A Masque of Chameleons

by Joan Van Every Frost

  “All the better to eat you, my dear, but then that was Red Riding-Hood’s wolf, wasn’t it?” Josefina replied carelessly, her teeth white against the brown-gold skin.

  Jason reached over and put a hand on her arm.

  “Come with me, gatita — I have a specially nice gilded cage for you that you will like.”

  Josefina started to pull back, then relaxed. Her eyes looked sleepily into his as she slowly covered his hand with hers. “Why not, domador de leones? For you are a lion tamer, are you not? If not, you may find yourself eaten.”

  He smiled that unexpected smile of his. “Let us go for my boots and top hat and oh yes, the whip. We mustn’t forget the whip.”

  She laughed richly, and they rose from the bench without taking their eyes off each other. Like smoke they drifted through the door and were gone.

  “Damn the wine!” Will exclaimed. “That should have been me taking her off, not old gimpy.” He licked his lower lip slowly. “I’ll bet she’s something in bed.”

  “You’ve plenty of time to find out,” Roberta replied tartly. “It looks as if she’s with us for good. It will be interesting watching you two tomcats squabbling over her.”

  He looked at her then and smiled a smile almost as sweet and tender as Jason’s. “I didn’t mean to goad you, Robbie. Come on, lass, help a drunken old man off to bed. You needn’t worry, I couldn’t do anything if I would, but I don’t want to waken cold in the night on this hard floor among the dead cigar butts.”

  She looked around for help, but all the others were gone, and she didn’t want to ask any of the gaming bit players because she thought it would be demeaning for Will. He heaved to his feet and put an arm over her shoulders to steady himself. Silently they shambled out the main door and toward the stable yard. They navigated the passageway with some difficulty and arrived at last at Will’s room. From somewhere inside came the sound of a gentle snore.

  The room was dark except for the thin stream of light that came from the hallway and allowed Roberta a view of the large double bed with its ornate, openwork brass headboard. Jessica was lying spread-eagled on one side, still fully dressed, and snoring away. Roberta was tempted to slip out from Will's hands and leave, but she could envision what it would be like to waken dressed and hung over in the cold light of early morning. She undressed him down to his long underwear, remembering the several times she had done the same for her father rather than waken Margarita. She rolled him under the covers and would have left if Jessica hadn't moaned then and turned over. With a sigh, she undressed Jessica as well, but only after a real battle with the stays, which were pulled so tight that they must have been cinched in for her by Will. Before Roberta went out, she poured mugs of water for both of them and put them within reach. She stood staring down then at Will's sleeping face and on an impulse bent down and kissed him gently on the mouth. His arms came up around her, and he kissed her in earnest, shocking her thoroughly, a shock not unmixed with pleasure until he spoke thickly, his words slurred with drink and sleep.

  “You're a good girl, Jess, and that's a fact. Come to bed, love — it's cold out there.”

  Roberta slipped out of his arms and ran out of the room, barely stopping to close the door behind her. She lay in bed a long time before going to sleep, still feeling his mouth on hers, the delicate flick of his tongue. She wished she were dead.

  *

  The next day they were a sorry crew as they collected at the theater. The opera company they had traveled with on the ship would be playing another three days, but during the day the theatre was empty, except for the elderly velador, a night watchman, who slept in a back dressing room, guarded in his turn by a fierce mottled little dog, blind in one eye. The small creature would snarl and snap whenever anyone came near, the milky blind eye looking, if anything, fiercer than the brown one.

  “I can see why the Aztecs used to eat them,” Hugh remarked acidly as the little dog danced in rage near his feet.

  Hung over and snapping at each other, they milled about mindlessly, cursing Hugh for having gotten them up at all. Will and Jessica were both in shocking condition, pale and suffering from the cold sweats. For once Will looked every bit as old as his wife as he kept rubbing his face nervously with a shaking hand.

