A Masque of Chameleons

by Joan Van Every Frost

  “You wouldn’t understand,” she said resentfully. “You’ve always been so damned sure of yourself.”

  “Have I now? Did you ever think how it must have felt the first time I looked in a mirror after I got this?” He touched the scar. “It seemed much worse then, all livid and puckered and angry; it made me look as if I had two faces. A monster to scare children. A freak. To a man, what he does in life is at least as important as love, and I was stripped of both, reduced to playing Caliban or Quasimodo. I’d had such marvelous visions of war: the comradeship, the glory, the bravery, the sacrifice. To fight the righteous battle was the highest, most selfless action in which a man could engage.

  “No one told me, nor would I have listened if he had, that between the living in glory and the dying in glory was another condition: living mutilated in shame and remorse. If it hadn’t been for a pox-scarred Mexican whore and a crusty old army surgeon, I’d have taken that same gun and put it properly in my mouth and I’d have put an end to it. God knows I thought of it.

  “The whore was if anything more scarred than I, but she kept me alive and she taught me what real love, not romantic love, was all about. The army surgeon, a dour old Scot named McCardle, had an easier job of it. I was convalescing from the operation on my leg, and he simply made me an orderly in the surgical ward. The surgical ward, I should explain, was a tent full of stink and flies and dying men. I saw men with half their faces shot away, not just a little old scar; they drooled and grinned constantly with no mouths left to close. I saw them missing arms and legs, with their manhood shot away, coughing up blood, with their heads so badly injured they weren’t human anymore. And just think, that Texas action was only a few skirmishes, hardly a war at all. Anyway, I took the lesson as it was meant, and when I was told I would never bear weight on that leg again, I set out to prove the old bastard wrong, just as he intended.”

  “Jason?” she said in a small voice. “I’m sorry.”

  “You needn’t be. Women, I’ve found, like to feel sorry for me, and pity is wonderfully close to passion.”

  “I didn’t mean that. I meant I’m sorry for how I’ve acted. Anyway, I don’t think they pity you. Funny, even though Gavin and the others call you His Nibs and Old Sourpuss behind your back, I never think of you with the scar, I always think of you smiling. You have a quite extraordinary smile, you know.”

  “That’s one of the nicest things anyone ever said to me.” His tone was surprised.

  “Oh, Jason, I’m afraid I’m going to be sick,” she wailed suddenly, her humiliation complete.

  He bent down and pulled out the pottery chamber pot from under the bed, then held her head as she spewed up the coffee and the aguardiente and the brandy. He wet his handkerchief in the basin on the washstand and carefully wiped her face. “You little fool, you didn’t even have any dinner, did you?”

  She smiled wanly, shivering again. “You didn’t really give me much of a chance did you?”

  “Now it’s I who should be sorry.”

  He held her against him again and she fell so fast asleep she didn’t even remember his carrying her into her room, undressing her down to the last petticoat, and pulling the covers over her.

  CHAPTER X

  When she opened her eyes the next morning, bright streaks of light were shafting in through the wooden shutters closed against the mosquitoes and flies. In awkward hurtful chunks the events of the night before fell into place. Her mouth tasted vile, and her stomach was queasy. There was a quiet knock on the door.

  “Awake yet?” Jason asked.

  “Come in. Though I may disgrace myself in front of you again,” she added, pulling the covers up to her chin.

  He carried a steaming bowl with a spoon in it. When she made a face and would have rejected the soup, he remonstrated. “Trust me, it will settle your stomach. Nothing like a bit of chile for a hangover.”

  She shuddered, but took up the spoon and forced down a mouthful. Miraculously it not only stayed down but created a blessed pocket of warmth where there had been only a cold knot of nausea. Without further protest, she finished the contents of the bowl.

  “Now hurry and dress, or the fair will be over before you ever see it.” He stood up with the empty bowl.

  “Oh dear, what time is it?”

  “Nearly ten. I’ve been out there since daylight, I only came back for breakfast.” He closed the doors behind him and she could hear from his receding footsteps that he was limping.

