea and carnations. Twenty minutes later I was up again in the barren cactus highlands.
I was making good time until I got a flat between Cuernavaca and Xoxocotla. After that, it was hell. I had no jack. It had been stolen in Mexico. I had to thumb a ride back to Cuernavaca and dicker with a lethargic garage. It was quarter of six before I was on my way again. There was still time to keep my date with Sally, but I was unreasonably anxious about Marietta. If I’d understood her, I wouldn’t have been worried. But I didn’t understand her, and because I didn’t understand her I imagined her capable of the most foolhardy things.
The evening was a faded pink when a twist in the road brought Taxco into view. Clinging to the mountainside with its weathered red roofs and its twin-steepled cathedral frothy as meringue, it is to me one of the most beautiful towns on this continent. That night the very air seemed rose-colored from the sunset. It wasn’t a town; it was a spray of peach blossom.
I thought of Sally sitting in it, waiting for me, like a little yellow spider with its web spun between the blossoms.
I turned into the street which led into the town. It was cobbled, steep, narrow, never meant for an automobile. I’d been in Taxco six years before, but Sally hadn’t been there then. I didn’t know where she lived. It was eight fifteen. There was no time to try to find out whether Marietta and Jake were there. I parked in a side street below the Zocalo next to a dilapidated burro and a tethered turkey. Two small pigs liked it. They came squealing out of a doorway and, squeezing underneath the car, collapsed into sleep.
From the Zocalo above me, wheezy steam-organ music blared down through the thickening twilight. Some church fiesta must have been getting under way. An Indian with a red and gray serape started coping with the pigs. I asked him where the Señora Haven lived. Everyone knows everything about everyone in Taxco. He pointed up the hill to a higher church. It was near there. The next house above the church.
I started on foot up the cobbled street. It was impossible to take the car any farther. The street was so steep that I had to lean forward to keep my balance. Apart from an old, old woman with an empty kerosene can, the place was deserted. Everyone must already have congregated in the public square.
I reached the church which clung precariously to the mountainside. A footpath wound upward past its pink walls. Chickens scurried out of my way. A pig lumbered toward the church door. The path swerved right, and there was Sally’s house, new looking and rich, spread across the hill above the town.
I passed through iron gates and up a twisting driveway, somber with the heavy green of bananas. I came to a flagged area with a tiled pool full of showy goldfish. The front door was beyond it. It was open. I moved to it, hesitated on the threshold, looking for a buzzer to ring. I couldn’t see one. It was exactly eight thirty. I called, “Sally,” tapped on the door, and walked in.
I was in the living room, a huge, tall room glowing with the pale colors of modern Mexican furniture. The air was dusky, and no lights had been lit. A girl was crouched in a chair near the window. I assumed it was Sally because I was expecting her.
I went toward her, saying, “Hello, Sally.”
She stirred. Her hair was dark. No trick of light could make Sally’s metal hair that dark. With disproportionate anxiety, I thought it was Marietta sitting there alone in Sally’s living room.
The girl got up then. She stood silhouetted against the tall windows. I crossed to her through the puzzling half-light. I was almost at her side before I recognized her. It seemed incredible to me that I could have been in a room with her and not known her. It was just that the possibility of her being there had been so remote. For a second the muscles of my legs felt thin as water.
“Iris,” I said.
Eight
She wore her coat slung over her shoulders, Sally-style. Her dark hair gleamed in the pink light that was hardly light. Her face was thin and terribly pale. She looked as if she had been sick for weeks. I wondered if her idyll with Martin was doing this to her.
She stared at me, her eyes almost vacant. I was surprised that seeing me should be such a shock. And I’d been thinking about her so much that I had lost the faculty of being natural. I felt awkward, clumsy.
“Peter.” Her hand came out and took my sleeve. Even the touch of her hand was different. That wasn’t the way my wife’s fingers had felt. “Peter, I didn’t recognize you. So dark.”
She seemed to be making a terrific effort at control. I said, “What are you doing here?”
“Me?” She paused as if thinking what she was doing there. Then the words came hurriedly. “Sally sent for me. She called me in Acapulco. She said not to tell Martin, but she wanted to talk to me. She said maybe—maybe everything could be arranged.” She added, “And you?”
“Remember your SOS? I’m here to talk to Sally too. Where is she?”
Iris leaned against the arm of a sofa that glowed a pale yellow. “I don’t know. I just came. I knocked on the door. Nothing happened. The door was open. I walked in. She isn’t here.”
“And the servants?”
“There’s some kind of fiesta. She must have let them all go to the fiesta.”
A flat silence came. We stood there in the gloom close together but like strangers—worse than strangers, because there was that quivering tension between us.
I said stiffly, in a tea-party voice, “I hope you are well.”
“Yes, thank you, Peter.”
“And Martin?”
