by Conrad Aiken
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A Heart for the Gods of Mexico
A Novel
Conrad Aiken
I
“Ommernous, that’s what it is, ommernous, every bit of it is ommernous.”
Six o’clock.… The tall man with the Jewish nose, and lean as he was tall, and with clothes that were too large for him, avoided looking at his reflection in the glassy water of the Frog Pond—which he was circling for the fourth time in Boston Common—but thought of it just the same, and, as always, with cynical amusement. He enjoyed walking as close as possible to the pond’s edge, along the familiar granite curbing, and enjoyed the notion of his image there, stalking angularly among budding boughs against a twilight May sky. Blomberg the crane, he thought. Blomberg the derrick—Blom the steam shovel.
“Ommernous,” he muttered again (thinking at the same time how characteristic it was of Key to be late); “need money, always need money, and as soon as they need money I’m supposed to find it; what’s the good of being a Jew if you can’t find money! And even to bargaining with a ticket agent, by God, and him with the name of Albumblatt.…”
He smiled grimly, and looked up at the fading sky over the spire of the Arlington Street Church, and the empty roof garden of the Ritz—bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang—and the image of the snow, but recently melted on the roof, and the awnings and box trees which would soon replace it, came to him as one thing. Where are the snows of yesteryear? and if winter comes, can spring be far behind? He turned once more towards the tall soldiers’ monument, rounding the toe end of the little granite-paved pond, and there before him was Key, coming towards him cockily on his short legs, the derby hat set crookedly like a tiny peanut on the tiny head, the dark glasses looking blind above the already smiling mouth.
“So you want some money, and is that a surprise.”
“It’s not for me. Now look here, Key——”
“You’re wasting your time. Why in hell don’t you go to work? I mean, at a job that pays you something.…”
They turned and walked slowly towards Charles Street, went off the path on to the grass, moved slowly side by side down the slight slope in the twilight. Blomberg smiled at the amusing and cynical little face which leered up at him with affectionate hardness from under the hat’s brim, and took Key’s arm. He quickened his pace.
“Now listen, Key. What I said on the phone is straight: it’s not merely an emergency, it’s a matter of life and death.”
“Where have I heard those words before?”
“Yeah. She wants to take him away on the one o’clock train tomorrow—tomorrow—and me too. To Mexico. Mexico, of all places! It costs money. What can I save out of my twenty-five bucks a week? I’ve got a little over a hundred, laid up against the rainy day and the dentist. And Noni’s got maybe four hundred and fifty.”
“And the boy friend, I suppose, won’t put up a nickel!”
“Don’t be nasty. I like Gil, I admire Gil, you’ve got to hand it to him, he’s an idealist, a real dyed-in-the-wool Puritan, self-sacrificing, honest, everything. Jesus, that man makes me mad! He gives everything away, every cent. Right now, God damn it, he’s probably sitting up there in Joy Street thinking up novel ways of giving away what little money he has left, as if it wasn’t enough that he gives all his time for nothing to the Legal Aid Society! God.…”
They veered by tacit agreement to the left, towards the gravel expanse of the baseball field in the Boylston Street corner of the Common, now beginning to look gray in the vanishing light of evening. The sweet sound of a batted ball, tingling and round and willowy, floated up to them, and they turned their eyes towards the gray-flanneled figures which moved there in the dusk. Even as they watched, one of the players, with arms raised as in some ritual, and small white face lifted to the sky, performed an absurd little crablike balance dance under the heaven-descending ball, until the sharply lowered elbows, and the barely heard clop, showed that it had been caught. Beyond the field, lights were beginning to come out in the Boylston Street shops.
“Well, but why do you come to me? I don’t even know them.”
“I come to you, because you’ve got a heart of gold.”
“No kidding?”
“No kidding.”
“Heh, heh, it is to laugh!”
“No.”
Blomberg frowned a little, looking down at their feet, their four feet moving synchronously on the spring grass, and thought the beginning was not too auspicious. But it was as well to avoid undue pressure at the outset, even though his own sense of the shortness of time was becoming so stifling. And especially with Key, who really enjoyed the preliminaries of maneuvering: the trout playing the angler. He said, a shade too nervously, half smiling:
“It really ought to interest you. It’s absolutely the damndest situation I ever heard of, much less got myself involved in! It’s a wonder.”
Key looked up at him speculatively, his face sobered, his guard for the moment relaxed.
“You’ve known Noni for a long time—but what about this Gil? I never heard much about Gil before, did I?”
“She wants to marry him.”
Blomberg pretended not to notice the sharp look which Key gave him on this. His face stiffened, impervious to scrutiny. Key said:
“I thought she was married already. But of course nowadays——”
“She is. That’s the point. You see——”
“God, look at the traffic. Let’s go down through the subway to the Little Building. And then, of course, we’ll be in the alert position for a quick one at the Nip. Would you like a quick one?”
“Does a camel?”
Emerging from the Tremont Street entrance, by the post office branch, they paused a moment on the curb to survey the slowing traffic between themselves and the gay windows of the Nip, with its hospitably open door, then walked swiftly across, to an accompaniment of squealing and squawking brakes.
