Conrad Aiken - A Heart for the Gods of Mexico

But he turned abruptly, and looked back, and there they were: it was true: Noni with her knees drawn up on the seat, lying on her side, her head pillowed in a folded coat against the window sill, the small white hand half-folded beneath her chin, the eyes closed but conscious: and opposite her, across the aisle, the top of Gil’s head, tipped at an angle, the thin tawny hair disarrayed in sleep, showing above the next chair back. Noni was pale, and the eyes, behind the closed eyelids, were thinking. The hand, too, was conscious. She knew the train, she knew the night, in its half-sleep her whole body was aware of the violent magic of time and place which was affronting them, and in its own subtle rhythmical oscillation, half submissive and half reluctant, it made its awareness manifest. With her eyes closed, she was living time, feeling it and taking it, this minute and the next and the next, this hour, this transit, this speed, and all the complications of texture with which they were woven. Her knees, under Gil’s raincoat, the green plush chair back, the two punched ticket vouchers which the conductor had ingeniously wedged in the parallel thumbholds of the window shade, the dimmed lights in a row along the bronze ceiling of the hurrying car, the ever varying sound of the wheels, singing and throbbing beneath them, the weight now thrown to one side now to the other, sudden staccatos of rattles as they clattered over a crossing, and the hard resonant rails now seeming to groove musically upwards almost into one’s body, then to withdraw again, until one felt effortless and ethereal, swung in a circle on the lightest of cords, out into space itself — all this he could see her knowing, even now, almost as if she were saying it aloud to him. All this, and how much more! Noni on the great circle to Mexico, taking her heart as an offering to the bloodstained altar of the plumed serpent, alive now between Gil and himself, and looking with closed face at both of them — her face, closed like a flower, but ready to open as soon as the sun shone — and this, too, she knew and waited for, the sun that was already pursuing them westward across the dark rondure of the turning world. Presently the first ray would leap up over the curve of the earth’s surface, leap after and overtake them, shoot beyond them into the waiting west. St. Louis, the unknown Mississippi River, magnificent red aorta of a rank continent, the Bayous, Missouri, Texas.…

He turned away from the defenseless face, with the firm little mouth and fringed eyes, and closed his own eyes only to open them again. Lucky unconscious Gil, the poor lamb! But let him sleep. Let the poor devil sleep. For him, even more perhaps than for himself and Noni, a bad time was coming, all the misery of awakening that comes to the unconscious. Suspicious he might be, just a little — surely, however, no more than that — and everything had been so gay, so good — the reading of the absurd guidebook, with its atrocious style, which Gil had found so amusing, and the names, and Noni’s mad description of the floods in the Connecticut valley — and then, suddenly, Albany and the long platform, and the attempt to buy a drinking cup for the whisky. Of the whisky Gil had seemed a little disapproving. A little stiff. Maybe just the idea of drinking it so unashamedly in public, out of paper cups — handing the bottle over the chair back — he had given Noni a quick and queer look when she first took it out of the hatbox — but afterwards, in the diner, as they sped in the gathering darkness along the Erie Canal— Schenectady, Utica, Syracuse, Rome —how magical the time change had been, with its bizarre marriage of present and past! Red and green lights of barges on the dark water, the dim towpath, a woman hanging washing on the stern deck in the twilight, a cat beside her, Noni telling about the cry of “Low Bridge!” with which in the old days the helmsman warned his crew, and everywhere the wonderfully fertile country with its fantastic baroque suburban houses, huge filigreed and porticoed façades, like the County Street houses of the Victorian period in New Bedford. He closed his eyes again, and all the voices rose in a chorus, rose all at once — here’s to the bride, here’s to the groom — here’s to the best man — there’s nothing like getting divorced and married in the same place — when you do that, it takes —but who said we had to change at Galion, there’s nothing about it — well, we’re off to Clixl Claxl, Ixl Oxl, and Popocatepetl — that’s where Hart Crane went, just before he drowned himself in the Caribbean — they say it’s a death country, a murder country, and the buzzards—

He opened his eyes to see the tall conductor leaning over him, one hand on the corner of the seat, looking for the voucher — it was the conductor for the new section, different, but generically the same. The dried leather face, pallid and ascetic, tall and stooped.

“Change at Galion.”

“How long do we have to wait there.”

“The St. Louis train will be waiting for you. Through train to St. Louis.”

“Thanks. Will somebody let us know, or wake us—”

“You don’t need to worry. The brakeman will put you off.”

“Thank you.”

Galion, at four-forty. A head had turned, a bland face, the figure was rising, approaching.

“Did I hear you say you were going to Galion?”

“No — we change there, for St. Louis—”

“Because I used to be a citizen of Galion—”

“Is that so — no, we only change there—”

“In fact I was born there, but I haven’t been there for a long time and I thought maybe I might have found a fellow citizen—”

“No, I’m sorry—”

“Well, not at all—”

The heavy figure lurched along the aisle to the ice-water tap, swayed as it bent to extract a cup, filled the cup and drank. A citizen of Galion. But what was Galion? Galion, Galion, Galion. The whistle cried mournfully into the night, cried again; far ahead on the long train, with all its Pullman cars full of sleeping people, the lost voice could be heard, as the engine sped blindly, cometlike, through the night. Ohio, Indiana, Illinois —even now the pioneers were crossing these in their covered wagons, building their homesteads, their snake fences against the snow, laying the broadax to the foot of the tree, felling the savage forests. But what home now was here, what home for Noni? A spiritual drought only, an unconquered and savage land, a bloodsucking land, which had slowly but surely taken the souls from the people who lived upon it. The wilderness was coming back, here as in the Berkshires the melancholy waste would return, the towns would be invaded by marching trees, grass would grow over the doorsill. There was no home here, could never be, it was as well that Noni would only pause here, in the dark, to change from one motion to another, touch the alien earth only in transit.

The book had slid from his knee to the floor, slid from darkness into light, and with it himself from sleep to waking. Rising with it, he turned and saw that Noni’s eyes were open, that she was smiling. Smiling sleepily and peacefully. He got up, went to her softly, leaned over her. She put her fingers to her lips, motioning towards Gil.

“Asleep!” she whispered.

“Yes, and why aren’t you!”

“How much time.”

Her eyes fluttered, didn’t quite focus on his own, the pupils were wide and dark, near but unseeing, she was barely conscious.

“Lots. Hours, Noni. The brakeman’s going to call us.”

“Oh.”

“Do you want anything. A drink of water.”

“No.”

“All right, then; go to sleep!”

The blue eyes fluttered and closed, opened, then closed again. Perhaps now she would really sleep, really let go and be taken downward — he straightened up, giving the raincoat on her knee a pat, looked along the aisle of the deserted car, turned and saw Gil’s open mouth, his hand crumpled against his cheek, the loose head nodding with the motion of the train, the spectacles folded on the window sill. Sleep, that knits up the raveled sleeve — but not this sleep, not this, by God, nor any such sleeve as this! For what was at work even now in Noni’s golden head—?