  “The reason I got you all down here today,” Hugh finally announced, “is that we are going to use this grace time to add several other pieces to our repertoire, a play and two other pantomimes.” At the chorus of protests, he raised his hand for silence. “Really, you’d think you were a group of amateurs. I venture to say that there isn’t one of you who doesn’t have at least some twenty parts by heart, and perhaps thirty more that wouldn’t be difficult to resurrect. The pantomimes are simple enough, surely you can’t be fussing about them.”

  “All right, Hugh, quit torturing us,” Will said in a sepulchral voice. “What’s the play?”

  “You needn’t worry about it, Will,” Hugh replied smugly. “We’re doing Sheridan’s School for Scandal in Spanish.”

  The protests this time were louder and even more heartfelt. “The man’s m-mad.” Guy declared. “This v-venture has t-turned his mind.”

  “I would really rather have done The Rivals, but Jason convinced me that cowardice is not amusing to the Mexican mind. Besides, Mrs. Malaprop’s part would be totally lost in translation.”

  “I might have known,” Will growled. “That damned Whitney’s got Hugh wrapped around his little finger. I suppose he has the best part as well.”

  “Would you rather have it?” Hugh asked innocently. “Joseph Surface’s part has, let’s see, how many lines?

  And all in Spanish. I don’t agree it’s the best part in any event.”

  “Who will play Teazle’s w-wife?” Guy asked, knowing that there were only two Spanish-speaking women in the company.

  “Oh, I think Robbie should do it. It’s time we gave her something to sink her teeth into. You’re to be Sir Oliver and Gavin will be Charles Surface. I shall be Sir Peter. We’ve plenty of people for the smaller parts.”

  “And Maria’s part? Who will play that?” Roberta asked. The bit players were all men, and even with Josefina they were short a younger woman.

  Hugh looked beyond them to the back of the stage, and they all turned around. “Silvia, my dear, come along where we can all see you.” He held out his hand toward a thin Mexican girl with large eyes who was perhaps eighteen and obviously terrified. Instead of coming forward, she shrank back. “We won’t eat you, truly,” Hugh coaxed.

  With a muttered oath, Jason walked up to the girl and began to talk to her in a low voice. As they stood watching silently, they could see her visibly relax and finally manage an uncertain smile. At last she timidly approached Hugh.

  “She suffers somewhat from shyness now,” Hugh admitted, “but she very much wants to join our company and learn English and return to New York with us. She knows a little English now, though heaven only knows where she got it, but her real value is that she’s a perfect mimic. Those idiots had no idea what a jewel they had in their midst.”

  “Jesus God,” Will muttered, “Guy’s right. Hugh has gone completely senile.”

  Josefina swept up to the girl then and began to question her in rapid Spanish. Jason interjected a few questions, and then he and Josefina both turned accusingly to Hugh.

  “She’s never been on a stage before in her life,” Josefina announced. “You know what she was with that Mexican company? She washed and ironed their costumes!”

  “Then she’ll find being on the stage a lot easier than what she was doing, won’t she?” Hugh said equably.

  Hugh turned to Gavin. “You and Silvia will work together. You teach her what you can about acting and English, and she can teach you about Spanish pronunciation. Robbie, I’ve arranged for an extra bed in your and Rosemary’s room, but for the rest of the tour one of you will have to take a small room alone.”

  Gavin rolled his eyes comically, and everyone laughed, even Will.

>   *

  Hugh drove them mercilessly those three days until they had their parts so ingrained that they could say them in their sleep. Gavin had Silvia shouting to him in the back row of seats until her voice was no more than a croak. Surprisingly, she turned out to have an uncanny memory and learned her lines before anyone else. Roberta began to see that possibly Hugh had made an astute choice after all.

  Their minds filled with all the new material they were having to work with, the cast slid through their first actual performance of Othello easily, smoothly, and entirely without that quality of excitement that had marked even the first reading, for which they were roundly chastized by Hugh.

  “We’ve been working like slaveys for days,” Will said, “and now we’re supposed to turn incandescent all night as well. To hell with it. If you want any kind of performances out of us, you’re going to have to let up on this all-day rehearsing.”

