My Sister's Hand in Mine

by Jane Bowles

  The old lady looked very stern. She noticed that her bony cheeks were tattoed with tiny blue crosses.

  “Why?” asked the old lady abruptly in a deep voice. “Why does she spend half her time with Moslem friends and half with Nazarenes?” She fixed her eye on Zodelia, never ceasing to shape the meat with her swift fingers. Now she saw that her knuckles were also tattooed with blue crosses.

  Zodelia stared back at her stupidly. “I don’t know why,” she said, shrugging one fat shoulder. It was clear that the picture she had been painting for them had suddenly lost all its charm for her.

  “Is she crazy?” the old lady asked.

  “No,” Zodelia answered listlessly. “She is not crazy.” There were shrieks of laughter from the mattress.

  The old lady fastened her sharp eyes on the visitor, and she saw that they were heavily outlined in black. “Where is your husband?” she demanded.

  “He’s traveling in the desert.”

  “Selling things,” Zodelia put in. This was the popular explanation for her husband’s trips; she did not try to contradict it.

  “Where is your mother?” the old lady asked.

  “My mother is in our country in her own house.”

  “Why don’t you go and sit with your mother in her own house?” she scolded. “The hotel costs a lot of money.”

  “In the city where I was born,” she began, “there are many, many automobiles and many, many trucks.”

  The women on the mattress were smiling pleasantly. “Is that true?” remarked the one in the center in a tone of polite interest.

  “I hate trucks,” she told the woman with feeling.

  The old lady lifted the bowl of meat off her lap and set it down on the carpet. “Trucks are nice,” she said severely.

  “That’s true,” the women agreed, after only a moment’s hesitation. “Trucks are very nice.”

  “Do you like trucks?” she asked Zodelia, thinking that because of their relatively greater intimacy she might perhaps agree with her.

  “Yes,” she said. “They are nice. Trucks are very nice.” She seemed lost in meditation, but only for an instant. “Everything is nice,” she announced, with a look of triumph.

  “It’s the truth,” the women said from their mattress. “Everything is nice.”

  They all looked happy, but the old lady was still frowning. “Aicha!” she yelled, twisting her neck so that her voice could be heard in the patio. “Bring the tea!”

  Several little girls came into the room carrying the tea things and a low round table.

  “Pass the cakes to the Nazarene,” she told the smallest child, who was carrying a cut-glass dish piled with cakes. She saw that they were the ones she had bought for Zodelia; she did not want any of them. She wanted to go home.

  “Eat!” the women called out from their mattress. “Eat the cakes.”

  The child pushed the glass dish forward.

  “The dinner at the hotel is ready,” she said, standing up.

  “Drink tea,” said the old woman scornfully. “Later you will sit with the other Nazarenes and eat their food.”

  “The Nazarenes will be angry if I’m late.” She realized that she was lying stupidly, but she could not stop. “They will hit me!” She tried to look wild and frightened.

  “Drink tea. They will not hit you,” the old woman told her. “Sit down and drink tea.”

  The child was still offering her the glass dish as she backed away toward the door. Outside she sat down on the black and white tiles to lace her shoes. Only Zodelia followed her into the patio.

  “Come back,” the others were calling. “Come back into the room.”

  Then she noticed the porcupine basket standing nearby against the wall. “Is that old lady in the room your aunt? Is she the one you were bringing the porcupine to?” she asked her.

  “No. She is not my aunt.”

  “Where is your aunt?”

  “My aunt is in her own house.”

  “When will you take the porcupine to her?” She wanted to keep talking, so that Zodelia would be distracted and forget to fuss about her departure.

  “The porcupine sits here,” she said firmly. “In my own house.”

  She decided not to ask her again about the wedding.

  When they reached the door Zodelia opened it just enough to let her through. “Good-bye,” she said behind her. “I shall see you tomorrow, if Allah wills it.”

  “When?”

