Jane Bowles - My Sister's Hand in Mine - The Collected Works of Jane Bowles

“Do you really want to go through with this?” he said to her, for he was incapable of finding new words for a situation that was certainly unlike any other he had ever experienced. She fell upon him and felt his face and his neck with feverish excitement.

“Dear God!” she said. “Dear God!” They were in the very act of making love. “I have lived twenty years for this moment and I cannot think that heaven itself could be more wonderful.”

The traveler hardly listened to this remark. His face was hidden in the pillow and he was feeling the pangs of guilt in the very midst of his pleasure. When it was all over she said to him: “That is all I want to do ever.” She patted his hands and smiled at him.

“Are you happy, too?” she asked him.

“Yes, indeed,” he said. He got off the bed and went out into the patio.

“She was certainly in a bad way,” he thought. “It was almost like death itself.” He didn’t want to think any further. He stayed outside near the fountain as long as possible. When he returned she was up in front of the bureau trying to arrange her hair.

“I’m ashamed of the way I look,” she said. “I don’t look the way I feel.” She laughed and he told her that she looked perfectly all right. She drew him down onto the bed again. “Don’t send me back to my room,” she said. “I love to be here with you, my sweetheart.”

The dawn was breaking when the traveler awakened next morning. Señora Ramirez was still beside him, sleeping very soundly. Her arm was flung over the pillow behind her head.

“Lordy,” said the traveler to himself. “I’d better get her out of here.” He shook her as hard as he could.

“Mrs. Ramirez,” he said. “Mrs. Ramirez, wake up. Wake up!” When she finally did wake up, she looked frightened to death. She turned and stared at him blankly for a little while. Before he noticed any change in her expression, her hand was already moving over his body.

“Mrs. Ramirez,” he said. “I’m worried that perhaps your daughters will get up and raise a hullabaloo. You know, start whining for you, or something like that. Your place is probably in there.”

“What?” she asked him. He had pulled away from her to the other side of the bed.

“I say I think you ought to go into your room now the morning’s here.”

“Yes, my darling, I will go to my room. You are right.” She sidled over to him and put her arms around him.

“I will see you later in the dining room, and look at you and look at you, because I love you so much.”

“Don’t be crazy,” he said. “You don’t want anything to show in your face. You don’t want people to guess about this. We must be cold with one another.”

She put her hand over her heart.

“Ay!” she said. “This cannot be.”

“Oh, Mrs. Ramirez. Please be sensible. Look, you go to your room and we’ll talk about this in the morning … or, at least, later in the morning.”

“Cold I cannot be.” To illustrate this, she looked deep into his eyes.

“I know, I know,” he said. “You’re a very passionate woman. But my God! Here we are in a crazy Spanish country.”

He jumped from the bed and she followed him. After she had put on her shoes, he took her to the door.

“Good-bye,” he said.

She couched her cheek on her two hands and looked up at him. He shut the door.

She was too happy to go right to bed, and so she went over to the bureau and took from it a little stale sugar Virgin which she broke into three pieces. She went over to Consuelo and shook her very hard. Consuelo opened her eyes, and after some time asked her mother crossly what she wanted. Señora Ramirez stuffed the candy into her daughter’s mouth.

“Eat it, darling,” she said. “It’s the little Virgin from the bureau.”

“Ay, mamá!” Consuelo sighed. “Who knows what you will do next? It is already light out and you are still in your clothes. I am sure there is no other mother who is still in her clothes now, in the whole world. Please don’t make me eat any more of the Virgin now. Tomorrow I will eat some more. But it is tomorrow, isn’t it? What a mix-up. I don’t like it.” She shut her eyes and tried to sleep. There was a look of deep disgust on her face. Her mother’s spell was a little frightening this time.

Señora Ramirez now went over to Lilina’s bed and awakened her. Lilina opened her eyes wide and immediately looked very tense, because she thought she was going to be scolded about the corset and also about having gone out alone after dark.

“Here, little one,” said her mother. “Eat some of the Virgin.”

Lilina was delighted. She ate the stale sugar candy and patted her stomach to show how pleased she was. The snake was asleep in a box near her bed.

“Now tell me,” said her mother. “What did you do today?” She had completely forgotten about the corset. Lilina was beside herself with joy. She ran her fingers along her mother’s lips and then pushed them into her mouth. Señora Ramirez snapped at the fingers like a dog. Then she laughed uproariously.

“Mamá, please be quiet,” pleaded Consuelo. “I want to go to sleep.”

“Yes, darling. Everything will be quiet so that you can sleep peacefully.”

“I bought a snake, mamá,” said Lilina.

“Good!” exclaimed Señora Ramirez. And after musing a little while with her daughter’s hand in hers, she went to bed.

* * *

In her room Señora Ramirez was dressing and talking to her children.

“I want you to put on your fiesta dresses,” she said, “because I am going to ask the traveler to have lunch with us.”

Consuelo was in love with the traveler by now and very jealous of Señorita Córdoba, who she had decided was his sweetheart. “I daresay he has already asked Señorita Córdoba to lunch,” she said. “They have been talking together near the fountain almost since dawn.”

“Santa Catarina!” cried her mother angrily. “You have the eyes of a madman who sees flowers where there are only cow turds.” She covered her face heavily with a powder that was distinctly violet in tint, and pulled a green chiffon scarf around her shoulders, pinning it together with a brooch in the form of a golf club. Then she and the girls, who were dressed in pink satin, went out into the patio and sat together just a little out of the sun. The parrot was swinging back and forth on his perch and singing. Señora Ramirez sang along with him; her own voice was a little lower than the parrot’s.

Pastores, pastores, vamos a Belén

A ver a Maria y al niño también.

She conducted the parrot with her hand. The old señora, mother of Señora Espinoza, was walking round and round the patio. She stopped for a moment and played with Señora Ramirez’s seashell bracelet.

“Do you want some candy?” she asked Señora Ramirez.

“I can’t. My stomach is very bad.”

“Do you want some candy?” she repeated. Señora Ramirez smiled and looked up at the sky. The old lady patted her cheek.

“Beautiful,” she said. “You are beautiful.”

“Mamá!” screamed Señora Espinoza, running out of her room. “Come to bed!”

The old lady clung to the rungs of Señora Ramirez’s chair like a tough bird, and her daughter was obliged to pry her hands open before she was able to get her away.

“I’m sorry, Señora Ramirez,” she said. “But when you get old, you know how it is.”

“Pretty bad,” said Señora Ramirez. She was looking at the traveler and Señorita Córdoba. They had their backs turned to her.

“Lilina,” she said. “Go and ask him to have lunch with us … go. No, I will write it down. Get me a pen and paper.”

“Dear,” she wrote, when Lilina returned. “Will you come to have lunch at my table this afternoon? The girls will be with me, too. All the three of us send you our deep affection. I tell Consuelo to tell the maid to move the plates all to the same table. Very truly yours, Sofia Piega de Ramirez.”