“Not too far back,” said Key. “I don’t like the odor of sanctity at the back! Dry martinis?”
“Two dry martinis.”
Key swiveled towards him on the stool, his hands in his side pockets; looked up at him smiling, his head tilted to one side. His attitude was one of amused expectancy.
“Well, go on, tell me about the boy friend. Where does he come from at this late day? Kind of a dark horse, I’d call it!”
“Oh, no. Gil has always been around—he’s the old faithful. They’ve known each other since the year one; I guess they played marbles together in the Public Gardens, while their nurses knitted, at the age of two. And then he wanted to marry her, but she wouldn’t and married Giddings instead—”
“Giddings?”
“Here’s mud in your eye. Yeah. Giddings. A first-class A-number-one bastard; full of charm, but without an honest bone in his body. He began as a society bond salesman, one of those pretty pink college boys that they have by the hundred at all the best brokerages, with the social register written all over them, and ended by being something damned like a crook. Ran a little private investment pool of his own, and got a lot of Noni’s money into it, and a lot of other people’s as well, and then slipped out from under when it went flooey. And of course it was all very nicely hushed up, and he just went gracefully out West, where, as far as anyone knows, he still is.”
“Ah. One of those. And how long has this been?”
“Ten years.”
“And being a nice Boston gal she didn’t do anything about divorcing him, of course. Of course not
! As you were saying.”
“No. She didn’t want to remarry—why should she? She was fond of Gil, but not enough—you see—”
“Christ, there’s that goddamned tune, what is it, the Chapel in the Moonlight—I wish they’d lay off it.”
They turned their heads towards the machine at the back, the little glass coffin full of records, listened to the gross throbbing of the music—like a bad heart, thought Blomberg, and winced—then turned back again to their drinks.
“But she was always sorry for him. You see, he had had a bad time of it. Made what Boston called a mismarriage.”
“You mean to say he’s got a wife?”
“No. No. She’s dead. It really was a sad business, at that. He never would tell anyone about it, but from what one can gather she got some sort of hatred or dislike of him right after the marriage; maybe she fell in love with someone else—damned beautiful, too; I’ve seen photos of her. Which raised hell with him. Noni says he nearly went crazy. Nice to him in society, you know, when they went out together, but wouldn’t have anything to do with him at home. And always going away, somewhere or other.”
“Ahem. A marriage in name only. So what?”
“So of course he enlisted as a private when the war broke out, hoping to get himself honorably killed with a bullet in his eye or something; and then, by God, what do you think she did?”
“See if you can surprise me, Blom—and let’s put this down and go an’ get a clam. Or an oyster.”
“Yeah, sure, Key, but listen!…”
They lifted their glasses simultaneously; Key was again smiling a little, but with obvious sympathy. It began to look hopeful. Just the same, you never could tell with Key, he could be as stubborn as a mule, and he hated to admit his feelings. Better soft-pedal the sobstuff, and take it easy.
They slid off their stools, and turned to the left as they went out. Key had a toothpick in his mouth, and the jaunty angle at which it wagged was amusingly in character—like, in fact, everything he did. As for instance, his habit of looking over the tops of his dark glasses, the blue eyes suddenly very bright and mischievous. Like minnows. And of course the very quaint hat. The neat small derby, on the neat small head, was perfect, like something out of a comic strip.
At the oyster house they were in luck: the two first seats at the bar were vacant.
“What a break!” said Key. “And, by God, there are Fairhavens, too.”
“Baby! and big enough to go skating on. Two half dozens?”
“This place gets me. What with all them fee-rocious red lobsters about, and that bowl of tomalley, and old George here opening oysters as easy as winking—sometimes I just can’t bear it.”
“There’s something about marine life, and the fruits of the sea—it must be an atavism. When you were a tadpole and I was a fish.”
“Yeah. But now, go on and surprise me. With what Mrs. Gil did.”
“Well, it seems that Mrs. Gil, when she saw Gil off for the front——”
“What was the old song? He left her to go to the front!”
“Never mind, Key. It seems she repented of what she had done, and how she had treated him; maybe she was tired of her lover, if in fact she had ever had one—my own theory about it was, she was just one of them queer psychological ‘cases,’ with a funny kink or squeam or something—and anyway, whatever it was, she told him before he went that if he got back alive she would reward him by having a child. See?”
“You could knock me down with a lily!”
“Yes. Isn’t it nice? He came back; and she kept her word; and she had a child. And it killed her. And the child died too.… A very handsome little specimen of poetic injustice; one of those magnificently generous gestures of the oversoul or destiny or the universal time machine that make so much sense that you want to turn handsprings of joy. For six months Gil wouldn’t even go outdoors: it was Noni that saved him.”
“I take it this was some time ago.”
“Oh, sure! Years.”
“Okay. But it doesn’t quite explain, does it, why she should up and want to marry him now. You can be sorry for someone, but dammit, Blom, you ain’t got to marry them, have you? Oh, look what George has done! And shall we say, fair haven?”
He looked down at the noble dish of oysters, beaming.
