The Hungry Blade

by Lawrence Dudley

  “Riley is also an artist,” she said, “knows the galleries, the dealers, the other artists.” There was a pounding on the door outside. A distant voice could be heard, loud—“¡Policía!”

  “Oh no! They’re here already!” Riley said.

  “Hurry! Go! Find out what the Nazis are doing.”

  “Follow me,” Riley said. They flew out, Hawkins close behind, into the courtyard. Another pounding at the front door. “This way!” They ran back across the garden to a door on the street. Riley motioned with a hand for Hawkins to wait, crept up to the door and peeked through a crack, flinched back, making a shushing gesture, whispering, “Oh no, they’re there, too!”

  “Well—why? What would they want with us?”

  “It’s what they do, round up all the people they can find. We were in her house. That makes us suspects. It’s their way of doing things.”

  Not something I can afford, Hawkins thought, knew instantly, alarm mounting second by second. Ignore the danger of exposure—just the length of time off the street and off the case. Could be disastrous. But what? If I was on the Continent I’d shoot my way out … can’t do that here, he thought. These coppers may be my problem but they’re not my enemy. But what? He quickly scanned the courtyard.

  “This way!”

  In a second he sprinted across the courtyard, Riley now in close pursuit, to a volcanic stone staircase across from the studio. It had a high wide stone wall or railing going down the side, at least a foot wide. At the top was a low portico roof over the stairs and door, that in turn was below another roof. They climbed up the railing, then pulled themselves up another three or four feet to the portico, then took a few steps to the upper roof. In seconds they were on top of the house.

  “Keep down,” Hawkins said. They crouched along low, almost on hands and knees, to the roof of the next house. Hawkins checked the street. Cops and cars were outside.

  “Back! Away from the street.” At the far side they rolled over the parapet onto the neighbor’s roof, keeping down, then raced along that to the next house, swinging out, hanging over and dropping down onto that roof, then racing to the back of the house to a tree. They reached out and caught a branch, swung out and climbed down into the courtyard. Hugging the wall, they sprinted around to the back gate, watching the windows behind them. No one saw. The gate was latched from the inside. Hawkins lightly opened it with a finger and looked out. Nothing. He straightened his tie and hat and motioned to Riley. A café was down at the corner. Hawkins gestured to it.

  “Walk slow. No cares.” They lightly sauntered down to the café as a police car sped by, went in the side door, looked around a moment, then walked out around the front.

  They wordlessly doubled around the corner, peering down the street. Two uniformed policemen were waiting outside Kahlo’s house with a car and van, their backs to the door.

  “The bastards! They’ll have to take her in her wheelchair!”

  “My car’s down there.”

  “They could be outside for hours.” Another police car went by. It slowed, the officers looking back.

  “They had people watching the house! This way!” Riley sprinted back up the street, led him into a narrow alleyway filled with trash, out onto another street. A siren sounded nearby. They went around another corner, then another and then made a straight line across the street to a slummy-looking garage built of stained adobe. Riley unlocked the big door and pulled Hawkins in. Seconds later they heard the sound of a car and siren speeding by.

  -31-

  The garage had been converted into a small studio with skylights made from a pair of discarded glass doors crudely cut into the ceiling, the white porcelain knobs staring down. Riley had painted a pair of unblinking eyes on them. Over some scanty-looking rafters was the underside of a corrugated tin roof painted sky blue, matching the high Mexico City sky outside, with a few white clouds, giving the room an airy, bright quality. A pair of spindly, whitewashed saplings partially held the roof up, little knickknacks and mirrors hanging from the stumps of lopped-off branches. Canvases and masks were scattered about. A bed with a rumpled blanket was folded against the back.

  “You live here?” Hawkins said.

  “No. I rent a small room nearby where I share a kitchen. Sometimes I sleep here, though.” There were a pair of kerosene lanterns and some candles around. No electricity.

  “You rely on sunlight?”

  “Plenty of light here in Mexico!”