“He’s well too. He doesn’t know I’m here.”
I stared down at the carpet. Some small object gleamed dully. I tried to identify it. A slipper? Yes, a silver slipper sprawled on its side. Beyond it, over by the open French windows leading to the terrace, a big vase full of tuberoses had fallen off a table and was lying on the carpet. I wondered if the wind had knocked it down.
“I hope you’re happy,” I said.
“Yes, Peter, yes.” The words sprang from her.
There seemed so much bravado that my heart melted for her. I didn’t mind any more that she was shutting me out. I went to her. I put my hands on her arms. She was shivering the way Marietta had shivered. Because what had happened between us had made me physically humble, I thought she found my touch repulsive. I took my hands away.
“Iris,” I said, “I want things to turn out right for you. You believe that, don’t you?”
She didn’t answer.
I said, “On the phone
Sally told me too that things might be arranged. Maybe she was telling the truth. Maybe it’ll pan out.”
“Don’t, please,” she whispered.
“Iris, baby, what’s the matter?”
She threw herself against me, sliding her arms around me. “Let’s get away from here. This room, I hate it. Don’t let’s wait. Please, Peter, let’s go.”
I was exhilarated because she was in my arms of her own accord. That meant more to me than the desperation in her.
I said quietly, “Don’t be silly, baby. This is important. We’ve got to wait. Maybe between us, we can—”
I heard footsteps at the door behind me. Then a reading lamp was snapped on. Iris broke from my arms. I turned to face the door, expecting Sally.
It wasn’t Sally. Large and handsomely brash in his tight gabardine suit, Jake Lord stood on the threshold. Under the cropped red hair he was grinning at me.
“Well, well,” he said. “Pardon me.”
We both stared at him, uncertain. He strolled into the room throwing a casual glance around its muted elegancies.
“Well,” he said again. “Fancy finding you here, Peter.” He came very close to us, staring blatantly at Iris. “And the little lady?”
I said, “Iris, this is Jake Lord. Jake—my wife.”
“Your wife?” He gave me the sort of wink that is associated with traveling-salesmen stories and hitched up his pants over his lean stomach. “Well, we live and learn.”
His self-assurance was impertinent and faintly ominous. He lounged away from us through the room. There was a desk with a typewriter and a sheet of paper in it. He paused, looking down shamelessly, reading what was written.
He glanced back at me. “Marietta here?”
“Marietta?”
He flicked a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. “Yeah. This house belongs to a party called Mrs. Sally Haven, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said.
He dropped into a chair, inhaling deeply, watching Iris as if she was a juicy number at a taxi-dance joint. “Sure Marietta isn’t here, Peter?”
“Why should she be?”
He shrugged the wrestler’s shoulders. “Here’s where she said she was coming. She’s crazy, that one, dragged me out of bed, told me I had to drive her to Taxco. Seems there was something she had to fix with this Haven dame. She’s her sister-in-law, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” I said, feeling uneasy.
“Came up here a couple of hours ago. Left me stuck in a bar downtown. I figured a couple of hours was long enough for any two girls to jabber at each other.” He threw out his big hands. “Here I am.”
I said, “If Marietta was here, she’s gone. You must have passed her.”
“Yeah? And this Sally Haven?”
“She’s not here either.”
He grinned at me. “Just you and your wife, eh? Hope I’m not intruding.”
“Why should you be?”
He started to whistle. He got up, glanced down at the silver slipper, and kicked at it with his toe. His sharp blue eyes moved to the white, overturned tuberoses.
“Does she carry liquor, this dame? I’m dry as Arizona.”
Iris was sitting very pale and stiff in a chair. Jake moved past her, so close that his arm brushed her. He paused, looking down at her curiously.
“My, little lady, you look peaked. Maybe she’s got a bar on the terrace. Come on. I’ll rustle up a little of what ails you.”
He bent over her and, taking her arms, lifted her to her feet. I pushed him away from her. He grinned his grin with the blue eyes wide open. “Now don’t get sore, Peter. No offense intended.” He put his hand on Iris’s sleeve. “Just offering the little lady a little snort.”
He started toward the French windows to the terrace. Iris recoiled from him to me. He disappeared. Iris and I followed, for no particular reason unless we were trying to avoid being alone.
The terrace was wide and white and long. It stretched the length of the house with a precipitous view of Taxco over a white-painted wooden balustrade. The lights were on now. They twinkled down the hillside like silver chains connected to the major brightness of the Zocalo. Santa Prisca had been dressed up for the fiesta. Strings of lights were strewed across its massive façade, and high up, between the twin steeples, sparkled a great Star of Bethlehem.
Carrousel music drifted to us on the still night air. Jake was moving away from us down the terrace, peering for liquor. A small polished moon hung almost directly above us, adding its milk-blue radiance to the fiesta. Iris stood very close to me, taut, staring down the plunging view at the quivering beauty of the town.
