William Vollmann - The Atlas

Desperate in the darkness, he snatched the idol's coin back, clenched it between his teeth and bit it until it burst and one more peso spurted out. Then she led him to the chapel of paper animals. He became the paper lion.

When a woman's head rides a man's heaving shoulder, there's a certain dark bird carved in lava that screeches. That sound the idol always hears; there's no escape. The idol flew down between the Red Song's breasts and said to her: He stole everything. Every night now until you die, you'll have to let your hair down beneath the trees.

The boy did not hear. So proudly and joyfully he watched the turquoise earrings still trembling at the edges of her dark face, the pale, downcurving fingernail of light below her eye, the other crescent, very tiny, just under her lower lip. Yawning, he waited for the darkness between her eyelashes to widen. Her ruby glittered on his tongue. Then he swallowed it.

The Red Song pushed him away from between her breasts. (His head was the idol's head.) He stared with sleepy eyes. She said to him: I know I have no mind. I'm nothing but a pair of buttocks. I heard you say that. And you, your mind lies under the night! Where's my ruby?

The boy smiled abashed and said: I threw it in the river.*

You have no mind! she cried. You're only a child who wanted ice cream in the shivering of the bells.

With sunny hair and spider-legs, the idol came to drink down her frothy hair. She did not see, but the boy did. The idol said to him: She claims that you have no mind! She means to eat your mind! You'll be darkness if you stay with her.

The Red Song sobbed out: You have no mind. And you made me bleed for your mind's sake.

Just as the beggar-woman jerks her baby awake upon the rich man's approach, so the idol woke the boy's anger, which was a little idol clutching and scratching at the grilles on the window of his heart, the grilles like square gold claws. So long she'd tormented him! His anger was the matador's silver dagger hidden always behind the red cloth.

You have a mind… he said, trying yet to love her.

Sitting beside him on a monument wall, she drew her knees under her armpits like a grasshopper and said: You have no mind.

His anger lurched the way that when you have a fever the flowers on the curtains crawl nauseatingly. He shouted into her face the Three Holy Names. (Everyone knows them.)

Her lips opened. She saw the paper animals. Her ruby was in the paper lion's mouth. She sat for a moment like a naked statue bronzily balancing on air. Then her dark head fell down upon his snow-white shirt.

At noon they tolled the half-spent day until the shadows of terrified pigeons darkened the plaza like rain. They fired the cannon as pigeon-wings seethed like steam. Then came the chanting procession of whores: women and children, two girls ahead bearing the Red Song's dress which was petalled like a sunflower, then six bearing a wreathed coffin, then the ladies in the back bowing beneath their parasols. At the very back came the madam, longing for the cathedral's smoky shade. By Maria, how her blood was simmering! But, her notebook open, she marched ready as ever for business. She followed her girls between the walls of waiting men. Men watched hoping for a stare of black, black lace. They'd forgotten the Red Song already, even though her ankles had never been like other girls' pale yellow ankles; their lust remained alive in just the way a fat girl's breasts strain for joy when she breathes. The madam smiled on them kindly. Resurrected, the soda girl sold orange fizz. The girls continued happy, she thought; they bore the Red Song lightly toward the church. No one knew she lay still bleeding in that coffin. Pale and swollen, she bled through her copper belt's hundred locks; the blood kept coming out until she floated up against the lid. So loudly did the pallbearers sing for the good of her soul that they did not hear her horrid sloshing. But at last blood began to ooze between the hinges of the coffin. For a moment longer it hid itself among her red roses. Then it jetted like the juice of pressed grapes. The six girls' shoulders were soaked with the dark black blood. They dropped the coffin and scattered into screams.

But the madam knew blood in the way that ice cream vendors handle dry ice with bare fingers, underawed by its steaming. She called her whores back. She pulled a withered cigarette from her blouse and threw it into the sewer. Then, gathering them around the lake of blood in which the coffin now floated, joining them hand in hand as they stood upon the cobblestones (circled more largely by the armies of waiting men), she said:

Whenever it rains, the red paint on the cathedral dome runs like blood. Blood goes where the shit goes, bleeding down our white restaurants that darkness eats like layer cakes. Blood goes down to the place where ancient ceramics turn brown in the earth. Listen to blood, my little nieces! Women know that blood's always being made-blood sings the red song! Even when the day's as white as the sunlight on the skull of that Indian lady selling plates, blood bleeds secretly from the gums of old men, from the throats of slaughtered cattle, from the prisoners' wounds, from between your legs, you women! Even in our cemetery whose skeletons are stuffed with bottles and trash, the hulks of switchboxes under dead traffic lights, the dust of old blood sifts out of bones. Blood's the song of rubies. Blood's the only song. Blood's as natural as a dead dog in the street.

* In 1992, a hundred fifty thousand pesos was about U.S. $50.

* Mexico City slang: to go to the river = to engage in cunnilingus.

Now Eleazar went down to the Elders, for all Rome, as it seemed, had come against them to take Masada. 2And the Elders were glad of his coming, and the Rabbis also resorted to him, for upon their hearts were shadows darker than the Dead Sea. 3And the fighters lifted their eyes and watched his passing. 4Then they turned their heads to study once again how the Roman armies did draw slowly closer. 5And the Elders awaited Eleazar on the middle terrace of Herod's northern palace where it was cold and shady and sandy. 6(But the women waited with the little ones where the pale rock had been hollowed out into ritual baths.)

7 And Eleazar said: Have you heard the news from Jerusalem?

8 And the Elders said: We saw a spy come to you, and the spy was weeping.

9 Eleazar said: Jerusalem is perished, and we alone are left of the Jewish nation. 10The Temple is no more.

11 Then the Elders burst into lamentation and rent their clothes in pieces, and their hearts were overthrown with sorrow. 12And the women listened, but could not hear the cause, so they crouched in silence, waiting to learn whether they should scream.

13 And Eleazar said: 'Tis well that we've repaired this old stronghold, and increased our walls towards Heaven, and bolted our gates with the strongest bolts. 14Because now the conquerors of Jerusalem turn to us. 15And belike they are saying to one another: This Masada is but a tomb that the Jews have built for themselves.

16 And the eyes of Eleazar were as sinister cavities. 17And a craven man who'd drunk of fear went rushing toward the women's place, and no one said him nay. 18The others sat on, and waited until they heard the women begin to scream.

19 Then Eleazar said: Now the worst is told. 20But even if Jerusalem is finished, still we have our Laws. 21And Masada is our rock of honor. 22In Herodium and Machaerus a few brave comrades hold out. 23Remain of good heart. 24I shall lead you until the end. 25And perhaps we can prevail even now, for who knows what the Lord has written?