The Berrybender Narratives

by Larry McMurtry

  “Excuse me, I believe it’s time for my devotions,” Father Geoffrin said. He had grown pale, he felt queasy; he did not want to hear of any more horrors.

  “So tell me, Dr. Edgechurch,” Tasmin said, determined to tough this curious diner out, “which nations produce the best torturers? Or do I mean the worst?”

  “Oh, that’s easy, the Japanese,” the doctor said at once. “There’s something aesthetical about it. They’re very good with cords, for example. Very good with cords.”

  Doctor Edgechurch paused to reflect on his long experience.

  “Of course great specialists do pop up here and there—you might almost call them artists,” he said. “There’s a Viennese called Schoensiegel. Extraordinary fellow. Confined himself entirely to feet, and yet he broke the strongest men. Plenty of nerves in the foot, I can tell you that.”

  Tasmin found the situation curious in the extreme. All the Berrybenders, even the usually unshockable Mary, were looking discomfited. Petal had crawled up in Lord Berrybender’s lap and was rapidly polishing off his cabrito. Buffum and Vicky looked distinctly peaked. And yet Dr. Edgechurch had said nothing improper or suggestive. He was a famous physician, determined to understand the workings of the human nervous system. Accordingly, as he had politely explained, he went to places where nerves were stretched to the limit: that is, torture chambers. It made sense, and the doctor had been modest and matter-of-fact in explaining it. And yet Geoff, turning green, had to flee. Buffum excused herself, Vicky remained expressionless, and Lord Berrybender was too distracted even to play with his granddaughter. Mary Berrybender, who could talk about the most recondite sexual practices without turning a hair, was now twisting her hair into curls, a nervous habit she was thought to have outgrown. With the exception of Doña Margareta, whose eyes shone more brightly every time a torture was mentioned, the whole table had been quelled.

  The odd effect he was having on his hosts did not escape Elliott Edgechurch. He drained his wineglass, stood up, thanked Lord Berrybender, and bowed to them all, in his face a touch of sadness.

  “There! I’ve done it again—spoiled a perfectly good dinner party,” he said.

  “Now, now,” Lord Berrybender said, but the doctor ignored him.

  “Healthy people don’t want to hear about tortures—and why should they?” he asked. “It’s the same with operations. Healthy people don’t like to watch them. In both instances there is always the possibility that such agonies will in time be theirs.

  “Thus,” he added, “my investigations will of necessity have to be of a lonely nature.”

  “But one day you’ll have your atlas,” Tasmin told him. “No doubt it will win you great fame.”

  “I hope not—that too would be a form of torture,” Dr. Edgechurch said; then he left the room.

  “Too scabby!” Petal said again. In this instance no one disagreed.

  10

  . . . a snug stall, well provided with straw . . .

  AMBOISE D’AVIGDOR had a stall in the stables, a snug stall, well provided with straw; yet he did not even try to sleep. From his stable door he could see the Ear Taker, hanging from his cords. At first the man’s deep sighs could be heard across the Plaza, but now there were no sighs. The two soldiers who were supposed to guard the dying man—lest he dematerialize and slip away—were asleep, wrapped in their heavy coats.

  Amboise walked over and stood looking at the small hanging man. The Ear Taker’s eyes were closed, but he was not dead. Amboise could hear the rasp of his breath. Amboise wished the man would open his eyes—he wanted the Ear Taker to look at him once more, to realize that he came as a friend. He wanted the man to know that the loss of his own ear meant little. Amboise supposed that the taking of his ear, and all the others, was an act of vengeance. He had seen how the Mexicans treated the Indians and could well imagine that any Indian might want vengeance. Taking ears was a novel vengeance, but Amboise wanted the little man to know that, for his part, all was forgiven. He liked to think that if he and the Ear Taker met in a time of peace they could be friends.

  Amboise waited a long time beneath the gibbet. It was cold. Finally his teeth began to chatter and he stumbled away to his stall, deeply disappointed. The moment of recognition that he wanted had not come.