  “Yes. Wonderful light here. Your English is very good.” But there’s an interesting trace of an accent, Hawkins thought. He began looking around at the paintings. Most were unfinished. The siren sounded in the distance again. Interesting paintings.

  “My mother and her family came from Ireland.” Ah, yes. Irish along with the Spanish, Hawkins thought. “Who did these paintings the Fascists want to sell?” Riley said.

  Hawkins went down the list of works he’d seen in Bermuda: Braque, Matisse, Rousseau, Picasso and more.

  “We don’t see many works by those artists here. That will cause a sensation because they are famous and foreign. People will think they have to be important.”

  “A sensation? Good. I don’t think the Nazis will want that.”

  “Yes!” Riley started to laugh. “I like disturbances. Too many people are so set in their ways. We must shake them up.”

  “Have you been exhibited?”

  “A few, but not like Frida or Diego. Not yet.”

  These paintings … unusual, Hawkins thought, a mixture of techniques and styles, surrealist, but not the frozen nightmare quality of a Dali, a folkloric, mythic element, perhaps.

  “Abstract works? Surrealist?”

  “Modern works. But Mexican! We must work from our own traditions, not ape foreign examples to create a revolutionary art for Mexico. We are not the States. We are an ancient country, you should go to the Olmec gallery in the anthropological museum, great art, three thousand years ago.” Riley pointed at a small bowl-shaped object, a reclining man wearing a headdress, looking to the side. “Like that Chacmool, it was for offerings to the rain god Tlaloc.” Hawkins walked around, studying it.

  “How old is it?”

  Riley laughed. “Two weeks.”

  “What? It looks ancient.”

  “No,” A big grin. “It’s a copy. I made it to order.”

  “That’s remarkable. For who?”

  “A dealer. He has a gringo customer who wants one. He will never know. All the artists here, except the big names, make things to get by. We have to.”

  “My, my, Riley, I won’t judge, though.”

  “They took half our country—we take their money.”

  “I suppose that’s sort of fair. You’re very talented.”

  “Thank you. I make masks, too. Heads and masks, they inspire me.”

  “Masks?”

  “Yes.” Riley pulled several more from a box, hanging them on the wall. “I am trying to get these exhibited. We all wear masks. It’s in our nature. What are the masks we wear? We do not ask this question. We should be aware of the masks we make. But mostly we are not.”

  “Quite a thought. Yes, we all wear masks.” I surely do, Hawkins thought. Depends on who I’m talking to, what mask I wear: Secret agent. Art dealer. American, British. Group captain. Valve salesman. A man sickened by violence. A man who regularly kills people … and surely will again. I wear a great many masks, he suddenly reflected. My job is … wearing masks, after a fashion. This Riley is interesting.

  “Yes!” A brilliant smile lit Riley’s face, then the rasp broke into a helpless and melodic giggle, voice rising and falling. As Hawkins looked over he realized something with a great start.

  “What masks do you wear, Riley?” Now it was Riley’s turn to look startled. Yes, that confirms it, Hawkins thought. He’d thought Riley was a late teenage boy, maybe ei
ghteen or nineteen. But no. Riley was a young woman.

  “Yes?”

  “I think I know—”

  “This is another mask I wear.”

  “Why this one?”

  “The mask of a man?”

  “Yes, why that one?”

  “I cannot stand the strictures our society places on women. Mexico is such a conservative country. Cárdenas tried to give women the vote. He failed. It was terrible. Many of us felt crushed. Mexico was not ready. Then, of course, the Church. Always the Church.”

  “Does Frida know? About your mask, I mean?”

  “Yes. She approves, but then does not. She has great difficulty as a woman, to be an artist, she fights all the time, you have no idea how hard it is to get exhibited. There are terrible newspaper articles—oh, how amusing the wife of a famous artist dabbles in paint. But then she is a feminist, her life, her womanhood, her femininity is her art. She refuses to agree to efface herself.”

  “Do people know? About you, I mean.”