“Fair haven! You know, that’s funny—she used to go there, or near there, in the summer, when she was a kid.… Nonquitt.… I went there once myself, and you never saw such wild roses in your life.… Gosh, aren’t these good!”
“Don’t talk—eat!”
They ate the oysters in silence; sat still for a moment, as for the completion of a ritual; then Key paid at the desk (as usual) and they went out. Without a word they crossed Tremont Street, and proceeded slowly to the foot of the marble stairs, in the middle of the next block, before Blomberg said:
“I take it we are once again going up these stairs to the Greeks?”
“It kind of looks like it, doesn’t it? Two minds with but a single thought.…”
In a front booth, from which they looked out at the fantastic lamplit rear walls—smooth and sinister as precipices—of the Metropolitan Theater—a view which unaccountably always made Blomberg think of Hamlet and Elsinore—they studied the pale blue mimeograph of the menu.
“I think while we’re thinking, Henry, we’ll have a couple of those nice big dry martinis. And then we can think even better.”
“Yes, Mr. Key.”
“Ha! I see lamb with okra, Blom. And I see stuffed vine leaves. And I see chicken livers en brochette! My God, it’s awful! What are you going to have?”
“Lamb with okra, every time. That little hexagonal vegetable is what I don’t like nothing else except.”
“Lamb brochette for me; I like the taste of the hickory wood.”
“Yes, the hickory wood.”
“Hang your clothes on a hickory limb! But you see, what I don’t get in all this, Blom, is why the rush to Mexico; why the hurry to marry a man she never wanted to marry before, and doesn’t love anyway; and above all why all the panic about it, when there’s so little cash that it’s got to be borrowed. Don’t think I’m being suspicious, because I am!”
He lit a cigarette, snapped the small silver lighter shut with a very competent little thumb, blew smartly on the lighted cigarette tip to make it glow, then removed the dark spectacles and placed them on the linen tablecloth. The question, in the tired blue eyes, was candid but friendly.… And this, Blomberg, thought, was the moment at which to go slow; the necessity must now come almost as if reluctantly from the circumstances of the situation; it must be in a sense as if he himself were only now making up his mind. And where to begin? At what obscure corner? Northeast or southwest? And with Noni, or Gil, or himself? Not himself, certainly, for it was apparent that Key was already sufficiently suspicious of his own connections with the affair. He stared out of the window at the mysterious blue-red lamplit brick of the walls of Elsinore, whistling softly a little ghost tune while he did so as if to gain time. Then he said gravely, and at once aware of the power of his dark face and conscious eyes on the quick receptivity of Key’s:
“She’s got to die.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s got to die. The doctors have given her six months—maybe a year at most—and maybe much less.”
“No!… You don’t mean it.”
“Yes. Heart. Something wrong about the heart. She won’t tell me the details—won’t talk about it at all. Except for the main fact. She got the final confirmation day before yesterday, and called me up, and I went down to the Hull Street house—you know, she lives in a little wooden house down there in the slum by Copp’s Hill burying ground—and, my God, Key, I can tell you I never want to go through such a night in my life again.”
He stopped abruptly, to regain control of his voice, which had begun to sound a little queer—how odd, he thought, to find that one’s voice does tremble at such moments—and then resumed, speaking ver
y slowly, very solemnly.
“All night, mind you, watching a woman, an ineffably lovely woman, and a wonderfully intelligent one, suddenly at battle with the idea of death. And conquering it, by God, Key. She didn’t rave—she didn’t cry, though I’ve seen her cry, many times—she just became an embodied question. Embodied suffering. I’ll never forget the expression of her face as long as I live. It was as if she were looking around me all the time, looking past me, trying to get through to something on the other side, or even seeing something there. It was curiously childlike—a persistent, baffled, hurt, uncomprehending, but perpetually questioning stare, as if I had become for her the only living evidence of a world of evil, or mystery, which she couldn’t accept. Do you see what I mean?”
“Jesus!”
“Yes. The incarnated ‘Why?’ of all tragedy, all human misery. All night she was that. And facing, of course, as if in me, that was the awful part of it, the fact that there was no answer. I was the pitiless and unanswering void; the whirlwind; the trap; the six-foot pine box; the gallows; the run-over child. No arguing about it, mind you—not much talk; she would sit perfectly still, and look at me for half an hour, then suddenly get up and walk out into the little garden at the back and stand there, staring up at the catalpa tree. We would just stand there for a while, looking up at the tree and the sky—my God it was extraordinary—I never saw the sky or a tree before—the sky was rushing away above us at a million miles a second, rushing away to annihilation; the tree was dying before our eyes, like one of those quick-motion movies when it all shrivels up like melting tinsel—and she was holding them there together, holding them to herself, by an effort of will which I could feel going out to them. Living out into the void with all her senses; that’s what she was doing; and making me do it with her.…”
Key lifted his cocktail glass, turned it so that the olive stirred. He said quickly:
“Blom, have a drink. How!”
“How! That helps.”
“And here’s Henry. One lamb brochette, Henry, and one lamb with okras. And some beers. And I guess a little rice, just for fun!”