by Conrad Aiken
And abruptly, almost as if she had known what he was thinking, she was saying, with sleepily turned head, her cheek pressed against the chairback:
“You don’t regret it, Blom, do you——?”
“Of course not, darling. I never was so happy in my life.”
“Neither was I! And now you must be very nice to Gil.”
Her eyes were wide open again, and still; again they exchanged a leisurely look of unhurried understanding, in which all the future lay between them like a long-familiar landscape, every beloved feature of which was wonderfully known to them. It was all there, every bit of it: the years like seed, the years like furrows, the years like sheaves. Noni at Nonquitt, freckled, sailing an eighteen-footer; Noni in Boston, bringing back a basket of daffodils and music from Faneuil Hall, or standing in line for the symphony concerts; Noni climbing the dark mountains of Mexico. Noni with himself and her devoted Gil, and then—Gil and himself alone, looking back.… And as they gazed at each other, motionless, save for the quivering of arm against arm, or hand in hand, with the everlasting vibration of the train, it was as if, in that wide landscape of all life, they could see themselves, now here, now there; now in one part of the landscape and now in another; by the rocky shore of a sea, on a hillside, in a park, in a dark street; walking quickly side by side, walking always in swift unison, their faces turned towards each other, their hands now and again touching, but always, where ever they happened to be going, with perfect knowledge of a shared purpose and view, a known and accepted destiny. This was their life. This had been their life.… And then, quickly, the Norse-blue eyes were laughing in the tired face, and he himself was laughing, and they shook their heads at each other for rebuke of such silliness, and Noni once more composed herself for sleep, gave a little wriggle for comfort, and turned her face away.
Whoo-whoooo-whoo-whoo——!
But he was not awake at Saltillo, although he thought he had been awake all night; he could have sworn that he had known each separate time that each of the babies had cried, and the voice of each, and the voice of each of the mothers; but when he awoke, and saw the great gray fan of dawn behind and over the mountains, and the brown twilight close against his window, it was to find that the train had stopped at a tiny little station, a mere adobe hut, white-walled and deserted in the wilderness, and on its front, painted in large black letters, the incredible name: Encantada. Encantada! Enchanted, the Enchanted Town. It was the enchanted mesa of Krazy Kat. He turned quickly to tell Noni, but of course she was gone, she had gone back to Gil. In the profound stillness of early morning, the train then began to move, glided away from the forlorn and deserted station, where not a soul was to be seen. A little mud-walled town was now visible, on the dark scrubby slope of the mountain, as forlorn and deserted as the station; and then, standing alone in the desert, his back to the sharply outlined mountains in the east, a solitary shrouded figure came into view, an Indian, wrapped closely in his sarape, standing immovable and secret as a rock to watch the passage of the train. It was incredible; it was a dream. It was exactly, to be sure, what he had just been dreaming—that landscapes are like states of mind, like feelings, like apprehensions. The little town called Encantada, deserted by all save that brooding and inscrutable hooded figure—and at this, of all hours, the morning twilight of a desert among mountains—all this was obviously much more intimately a part of himself than a mere geographical section of a continent.… He had known it before; as now, too, he felt that he had known before the miles and miles of sagebrush and mesquite, the straggling rows of broken prickly pear beside the railway line, the Spanish bayonet, the iron and copper-colored mountains saw-toothed against the cloudless and burning sky. It was no surprise to see a wolf loping unhurriedly away towards the foothills, nor the citadels of prairie dogs, nor the buzzards sailing in pairs, sailing and wheeling, their wide moth wings almost motionless. It was a dream, a continuous dream; all day it unfolded in identical character; and at breakfast and at lunch, in the peculiar Mission dining car, with its black oak beams and gaudy Mexican pottery, they agreed that it was something they had all dreamed, all three of them, long ago, and many times.
“And those date palms, walking up and down the hills like sad little families,” said Noni.
“Or like men charging a hill in open formation.”
