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

“My sweetheart is there in the city,” he continued. “She was living here before.”

Señora Ramirez took the boy’s long hand in her own. The word sweetheart had recalled many things to her.

“Sit down, sit down,” she said to him. “Sit down here beside me. I too have a sweetheart. He’s in his room now.”

“Where does he work?”

“In the United States.”

“What luck for you! My sweetheart wouldn’t love him better than she loves me, though. She wants me or simply death. She says so any time I ask her. She would tell the same thing to you if you asked her about me. It’s the truth.”

Señora Ramirez pulled him down onto the bench next to her. He was confused and looked out over his shoulder at the road. She tickled the back of his hand and smiled up at him in a coquettish manner. The boy looked at her and his face seemed to weaken.

“You have blue eyes,” he said.

Señora Ramirez could not wait another minute. She took his head in her two hands and kissed him several times full on the mouth.

“Oh, God!” she said. The boy was delighted with her fine clothes, her blue eyes, and her womanly ways. He took Señora Ramirez in his arms with real tenderness.

“I love you,” he said. Tears filled his eyes, and because he was so full of a feeling of gratitude and kindness, he added: “I love my sweetheart and I love you too.”

He helped her down the steps of the kiosk, and with his arm around her waist he led her to a sequestered spot belonging to the convent grounds.

* * *

The traveler was lying on his bed, consumed by a feeling of guilt. He had again spent the night with Señora Ramirez, and he was wondering whether or not his mother would read this in his eyes when he returned. He had never done anything like this before. His behavior until now had never been without precedent, and he felt like a two-headed monster, as though he had somehow slipped from the real world into the other world, the world that he had always imagined as a little boy to be inhabited by assassins and orphans, and children whose mothers went to work. He put his head in his hands and wondered if he could ever forget Señora Ramirez. He remembered having read that the careers of many men had been ruined by women who because they had a certain physical stranglehold over them made it impossible for them to get away. These women, he knew, were always bad, and they were never Americans. Nor, he was certain, did they resemble Señora Ramirez. It was terrible to have done something he was certain none of his friends had ever done before him, nor would do after him. This experience, he knew, would have to remain a secret, and nothing made him feel more ill than having a secret. He liked to imagine that he and the group of men whom he considered to be his friends, discoursed freely on all things that were in their hearts and in their souls. He was beginning to talk to women in this free way, too — he talked to them a good deal, and he urged his friends to do likewise. He realized that he and Señora Ramirez never spoke, and this horrified him. He shuddered and said to himself: “We are like two gorillas.”

He had been, it is true, with one or two prostitutes, but he had never taken them to his own bed, nor had he stayed with them longer than an hour. Also, they had been curly-headed blond American girls recommended to him by his friends.

“Well,” he told himself, “there is no use making myself into a nervous wreck. What is done is done, and anyway, I think I might be excused on the grounds that: one, I am in a foreign country, which has sort of put me off my balance; two, I have been eating strange foods that I am not used to, and living at an unusually high altitude for me; and, three, I haven’t had my own kind to talk to for three solid weeks.”

He felt quite a good deal happier after having enumerated these extenuating conditions, and he added: “When I get onto my boat I shall wave goodby to the dock, and say good riddance to bad rubbish, and if the boss ever tries to send me out of the country, I’ll tell him: ‘not for a million dollars!’” He wished that it were possible to change pensions, but he had already paid for the remainder of the week. He was very thrifty, as, indeed, it was necessary for him to be. Now he lay down again on his bed, quite satisfied with himself, but soon he began to feel guilty again, and like an old truck horse, laboriously he went once more through the entire process of reassuring himself.

* * *

Lilina had put Victoria into a box and was walking in the town with her. Not far from the central square there was a dry-goods shop owned by a Jewish woman. Lilina had been there several times with her mother to buy wool. She knew the son of the proprietress, with whom she often stopped to talk. He was very quiet, but Lilina liked him. She decided to drop in at the shop now with Victoria.

When she arrived, the boy’s mother was behind the counter stamping some old bolts of material with purple ink. She saw Lilina and smiled brightly.

“Enrique is in the patio. How nice of you to come and see him. Why don’t you come more often?” She was very eager to please Lilina, because she knew the extent of Señora Ramirez’s wealth and was proud to have her as a customer.

Lilina went over to the little door that led into the patio behind the shop, and opened it. Enrique was crouching in the dirt beside the washtubs. She was surprised to see that his head was wrapped in bandages. From a distance the dirty bandages gave the effect of a white turban.

She went a little nearer, and saw that he was arranging some marbles in a row.

“Good morning, Enrique,” she said to him.

Enrique recognized her voice, and without turning his head, he started slowly to pick up the marbles one at a time and put them into his pocket.

His mother had followed Lilina into the patio. When she saw that Enrique, instead of rising to his feet and greeting Lilina, remained absorbed in his marbles, she walked over to him and gave his arm a sharp twist.

“Leave those damned marbles alone and speak to Lilina,” she said to him. Enrique got up and went over to Lilina, while his mother, bending over with difficulty, finished picking up the marbles he had left behind on the ground.

Lilina looked at the big, dark red stain on Enrique’s bandage. They both walked back into the store. Enrique did not enjoy being with Lilina. In fact, he was a little afraid of her. Whenever she came to the shop he could hardly wait for her to leave.

He went over now to a bolt of printed material which he started to unwind. When he had unwound a few yards, he began to follow the convolutions of the pattern with his index finger. Lilina, not realizing that his gesture was a carefully disguised insult to her, watched him with a certain amount of interest.

“I have something with me inside this box,” she said after a while.

Enrique, hearing his mother’s footsteps approaching, turned and smiled at her sadly.

“Please show it to me,” he said.

She lifted the lid from the snake’s box and took it over to Enrique.

“This is Victoria,” she said.

Enrique thought she was beautiful. He lifted her from her box and held her just below the head very firmly. Then he raised his arm until the snake’s eyes were on a level with his own.

“Good morning, Victoria,” he said to her. “Do you like it here in the store?”

This remark annoyed his mother. She had slipped down to the other end of the counter because she was terrified of the snake.

“You speak as though you were drunk,” she said to Enrique. “That snake can’t understand a word you’re saying.”

“She’s really beautiful,” said Enrique.

“Let’s put her back in the box and take her to the square,” said Lilina. But Enrique did not hear her, he was so enchanted with the sensation of holding Victoria.