  *

  He was waiting for her in the main room where the cooking and the eating and most of the living all took place. The woman who owned the house grinned at her knowingly from behind the large iron-topped brick stove. Jason offered Roberta his arm. “Off we go then. We’ll walk this time; it’ll do us both good.”

  “Oh my poor dancing shoes,” she mourned. “They’ll never be the same again.” They were in truth dirty and stained around the soles, the toes scuffed.

  “I’ll buy you new ones.”

  “Not in Mexico you won’t. No one in the entire country has feet as large as mine.”

  He stopped and faced her. “There is something I want understood. I will not put up with listening to you whine. You can go tell your imaginary woes to anyone else you like, but not to me. Entiendes?”

  She nodded, but her mouth quirked. “Old Sourpuss is back,” she murmured.

  “I should have beaten you last night instead,” he grumbled, but the corners of his mouth lifted into that astonishing smile.

  The fairground was alive with people and animals. There were horses of all sizes and ages, even mares with foals, as well as burros and mules. A constant babble of voices cascaded one over the other as animals were trotted up and down, their feet examined, their mouths peered into.

  “Teach your grandmother to suck eggs,” they heard a white-clad countryman with a red sash say. “That horse has fifteen years if he has a day.”

  From another quarter, “Hombre, you must think I’m mad. Two hundred pesos is a hundred and fifty more than she’s worth, I don’t care if she’s in foal to Pegasus.”

  “If you see Will, let me know,” Jason said. “He was the only one who hadn’t a horse when I left for breakfast.”

  “Is he so hard to please?”

  “No, he was so late getting up, like someone else I can name.”

  She tossed her head. “I suppose Josefina got up early too?”

  “No again, but I’d never venture to advise that one about anything. She’ll get a blooded horse for herself in the city, and I’ll spend the rest of the tour wondering when his legs will give out.”

  There was a commotion a few yards distant, a flash of red hair, and a lot of dust swirling up around the agitated crowd.

  “Could that be our own sweet lad then?” Jason asked almost to himself, pushing his way toward the disturbance.

  As they approached, they could see Will, all dusty down one side of him, mounting a big barrel-chested sorrel held by several men. Will got on, and the men turned loose the horse, which began to rear and plunge. Will hung on stubbornly, clutching the wide Mexican saddle horn, but the struggle was obviously unequal and he was again thrown to the ground.

  “Dammit,” he said, slapping the dust off his clothes, “I’m going to ride that horse if it’s the last thing I do!”

  “If I could suggest something,” Jason said mildly, “I think you’d be better off if you could get the horse away from this crowd and quieted down. He’s bucked off his freshness now, and he may be as glad as you to walk off quietly.”

  “You want to ride him?” Will was truculent.

  “Not I. He’s damned strong and large besides, so it’s a long way to fall. I already have one limp.”

  Somewhat mollified that as experienced a rider as Jason was reluctant to try his luck, Will led the horse off through the crowd toward a distant deserted part of the field.

  Roberta started to go toward the corner where Will was stroking and talking to the horse, but Jason s
topped her. “Leave him be. If all goes well, he’ll want to have done it by himself, and if it doesn’t go well, he won’t want a would-be mistress watching him dumped again.”

  Will mounted once more and sat there quietly, then carefully took up the reins and turned the horse into a walk. The animal switched its tail nervously, then pulled his head in and played with the bit.

  “That’s it,” Jason said. “He’ll do.”

  “You can’t let him have that horse,” Hugh protested from beside them. “What am I going to do with an Othello on crutches?”

  Jason laughed. “Well, Shakespeare himself says Othello was just back from the wars, didn’t he? Don’t worry, Hugh. Once that horse is worked, he’ll stop all that nonsense.”

  When Jessica protested at having to ride horseback all the way back to the city, Hugh told her they had no more than six weeks to prepare themselves for a lot of long hard journeys. “You’ll bless me later on,” he added.