The carrousel was wheezing out “La Barca de Oro”. From far down the terrace, Jake started to whistle the ever popular song along with the music. Suddenly his whistle stopped. For a second the terrace was quiet as an abandoned church. Then Jake’s voice came, strange, harsh.
“Hey, Peter, hey, you girl, come here.”
I started toward him. Iris hesitated and then, coming after me, slipped her cold hand into mine. We passed low, shadowy porch chairs and divans. Jake’s large figure loomed ahead. He was standing with his back to us, peering down over the balustrade. And, as we drew closer, I saw that there was no balustrade there. Part of it had broken off, leaving a gaping hole.
We reached him. Down in the Zocalo the steampipes of the carrousel were sobbing. The words of the song were so familiar to me that they jogged along with the music in my mind.
Voy a aumentar los mares con me llanto
Adiós, mujer…
Jake heard us coming. He turned sharply. In the moonlight his face was utterly changed. The blandness was gone. He looked grim and tough as a gun. He grabbed my arm. He pulled me toward the gap in the balustrade. Beyond it there was a sheer drop of over thirty feet into a dry, rocky stream bed.
“Get a load of that, Peter,” he said.
I saw it, of course. First I saw the strip of broken balustrade where it had fallen. Then I saw the hair—hair gleaming, metallic, almost white in the moonlight. I saw the hair and I saw the little white hands, flung up. I saw the tiny body sprawled there below on the jagged rocks—limp as a doll tossed away by a bored child.
The words of the song were still pounding in my ears, running with the carrousel music.
Adiós, mujer, adiós para siempre adiós.
The parallel between the mournful words and the thing below made me feel sick.
Jake said, “She’s as dead a dame as I’d care to see. Back’s broken, you can tell from the position. Who is it? Mrs. Haven?”
I became conscious of Iris then. She sagged against me, and her voice rose, shrill, jagged, over the lamenting music.
“She was lying there all the time. Sally was lying there and I didn’t know.”
At first that remark, wrenched out of her, seemed completely without sense to me. Why should she say she hadn’t known Sally was lying there? Of course she hadn’t known Sally was lying there.
Slowly Jake turned to her. His eyes were bright in the moonlight.
“You didn’t know it, eh?”
“I didn’t,” said Iris. “I didn’t. I didn’t.”
The hysteria of that repetition was bad enough. But suddenly I felt as if Sally’s terrace was dissolving beneath my feet.
Iris was my wife. I had loved her for five years. I knew every in and out of her mind, every inflection of her voice.
And I knew then that her voice was false. She was lying. She had known Sally was there.
All the time she had been with me, in the living room, she had known that Sally was lying there—dead.
Nine
I led Iris to one of the porch chairs. I made her sit. I said, “Jake and I’ve got to go down to Sally.”
I didn’t know if she was listening. She had folded her hands and was looking at a ring on her finger. It was a new ring. From Martin? In the darkness her face was white as the tuberoses scattered behind her. I was scared of what she might say or do. I lea
ned down and whispered like a conspirator, “Be careful. For God’s sake, be careful.”
Jake had swung himself down through the gap in the balustrade. I hurried after him. Jake with his gun, his swaggering impudence, his possible connection with Sally, was an unknown quantity. He was bright, I knew. He was also potentially hostile. I couldn’t afford to have him discover whatever there might be to discover without my being there.
When I formulated that thought, I didn’t let myself admit what it implied.
The drop to the dry stream bed was almost sheer. I started clambering after Jake, clinging to jutting stones and crevices. He had reached the stream bed and was bending over Sally. I joined him. The edge of the broken segment of balustrade was lying over her legs. Jake pushed it aside. I noticed at once that one of the little feet was bare. On the other, a silver slipper gleamed.
The moonlight was strong, blue like the moonlight in Swan Lake. The slight body seemed to have no substance. The metal hair poured over a rock. Her eyes were open. They stared up at nothing. Her lips were parted too. I could see the white teeth. There was no blood. But the position of the body told the story. A body couldn’t be hunched backward that way unless the spine was shattered.
I took her thin, cold wrist with its sagging silver bracelets.
There was no pulse.
Jake was squatting at my side. His thigh brushed against mine, solid and warm and in violent contrast to the chill of that dead wrist.
“Well,” he said.
As we crouched there, Sally’s voice, light and pretty with its suppressed giggle, seemed to weave in my mind with the music from the Zocalo. Peter, I like you. I shivered. Maybe I’ll never go to the police—if you come. She’d said that. She’d changed her mind. Marietta might have been saved from jail. Martin might have got his divorce. Iris might have got Martin.
Everything might have been all right—without this.
My hand moved from her wrist up her arm. Jake pushed it roughly away.
Puzzle for Pilgrims Page 6
