Conrad Aiken - A Heart for the Gods of Mexico

An enormous white butterfly — preposterous — went by, on soft, slow wings — it was like the leisurely waving of a handkerchief. These tropics certainly did things in a big way. Over the red palace of Cortez, on the far side of the square, the clouds had become of an unbelievable purple — there could be no doubt that they meant business, and soon. Not that anybody minded. The hubbub went on just the same; Indian boys on shiny new bicycles rode round and round the square, bumping in and out of the dusty holes, and displaying a positive genius for falling off. A blind beggar, with white slits for eyes, and as evil a face as he ever had seen, was led into the café, and out again, by a frightened little girl. A starved dog with a broken back, the hind quarters twisted, dragged itself crookedly to the little parapet of flowerpots by the entrance, and lay there, mutely begging. No attention was paid to it. The eyes, tender and trusting, beseeching, were enough to break one’s heart; and when at last it gave up hope, and began to drag itself away, it heaved such a sigh of pure and beaten despair as ought rightly to have ended the world. He watched its pitifully slow progress all along the side of the darkening square, towards the palace, and then out of sight round a corner. He felt quite sure that it was going away to die; that sigh could have meant nothing else. And it was an indictment of mankind. Or of God? It came to the same thing.… Meanwhile, the Bach-bird had again broken out into song, fought its way up that furious contrapuntal cataract of glittering and savage semitones, made once more the final leap of triumph. And just then, round the very corner where the little dog had disappeared, Hambo came into sight, in the dusk, walking slowly with his tall forked stick, for all the world like St. Christopher. The swimming pool had given him lumbago; and the forked stick had been borrowed from one of the rose trees in the garden. Good-natured and solemn, the fringe of blond beard making the round face look a little odd, he approached self-consciously and shyly.

“It’s going to rain like hell,” he said. “I see you found it.”

“Yes, I found it.”

“I’m not sure we oughtn’t to get back pretty soon, you know — it’s late, and it goes dark suddenlike, and when it rains here, it rains. Not to mention lightning. Also, I didn’t as a matter of fact like to leave Gil and Noni alone in the house, not speaking any Spanish — Noni doesn’t seem very well, does she? It seemed to me that Gil was a little worried. And there’s this goddamned fiesta on, you know, San Manuel, with a marimba band in the house across the road, and everybody drunk — they’re making a hell of a row, and usually it means trouble. Christ, yes, the gardener’s woman — Pablo, the gardener, you know — just came reeling up the drive and flung her arms around my neck and kissed me. She was drunk, of course.”

“Has Noni got up yet?”

“No, she’s still in bed, I think. I haven’t seen her. I was thinking, you know, that if she’s ill, that row must upset her. And they’ll keep it up all night. They always do. And Pablo will get pretty drunk, too.”

“Is there a good doctor here?”

“There’s a funny little Mexican fellow, who’s quite good — he mostly treats the soldiers in the barracks for syphilis, you know — an army doctor, but good. I hope it’s nothing serious?”

“I think I ought to tell you that it is , but that Noni doesn’t want Gil to know. It’s her heart.”

“Oh.”

“Which makes it very awkward.”

“It does! Yes.”

“So that about all we can do is wait and see. I don’t like to send for a doctor, or urge Noni to let me send for one, until I get my cue from her — but of course, if things took a turn for the worse, I would.”

“I see.”

Hambo protruded his lower jaw, bared his lower teeth in a grin of embarrassed preoccupation, hissed through them softly. He tipped the little glass of pale tequila into the tumbler of cracked ice, squeezed half a green lime into it with awkward fingers. He said, sidelong:

“I’m afraid, by Jesus, I haven’t been very helpful. I bring her the glad news that the divorce is going to take months instead of weeks, and cost twice as much as she thought — and provide a house full of scorpions, with beds that not even a Chinaman could sleep in. And worst of all, I drag her over the mountains at midnight, after she’s been three and a half days without sleep, instead of taking her straight to a hotel. I really thought, you know, that you fellows would like to get it over with, get out here and get settled, instead of having the trouble of digging yourselves into a hotel and then out again. Besides, the hotels in Mexico City are god-awful holes, and there’s nothing to see there anyway. Only churches. But I guess I was a damned fool.… Will you try a tequila ?”

“It wasn’t your fault at all. It was nobody’s.… Yes I will.”

He had a tequila, and another, and a third; he thought they tasted a good deal like prohibition alcohol. The approaching storm had formed an immense purple-black canopy over the city, and against it now the electric lights showed an uncanny and brilliant white. In the tall eucalyptus trees over the illuminated fountain — or were they a kind of laurel? — hundreds of large birds were quarreling and screaming, darting to and fro as meaninglessly as the small boys on their bicycles. Hambo was talking about the niño —an insect like a cricket, he said, only paler in color — Pablo, the gardener, had brought him one, holding it up by one of its antennas, and tickling the sting in its tail with a stick — and it was so deadly poisonous, yes, that there was no known antidote for it. Your throat swelled up until you died of suffocation. Suffocation, yes. The scorpions were quite easy — though every night it was as well to have a look around, knock them off the ceiling. Then there were the salamancescas , the little lizards with red pouches under their throats; beautiful little things; you would see them sitting on the rosetrees — deadly poison too—

“My God, everything here seems poisonous!”

“You never said a truer word, Blomberg. Nature red in tooth and claw. The ants here would as soon as not pick your eyes out while you sleep. And as for the Indians — here comes the rain.”

A surge of wind over the tall trees announced its coming, a quick wrinkle, of lightning, succeeded almost instantly by a stinging crash of thunder, and at once the rain was falling in a massive downpour, as if it had been raining forever. Across the little side street, the cannon-shaped waterspouts along the eaves of the Café San Marco poured solid round streams of water in a series of loud cataracts on to the sidewalk. The proprietor, in shirt sleeves, a toothpick in his mouth, stared gloomily across at them from his table, very cross-eyed; he looked like a brigand. Hambo nodded towards him, and said:

“Quite a nice chap, though he doesn’t look it. His daughter was one of the waitresses here, until she got pregnant. And even then! In fact, I began to be worried about it.… If we stand at the entrance, we can signal a taxi. I don’t think we’d better walk. There’s a taxi sitio just up the line, and they may see us.”

He stood on the step, waving his ridiculous stick, and grinning, and sure enough in no time at all they were in a smart and glittering but dripping taxi, had plunged down the precipitous road towards the bridge over the gorge, but instead had then turned to the right below the palace, and had slowly crept along the bumpy road which led out of town into the wilderness. They had passed the row of little shops; a bare wooden dinner table set out in the street, covered with empty bottles; a tethered goat; a drunk leaning back helplessly against a white wall.