  “Hugh,” Jessica bit off her words, “I may perform a number of foolish acts yet in my life, but blessing you won’t be one of them.”

  *

  As rehearsal followed performance followed rehearsal, Roberta found that she had grown some sort of scar tissue. She could actually talk to Will reasonably naturally, though she was at some pains not to allow him to touch her even accidentally. Thank God they weren’t still doing that play in which he kissed her. Her view of Jessica had altered radically since the San Crispin fiesta, and it occurred to her that Jessica in her own way was as much a victim of machismo as the Mexican ladies who sat mindlessly staring out the window all day.

  Ah, but there were times at night when she ached for him, saved only by the memory of that terrible encounter. Jason could say what he liked, the act was ugly and demeaning, and she could not imagine subjecting herself to it with anyone, not even Will.

  Their opening night turned out to be a spectacular success. The elite of Mexican society attended, including even El Presidente himself, El General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. Though it was difficult to see him clearly in the uncertain archaic lighting of the theater, Roberta could distinguish a pale, nearly handsome face dominated by intense dark eyes and a remarkably high forehead. He looked more like a philosopher than a ruler, more a scholar than a despot. She stared through the side of the curtain, mesmerized. The monster against whom she had preached sat between Zaragoza and the vapidly pretty little fifteen-year-old he had so recently married, joking with one while he idly caressed the other.

  Even better received than Othello was The Robbers' Roost. The idea of the mother-in-law turning the tables and running the lives of the outlaws struck a familiar chord, for in Mexican family life it was only when she was removed a generation that the Mexican woman came into her own, with a vengeance. Suddenly the servile wife, the patient, timid mother became a matriarchal tyrant with the arrival of the grandchildren. Powerful, successful men in their forties and fifties, who had looked upon their wives as no more than servants and brood mares, went to enormous lengths to placate and appease the black-clad aging ladies who now ruled the entire family with a will of iron and an adder’s tongue. Jessica was a shrewd observer, and she aped brilliantly the mannerisms of such of these family despots as she had been able to watch in action. Jason, too, subtly changed his part as chief of the robbers to add the kind of conciliatory gestures also appropriate to the grown son of a household. There were those in the audience, mainly men, who laughed until the tears came to their eyes, and the cast was given unheard-of encores.

  *

  Much to Hugh's delight, the entire cast was invited not only for an audience, but actually to dine at the presidential palace three days hence.

  “I wouldn't feel flattered if I were you, Hugh,” Jason remarked. “Our dining with the Great One is a little like being on the wrong side of the bars during feeding time at the zoological garden. We are, to be blunt about it, curiosities.”

  “Curiosities or no,” Hugh retorted, “we wouldn't have been asked if we hadn't been good. I'd be curious myself to meet such geniuses,” he added smugly.

  Even Jason had to laugh.

  La Escandalosa opened the following night to a crowded theater. Hugh proclaimed triumphantly that people were being turned away, so apparently word of last night's success had gotten around.

  All of them were anxious on Silvia’s account, but to their astonishment she made a confident entrance and proceeded to tell the audience in a clear and disapproving voice about her disagreeable suitor and what she thought of malicious gossips. The other three actors stood gaping at her transfixed, and Jason very nearly fluffed his own lines.

  When the play was over, all gathered around to compliment her on her performance.

  “How did you do it, Hugh?” Will asked. “Even without knowing much Spanish, I could tell the girl had changed.” His eyes held a new appraising look.

  “It certainly wasn’t me,” Hugh replied, elated. “You saw how much I was able to get out of her at dress rehearsal.” Then he was all business again. “Jessica, remember we’re doing the ghost story tonight. Be sure Sid’s papier-mache head is where he can find it. I thought one of those soldiers on the way from Puebla was going to faint when he came across it in our coach. Alorsy Will, don’t forget we changed your entrance cue.”

  The pantomime was a great success, drawing a horrified gasp from the audience when Sid appeared, gruesomly carrying his dead and bloody head in his hands. Jason was still writing industriously on the Escandalosa when the theater was darkened and the others left. Roberta stayed with him for a little while but at last signaled the velador to extinguish the backstage oil lamp by the light of which Jason had been working.