  “It’s none of their business.” She handed him a mask, a jaguar, then another, tiled with small mirrors.

  Perhaps, Hawkins thought, but still—I think have more experience with wearing masks.

  “A dangerous business, these masks,” he said. “Can you can keep track of which mask you’re wearing?”

  “They are all acts of creation. What does it matter?”

  “But can you get lost, lose who you are? Have too many masks?” I sometimes wonder, too, he thought. It can get confusing … all the masks I wear.

  “No, all of life is a mask—death, too.” She handed him a mask in the form of a bleached skull, with rouged cheeks and ringlets of hair. “This is the mask of death.”

  “Who wears the mask of death? The giver of death? When it comes for you?” Who wears that mask? That’s the thing. A mask I wear all too often, Hawkins thought. Hasn’t come for me. Not yet. Perhaps, I wore it first, or better, or maybe simply luckier to find that mask first. “Many men are wearing that mask today.”

  “No, that mask is death, death itself.”

  “No, death is not a mask, or if it is, it’s a mask you will never take off.”

  “Yes, you do lose yourself, at that moment, under the mask of death. The world, too.”

  Something struck Hawkins with great force: We wear masks all the time, all through life. Then he thought of his girlfriend, Daisy van Schenck, back in New York. Not with Daisy, he thought. That’s what’s so different—being with her. There were no masks, it was liberating, in a way, to totally be oneself. Can we—she and I—get that truth back? After I had to put my masks back on, after I had to leave? He brushed that thought aside.

  “Can you wear a mask with one you love?”

  “Yes. The mask of love!” She began sorting through the box, looking for one.

  “No. I think it’s the nature of love, to let the masks all fall. That’s its blessing.” Or at least what I get out of it, Hawkins thought. It’s a moment without the masks—where all of my life is real again, I never have that numb feeling, be numb myself, feel nothing. With her, I feel again. But Riley seemed troubled by the idea.

  “I don’t know …”

  “Because if they’re in love with a mask—are they in love with you? What happens if the mask falls? What are they in love with?”

  Instead of answering she rose and checked the window in the garage door.

  “We should go.”

  -32-

  Hawkins was driving along the Via del Centenario, another wide boulevard, wet and shiny from an early morning shower. A brilliant sun broke through the dark clouds. The lush green of the trees lining the wide boulevard and the Parque Hundido seemed to glow from within, as though made of living neon tubes. He was heading toward the distant city center but Hawkins was watching Riley, fascinated. There was an I-don’t-give-a-damn quality to her, she’d stuck her head and arm out of the window, the way dogs and children do, breeze whipping her hair, not caring at all who saw or how silly it might look, holding her straw hat in her lap, a few stray drops from the sprinkle dotting her forehead.

  “I rarely ride in a car,” she shouted. “We will go to the Zocalo. Around there we’ll find the galleries where all the rich people go.” She glanced over, adding sourly, “With their cars.” She sat back in, levelly gazing now at Hawkins, then took a deep breath. “This gallery in New York that you work for. Could it exhibit my works?”

  Ah, well … Hawkins thought. “Possibly. But the owner likes old things, antiques, artists long established. Nothing risky. He’d probably like that bowl.”

  “That can be arranged!”

  “Thank you, but no! I will take your own works up with him, though.”

  “Good! When we go to these galleries, could you say you are interested in my art?”

  “Why, yes. The least I can do.”

  “¡Maravilloso! If they thought a New York gallery was interested, that might do it for me. We’ll start with Galería de Arte Mexicano. Frida and Diego exhibited there. It is very prestigious. Rich gringos go there first because they also exhibit foreign artists, like your stolen Nazi paintings.”