“But so attitudinizing, so tragic and comic! And so compassionate!”
“Yes. They’re really absurd.”
“The little ones, especially!”
It was all a dream: and in it now, too, were the manifest distortions of fatigue; the rocks too angular, the soil too red, the Indians too many and too sullen, the train too crowded. The suave violinist from San Luis Potosi gave Noni cards to his maternal “ont” in Mexico City: she ran a pension. They must go to see Roberto Soto, the Charlie Chaplin of Mexico; and a bullfight; and a cockfight. He had learned his English in school; he had played in the symphony orchestra in Mexico City; he knew Chavez. The Spaniards despised the pure-blooded Spaniards of Mexico. Pulque was the ruin of the peons. Pulque? Yes, pulque. And these desert stretches, with the maguey, and that other gray brushlike bush, from which it was possible to make rubber—but farther south the country would be more beautiful. Yes.
The blonde girl had joined the three married women with their babies: the young man with the cowboy hat sat alone in the seat, sulking. He was listening, but pretending not to listen, to the loud conversation, the sallies of wit, the screams of laughter, behind him. Parrot laughter: cold and fierce. Monterrrrrey, the blonde girl was saying, rolling the r brilliantly and mercilessly, Monterrrrrey, something about Monterey, and they all rocked with uncontrollable and malicious laughter. She was punishing him now; she had become the life of the party: the demure young thing whom he had tried to seduce was keeping the whole train in an uproar. The conductors—there seemed to be two of them—came and joined them, so did the beer man; so did an Indian woman with a hen in a basket. And always they were coming back to that everlasting Monterrrrrey.
Sure enough, the landscape had changed, was changing; and while the mountains still kept their indomitable stations, color of slate, color of bronze, stained with dark blood, the valleys opened outward and downward in richer greens, in corn fields, in grain fields, and here, too, were mountain streams, the land was no longer waterless, and now a small river running and sparkling, where before were only dried beds of rock. Pink churches stood among the trees, and yellow churches; far below the turning train the wide-hatted white-clad little figures of laborers could be seen, stooping in the rich fields. And here, by the tracks, grew goldenrod, already in bloom, strayed all the way from New England.… It was in the dusk that Noni discovered it, with her hand on the pane—Noni looking down into the purple valley below them, where now the lights had already begun to twinkle. Time with a hundred eyes, time the star spider!—the train had increased its speed once more, it was on the last stretch, it was hurrying home.
“Do you suppose he’ll meet us? Do you suppose Hambo will be there?”
“God knows, Noni; I suspect the train’s already late——”
“Quite a lot, I think——!”
“And we don’t know how far Cuernavaca is——”
“No. I suppose, at this hour of the night—it’s unlikely?”
“And this day of the month, and this year——”
“Where are we anyway? I wouldn’t be in the least surprised if I woke up in Boston——!”
“Yes, it doesn’t exist.…”
Gil tried to read the detective magazine: Noni nodded over the Megha Duta. Noni tried to read the detective magazine: Gil nodded over the Megha Duta. I Cover the Death House. Guns, Blondes, and Speed. Burning legs, burning lips, the singed smell of the executioner! And gilded Lil, tossing off nickel beers in the bar, after her farewell visit to her condemned husband! Guns, Blondes, and Speed.
“Well, I hope he’s there. Otherwise we’ve got to try to get into a hotel.”
“O God, our
help in ages past.”
“And I wonder what kind of a house he’s got—did you say he was Bohemian, Gil?”
“Bohemian? No, I wouldn’t say Bohemian. I met him on a ship.”