  “What in the hell - ” he exclaimed.

  “We’ve got to let the velador go to bed,” Roberta said. “You can finish that at the house.”

  “I thought he was supposed to be watching, not sleeping,” Jason muttered sourly but nonetheless gathered up his pen, ink, and papers.

  “My stars, Jason, how long have you lived in Mexico?” Roberta laughed.

  He put on his hat and cloak, and they were let out by a grateful velador, who bowed and thanked the kind señores profusely. Outside, the street seemed darker than usual, and they saw that the oil light that generally burned at the corner of the building had gone out.

  “Damn!” He took her arm as they felt their way to the corner.

  The streets were silent and empty except for a few leparos sleeping on the sidewalks, for most people dared not venture out so late. Only yesterday they had seen a body mutilated horribly with a knife still lying in the street the next morning. Roberta heard a distant shout that died away ominously, and she pressed herself nervously against Jason’s arm. Their progress was agonizingly slow, for the uneven pavement with its ridges and cracks forced them to put their feet down gingerly with each step. When a stray scavenger dog gave a sudden bark nearby, both of them started violently. The dark seemed all at once alive with menace, threatening in its very lack of sound.

  Roberta gave a weak laugh. “I’m thankful I don’t have to do this alone,” she whispered anxiously. “I don’t know about you, but - ”

  “Hsst!” he interrupted her.

  The only warning they had was a quick soft slap of bare feet before Jason’s head was jerked back from behind. Jason threw up his right arm and spun about, knocking Roberta off to the side. Her eyes still unused to the dark, she could make out only a vague scuffling of figures. The straining shapes seemed to merge into one large form that resembled a great shadowy animal struggling agonized in a cruel trap. She could hear hoarse gasps and groans of exertion as she approached them with a loose paving stone in her hand, hoping to be able to distinguish attacker from rescuer.

  Not until Jason shouted, “Run, Robbie! For God’s sake, run!” did the danger of her own position in the event Jason lost the fight strike her. Yet after only a brief hesitation she held her ground and continued to look for an opening. In those moments she
found that Jason’s being hurt or possibly killed meant more to her than she cared to contemplate.

  Suddenly she heard a sharp cry and an audible snap. The bare feet slapped again on the pavement, this time retreating, and she heard with them the dwindling sound of hoarse sobs. She dropped the stone she was holding with a clatter and helped Jason to his feet.

  “Jason! Are you all right?”

  “As all right as a man who was nearly killed can be,” he panted, slapping some of the street dirt from his clothes. “The worst of it is that I don’t know if that was a real thief or someone sent to act like one. He smelled enough to be a real thief, though, at that.” He felt around on the pavement for his hat, and finally lit a lucifer. She gasped as she saw in the small flame of the match that blood was dripping off the end of his fingers. “You're hurt! Let me see.” She pulled back the coat sleeve to find that the shirt beneath was drenched with blood. The match went out.

  “Can you make it back to the inn where the horses are stabled?”

  “Of course I can make it to the inn,” he said in a disgusted tone. “It's only a cut.”

  At the inn they discovered that the rest of the company had long since gone on home, but Jason now looked so white under the smudges on his face that she persuaded him to book a room there for the night. Happily the innkeeper took them for man and wife, so they didn't have to endure any knowing leers. There was a scurrying in the room as she opened the door, but Jason didn't seem to care. Grateful, he sank down on the grimy sheets of the bed.

  “I want a basin of hot water and some clean cloths,” she told the innkeeper downstairs. “And a bottle of brandy,” she added.

  He looked alarmed. “Listen, missus, if he's got something wrong with him, it’s better he don't stay.”

  “We were attacked by a footpad just after we left the theater,” she explained. “He has a cut on his arm that should be dressed.”

  He thought about it for a moment, then held out a dirty hand. With a disgusted look she put several reales in it. He nodded. “The girl will be up with the water soon.”