  Hawkins stopped by the Hotel Imperial, collecting from the concierge a waiting three-day-old copy of the New York Times that’d arrived that morning. He checked in back. There it was. Perfect, he thought. The BSC staff in Manhattan had adroitly created a fake photo of the Alpert Gallery and placed it in a small display ad in the back of the paper. It was, needless to say, an extremely convincing fake, as good or better than Riley’s Chacmool. A casual mention, he thought, Then—oh, perhaps it’s here. Ah yes. See there? That’s us. Only a slightly ironic touch there—that’s us! Busy at our work … Probably convincing to someone from uptown for a few days, to say nothing of someone two thousand miles away.

  He heard voices behind him.

  “¡Oye! ¡Tú! ¡Largarse! ¡Este lugar no es para campesinos!”

  It was one of the hotel clerks, irritably gesturing at Riley to leave, catching her sleeve to push, handing out a few centavos with the other. Riley slapped his hand away, hard, angry, face red, sending the pennies scattering across the marble floor, answering in English, waving a fist under his nose.

  “I am not a beggar. I have every right to be here!” That startled the man, hearing what appeared to be a poor campesino speak inglés.

  “Señor Riley is not a campesino, he is with me!” Hawkins said.

  The clerk froze for a split second, a horrified look on his face, said, “Pardon me!” then bowed and shuffled away, “Pardon me!” picking up the centavos as he went.

  Riley began coolly moseying around, inspecting the elegant lobby.

  “This is where you’re staying?”

  “I know what you’re thinking. For rich people. I have an expense account. What the hell was that about?”

  “He thought I was a beggar because I am wearing a straw hat and a guayabera. He shouted at me, told me to scram. They think they are too good for the people. These little bowls of pennies one sees at all the businesses? They pay the poor to go away.”

  “I see.”

  They got back in the car and headed east in an awkward silence. Hawkins turned a corner, ready to cross to the Zocalo, but down at the far end, near the square, a large crowd could be seen, blocking access across.

  “Oh! A demonstration,” Riley said, mood suddenly lifting. “We should get out and see.”

  Hawkins parked and they walked up, pushing and angling through the throng in the street. The massive square in the center of the city, once the site of the Aztec temples razed by the conquistadors, was now flanked on one side by the immense cathedral and the equally immense Palacio Nacional, a long ancient-looking edifice built with the same dark, reddish stone one saw all across the city. It was filling with a surging crowd of people, many waving Mexican flags or red ba
nners covered with slogans. The tone of the crowd was energized, militant, perhaps, but enthusiastic and not unfriendly.

  “What’s going on?”

  The crowd began chanting, “¡Ningunas bases! ¡Ningunos concesiones! ¡Ningunos fascistas!”

  “No bases, no concessions, no to the Fascists. President Cárdenas made it clear we will never allow foreign bases on our soil or give out any more oil concessions.”

  “Who organized this?” Hawkins said.

  “No one.”

  “What? Someone had to call it.”

  “No. When something exciting happens people rush here.”

  “What happened?”

  “The government announced today that the first foreign oil company accepted compensation. People are excited because we all helped.”

  “How?”

  “After the oil nationalization, the US government stopped buying silver for coinage from Mexico—it was pressure, to break us. Presidente Cárdenas made an appeal to the people. The square—”

  “This square, the Zocalo?”

  “Yes, here, two hundred thousand people came here to donate their valuables. People gave their wedding rings, their silver. I have a neighbor who brought his last chicken.”

  “I … don’t understand. Why?”

  “To pay the companies back for what they invested here. That was only right.”

  Hawkins tried to imagine the scene, the people surging in, tossing pieces of jewelry and silver onto the mounting heaps—no, impossible, he thought. Tens of thousands of people taking their wedding rings and tossing them in a pile? Because this man asked them to? Who could believe it? But here these people were …

  He’d seen big rallies in Europe: the precise goose-stepping at Nuremberg, marches in Moscow carrying giant banners and portraits of the leaders, even protests in Paris marching in loose ranks behind their union banners. Nothing like this. Those were carefully organized. Riley was right. These people organized themselves. You could tell from the happy but casually chaotic quality of it: clearly no one was in charge. The crowd shifted to another chant.