A Masque of Chameleons

by Joan Van Every Frost

  “All right,” she answered. “Talk.”

  “Not here. I’ll wait for you outside. I know it’s warm, but wear a cloak. Tell Hugh I’ll bring you home, that I want you to help me look for Carmelita, that she told you something that makes you think you might know where she is.”

  The well-wishers thinned out. She took a hooded cloak from among Jessica’s costumes and went out into the balmy night, thankful for the fresh air after the heat and stuffiness and cigar smoke of the theater. Jason gestured to her from a volante, and the mule set off at a shuffling trot.

  They alighted at a darkened doorway that seemed indistinguishable from all of the others in the unlighted street. Jason pushed open the door without knocking and they found themselves in a stone room filled with tables and chairs, most of them empty. On each wooden table a candle in a bottle lumpy with old wax shed a flickering light. A waiter in a spotted apron, looking as if his feet hurt, approached. Jason ordered oysters and roast huachinango for both of them, along with a bottle of wine.

  “'You and I are thinking the same thing, my girl, that possibly — no, probably — we won’t be seeing Carmelita again.”

  “Maybe she flirted with someone, went home with him, forgot the time. Perhaps she had too much to drink...”

  He shook his head. “She was free with her favors, all right, but she would never have gone that far.”

  Roberta wondered why not. From what she had seen of Carmelita, a stage career was far down on her list of what was important in life. “So what will you do now?”

  He waited while the waiter set down the oysters and a bottle of wine and glasses. “I want you to take her place.”

  “You must be mad. I don't look anything like her, to begin with.”

  “No one except a few of her family has seen her since she was thirteen.”

  She looked at him with an oyster partway to her mouth. “She has just disappeared mysteriously, you suspect foul play, und yet you have the nerve to ask me to take her place?”

  “I think we can keep them from knowing that you have.”

  “Even in that unlikely event, why should I?”

  “Because you don't like people being killed any more than I do. Because you've never committed yourself to anything in your life — you'd be a better actress if you had. Because you'll never know what it is to be truly alive until you’re willing to risk your life for a cause. Do you really want to spend the rest of your life being a gradually aging ingenue hopelessly infatuated with someone you can never have?”

  He had clearly played upon all of her doubts about herself and her future. He was right, she wasn't really alive, battening as she did on a love affair that could never become a reality. She could see people other than Will clearly enough: Jason the fanatic, Gavin the unformed boy who wanted her because he couldn't have her, Jessica the great actress who was destroying herself, Hugh the father of them all but impulsive, single-minded, Daphne the shadow of Hugh without a thought or opinion of her own... Well, why not try this? She could always back out if she wanted to.

  “All right,” she said at last. “But if it seems too dangerous, if I find I don't like your General Alarcon, I'm going to bow out. This isn't my country and this isn't my cause. Is that understood?”

  “You won’t decide any of those things,” he replied with enormous assurance that was more than a little galling.

  “What do I have to do?”

  “As we travel from city to city, I shall be setting up meetings with the disaffected and have you talk to them. You won't have to lie except about who you are; ‘I’ll tell you what to say. Veracruz will be first and in one way hardest because it’s a Santa Anna stronghold.”

  “What if someone begins asking me about my family?” He waved a hand impatiently. “You needn't worry, I'll give you all the details you'll ever have to have. Think of it as learning a part.”

  “Are you getting paid for this?” she asked directly. “Of course I am — eating becomes a habit, you know. Hugh’s salaries aren't exactly astronomical, as you are well aware.”

  “Is Carmelita getting paid?”

  “No, she has more money than she knows what to do with, and she does indeed want her father to be President. Why, do you want to be paid? I can arrange it, you know.”

  “I don't think so,” she said after a pause. “If I believe in what I'm doing, the money won't matter. I somehow don’t like the idea of being bought, so to speak. You know, you're taking a lot for granted. To begin with, you're assuming Carmelita has been abducted or even done away with, aren't you? What if she isn't? You'll feel pretty silly then, won't you?”

