William Vollmann - The Atlas

The idol was gone. The boy's arm slipped, hard and brown, around the Red Song's neck, cutting her hair in two.

He walked her quickly past the National Palace, where less lucky men stood in front, raising sheets tied to two sticks, two men to a stick, red flags and umbrellas and bullhorns, dust, a man selling Pop-sicles; the sheets said: GIVE US THE RED SONG. He walked her between the hedges of the Alameda, his smile in her eyes, his hand on her neck. (He was as gaudily unstable as the colored parasols in the park.) He craved the way she could grab handfuls of her blouse and offer it to the breeze.

Red Song, show me your little ruby this night.

I have no ruby. I only have a mind.

The round lamps came on as fragrantly yellow as lemons, hovering among the trees. The hurdy-gurdy attendant, attired like a sixteen-star general, cranked the air full of sweetness. The fountains jetted their eternal orgasms. Suddenly the attendant's identically uniformed triple-secret double marched to the boy and asked to be paid. The boy's heart vomited. He did not pay, because he needed every peso for the Red Song. The man went away whispering: You listened, but you did not pay. You stole the fruit of my mind.

The wet statues in the fountain had become as black as whaleskin. Everyone took ease in the benches that bound the nested circles of cobblestones whose center the fountains owned. Couples promenaded in step. There was still enough light to gleam on the backs of the women's high heels. But now it got dark quite suddenly, like tolling bells.

The boy swallowed and said again: Red Song, please let me take your ruby, your pretty little ruby. .

Across the street, the madam opened her notebook.

I have no ruby! the Red Song cried.

But across the street the madam smiled, reached into her stony bosom, pulled out a cigarette, a shining cigarette.

Then the Red Song swayed and said: Give me a million in silver and gold.

The boy grasped her fiercely. — You swear?

I swear I'll show you my ruby. But I'll never show you my mind.

The idol was not gone. The idol was the tooth in the dark ceiling, the little child at table whom others must serve. The next night was as dark as the inside of a woman's skirt. Behind wide yellow crosswalk-lines the Red Song stood waiting. The musicians blew their silver trumpets; other whores breathed the Red Song's breath, hoping to steal beauty's luck. Already he'd leaped the cemetery wall, and his new friend, his old friend, brought the spade and was gone. (The idol was not gone. The idol was young earrings in an old woman's face.) Now the boy dug deeper than fungus and urine-smelling dirt. Guided by the light of scarlet worms, he opened sleep's barred windows. His shoveltip rang! He'd struck her mother's skeleton, sounded the long curve of the silver bird's neck veined with shadows, spangled with light!

He boiled the money clean: gray coins, yellow coins, he scraped out their maggoty marrow. A million pesos! — smooth and wet, incised with numbers and naked women. As soon as he'd heaped them into the Red Song's arms, the soda girl screamed with envy and stabbed herself in the breast, the musicians played all their tunes at once, the madam sprouted new teeth to lengthen her grin; and then the Red Song took the boy's hand. They went off together.

Now she let him touch the flowers that fringed her underchemise. He undid white ribbons and lace, white sashes like weeds around her ankles. Ruffles struggled at her shoulders like wings. He touched the buttons that went down her back. Each rang with its own note. Slender like a candle, she began to let down her hair. Then she pinned it up again. That much the madam had taught her — oh, the madam had a mind! — I ask but a thousand more, the Red Song said. The million is for the madam. The thousand, ah, the little thousand is for me.

The next night was as dark as the dirt beneath a corpse's fingernails. Her mother having now been stripped, he went to his mother and sang to her of his death, squeezed a thousand pesos' worth of tears from her eyes. His mother wept: All for your amiga, your little amiga — how she's stolen your mind!

Outside the house the Red Song stood waiting. The madam was not there, but one man in red livery beat the silver drum. The boy came running out with liquid silver scalding his cupped hands, and the drummer smashed the drum in a single stroke of triumph. Now the boy baptized the Red Song with those tears which cooled and became sacred as they rolled down her hair, becoming not pearl but mother-of-pearl — shell-coins engraved with numerals and mermaids. Once she was thoroughly studded with these precious beads, she sat herself up on a wall so that her face was as high as his face. He put his hands on the wall, one on either side of her. (Already up her dress, his fingers were families advancing on their knees across the Basilica's marble floor, the little children not knowing how to balance themselves.) Rending the calm gold darkness, he played her breast like a dark hand stroking a guitar as she locked her legs around him. His head fell forward into his dreams. Her hands stroked his back; her arms pulled him closer. Their kisses rang beneath their heels as they hurried to the idol's altar; their kisses were tiles like cream, tiles like cream in coffee; tiles like custard. — But I'll beg you for a hundred more, she whispered. The thousand is for new ribbons. The hundred, ah, only the little hundred is for me.

The next night was as dark as an Indian woman's hair. For the little hundred nothing attended her — not even the spastic grin of a redfaced trumpeteer. The boy no longer knew how to appease her demands, but another skull gazed into a skull-shaped pot still faintly spiraled with ocher; the other skull was his new friend, his old friend, who served him lust on spiderwebbed plates of black slate. The Red Song waited. He tiptoed past the sorrowful shadow of her tanned cheek, past the softly resigned look of the sleeping woman's mouth.

In the Alameda his dear friend called helpers: frogmasked, kiln-baked women with spread legs. For him they quickly caught a hundred pesos in crickets. Why sell their songs? This live money was precious, being sought by every soft brown hand heavy with rings. He came back guided by the light of marble on her cheekbones. Hopping onto her sleeping belly, they became obsidian counters carved with hieroglyphs and scowling slant-eyed girls. The Red Song woke smiling. As soon as she'd caressed those smooth black counters of preciousness, she stood up and took his hand.

She took him down the tunnel of fingernails between two churches windowed with dripping eyelashes. Following those ants which resemble triple beads of amber, she led him down blueflower-tiled stairs, down dark stone stairs guarded by moonmaned iron monsters, square-tongued gargoyles, down into the cave-smell beneath the rock-lobed ceiling, and her tongue thrust inside his mouth, dripping with saliva that burned like lemon juice. Then she brought him to the place like the twining roots of shadow on a trumpet's bowl, like the white grooves of dress shirts between black-suited shoulders. — Now give me just ten pesos more, she said in his ear. The hundred you gave me is nothing. Ten pesos, ah, ten little pesos is less than nothing, just a ghost to keep nothing good company.

The night was as dark as a beetle's belly. He held out his hand in the darkness, and the idol put ten pesos in it. So she led him to a deep chamber in the earth, where the idol's skeleton with its jade deathmask lay inside an immense sepulcher of white stones, the corner slab inscribed with designs. Then she let down her hair. — One peso more is all I ask, said the Red Song. A single peso, not even for me. It's only the ten pesos that asks it.