The echoes of the past came around them briefly, with faint evocation; Noni was looking at her hands, her fingernails, with fatigued amusement; Noni came back from the lavatory a little distressed (for it was filthy), but making a weary joke of it; Noni lay back with her hand over her eyes, tired, while Gil gazed beyond her at the darkening landscape. Nightfall, nightfall; the train falling around the curve of the world——
And in fact the train had now become positively suicidal. It was at last rushing downhill, hurling itself precipitately down the mountainsides, down gorges, down tunnels and valleys, lurching in breakback fashion around screaming bends, falling and then checking momentarily in the pitch darkness, only to resume its headlong disastrous plunge to Mexico City. It was unbelievable. Noni was a little frightened: so was Gil. So for that matter was himself. Gil said:
“And when you remember how that rail at Queretaro bent down two inches—you saw it, Noni—you just kind of wonder.”
“They might as well jump straight down and be done with it!”
“Just about.”
“It’s as good as Coney Island!…”
But abruptly, and as if with purpose, the blonde girl had come back to her seat, had put on her hat with firm fingers, was getting down her bag; the train was slowing; passengers were rising, peering out of windows; another train passed them going north, at a switch point; there were rows of lights, there were buildings. Could it be?… Half past eleven; they were an hour late. And now the tolling bell, melancholy and slow, ylang—ylang, ylang—ylang, and the slowing train still slower, and the long platform with running figures; and suddenly Gil was exclaiming—as he stared down through the window——
“It’s Hambo—look, it’s Hambo—Noni—with a stick as tall as himself!”
“He’s come to meet us—isn’t he a darling?”
The round red face glared up at them affectionately, the fat fist lifted a forked stick towards them in signal; he was walking slowly alongside the train, grinning. So this was Hambo; and now everything would be simple.… And this familiar world, this train, would be lost forever.
IV
“Ommernous, that’s what it is, ommernous, every bit of it is ommernous!”
And not least the alien sky, with those gizzard-colored thunderheads already piling up, as Hambo said they always did in the evening, now that it was the rainy season; and not least the smells of these filthy little streets, if streets they could be called; and not least the stinking green-gray water that flowed down the gutters. The landscape, with its great red and brown mountains, everywhere visible round the sprawling white-walled mountain town, was all very handsome; and so—when it came flashing out through the clouds—was Popocatepetl; and so were the savage unfamiliar trees and flowers. It was everything that Hambo said for it. Yes, indeed! But also, it was ommernous. As for Noni——!
He had been walking a long time; exploring, with an indifferent eye, the sights of Cuernavaca; getting himself lost in the narrow streets, and finding himself again. Twice he had arrived at the same odd little church, apricot-colored, its stiff little façade framed (as if parenthetically) by two tall curved cypresses. Twice he had stumbled down to the bridge—and this was indeed fantastic!—which crossed that incredible tree-filled gorge. The fernlike trees were so interlaced across it that one thought of course it must be very shallow; only when one looked a second time did one glimpse—far below—and with a sudden contraction of the heart—tiny rocks and ripples in the filtered sunlight, knotted roots on the dank sides of the narrow little canyon, and the sinister suckers of the creepers, venomous and dark, hanging down hundreds of feet in search of a foothold. The barranca. To turn away from that was a relief; but what was there to turn to? The streets were all alike, the Indians were all alike; the truth was that he hated everything, everything was wrong. The market bored and irritated him; so did the sound of a foreign language, Spanish; so did the rows of stalls and barrows in the two little squares that formed the center of the town. Who the devil wanted pots or laces or belts or bead necklaces, or those dreary little messes of food—a few beans, peppers, peanuts, pods, squash seeds—on a tray? Or ears of corn simmering in little pans—so, anyway, it looked—of hot axle grease!… No, it was all hateful. And to come upon that sign, that mysterious sign—Quo Vadis? Inhumaciones—and to wonder what it meant, and to find out—that had been the last straw! For when he had reached the open door of the little shop, and had peered in, it was to discover that it was an undertaker’s. A tasteful display of coffins—all sizes and colors—neatly stowed on shelves—and a young man in the act of tacking gray satin, very tenderly indeed, to a small kite-shaped coffin lid. And the cynical question, “Quo Vadis?”…