  In the morning the Ear Taker was found to be dead, his eyes frosted shut by the bitter chill. The Governor didn’t allow the body to be cut down. The Ear Taker hung in the Plaza until his body fell apart, a warning for all transgressors and food for the carrion birds.

  11

  The Governor was vexed—he couldn’t find his wife.

  THE GOVERNOR WAS VEXED—he couldn’t find his wife. There were thirty servants in the Palace and yet none of them seemed to know where Doña Margareta had got to. Even the majordomo, a thin, severe fellow who, as part of his job, attempted to keep track of all the rumors floating around the intrigue-ridden city of Santa Fe, merely shrugged when the Governor asked if he had seen Doña Margareta. The Governor went to the kitchen, but no one was helpful there either; he went to the carriage house, thinking his wife might be taking a drive, but all the buggies and carriages were correctly lined up. No one in the stables had seen Doña Margareta. It was most annoying. Normally the Governor’s heavy responsibilities permitted him little freedom. He was the Governor—the paperwork seemed endless. He employed two secretaries and several scribes, but still, all day, he had scarcely a chance to lift his head, to sit and think, to smoke a cigar—or to visit his wife.

  Today, though, the paperwork had been unaccountably light. It was only a little past noon, yet his desk was clear. Even a governor was human—it was a rare day when he could escape in the afternoon. He stood at the window for a moment, watching some soldiers drill, and then his thoughts turned to Doña Margareta, the wealthy beauty he had captured in the City of Mexico. He enjoyed his cigar— why not take advantage of the fact that his desk was clear and go enjoy his wife? He was a heavy man and Doña Margareta a petite, small-boned woman. Sometimes he wondered whether Doña Margareta really liked him. With a wife it was sometimes hard to say. She didn’t refuse him, but it could not be said that she performed her conjugal duties with much enthusiasm. The Governor suspected she found him gross, a sweaty bulk to be tolerated. After their lovemaking Margareta would sit and fastidiously pick his chest hairs off her breasts and belly. It embarrassed the Governor slightly. He tried to be considerate in their lovemaking but he was a hairy fellow and somehow the hairs kept coming off on Margareta. She never said a word but it was clear she didn’t like it that she rose from their bed sweaty and covered with hairs.

  Still, a wife had her duties. It was not to be expected that she would enjoy every one of them. He was home unexpectedly and hoped to have a little fiesta and then a little siesta, and yet the first impediment was that his wife seemed to have disappeared. None of the thirty servants would even venture an opinion as to where she might be. Of course, Margareta was not a favorite with the servants. She had been brought up to take a firm line with servants and she did take a stern line. She had once even cuffed one of her own ladies-in-waiting in public, at the beginning of a state dinner. The girl had failed to complete some small chore and was given a ringing slap, an action that drew much negative comment. The lady-in-waiting had been of good family herself; that this haughty woman from the City of Mexico had so forgotten decorum as to slap her was an action the old families of Santa Fe would never forgive. Doña Margareta had made little effort to conceal her contempt for local stan-dards—no, it did not make the Governor’s job easier; but then wives had to be lived with and there was no denying that Margareta was a great beauty.