  “Four o’clock.” It was obvious that she had chosen the first figure that had come into her head. Before closing the door she reached out and pressed two of the dry Spanish cakes into her hand. “Eat them,” she said graciously. “Eat them at the hotel with the other Nazarenes.”

  She started up the steep alley, headed once again for the walk along the cliff. The houses on either side of her were so close that she could smell the dampness of the walls and feel it on her cheeks like a thicker air.

  When she reached the place where she had met Zodelia she went over to the wall and leaned on it. Although the sun had sunk behind the houses, the sky was still luminous and the blue of the wall had deepened. She rubbed her fingers along it: the wash was fresh and a little of the powdery stuff came off. And she remembered how once she had reached out to touch the face of a clown because it had awakened some longing. It had happened at a little circus, but not when she was a child.

  A Guatemalan Idyll

  When the traveler arrived at the pension the wind was blowing hard. Before going in to have the hot soup he had been thinking about, he left his luggage inside the door and walked a few blocks in order to get an idea of the town. He came to a very large arch through which, in the distance, he could see a plain. He thought he could distinguish figures seated around a far-away fire, but he was not certain because the wind made tears in his eyes.

  “How dismal,” he thought, letting his mouth drop open. “But never mind. Brace up. It’s probably a group of boys and girls sitting around an open fire having a fine time together. The world is the world, after all is said and done, and a patch of grass in one place is green the way it is in any other.”

  He turned back and walked along quickly, skirting the walls of the low stone houses. He was a little worried that he might not be able to recognize a door of his pension.

  “There’s not supposed to be any variety in the U.S.A.,” he said to himself. “But this Spanish architecture beats everything, it’s so monotonous.” He knocked on one of the doors, and shortly a child with a shaved head appeared. With a strong American accent he said to her: “Is this the Pension Espinoza?”

  “Sí!” The child led him inside to a fountain in the center of a square patio. He looked into the basin and the child did too.

  “There are four fish inside here,” she said to him in Spanish. “Would you like me to try and catch one of them for you?”

  The traveler did not understand her. He stood there uncomfortably, longing to go to his room. The little girl was still trying to get hold of a fish when her mother, who owned the pension, came out and joined them. The woman was quite fat, but her face was small and pointed, and she wore glasses attached by a gold chain to her dress. She shook hands with him and asked him in fairly good English if he had had a pleasant journey.

  “He wants to see some of the fish,” explained the child.

  “Certainly,” said Señora Espinoza, moving her hands about in the water with dexterity. “Soon now, soon now,” she said, laughing as one of the fish slipped between her fingers.

  The traveler nodded. “I would like to go to my room,” he said.

  * * *

  The American was a little dismayed by his room. There were four brass beds in a row, all of them very old and a little crooked.

  “God!” he said to himself. “They’ll have to remove some of these beds. They give me the willies.”

  A cord hung down from the ceiling. On the end of it at the height of his nose was a tiny electric bulb. He turned it on and looked
at his hands under the light. They were chapped and dirty. A barefoot servant girl came in with a pitcher and a bowl.

  In the dining room, calendars decorated the walls, and there was an elaborate cut-glass carafe on every table. Several people had already begun their meal in silence. One little girl was speaking in a high voice.

  “I’m not going to the band concert tonight, mamá,” she was saying.

  “Why not?” asked her mother with her mouth full. She looked seriously at her daughter.

  “Because I don’t like to hear music. I hate it!”

  “Why?” asked her mother absently, taking another large mouthful of her food. She spoke in a deep voice like a man’s. Her head, which was set low between her shoulders, was covered with black curls. Her chin was heavy and her skin was dark and coarse; however, she had very beautiful blue eyes. She sat with her legs apart, with one arm lying flat on the table. The child bore no resemblance to her mother. She was frail, with stiff hair of the peculiar light color that is often found in mulattoes. Her eyes were so pale that they seemed almost white.

  As the traveler came in, the child turned to look at him.

  “Now there are nine people eating in this pension,” she said immediately.