  Hugh looked taken aback for a moment, then suddenly so tired that Roberta felt sorry for him. His problems far outweighed theirs. He had worked harder than any of them, had carried them all on his back, and had had to attend to business details as well, adding to his load a three-hour marathon with the theater manager, who without any forewarning had demanded a far larger percentage of the receipts than had been agreed upon in advance.

  Jason appeared beside her as they walked back to the inn. “No rehearsal tomorrow afternoon,” he said quietly, “so I’m scheduling a first meeting. Next to Guadalajara, Puebla is the most important city outside of Mexico itself.” He used the usual idiom of “Mexico” to designate the city as well as the entire country. “Depending on how this first one goes, we may have another before we leave, scheduled far enough in advance to get in all the large landowners around. They hate Santa Anna's guts.”

  “What time?”

  “I’ll meet you at two-thirty with the horses, around the corner to the west. We'll be going clear across the city.”

  “Our disguises?”

  “They’ll be there, along with a wheelchair. The house belongs to an old friend of mine, Don Angel Ladron de Guevara Coronado, whom you won’t meet until the rest do. The fewer who know what you really look like, the better.”

  She was so tired that she couldn't begin to summon up the excitement she had felt in Veracruz, nor the anxiety either. All she could think of was that there went her afternoon off, and a long evening of Othello still to come. She sighed as they all trudged flat-footed through the chill empty streets and across the cobbled inn courtyard.

  Lunch, which they had been having early for Mexico due to their rehearsal schedule, came at two the next day, and Roberta hoped that Jason would stay to finish it as she would like to do. When the coffee, fruits, and sweetmeats arrived, however, he slipped off. She gave him twenty minutes to get the horses, and felt smug when she heard the hooves on the cobbles almost to the minute. For ten more minutes she sipped her coffee and peeled an orange, slowly eating it section by section, savoring the tart sweetness.

  When Roberta at last slipped out, having given Rosemary an excuse for her departure, she found an impatient Jason holding the equally impatient horses. Grumpily he helped her into the saddle arid they set off toward the great cathedral that dominated the city. They passed the main plaza with its flowers, fountains, and municipal palace, and were heading into a district of rich homes interspersed with frequent churches and convents. The housefronts here were emblazoned with brilliant tiles mainly of blue and yellow and white with occasional flashes of brick-red. The midafternoon winter sun at the seven-thousand-foot altitude was thin, and a chill breeze made Roberta wish she had worn her heavier riding cloak. The clean, empty streets echoed forlornly with the sound of the horses’ hooves, and as they made their way in several directions diagonally across town, there were breathtaking glimpses of the great snow-crowned volcanoes Orizaba, Popocatepetl, and Iztacihuatl.

  “We are surrounded by the Mountain of the Star, the Smoking Mountain, and the Sleeping Woman,” Jason remarked. “I must get you up on a rooftop for a really good view. It’s sights like that that can almost make me believe in God.”

  They stopped before an especially ornately tiled house where Jason thumped on the huge carved wooden door with his riding crop. The door swung open and a liveried servant waved them wordlessly into a bare courtyard where they dismounted and climbed some stairs to a large hall whose floor was curiously painted to resemble an intricate carpet. Taking her by the hand, Jason pulled her into a side room, its floor also painted, but furnished with several Spanish colonial chairs of dark carved wood, their tall straight backs and bare seats defying anyone actually to sit in them. There was a high carved table of matching wood, and a large wardrobe in one corner. Next to it stood a wooden wheelchair, far better designed and more graceful than the clumsy contraption they had used in Veracruz. Without asking, she knew that the wardrobe contained their costumes and makeup.

  Used to the communal dressing rooms of small theaters that offered little privacy, Roberta stripped to her stays, put on the form, and covered it with the same dress she had worn in Veracruz, all without so much as a glance at Jason, who was equally unself-consciously putting on the dirty white peasant pants and shirt. Later she sat in one of the chairs as he painstakingly applied the makeup and gave her the cotton padding for her cheeks. As he leaned over her, touching here and smearing there, she watched his eyes with fascination.