  But where, the Governor asked, had this great beauty gone? Probably she was out visiting, but about the only family she still visited regularly was the Berrybenders, where she had dined only the night before. The Governor, his mind on a fiesta, was about to settle for a siesta when he happened to pass a storeroom where a lot of heavy furniture had been stored while one or two o
f the bedrooms were getting a fresh coat of white paint. The Governor was strolling down the hall when he heard what sounded like a grunt from inside the storeroom. A moment later he heard another grunt, followed by a swishing sound. His first thought was that two servants were probably fornicating in the storeroom; servants could not be particular when an opportunity to fornicate came. The Governor was a tolerant man; he did not expect servants to behave like saints. He himself, as a young captain of cavalry, had fornicated in some pretty unlikely places: on saddle blankets, in corn cribs, wherever he could go with a willing girl. He was about to pass on, but then he heard a third grunt and stopped, confused. The grunt sounded like Margareta. Hadn’t she grunted like that in the early days of their marriage, when he still managed to excite her? He couldn’t remember. Lately she had ceased even to pretend that his caresses excited her. It struck the Governor—as it should have sooner—that the reason Margareta had no interest in him was because she had a lover. Of course she had a lover. In the City of Mexico it was no doubt the expected thing, for a woman of her class. Immediately the Governor wished that he had had the good sense not to go looking for his wife. Why hadn’t he been content with a nice long siesta? As the grunts continued the Governor had less and less doubt that his wife was behind the door, in the storeroom, copulating with—whom? A soldier? One of his generals? A trader? A servant, even? The Governor began to feel angry—then he became furious. But even his fury was mixed with doubt. Part of him knew that the wise thing would be to walk on—after all, many women grunted in their passion. It might just be two servants. If it was merely a servant girl, then nothing need change. But if he opened the door and found his wife in the arms of, say, General Juan Diego, then everything must change. He might have to kill the lover, banish the wife. If he discovered his wife with another man he would certainly have to take strong action or else become a figure of ridicule. There would be disorder in the Palace for a long time to come.

  For a moment, as the grunting and swishing continued, the Governor struggled with himself. He was by nature prudent, deliberate in his actions. He had been made Governor of Nuevo México precisely because he was not impetuous. He took his time. He studied each question carefully; he wasted neither money nor men. His superiors in the City of Mexico trusted his judgment, his discretion. Was he willing to risk throwing it all away for a faithless wife?

  A moment later the male won the struggle with the administrator in the Governor’s breast. He kicked open the door.

  12

  . . . she was whipping Tomas . . .

  THE FIRST SHOCK the Governor received was that his beautiful, fastidious wife, noted at every assembly for her cool elegance, was drenched in sweat. It ran down her cheeks, pooled at the base of her neck, stained her armpits as she wielded the heavy whip—the same whip that had been used to lash the Ear Taker. But Doña Margareta wasn’t whipping the Ear Taker, she was whipping Tomas, the Governor’s most effective young footman, the one who rode on the running board of the Governor’s carriage.

  Tomas had been stripped to the waist and tied at the wrists to a bedpost. Doña Margareta grunted when she struck, so intent on her task—her fine features distorted, her eyes shining—that for a moment she failed to notice her husband standing in the doorway, as shocked by what he was witnessing as if he had seen a dead man rise. Though the whip was heavy, Margareta was small and inexpert. Though Tomas had a few red marks on his back she was not really hurting the boy—what was hurt was his pride, the pride of a young gentleman of good family who had risen to the post of first footman to the Governor of New Mexico. It was plain that Tomas was terribly embarrassed. When Doña Margareta called for him he was rather surprised. Tomas was the Governor’s footman—Doña Margareta’s was a vain young man named Jesus, whom the Governor would not have put up with for a minute. But Tomas had gone obediently to Doña Margareta’s chamber, only to be marched, without a word of explanation, down a hall and into a dusty storeroom, where he was told to remove his shirt. Tomas found himself trapped in a nightmare. Why was he in this storeroom full of dusty beds and tables? Why must he remove his shirt? Why was Doña Margareta carrying a whip with dried blood still on it?

  “Get your shirt off at once or I’ll tell my husband you raped me,” Doña Margareta demanded. Tomas felt the nightmare close around him. If Doña Margareta made good her threat, then his life was over. Unhappily, Tomas removed his shirt and allowed Doña Margareta to tie him to an old bedpost. She didn’t tie him well—he could easily have freed himself, but then what? If someone saw him half unclothed with the Governor’s wife they might jump to the wrong conclusions. What seemed clear was that Doña Margareta had become a madwoman. Her breathing was harsh, her bosom heaved, her hands became so sweaty that she could hardly hold the whip. At first she struck him on the shoulders, but then her blows were directed lower. At one point she came close, squeezing him and mauling him before stepping back to strike again. The whipping didn’t hurt, but where would it end? What if Doña Margareta took his pants down? The prospect horrified him.