  “That's a kind of silly I'd like to feel.”

  “How do you know I won't talk too much?”

  “What could you tell anyone that Zaragoza doesn't already know? Even in Mexico I’m the only one who has the lists of the people to be contacted and where they are to be found. You'll meet and talk to them, but you won't know whom you're talking to and you won't know ahead of time even where the meetings will take place.”

  “Those lists were what the thief on the Priscilla was after, weren’t they?”

  He nodded as he deftly slit his red snapper along the spine, neatly lifting the tender meat, crisp gold skin and all, from the bones beneath.

  “Aren’t you afraid someone will manage to steal them somehow? Even now?”

  “Not unless they can read minds.”

  “You mean you memorized them? Weren’t there a lot of names and places?”

  “Fifty-three addresses and one hundred and fifty-seven names, to be exact.”

  “Aren’t you afraid you’ll forget some of them before you get there?”

  “My dear girl, memorizing is my business. I have over twenty of Shakespeare’s plays by heart, not to mention others like Marlowe, Congreve, Wycherley, Moliere in French and English both, and a mishmash of others, some of which I wish I could forget.”

  “What if they catch you?”

  His lips lifted in that unexpected smile. “Well, I just don’t expect they’ll be able to. With any luck, they may even think that I was merely some sort of stage setting for Carmelita instead of the other way around.”

  She sighed and shook her head. “I must be stark raving mad to be a party to this,” but already the sense of danger and intrigue was fizzing in her blood. She could see how it would be all too possible to become addicted to this kind of excitement, to want to make it a way of life. What was it like when you had once experienced this heightened sense of being alive and pitting your wits against someone else, and then it was all over? She supposed she would find that out too.

  It wasn’t until noon the following day that the police, who had shown themselves to be remarkably uninterested in the murder of Roger Ainsley, apparently thinking that since it took place in the middle of the sea it was none of their business, took Hugh and Jason to identify the body of a young woman who had apparently fallen from one of the docks and drowned the night before. “The damn fools,” Jason said impatiently later. “If they’d thrown her in near Morro Castle, the sharks would have left nothing — she would simply have disappeared. Now I wonder why they wanted us to know for sure she was dead?”

  Though he must have known her from childhood if he had been like another son to the general, there was no trace of sorrow or even sympathy in his voice. Roberta shivered as if someone had walked over her grave.

  CHAPTER V

  A maddening succession of nortes and total calms had kept them hanging off Veracruz for several weeks but now the perverse, favorable brisa blew accommodatingly. They had picked up a pilot and were ghosting through the tricky channel past the grim island fortress of San Juan Ulua, which as recently as six years ago had been taken by the French after a desperate struggle that made a hero of Santa Anna but left Veracruz a fire-blackened shell.

  Roberta felt like weeping when she saw in place of the palm trees and frangipani and banana groves she had imagined, barren red sand dunes that stretched as
far as the eye could see. The town itself was nearly as bad, a place of wide, empty streets and severe buildings with long shuttered windows.

  As they disembarked, the Spaniards predictably drunk again, an amazing equippage drawn by several mules came lurching down the street to stop at their dock. Down from the driver’s seat jumped a short, bowlegged old man with tight gray curls and a cheerful black face. With a flourish, he doffed his shabby stovepipe hat and bowed as he opened the door of the coach. The passengers from the ship stood in opeumouthed amazement, wondering what curious personage would emerge from this strange conveyance.

  “Bonjour! Bonjour!” a familiar voice cried gaily. “What kept you so long? I’ve been waiting for you for weeks!”

  To their utter astonishment there appeared Josefina, elaborately gowned, complete with a fashionable violet bonnet that did not become her at all and a matching violet parasol. She fanned herself languidly with an ornate ivory fan while she positively smirked at them.

  “However did you get here?” Roberta managed at last.

  “On the steamship Scotland Lass. You have no idea the number of trips I’ve made to the waterfront every time some idiot would say that the wind was favorable and surely you would be in momentarily. Bon dieu, what a hideous place!”