  “Nine,” said her mother. “Many mouths.” She pushed her plate aside wearily and looked up at the calendar beside her on the wall. At last she turned around and saw the stranger. Having already finished her own dinner, she followed the progress of his meal with interest. Once she caught his eye.

  “Good appetite,” she said, nodding gravely, and then she watched his soup until he had finished it.

  “My pills,” she said to Lilina, holding her hand out without turning her head. To amuse herself, Lilina emptied the whole bottle into her mother’s hand.

  “Now you have your pills,” she said. When Señora Ramirez realized what had happened, she dealt Lilina a terrible blow in the face, using the hand which held the pills, and thus leaving them sticking to the child’s moist skin and in her hair. The traveler turned. He was so bored and at the same time disgusted by what he saw that he decided he had better look for another pension that very night.

  “Soon,” said the waitress, putting his meat in front of him, “the musician will come. For fifty cents he will play you all the songs you want to hear. One night would not be time enough. She will be out of the room by then.” She looked over at Lilina, who was squealing like a stuck pig.

  “Those pills cost me three quetzales a bottle,” Señora Ramirez complained. One of the young men at a nearby table came over and examined the empty bottle. He shook his head.

  “A barbarous thing,” he said.

  “What a dreadful child you are, Lilina!” said an English lady who was seated at quite a distance from everybody else. All the diners looked up. Her face and neck were quite red with annoyance. She was speaking to them in English.

  “Can’t you behave like civilized people?” she demanded.

  “You be quiet, you!” The young man had finished examining the empty pill bottle. His companions burst out laughing.

  “O.K., girl,” he continued in English. “Want a piece of chewing gum?” His companions were quite helpless with laughter at his last remark, and all three of them got up and left the room. Their guffaws could be heard from the patio, where they had grouped around the fountain, fairly doubled up.

  “It’s a disgrace to the adult mind,” said the English lady. Lilina’s nose had started to bleed, and she rushed out.

  “And tell Consuelo to hurry in and eat her dinner,” her mother called after her. Just then the musician arrived. He was a small man and he wore a black suit and a dirty shirt.

  “Well,” said Lilina’s mother. “At last you came.”

  “I was having dinner with my uncle. Time passes, Señora Ramirez! Gracias a Dios!”

  “Gracias a Dios nothing! It’s unheard-of, having to eat dinner without music.”

  The violinist fell into a chair, and, bent over low, he started to play with all his strength.

  “Waltzes!” shouted Señora Ramirez above the music. “Waltzes!” She looked petulant and at the same time as though she were about to cry. As a matter of fact, the stranger was quite sure that he saw a tear roll down her cheek.

  “Are you going to the band concert tonight?” she asked him; she spoke English rather well.

  “I don’t know. Are you?”

  “Yes, with my daughter Consuelo. If the unfortunate girl ever gets here to eat her supper. She doesn’t like food. Only dancing. She dances like a real butterfly. She has French blood from me. She is of a much better type than the little one, Lilina, who is always hurting; hurting me, hurting her sister, hurting her friends. I hope that God will have pity on her.” At this she really did shed a tear or two, which she brushed away with her napkin.

  “Well, she’s young yet,” said the stranger. Señora Ramirez agreed heartily.

  “Yes, she is young.” She smiled at him sweetly and seemed quite content.

  Lilina meanwhile was in her room, standing over the white bowl in which they washed their hands, letting the blood drip into it. She was breathing heavily like someone who is trying to simulate anger.

  “Stop that breathing! You sound like an old man,” said her sister Conseulo, who was lying on the bed with a hot brick on her stomach. Consuelo was small and dark, with a broad flat face and an unusually narrow skull. She had a surly nature, which is often the case when young girls do little else but dream of a lover. Lilina, who was a bully without any curiosity concerning the grown-up world, hated her sister more than anyone else she knew.

  “Mamá says that if you don’t come in to eat soon she will hit you.”

