William Vollmann - The Atlas

What's her secret? they shrieked.

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.

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.

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.

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.