William Vollmann - The Atlas

The truck with loud music stopped. The woman bowed her head slowly, but didn't trouble to uncross her arms.

In a voice like jellyfish collapsing, his friend said: That one's yours.

Oh, well, the boy said apologetically, she belongs to herself. .

She's nothing but a pair of buttocks.

Everything has a mind, the boy whispered, afraid to look at this friend he contradicted. Everyone has a mind. Everyone has hands to work and make something good—

The idol laughed. — I have no mind. She has no mind.

She stood in the street like silverware gleaming in darkness. Behind her, a girl licked a Popsicle like a long red chili. For a moment it seemed that she licked her own tongue. She was the woman's daughter.

His friend nudged him. — How much? the boy said.

A hundred fifty thousand,* the woman said.

A hundred.

No. (Her pale white face shook.)

You win. Come with me. No, no, first give me your mouth.

She kissed him listlessly, like the trickle of a silver earring among black hair. Her kiss tasted of the penises of men long dead.

Triumphant, the idol swarmed into the air to infect the whole world. She did not see that, but her daughter screamed. (The madam wrote a cross in the notebook.)

Now the boy was bold. He took her by the chin. — I said come with me.

Wherever I go, my daughter goes also. She's afraid without me.

Come with me.

She undid her necklace of heavy plates of dark silver — smooth, almost buttery to the touch; they rang on the glass floor. The daughter turned her back. Knowingly she played with the silhouettes that vanish behind walls. So the pretty sisters used to play, noiselessly, in the clay rooms of old Egypt, after their god-brothers had taken them to wife.

The boy was not a boy anymore. He leaned back smoking, so that the round stone of his ring rose into the world. Smoke came out his nose. Again the mother cooled him with mercury tears of silver on whitestone, while the daughter turned her back. His friend was leading them by arm and waist to the culmination at the stall of green-lit bones.

What's the young girl's name?

I won't tell you, Señor. She's nothing to do with you.

The daughter turned her back.

Do you both have minds? he said. The longer I'm with you, the more your minds elude me.

I have no mind, the woman said. Long ago I let my mind down beneath the trees.

Every time, he got older. The daughter turned her back. She played behind his white walls, soon to be brown with drying blood. Her mother became a transparent insect on the wall, its thorax glowing like an ironribbed lamp. He became a grand bone column hollowed out with bells. That was why the idol laughed.

Under the night she'll help you, the idol said. She and the young bitch.

He replied: It's always night.

When the daughter drew up against his shoulder, as if of her own accord, her shadow became longer than his. He reflected on his skull the soles of her feet.

Make the child sing, he said. Then I'll give her pesos and rubies. One ruby, anyhow. I have one ruby. Do you know what it's called?

For the last time, Señor, I beg you not to touch her. I insist on it.

I'll give her a ruby just to let her hair down! Imagine that! That's more than I ever gave you. Do you know what rubies are made of? In the end I'll get her, whore. She has no mind. .

On a night like a hooked obsidian knife, the mother in despair and fear whispered in his ear the Three Holy Names.

At once he thought he had the phosphorus to ignite the world.

He found the chapel of paper animals. The paper lion was the one who must not be touched. He saw the paper mountain which even the priest didn't see. It was a slender pyramid on the wall beside the altar. As he approached, it enlarged itself to infinitude. The priest screamed as he ran forward. (Others beneath the trees had screamed that way when he'd begun whipping himself.) He ran into the mountain and was gone.

The soldiers said that she was a bad woman. She prayed her way up the myriad white laces on their black boots. Her last words on the gallows were: He died as sweetly as a little lamb!

Sometimes this round hard world smells like sugarcones. Sometimes sorrow detonates in an explosion of parks and bells. Regardless waits the future like an ivory-handled pistol in a snakeskin belt.

As bell-strokes assembled the bones of the hours, the young girl grew taller. She lived on the stalks and rays of seashell-light. Already other girls circled her in the dance of red crabs around the drum. Gliding like a cat on marble, she parted the bars on windows. They called her the Red Song.

Your mother was a whore! the madam called out, and a hundred girls laughed.

I was born on a stone mountain crowned with trees, she said. I'm as clean as any woman's white blouse.

On a Sunday morning that smelled like cakes, a soldier came to see her. He undid his pale green skull-crown ruled by logic like the yellow scales and tiles of the cathedral-dome. A ruby was hidden in his hair. — From your mother, he said.

Then she knew she was ready. She put on her shoes that could dance across the sky. (She never awoke the sidewalk ache.) She outdid the fat girl with doll's eyes.

The madam squeezed her and said: Why don't you let your hair down beneath the trees? You have a good shape, you know; you're slender like a candle. Men have money. Take them; leave them as cold and clean as picked chicken-bones!

I don't know how, she replied.

Don't know how? Why, it's as easy as sucking a licuado up a straw!

I don't know how because I have a mind. Only girls without minds know how.

Ah, so your mother had no mind? I owned your mother and I'm going to own you. Just wait and see; you'll sing my song.

My mother had a mind, and I'm my own song.

Was your mother better than my mother? My mother worked so long in the corner stand that she became part of the magazines, nuts and candles! She had a better mind than God. Your mother had no mind, I tell you! And I'm going to rent out your smooth throat; I need money to warm me at night. .

My mother had a mind! I don't care what you say. She knew the Three Holy Names. And I do also, Sefiora, I warn you!

The madam departed. But there came the night when all girls must dance (the madam knew that). They dance on the zocalo and throw cigarettes from their bosoms. He who catches a cigarette grows lucky. But that's not all of it, because each girl also tosses one cigarette that she's kissed with her lipstick. Catch that, and she's yours.

The old madam stood waiting like a shadow on a rock. Once she too had thrown cigarettes to boys. (Her yellow tattooed breasts were the carven eggs of some extinct bird.) The idol flew down and brushed her like a musician's fringed black sleeve. The idol said: Under the night I'll help you. I'll help you rake away her mind.

The Red Song leaped up onto the plinth. The hot breeze lifted her purple skirt like the outer skin of an onion so that everyone could see her black and gold lace stockings. So many slender brown legs, dancing in red shoes, white shoes, black shoes! But the boys watched the Red Song. They wanted to buy a ticket for everything. Her belt of copper had a hundred little locks.

Whenever she danced, the idol threw confetti in everyone's hair. The other longhaired girls threw their cigarettes, but no one would catch them. Weeping, they hurled gold and silver necklaces, but these also fell unclaimed on the cobblestones, striking with noises like breaking glass. Just as the orange juice vendor draws his arm in to his naked chest, then jerks it down again so that his body shudders and the extractor shudders and golden droplets spray his chest, so the other girls flailed and shook until they'd spattered each other with sweat. Nobody wanted their juice.