  Up close, the brilliant blue was broken by tiny spokes of black that matched the black of the pupils, alternating with areas of clear dark blue that made her think of the tropical sea just before sunset. She saw the line of scarring, white, slightly puckered and indented over the cheekbone. The black beard was glossy and curled slightly below a wide lower lip. His nose was long and thin, straight except for a noticeable jut just below his eyes where it might at one time have been broken. Black eyebrows sliced clearly across a high forehead, his black hair carelessly tumbled by the taking off of his hat after the ride. She found herself translating that cold blue and black into red and amber, the warm colors, a lover’s colors. Would that it were Will touching her so gently and deftly, his gaze upon her face so rapt.

  The meeting room was crowded, this time with many more frock coats than ranchero costumes. Word had obviously preceded them from Veracruz, for after a brief murmur of exclamation at her entrance, there was a spatter of spontaneous applause. Wholly at ease, she launched into her speech on the virtues of Alarcon and the vices of Santa Anna. At the end, the applause was enthusiastic, punctuated by shouted oles. As she sat there smiling and nodding smugly, a youngish man with a brutal jaw stood up and she felt with a flick of fear the admonitory prod between her shoulders.

  “Gentlemen,” the man said commandingly into the babble of voices that dropped instantly into silence, “that was a very pretty speech, and I applaud its sentiments heartily. Unfortunately, however, the lady is an impostor.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  “Gabriel Cuevas!” hissed Jason in her ear under the storm of question and protest.

  Heart thumping madly, Roberta raised her hand imperiously for silence. She waited as the voices ceased one by one until the room filled with a stillness so overpowering that it became a solid physical entity, in which they all were frozen like butterflies in amber.

  “Dear Pepino,” she said then, affection and laughter in her voice, “you haven’t changed a bit, have you? Always the skeptic. Remember when I warned you that giant frog looked poisonous and you wouldn’t believe me?” Cuevas’ expression of stern righteousness had changed to one of puzzled astonishment. “The years haven’t dealt as kindly with me as they have with you, have they? I’m dumpy and lame now, but inside, believe me, lives still the Carmelita you grew up with.”

  With an inarticulate exclamation he pushed through the crowd and embraced her, tears running down his face. “Come home with me,” he demanded; “Esperanza will never forgive me if you don’t stay with us.”

  She hoped he didn’t realize that
her bosom felt quite unlike real breasts, even with stays. With luck his awkward position embracing her while standing didn’t allow much actual bodily contact. “Ah, Pepi, I can’t,” she replied regretfully. “You know that my life isn't worth a copper tlaco if Santa Anna’s secret police find me. My only chance is to disappear immediately after these meetings, at any one of which an agent of his could be placed.” She gestured at the group of men talking animatedly among themselves, politely leaving Cuevas and her to their supposed reunion. She patted his arm affectionately. “When the monster is gone, we shall all be free and I shall remember all the adventures we had as children. By the way, what are you doing in Puebla?”

  “Carlos, being older, of course got the hacienda, and I bought into Atunano’s cotton factory here. I think we’ll make a fortune.”

  “I wish you the best of luck, Pepi. I shall return before too long.”

  He kissed her hand and then for the first time looked directly into her eyes. His eyes narrowed, and she knew that he had seen the light gray where the black should have been. However, he only squeezed her hand and said, “You are a brave woman, senorita. Vaya con Dios, go with God.”

  After much shaking and kissing of hands, compliments and encouragements, they got away at last and slipped into the room that held their clothes.

  “That was damned bad luck,” Jason said, stripping off his shirt. He wiped the makeup from his chest and stomach that he had used to mask the whiteness of his skin under the open shirt. “Good thing I don’t have much in the way of chest hair, or I’d have had to shave it,” he added, half to himself.

  “Does it really matter that Cuevas knows?” she asked. “He knew me in the end, but he seemed not unsympathetic. Why should he try to sink the very cause he supports?” She undid the laces of the form.