by Jane Bowles
"I wish to heaven," she said to herself, "that he would come and carry me out of this kiosk." She sat idly watching the boys playing in the dirt in front of the convent. One of them was a good deal taller than the others. As she watched their games, her head slumped forward and she fell asleep.
No tourists came, so the smaller boys decided to go over to the main square and meet the buses, to sell their lollipops and picture postcards. The oldest boy announced that he would stay behind.
"You're crazy," they said to him. "Completely crazy."
He looked at them haughtily and did not answer. They ran down the road, screaming that they were going to earn a thousand quetzales.
He had remained behind because for some time he had noticed that there was someone in the kiosk. He knew even from where he stood that it was a woman because he could see that her dress was brightly colored like a flower garden. She had been sitting there for a long time and he wondered if she were not dead.
"If she is dead," he thought, "I will carry her body all the way into town." The idea excited him and he approached the pavilion with bated breath. He went inside and stood over Señora Ramirez, but when he saw that she was quite old and fat and obviously the mother of a good rich family he was frightened and all his imagination failed him. He thought he would go away, but then he decided differently, and he shook her foot. There was no change. Her mouth, which had been open, remained so, and she went on sleeping. The boy took a good piece of the flesh on her upper arm between his thumb and forefinger and twisted it very hard. She awakened with a shudder and looked up at the boy, perplexed.
His eyes were soft.
"I awakened you," he said, "because I have to go home to my house, and you are not safe here. Before, there was a man here in the bandstand trying to look under your skirt. When you are asleep, you know, people just go wild. There were some drunks here too, singing an obscene song, standing on the ground, right under you. You would have had red ears if you had heard it. I can tell you that." He shrugged his shoulders and spat on the floor. He looked completely disgusted.
"What is the matter?" Señora Ramirez asked him.
"Bah! This city makes me sick. I want to be a carpenter in the capital, but I can't. My mother gets lonesome. All my brothers and sisters are dead."
"Ay!" said Señora Ramirez. "How sad for you! I have a beautiful house in the capital. Maybe my husband would let you be a carpenter there, if you did not have to stay with your mother."
The boy's eyes were shining.
"I'm coming back with you," he said. "My uncle is with my mother."
"Yes," said Señora Ramirez. "Maybe it will happen."
"My sweetheart is there in the city," he continued. "She was living here before."
Señora Ramirez took the boy's long hand in her own. The word sweetheart had recalled many things to her.
"Sit down, sit down," she said to him. "Sit down here beside me. I too have a sweetheart. He's in his room now."
"Where does he work?"
"In the United States."
"What luck for you! My sweetheart wouldn't love him better than she loves me, though. She wants me or simply death. She says so any time I ask her. She would tell the same thing to you if you asked her about me. It's the truth."
Señora Ramirez pulled him down onto the bench next to her. He was confused and looked out over his shoulder at the road. She tickled the back of his hand and smiled up at him in a coquettish manner. The boy looked at her and his face seemed to weaken.
"You have blue eyes," he said.
Señora Ramirez could not wait another minute. She took his head in her two hands and kissed him several times full on the mouth.
"Oh, God!" she said. The boy was delighted with her fine clothes, her blue eyes, and her womanly ways. He took Señora Ramirez in his arms with real tenderness.
"I love you," he said. Tears filled his eyes, and because he was so full of a feeling of gratitude and kindness, he added: "I love my sweetheart and I love you too."
He helped her down the steps of the kiosk, and with his arm around her waist he led her to a sequestered spot belonging to the convent grounds.
The traveler was lying on his bed, consumed by a feeling of guilt. He had again spent the night with Señora Ramirez, and he was wondering whether or not his mother would read this in his eyes when he returned. He had never done anything like this before. His behavior until now had never been without precedent, and he felt like a two-headed monster, as though he had somehow slipped from the real world into the other world, the world that he had always imagined as a little boy to be inhabited by assassins and orphans, and children whose mothers went to work. He put his head in his hands and wondered if he could ever forget Señora Ramirez. He remembered having read that the careers of many men had been ruined by women who because they had a certain physical stranglehold over them made it impossible for them to get away. These women, he knew, were always bad, and they were never Americans. Nor, he was certain, did they resemble Señora Ramirez. It was terrible to have done something he was certain none of his friends had ever done before him, nor would do after him. This experience, he knew, would have to remain a secret, and nothing made him feel more ill than having a secret. He liked to imagine that he and the group of men whom he considered to be his friends, discoursed freely on all things that were in their hearts and in their souls. He was beginning to talk to women in this free way, too—he talked to them a good deal, and he urged his friends to do likewise. He realized that he and Señora Ramirez never spoke, and this horrified him. He shuddered and said to himself: "We are like two gorillas."
He had been, it is true, with one or two prostitutes, but he had never taken them to his own bed, nor had he stayed with them longer than an hour. Also, they had been curly-headed blond American girls recommended to him by his friends.