  When the Governor opened the door and stood there with a shocked expression on his face, Tomas felt greatly relieved. Now surely it wouldn’t become anything worse than it had already been. The Governor was too stunned to speak, but at least he could see that his wife, and not his trusted footman, had brought the strange proceedings about. She held the whip, he was tied; as the Governor’s footman he should not have been subjected to such indignities. It was a craziness of some kind; there was no explaining it.

  The Governor, stunned for a moment, was trying to find an explanation that made sense. Tomas was not one of Doña Margareta’s servants. Could the boy have somehow committed some mild offense that set Margareta off? It was hard to imagine what the boy could have done that would cause Margareta to march him off to the storeroom and whip him. Usually she just slapped servants where they stood, if they displeased her.

  “What has Tomas done?” the Governor managed to inquire.

  Caught in her frenzy, Doña Margareta had scarcely noticed her husband’s entrance, but when she did notice she whirled on him. There he stood, gross and fat, the man whose sweaty belly she was often beneath, pressed into the mattress, ugly hairs plastered to her body, feeling nothing but distaste. Why had he, of all people, followed her to the storeroom? What could this big-bellied ox possibly want?

  “Go away!” she hissed, her look so furious that the Governor retreated a step. For a moment, it seemed his wife might turn the bloody whip on him.

  “But what did he do? Why are you whipping Tomas?” the Governor asked. “He’s my footman. Why have you brought him here?”

  “Go away!” Doña Margareta screamed—her scream echoed down the empty halls. Old Constancia, folding linen, heard it all the way across the building.

  “But he’s such a good footman, I only want to know what he did,” the Governor said meekly. He very much wished he had not opened the door. It was not pleasing to see one’s wife, soaking in her own sweat, vicious with anger.

  “He was insolent!” Doña Margareta insisted. She didn’t want to make any broader accusation—that might result in the slim, handsome Tomas being removed from the household entirely.

  “I told you to go away!” Doña Margareta screamed a third time.

  The Governor, looking at Tomas, realized the boy was too embarrassed even to meet his eye. Tomas had always been shy and polite—the last thing he could be accused of was insolence. The Governor wondered if his wife’s screams could be heard outside the Palace. He didn’t know what to do, how to help the trembling boy, what to say to his sweat-soaked wife.

  “Don’t be too long,” he said finally. “Remember, we are having guests.” He who had fought savage Indians, neither giving nor expecting any mercy, quailed before the anger in his wife’s eyes.

  The minute he stepped back Doña Margareta kicked the door shut. Before the Governor turned away he heard the grunt again and knew that his wife was already applying the lash. It m
ade him feel a fool. He was, after all, the Governor of Nuevo México. He should have struck her down, the vicious woman who was whipping one of his finest young footmen.

  And if he had struck her down, would that have changed anything? Men, after all, were supposed to rule women. He should have taken the whip from her and lashed her a few times himself. He should have dragged her to their bedroom and had his way with her, sweat or not, hairs or not. He should have paid the woman back in her own coin. But he hadn’t. He had been cowardly. Besides, shut up in an old storeroom with a handsome boy, who could know what else she might do?

  The two secretaries and the scribe were shocked and disappointed when the Governor walked back into his office. They thought they had the afternoon off. They were playing cards. On a normal day the Governor would not have tolerated the cards or the idleness. He sat down at his empty desk, in his big chair. He stared out the window. He did not move until the shadows began to fall.

  13

  . . . extremely fine features and a long, graceful neck.

  TAKE A LOVER if you need a lover—there are several handsome young officers here,” Tasmin pointed out to Vicky, who looked sad and downcast. Her labor with her second son, Randy, had been long and difficult—she could not seem to reclaim her energies. It was always a struggle to be a good wife to Albany Berrybender, and the struggle had recently been made even more difficult by Lord Berrybender’s infatuation with Julietta Oli-varies, wild, a beauty, and of the very highest nobility—Spanish, not Mexican. Married at fourteen to an elderly French banker, Julietta had run away with a conscript; captured and put in a convent, she had escaped. Exiled to Mexico City to cool off, she seduced so many young men that she was exiled all the way to the end of the road, which was Santa Fe, where she had an aunt.