  They all groaned and looked accusingly at Hugh, who refused to meet anyone’s gaze.

  “Hugh,” Josefina continued, “you and Daphne and Roberta and Rosemary will stay with me at the house I’ve taken, and I booked rooms for the rest at the inn Los Flamencos.”

  “Where is the theater manager, what’s his name, Alvarado?” Hugh asked. “He was to have made all the arrangements.”

  Josefina shrugged. “After you’ve seen the theater, you’ll be just as glad I told him I would do the arranging.” She lit a cigar and puffed away as she gave instructions right and left, obviously in her element.

  *

  The house Josefina had taken was quite grand, the inner courtyard surrounded by flower beds alight with brightly colored blossoms. As they sat down to lunch, it was Will who finally asked her what they all wanted to know.

  “Josefina, my curiosity has gotten the better of me. Why did you choose to come to this godforsaken city?”

  “To meet you,” she smiled.

  “But we're only going to be here for a few days,” Hugh protested.

  “Which is a few days too many,” Josefina observed with a twinkle. “I can't wait until you see the theater.”

  “But wasn't that rather a long trip to make for only a few days?” Will persisted.

  “Oh, I intend to see quite a bit of Mexico,” she replied airily.

  “By yourself?” Daphne was horrified. “Surely it isn't safe for a woman traveling alone.”

  “But I won't be alone,” she laughed.

  “You have friends here?” Jason asked politely, meaning it almost as a rhetorical question.

  “I certainly do — they are sitting here at this table.” They stared at her, speechless, not knowing what to make of her announcement.

  “You see, I've always loved to travel,” she explained, “but since Jean died I haven't been able to because of that silly custom that women don't travel by themselves. Then I had a conversation with Roberta one day, when she said that what she liked most about being an actress was the freedom. She could travel, she was accepted by her fellow actors as a person — in short, she had almost the freedom of a man.” Josefina shrugged. “How would you feel about trying me out?”

  “Mon dieu, Josefina,” Hugh exclaimed, scandalized. “You don't need the money, and besides, you're a lady.” She laughed then, that wonderful melodious laugh. “I a lady? Hugh, you're mad. Ladies no longer smoke cigars in public, and they don't keep company with actors, nor do they ride horseback by themselves. Ladies haven’t been brought up in a dirt-floored shack that was flooded out every summer. My father died of the lung disease and my mother came to Havana to get work. She ended up washing clothes for rich people.”

  “But Jean?” Hugh said weakly. “He was my friend, he - ”

  She waved an impatient hand at him. “Jean was fifty-five years old when I married him. He was a wonderful man. He told me that all his life he had done the proper things, but now his wife was dead and his children grown, and he was going to do as he liked.” Her expression softened. “I was what he liked. Now I want to do as I like. Please, Hugh. Jean would approve, believe me.”

  Jason watched them with a faint smile while Will looked bewildered, as well he might, understanding as he did only a fraction of the French Hugh and Josefina had dropped into for their discussion.

  “Let her, Hugh,” Jessica said suddenly. “We need someone to take Carmelita's place.”

  Everyone there except possibly Josefina knew that Jessica was reminding Hugh she couldn't always be counted upon. Roberta felt a wrench. She along with the rest of them had somehow hoped that the part of Desdemona would keep her off the bottle, that perhaps this might be the beginning of a comeback for her. Yearn after Will she must, Roberta thought, but his happiness was all-important. Yes, she really did hope that Jessica could straighten out. Besides, a small mean voice inside her said, he'll never leave her while she's in trouble, not my Will. What if, the daydream part of her brain went on, what if she stopped drinking and then when they were in Mexico City Jessica fell in love with this tall, suave Mexican and — Oh God, she wondered, am I losing my mind? I'm not sixteen anymore, I know how life is... Do I, though? Do I really? Does it have to be that way?

  After lunch Jason drew her aside. “Tomorrow afternoon during siesta there'll be a meeting. Now do you remember all you've rehearsed? If you're not sure, then forget it. Better not to do anything than to muck it up.”