  “Is that how you got that bloody nose?”

  “No,” said Lilina. She walked away from the basin and her eye fell on her mother’s corset, which was lying on the bed. Quickly she picked it up and went with it into the patio, where she threw it into the fountain. Consuelo, frightened by the appropriation of the corset, got up hastily and arranged her hair.

  “Too much upset for a girl of my age,” she said to herself patting her stomach. Crossing the patio she saw Señora Córdoba walking along, holding her head very high as she slipped some hairpins more firmly into the bun at the back of her neck. Consuelo felt like a frog or a beetle walking behind her. Together they entered the dining room.

  “Why don’t you wait for midnight to strike?” said Señora Ramirez to Consuelo. Señorita Córdoba, assuming that this taunt had been addressed to her, bridled and stiffened. Her eyes narrowed and she stood still. Señora Ramirez, a gross coward, gave her a strange idiotic smile.

  “How is your health, Señorita Córdoba?” she asked softly, and then feeling confused, she pointed to the stranger and asked him if he knew Señorita Córdoba.

  “No, no; he does not know me.” She held out her hand stiffly to the stranger and he took it. No names were mentioned.

  Consuelo sat down beside her mother and ate voraciously, a sad look in her eye. Señorita Córdoba ordered only fruit. She sat looking out into the dark patio, giving the other diners a view of the nape of her neck. Presently she opened a letter and began to read. The others all watched her closely. The three young men who had laughed so heartily before were now smiling like idiots, waiting for another such occasion to present itself.

  The musician was playing a waltz at the request of Señora Ramirez, who was trying her best to attract again the attention of the stranger. “Tra-la-la-la,” she sang, and in order better to convey the beauty of the waltz she folded her arms in front of her and rocked from side to side.

  “Ay, Consuelo! It is for her to waltz,” she said to the stranger. “There will be many people in the plaza tonight, and there is so much wind. I think that you must fetch my shawl, Consuelo. It is getting very cold.”

  While awaiting Consuelo’s return she shivered and picked her teeth.

  The traveler thought she was crazy and a little disgusting. He had come here as a buyer
for a very important textile concern. Having completed all his work, he had for some reason decided to stay on another week, perhaps because he had always heard that a vacation in a foreign country was a desirable thing. Already he regretted his decision, but there was no boat out before the following Monday. By the end of the meal he was in such despair that his face wore a peculiarly young and sensitive look. In order to buoy himself up a bit, he began to think about what he would get to eat three weeks hence, seated at his mother’s table on Thanksgiving Day. They would be very glad to hear that he had not enjoyed himself on this trip, because they had always considered it something in the nature of a betrayal when anyone in the family expressed a desire to travel. He thought they led a fine life and was inclined to agree with them.

  Consuelo had returned with her mother’s shawl. She was dreaming again when her mother pinched her arm.

  “Well, Consuelo, are you coming to the band concert or are you going to sit here like a dummy? I daresay the Señor is not coming with us, but we like music, so get up, and we will say good night to this gentleman and be on our way.”

  The traveler had not understood this speech. He was therefore very much surprised when Señora Ramirez tapped him on the shoulder and said to him severely in English: “Good night, Señor. Consuelo and I are going to the band concert. We will see you tomorrow at breakfast.”

  “Oh, but I’m going to the band concert myself,” he said, in a panic lest they leave him with a whole evening on his hands.

  Señora Ramirez flushed with pleasure. The three walked down the badly lit street together, escorted by a group of skinny yellow dogs.

  “These old grilled windows are certainly very beautiful,” the traveler said to Señora Ramirez. “Old as the hills themselves, aren’t they?”

  “You must go to the capital if you want beautiful buildings,” said Señora Ramirez. “Very new and clean they are.”

  “I should think,” he said, “that these old buildings were your point of interest here, aside from your Indians and their native costumes.”

  They walked on for a little while in silence. A small boy came up to them and tried to sell them some lollipops.