James Cain - Serenade

“Yes.”

She just whispered it, but she drew it out like she always did, so the end of it was a long hiss. “... Just like the priest.”

My head began to pound like it would split. That was the crown of skunk cabbage, all right, after all the years at harmony, of sight-reading, of piano, of light opera, of grand opera in Italy, Germany and France — to be told by this Indian that couldn’t even read that I sounded like a priest. And it didn’t help any that that was just what I sounded like. The echo of my voice was still in my ears and there was no getting around it. It had the same wooden, dull quality that a priest’s voice has, without one particle of life in it, one echo that would make you like it.

My head kept pounding. I tried to think of something to say that would rip back at her, and couldn’t.

I got up, blew out all the candles but one, and took that one with me. I started up past the crucifix to cross over to the vestry room. She wasn’t at the crucifix. She was out in front of the altar. At the foot of the crucifix I saw something funny and held the candle to see what it was. It was three eggs, in a bowl. Beside them was a bowl of coffee and a bowl of ground corn. They hadn’t been there before. Did you ever hear of a Catholic putting eggs, coffee, and corn at the foot of the cross? No, and you never will. That’s how an Aztec treats a god.

I crossed over, and stood behind her, where she was crouched down, on her knees, her face touching the floor and her hands pressing down beside it. She was stark naked, except for a rebozo over her head and shoulders. There she was at last, stripped to what God put there. She had been sliding back to the jungle ever since she took off that first shoe, coming out of Taxco, and now she was right in it.

A white spot from the sacristy lamp kept moving back and forth, on her hip. A creepy feeling began to go up my back, and then my head began to pound again, like sledge hammers were inside of it. I blew out the candle, knelt down, and turned her over.

When it was over we lay there, panting. Whatever it was that she had done to me, that the rest of it had done to me, I was even. She got up and went back to the car. There was some rattling back there, and then I felt her coming back, and got up to meet her. I was getting used to the dark by then, and I saw the flash of a machete. She came in on a run, and when she was a couple of yards away she took a two-handed chop with it. I stepped back and it pulled her off balance. I stepped in, pinned her arms, and pressed my thumb against the back of her hand, right at the wrist. The knife fell on the floor. She tried to wriggle free. Mind you, neither one of us had a stitch on. I tightened with one arm, lifted her, carried her in the vestry room and closed both doors. Then I dumped her in the bed she had been in, piled in with her, and pulled up the covers. The fire still made a little glow, and I lit a cigarette and Ï smoked it, holding her with the other arm, then squashed it against the floor.

When she tired, I loosened up a little, to let her blow. Yes, it was rape, but only technical, brother, only technical. Above the waist, maybe she was worried about the sacrilegio , but from the waist down she wanted me, bad. There couldn’t be any doubt about that.

There couldn’t be any doubt about it, and it kind of put an end to the talk. We lay there, then, and I had another cigarette. I squashed it out, and from away off there came a rumble of thunder, just one. She wriggled into my arms, and next thing I knew it was daylight, and she was still there. She opened her eyes, closed them again, and came closer. Of course there wasn’t but one thing to do about that, so I did it. Next time I woke up I knew it must be late, because I was hungry as hell.

It rained all that day, and the next. We split up on the cooking after the first breakfast. I did the eggs and she did the tortillas, and that seemed to work better. I got the pot to boil at last by setting it right on the tiles without any plate, and it not only made it boil, but saved time. In between, though, there wasn’t much to do, so we did whatever appealed to us.

That afternoon of the second day it let up for about a half hour, and we slid down in the mud to have a look at the arroyo. It was a torrent. No chance of making Acapulco that night. We went up the hill and the sun came out plenty hot. When we got to the church the rocks back of it were alive with lizards. There was every size lizard you could think of, from little ones that were transparent like shrimps, to big ones three feet long. They were a kind of a blue gray, and moved so fast you could hardly follow them with your eyes. They leveled out with their tail, somehow, so they went over the rocks in a straight line, and almost seemed to fly. Looking at them you could believe it all right, that they turned into birds just by letting their scales grow into feathers. You could almost believe it that they were half bird already.

We climbed down and stood looking at them, when all of a sudden she began to scream. “Iguana! Iguana! Look, look, big iguana!”

I looked, and couldn’t see anything. Then, still as the rock it was lying on, and just about the color of it, I saw the evilest-looking thing I ever laid eyes on. It looked like some prehistoric monster you see in the encyclopedia, between two and three feet long, with a scruff of spines that started at its head and went clear down its back, and a look in its eye like something in a nightmare. She had grabbed up a little tree that had washed out by the roots, and was closing in on him. “What are you doing? Let that goddam thing alone!”

When I spoke he shot out for the next rock like something on springs, but she made a swipe and caught him in mid-air. He landed about ten feet away, with his yellow belly showing and all four legs churning him around in circles. She scrambled over, hit him again, and then she grabbed him. “Machete! Quick, bring machete!”

“Machete, hell, let him go I tell you!”

“Is iguana! We cook! We eat!”

“Eat! — that thing?”

“The machete, the machete!”

He was scratching her by that time, and if she wouldn’t let him go I wasn’t letting him make hash out of her. I dove in the church for the machete. But then some memory of this animal caught me. I don’t know whether it was something I had read in Cortés, or Diaz, or Martyr, or somebody, about how they cooked it when the Aztecs still ran Mexico, or some instinct I had brought away from Paris, or what. All I knew was that if we ever cut his head off he was going to be dead, and maybe that wouldn’t be right. I didn’t grab a machete. I grabbed a basket with a top on it, and dug out there with it. “The machete! The machete, give me machete!”

He had come to by now, and was fighting all he knew, but I grabbed him. The only place to grab him was in the belly on account of those spines on his back, and that put his claws right up your arm. She was bleeding up to her elbows and now it was my turn. Never mind how he felt and how he stunk. It was enough to turn your stomach. But I gave him the squeeze, shoved him head-down in the basket, and clapped the top on. Then I held it tight with both hands.

“Get some twine.”

“But the machete! Why no bring—”

“Never mind. I’m doing this. Twine — string — that the things were tied with.”

I carried him in, and she got some twine, and I tied the top on tight. Then I set him down and tried to think. She didn’t make any sense out of it, but she let me alone. In a minute I fed up the fire, took the pot out and filled it with water. It had started to rain again. I came in and put the pot on to heat. It took a long while. Inside the basket those claws were ripping at the wicker, and I wondered if it would hold.