"Well," he told himself, "there is no use making myself into a nervous wreck. What is done is done, and anyway, I think I might be excused on the grounds that: one, I am in a foreign country, which has sort of put me off my balance; two, I have been eating strange foods that I am not used to, and living at an unusually high altitude for me; and, three, I haven't had my own kind to talk to for three solid weeks."
He felt quite a good deal happier after having enumerated these extenuating conditions, and he added: "When I get onto my boat I shall wave goodby to the dock, and say good riddance to bad rubbish, and if the boss ever tries to send me out of the country, I'll tell him: 'not for a million dollars!' " He wished that it were possible to change pensions, but he had already paid for the remainder of the week. He was very thrifty, as, indeed, it was necessary for him to be. Now he lay down again on his bed, quite satisfied with himself, but soon he began to feel guilty again, and like an old truck horse, laboriously he went once more through the entire process of reassuring himself.
Lilina had put Victoria into a box and was walking in the town with her. Not far from the central square there was a dry-goods shop owned by a Jewish woman. Lilina had been there several times with her mother to buy wool. She knew the son of the proprietress, with whom she often stopped to talk. He was very quiet, but Lilina liked him. She decided to drop in at the shop now with Victoria.
When she arrived, the boy's mother was behind the counter stamping some old bolts of material with purple ink. She saw Lilina and smiled brightly.
"Enrique is in the patio. How nice of you to come and see him. Why don't you come more often?" She was very eager to please Lilina, because she knew the extent of Señora Ramirez's wealth and was proud to have her as a customer.
Lilina went over to the little door that led into the patio behind the shop, and opened it. Enrique was crouching in the dirt beside the wash tubs. She was surprised to see that his head was wrapped in bandages. From a distance the dirty bandages gave the effect of a white turban.
She went a little nearer, and saw that he was arranging some marbles in a row.
"Good morning, Enrique," she said to hi
m.
Enrique recognized her voice, and without turning his head, he started slowly to pick up the marbles one at a time and put them into his pocket.
His mother had followed Lilina into the patio. When she saw that Enrique, instead of rising to his feet and greeting Lilina, remained absorbed in his marbles, she walked over to him and gave his arm a sharp twist.
"Leave those damned marbles alone and speak to Lilina," she said to him. Enrique got up and went over to Lilina, while his mother, bending over with difficulty, finished picking up the marbles he had left behind on the ground.
Lilina looked at the big, dark red stain on Enrique's bandage. They both walked back into the store. Enrique did not enjoy being with Lilina. In fact, he was a little afraid of her. Whenever she came to the shop he could hardly wait for her to leave.
He went over now to a bolt of printed material which he started to unwind. When he had unwound a few yards, he began to follow the convolutions of the pattern with his index finger. Lilina, not realizing that his gesture was a carefully disguised insult to her, watched him with a certain amount of interest.
"I have something with me inside this box," she said after a while.
Enrique, hearing his mother's footsteps approaching, turned and smiled at her sadly.
"Please show it to me," he said.
She lifted the lid from the snake's box and took it over to Enrique.
"This is Victoria," she said.
Enrique thought she was beautiful. He lifted her from her box and held her just below the head very firmly. Then he raised his arm until the snake's eyes were on a level with his own.
"Good morning, Victoria," he said to her. "Do you like it here in the store?"
This remark annoyed his mother. She had slipped down to the other end of the counter because she was
"You speak as though you were drunk," she said to Enrique. "That snake can't understand a word you're saying."
"She's really beautiful," said Enrique.
"Let's put her back in the box and take her to the square," said Lilina. But Enrique did not hear her, he was so enchanted with the sensation of holding Victoria.
His mother again spoke up. "Do you hear Lilina talking to you?" she shouted. "Or is that bandage covering your ears as well as your head?"
She had meant this remark to be stinging and witty, but she realized herself that there had been no point to it.
"Well, go with the little girl," she added.
Lilina and Enrique set off toward the square together. Lilina had put Victoria back into her box.
"Why are we going to the square?" Enrique asked Lilina.
"Because we are going there with Victoria."
Six or seven buses had converged in one of the streets that skirted the square. They had come from the capital and from other smaller cities in the region. The passengers who were not going any farther had already got out and were standing in a bunch talking together and buying food from the vendors. One lady had brought with her a cardboard fan intended as an advertisement for beer. She was fanning not only herself, but anyone who happened to come near her.
The bus drivers were racing their motors, and some were trying to move into positions more advantageous for departing. Lilina was excited by the noise and the crowd. Enrique, however, had sought a quiet spot, and was now standing underneath a tree. After a while she ran over to him and told him that she was going to let Victoria out of her box.
"Then we'll see what happens," she said.
"No, no!" insisted Enrique. "She'll only crawl under the buses and be squashed to death. Snakes live in the woods or in the rocks."
Lilina paid little attention to him. Soon she was crouching on the edge of the curbstone, busily unfastening the string around Victoria's box.