The truth was, they never should have done it. The midnight drive out over the mountains, immediately after getting off the train—the abrupt changes in altitude, so that even Gil and himself had been quite deafened—this had been absolute madness; they should never have listened to Noni and Hambo. Never. Though of course nobody had thought it was as far as all that, or as high; and Hambo had been in entire ignorance of the situation, and he himself powerless to speak. It was a trap. Nothing but a trap! “Only an hour,” Hambo had said, grinning and patting the steering wheel; but Christ, he hadn’t mentioned that you had to climb over the backbone of the continent to do it! And suddenly then, in the dark car, to feel Noni stiffening beside him, stiffening and gasping, thrusting her hands out desperately as if to find something to hold on to, then turning her face fiercely downward against his arm, lest the look of agony be seen, be seen by Gil—the terrible strong shudders of the body, in its powerful instinctive struggle against the enemy within—and all the while the pathetic heroic effort to minimize the convulsion, and to protect poor frightened Gil. “No,” he said aloud; “no, things can’t be like that, no.…”
Turning a corner at random, he stumbled a little on the cobbles, saw the square with the fountain once more before him, and decided he might as well go to Charlie’s at once—where he was to meet Hambo—and wait there. It was nearly time anyway—or wasn’t it? And besides, his teeth were chattering—which was damned funny, as it was very hot—and a drink would do him good. Charlie’s, anyway, was unmistakable—you could see the sign a mile off, a little corner café with open stone arches and red-covered tables, facing the palace square. Cafés, in fact, were everywhere. There was another one next door, and outside this was a crowd of Indians, in their white and pink cottons, trying to get into—or out of, it was difficult to say which—a ramshackle bus. The driver was racing the engine, which rose to a shattering but somehow decrepit roar, a bell began clanging rapidly in the porch of the café, a bird, a really extraordinary bird—at that moment he saw it in its cage, over the gunny sack partition between the two cafés—began simultaneously to scream a contrapuntal and Bachlike thing, which ascended by concealed half tones, and suddenly the bus shot away around the corner of the square, on two wheels, two young men running after it and swinging up on the rear step as it went. The astonishing bird song had stopped as abruptly as it had begun—after a brilliantly complicated climb of perhaps half an octave—and the entire separate uproar attending the departure of the bus had ceased. He ordered his whisky and sat down.
An enormous white butterfly—preposterous—went by, on soft, slow wings—it was like the leisurely waving of a handkerchief. These tropics certainly did things in a big way. Over the red palace of Cortez, on the far side of the square, the clouds had become of an unbelievable purple—there could be no doubt that they meant business, and soon. Not that anybody minded. The hubbub went on just the same; Indian boys on shiny new bicycles rode round and round the square, bumping in and out of the dusty holes, and displaying a positive genius for falling off. A blind beggar, with white slits for eyes, and as evil a fa
ce as he ever had seen, was led into the café, and out again, by a frightened little girl. A starved dog with a broken back, the hind quarters twisted, dragged itself crookedly to the little parapet of flowerpots by the entrance, and lay there, mutely begging. No attention was paid to it. The eyes, tender and trusting, beseeching, were enough to break one’s heart; and when at last it gave up hope, and began to drag itself away, it heaved such a sigh of pure and beaten despair as ought rightly to have ended the world. He watched its pitifully slow progress all along the side of the darkening square, towards the palace, and then out of sight round a corner. He felt quite sure that it was going away to die; that sigh could have meant nothing else. And it was an indictment of mankind. Or of God? It came to the same thing.… Meanwhile, the Bach-bird had again broken out into song, fought its way up that furious contrapuntal cataract of glittering and savage semitones, made once more the final leap of triumph. And just then, round the very corner where the little dog had disappeared, Hambo came into sight, in the dusk, walking slowly with his tall forked stick, for all the world like St. Christopher. The swimming pool had given him lumbago; and the forked stick had been borrowed from one of the rose trees in the garden. Good-natured and solemn, the fringe of blond beard making the round face look a little odd, he approached self-consciously and shyly.