  “Of course I remember,” she replied indignantly. “Memorizing is my business,” she mimicked him. “I thought these meetings would be at night. Isn’t it dangerous in the daytime?”

  He shook his head. “No one is about during the afternoon siesta, and with the streets empty it’s all but impossible for anyone to follow us without our knowing it. Meet me at two-thirty at the Flamencos.”

  “Comida here is between three and four. What will I tell Josefina?”

  “Tell her you have an assignation; she’ll understand that all right.”

  “But I haven’t been here long enough to know anyone.”

  “For God’s sake,” he exclaimed in exasperation, “tell her your assignation is with one of the bit players. Gavin is too chancy; Josefina might say something to him and then you’d be followed for sure.”

  *

  As she approached the Flamencos at last that afternoon, she was still burning with embarrassment over her interview with Josefina about her supposed assignation. The conversation had ended with Josefina actually pressing upon her a jar of some salve to prevent her becoming pregnant! Jason startled her when he stepped out from a doorway and clasped her arm.

  “This way,” he said tersely, guiding her into a high, dim marble entrance hall and then through a door into a small bright room that looked to be a sewing room. A gnome-like man with a large hairy mole on one cheek and two vagrant tufts of gray hair sticking up from either side of his head regarded her with impolite intensity.

  “This is the girl,” Jason said without preamble or introduction.

  Roberta realized that the little man was going over her face feature by feature, ending with her ears. He frowned and bit his pendulous lower lip. “I’ll tell you, Jason, I don’t know how well I can do with her. There is no way I can make her look exactly like Carmelita. The shape of the face I can change, and the nose and the mouth won’t need any more than makeup. It’s the eyes. You can’t take almond-shaped eyes like hers and a bright gray color to boot, and turn them into round black eyes. There’s no possible way of doing it. And I’ll tell you something else. This lady is far taller than average, and there’s no way to disguise that, either. If she were too short, it would be easy, but too tall — I don’t know.”

  “
Well, do the best you can. Perhaps we can figure out some way for her to be sitting down, though I’m damned if I know how. I wouldn’t have brought you all the way from Mexico City if you weren’t the best there is, Emil.”

  They sat her down in a chair, pinned a towel around her shoulders, and set to work. Jason was to watch carefully so that he would be able to re-create the disguise.

  “You know a bit about makeup already,” Emil said, “and that makes it easier. Now first of all you put these cotton pads between her upper teeth and her cheek and between her lower teeth and her cheek. See how they fill out her face and make it plump and round? It will alter her speech somewhat, too, which is all to the good. You can’t do much about the eyes, but if we attach these false eyelashes and put eye shadow here, and here, you get a sort of illusion, if you see what I mean. Now we want light makeup under here, and light makeup on either side of the nose, like this. She’s got a single frown mark between her eyes, rather unusual, so we’ll fill it in like this, and pencil in the customary two. That little cleft in her chin should be filled in as well.” He went puttering on, talking all the time, until she felt drowsy in the glaze of afternoon heat.

  “Voilà!” he exclaimed at last. “Here is your heiress.”

  Jason backed away from her. “Very good, Emil. Much better than we had any right to expect. Go look at yourself, Robbie.”

  She stood up and turned to face one of the mirrors. Looking at her was a woman with her own body but another face, a face that seemed faintly familiar. No, not quite familiar, but very like someone familiar. However, if she hadn’t known what they were trying to do, she wouldn’t have guessed. The likeness to Carmelita was really more in the type of looks than in the features themselves, but at least she didn’t look in the slightest like herself. She remembered having known that strange feeling once before when Daphne and Jessica were both too indisposed to go on and Hugh had had to make her up as an old woman with gray hair and wrinkles.

  Now Emil handed her an apparatus she was to put on her body over her own stays. “When you’ve got it on, you can try that dress over there; yours won’t fit you of course. And pin on the mantilla too, while you’re at it. Come on, Jason, I’ll start on you. If you’re not careful, you’ll be late.”