Richard Brautigan - The Abortion - An Historical Romance 1966

‘Well, I guess we’d better go,’ I said.

‘I’m ready,’ Vida said.

The ghost of the dead mother watched us as we left. She was sitting on the bed knitting a ghost thing.

I don’t like San Diego. We walked the few blocks to the Greyhound bus depot. There were baskets of flowers hanging from the light posts.

There was almost a small town flavour to San Diego that morning except for the up-all-night tired sailors or just-starting-out sailors walking along the streets.

The Greyhound bus depot was jammed with people and games of amusement and vending machines and there were more Mexicans in the bus depot than on the streets of San Diego. It was almost as if the bus depot were the Mexican part of town.

Vida’s body, perfect face and long lightning hair performed their customary deeds among the men in the bus depot, causing a thing that was just short of panic.

‘Well,’ I said.

Vida replied with a silence.

The bus to Tijuana left every fifteen minutes and cost sixty cents. There were a lot of Mexican men in the line wearing straw and cowboy hats in sprawled laziness to Tijuana.

A jukebox was playing square pop tunes from the time that I had gone into the library. It was strange to hear those old songs again.

There was a young couple waiting for the bus in front of us. They were very conservative in dress and manner and seemed to be awfully nervous and bothered and trying hard to hold on to their composure.

There was a man standing in the line, holding a racing form under his arm. He was old with dandruff on the lapels and shoulders of his coat and on his racing form.

I had never been to Tijuana before but I had been to a couple of other border towns: Nogales and Juarez. I didn’t look forward to Tijuana.

Border towns are not very pleasant places. They bring out the worst in both countries, and everything that is American stands out like a neon sore in border towns.

I noticed the middle-aged people, growing old, that you always see in crowded bus depots but never in empty ones. They exist only in numbers and seem to live in crowded bus depots. They all looked as if they were enjoying the old records on the jukebox.

One Mexican man was carrying a whole mess of stuff in a Hunt’s tomato sauce box and in a plastic bread wrapper. They seemed to be his possessions and he was going home with them to Tijuana.

As we drove the short distance to Tijuana it was not a very pleasant trip. I looked out the window to see that there was no wing on the bus, no coffee stain out there. I missed it.

San Diego grew very poor and then we were on a freeway. The country down that way is pretty nothing and not worth describing.

Vida and I were holding hands. Our hands were together in our hands as our real fate moved closer to us. Vida’s stomach was flat and perfect and it was going to remain that way.

Vida looked out the window at what is not worth describing, but even more so and done in cold cement freeway language. She didn’t say anything.

The young conservative couple sat like frozen beans in their seats in front of us. They were really having a bad time of it. I pretty much guessed why they were going to Tijuana.

The man whispered something to the woman. She nodded without saying anything. I thought she was going to start crying. She bit her lower lip.

I looked down from the bus into cars and saw things in the back seats. I tried hard not to look at the people but instead to look at the things in the back seats. I saw a paper bag, three coat hangers, some flowers, a sweater, a coat, an orange, a paper bag, a box, a dog.

‘We’re on a conveyer belt,’ Vida said.

‘It’s easier this way,’ I said. ‘It will be all right. Don’t worry.’

‘I know it will be all right,’ she said. ‘But I wish we were there. Those people in front of us are worse than the idea of the abortion.’

The man started to whisper something to the woman, who continued staring straight ahead, and Vida turned and looked out the window at the nothing leading to Tijuana.

The border was a mass of cars coming and going in excitement and confusion to pass under an heroic arch into Mexico. There was a sign that said something like: WELCOME TO TIJUANA THE MOST VISITED CITY IN THE WORLD.

I had a little trouble with that one.

We just walked across the border into Mexico. The Americans didn’t even say good-bye and we were suddenly in a different way of doing things.

First there were Mexican guards wearing those.45 calibre automatic pistols that Mexicans love, checking the cars going into Mexico.

Then there were other men who looked like detectives standing along the pedestrian path to Mexico. They didn’t say a word to us, but they stopped two people behind us, a young man and woman, and asked them what nationality they were and they said Italian.

‘We’re Italians.’

I guess Vida and I looked like Americans.

The arch, besides being heroic, was beautiful and modem and had a nice garden with many fine river rocks in the garden, but we were more interested in getting a taxi and went to a place where there were many taxis.

I noticed that famous sweet acrid dust that covers Northern Mexico. It was like meeting a strange old friend again.

‘TAXI!’

‘TAXI!’

‘TAXI!’

The drivers were yelling and motioning a new supply of gringos towards them.

‘TAXI!’

‘TAXI!’

‘TAXI!’

The taxis were typically Mexican and the drivers were shoving them like pieces of meat. I don’t like people to try and use the hard sell on me. I’m not made for it.

The conservative young couple came along, looking very frightened, and got into a taxi and disappeared towards Tijuana that lay flat before us and then sloped up into some hazy yellow poor-looking hills with a great many houses on them.

The air was beginning electric with the hustle for the Yankee dollar and its biblical message. The taxi drivers seemed to be endless like flies trying to get you into their meat for Tijuana and its joys.

‘Hey, beau-ti-ful girl and BE-atle! Get in!’ a driver yelled at us. ‘Beatle?’ I said to Vida. ‘Is my hair that long?’

’It is a little long,’ Vida said, smiling.

‘Hey, BE-atle and hey, beauty!’ another driver yelled.

There was a constant buzzing of TAXII TAXI! TAXI! Suddenly everything had become speeded up for us in Mexico. We were now in a different country, a country that just wanted to see our money.

‘TAXI!’

‘TAXI!’

(Wolf whistle.)

‘BE-atle!’

‘TAXI!’

‘HEY! THERE!’

‘TAXI!’

‘TIJUANA!’

‘SHE’S GOOD-LOOKING!’

‘TAXI!’

(Wolf-whistle.)

‘TAXI!’

‘TAXI!’

‘SENORITA! SENORITA! SENORITA!’

‘HEY, BEATLEI TAXI!’

And then a Mexican man walked quietly up to us. He seemed a little embarrassed. He was wearing a business suit and was about forty years old.

‘I have a car,’ he said. ‘Would you like a ride downtown? It’s right over there.’

It was a ten-year-old Buick, dusty, but well kept up and seemed to want us to get into it.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘That would be very nice.’

The man looked all right, just wanting to be helpful, so it seemed. He didn’t look as if he were selling anything.

‘It’s right over here,’ he repeated, to show that the car was something that he took pride in owning.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

We walked over to his car. He opened the door for us and then went around and got in himself.

‘It’s noisy here,’ he said, as we started driving the mile or less to Tijuana. ‘Too much noise.’