Enrique's head had begun to pain him and he felt a little ill. He wondered if he could leave the square, but he decided he did not have the courage. Although the wind had risen, the sun was very hot, and the tree afforded him little shade. He watched Lilina for a little while, but soon he looked away from her, and began to think instead about his own death. He was certain that his head hurt more today than usual. This caused him to sink into the blackest gloom, as he did whenever he remembered the day he had fallen and pierced his skull on a rusty nail. His life had always been precious to him, as far back as he could recall, and it seemed perhaps even more so now that he realized it could be violently interrupted. He disliked Lilina; probably because he suspected intuitively that she was a person who could fall over and over again into the same pile of broken glass and scream just as loudly the last time as the first.
By now Victoria had wriggled under the buses and been crushed flat. The buses cleared away, and Enrique was able to see what had happened. Only the snake's head, which had been severed from its body, remained intact.
Enrique came up and stood beside Lilina. "Now are you going home?" he asked her, biting his lip.
"Look how small her head is. She must have been a very small snake," said Lilina.
"Are you going home to your house?" he asked her again.
"No. I'm going over by the cathedral and play on the swings. Do you want to come? I'm going to run there."
"I can't run," said Enrique, touching his fingers to the bandages. "And I'm not sure that I want to go over to the playground."
"Well," said Lilina. "I'll run ahead of you and I'll be there if you decide to come."
Enrique was very tired and a little dizzy, but he decided to follow her to the playground in order to ask her why she had allowed Victoria to escape under the buses.
When he arrived, Lilina was already swinging back and forth. He sat on a bench near the swings and looked up at her. Each time her feet grazed the ground, he tried to ask her about Victoria, but the question stuck in his throat. At last he stood up, thrust his hands into his pockets, and shouted at her.
"Are you going to get another snake?" he asked. It was not what he had intended to say. Lilina did not answer, but she did stare at him from the swing. It was impossible for him to tell whether or not she had heard his question.
At last she dug her heel into the ground and brought the swing to a standstill. "I must go home," she said, "or my mother will be angry with me."
"No," said Enrique, catching hold of her dress. "Come with me and let me buy you an ice."
"I will," said Lilina. "I love them."
They sat together in a little store, and Enrique bought two ices.
"I'd like to have a swing hanging from the roof of my house," said Lilina. "And I'd have my dinner and my breakfast served while. I was swinging." This idea amused her and she began to laugh so hard that her ice ran out of her mouth and over her chin.
"Breakfast, lunch, and dinner and take a bath in the swing," she continued. "And make pipi on Consuelo's head from the swing."
Enrique was growing more and more nervous because it was getting late, and still they were not talking about Victoria.
"Could I swing with you in your house?" he asked Lilina.
"Yes. We'll have two swings and you can make pipi on Consuelo's head, too."
"I'd love to," he said.
His question seemed more and more difficult to present. By now it seemed to him that it resembled more a declaration of love than a simple question.
Finally he tried again. "Are you going to buy another snake?" But he still could not ask her why she had been so careless.
"No," said Lilina. "I'm going to buy a rabbit."
"A rabbit?" he said. "But rabbits aren't as intelligent or as beautiful as snakes. You had better buy another snake like Victoria."
"Rabbits have lots of children," said Lilina. "Why don't we buy a rabbit together?"
Enrique thought about this for a while. He began to feel almost lighthearted, and even a little wicked.
"All right," he said. "Let's buy two rabbits, a man and a woman." They finished their ices and talked together more and more excitedly about the rabbits.
On the way
home, Lilina squeezed Enrique's hand and kissed him all over his cheeks. He was red with pleasure.
At the square they parted, after promising to meet again that afternoon.
It was a cloudy day, rather colder than usual, and Señora Ramirez decided to dress in her mourning clothes, which she always carried with her. She hung several strands of black beads around her neck and powdered her face heavily. She and Consuelo began to walk slowly around the patio.
Consuelo blew her nose. "Ay, mamà," she said. "Isn't it true that there is a greater amount of sadness in the world than happiness?"
"I don't know why you are thinking about this," said her mother.
"Because I have been counting my happy days and my sad days. There are many more sad days, and I am living now at the best age for a girl. There is nothing but fighting, even at balls. I would not believe any man if he told me he liked dancing better than fighting."
"This is true," said her mother. "But not all men are really like this. There are some men who are as gentle as little lambs. But not so many."
"I feel like an old lady. I think that maybe I will feel better when I'm married." They walked slowly past the traveler's door.
"I'm going inside," said Consuelo suddenly.
"Aren't you going to sit in the patio?" her mother asked her.
"No, with all those children screaming and the chickens and the parrot talking and the white dog. And it's such a terrible day. Why?"
Señora Ramirez could not think of any reason why Consuelo should stay in the patio. In any case she preferred to be there alone if the stranger should decide to talk to her.
"What white dog?" she said.
"Señora Espinoza has bought a little white dog for the children."
The wind was blowing and the children were chasing each other around the back patio. Señora Ramirez sat down on one of the little straight-backed chairs with her hands folded in her lap. The thought came into her mind that most days were likely to be cold and windy rather than otherwise, and that there would be many days to come exactly like this one. Unconsciously she had always felt that these were the days preferred by God, although they had never been much to her own liking.