5
To the poor most places are foreign, all soil not the neighborhood extraterritorial and queer. They cling to an idea of edge, a sense of margin. It’s as if space, space itself, not climate or natural resources or the angle at which a town hangs from the meridian, dictates situation and size, even form, even vegetation. They believe, that is, in a horizon geography, a geology of scenic overlook, the visible locutions of surface like merchandise arranged in a store. For them, Nature, the customs she fosters, seem to exist within serially located parallel lines. Science and history are determined by latitude and longitude, little else. Savannas and rain forests, jungles, seashores, mountains and deserts——those were the real nations.
The people were not strange to him, only their white shirts. Only their artifacts, their basketstraw heritage and adobe being. So much silver—it gleamed everywhere, so accessory he suspected that even the policemen’s badges were made of it—made his soul reel. So much marquetry—even the benches in the public squares and gardens seemed a sort of crocheted wood—gave him a sense of an entire country artisan’d into existence. The sun seemed a feature of the landscape, and he was enough conscious of the tremor-settled streets to suspect the delicate arrangements of the earth he walked upon, and to sense it sensed his steps.
It was all as mysterious and significant as the skinned rabbits and shaved chickens that hung upside down from hooks in the butchers’ shop windows, red and naked as political example.
They had been in Mexico almost four days and Mrs. Glazer had still to receive her first treatment. They had rented a car in El Paso and crossed the Rio Grande to Juarez, Mrs. Glazer insisting they stop for the hitchhikers standing on the Mexican side of the bridge. George handled the money, the blue, red and yellow tissues of currency, soft as old clothes. He signed the insurance forms and answered the border guards’ questions. She gave him her tourist card to carry. He signed the register at their motel while she remained in the air-conditioned car. He settled her in her room and turned down her bed. She had him call Sam before he went to his own room. Standing, he relayed both ends of the conversation to and from the easy chair in which she sat. They had arrived safely, he said. He and the children already missed her, he said. The girls had to do all their homework before they went out. Mary couldn’t have a milk shake till after dinner. Milly wasn’t to make any arrangements for Wednesday afternoon. That’s when auditions for Nutcracker were scheduled, he said. The trip had tired her, he said, and she thought she’d put off her first visit to the clinic till morning.
A boy rose from a camp chair in which he’d been sitting, handed something to an old woman, and came up while George was still parking the car in the lot.
“Joo here for treatments?”
“Do you speak English?”
“Ain’t that English? Joo here for treatments?”
“Information.”
“What informations joo want? Si. Sure. It work. Cure up jore cancers. Fix joo up fine.”
Mills started past the boy.
“Hey,” called the boy. “Joo, Misters. Joo got to take number. I give joo.”
But Mills ignored him.
Two receptionists in nurse’s uniforms sat at registration desks at the back of the crowded room. George went outside to get a number.
“Joo need me to watch jore cars? I watch jore cars,” the boy called after George as he started back toward the clinic. “That ways nothing awfuls happen. Nobody break jore window or puncture jore tires or tear off jore antenna or pour sugars in jore gas tanks.”
George turned around.
“How much?”
The boy grinned at him. “Joo got a Joo.S. dollars on you?” George handed him a dollar.
“Crowded in there? Many peoples?” The boy wiped imaginary sweat from his forehead, pulled at his shirt, pretended to fan himself. “Joo want to rent my chair for a quarter? Sick peoples need to sit down.”
“What’s your number?” a very old man asked him, smiling, when he was again inside. He wore an old-fashioned taxi driver’s cap with a button that said “Official Guide” where the badge number would have been.
“Ninety-five,” Mills said.
The old man’s smile disappeared and his eyes filled with tears. “Ninety-five,” he said feelingly. “You come all this way, all this far from el Estados Unidos, and they give you ninety-five. Tch-tch.”
“It’s all right,” Mills said.
“No, señor! No all right! I jam shame for my people. I jam shame for those two whore daughters of whores who call themselves typists. So slow. Tch-tch. They call themselves train typists? They are train pussies! Customers have to spell out for them all everything. Ninety-five.” The old man spit on the floor. “You be here all week. I get you thirty-seven. Five pesos.”
“No thanks.”
“Five pesos. That isn’t even a quarter.”
“I’ll wait.”
“Sure,” the old man said, “wait. You in good shape. I can seen it for myself. Your tumor ain’t bad. You got all the time in the world.”
“I’m not sick,” Mills said, “it isn’t for me. I’m making arrangements for the lady I work for.”
“Verdad?” the old man said. He seemed relieved. “I’m happy for you, señor. I am happy but puzzle. If it isn’t for you, then why you waste your time in such a place? Plane to El Paso, verdad? Rented a car? First time in ol’ Mayheeho, si ? Sure. Is beautiful day, si? Gift me seven pesos, I get the cunts to call out ninety-five, we go for a ride.”
Mills looked at the young women. Twenty-eight had been the last number called.
“Could you do that?” he asked.
“Caramba, señor,” the old man said, “thees girls is my sisters!”
“No,” Mills said. “I don’t think so.”
“Seven pesos. That’s thirty cents.”
“It’s thirty-five cents,” Mills said.
“Where do you change your money?”
“At the motel.”
The old man groaned. “No, señor,” he said patiently, “never change money at the motel. Always go to the Midas Muffler. Change it there.”
“Jesus, leave me be, will you?” Mills said. “Everybody has his hand out. I had to pay the kid in the parking lot to watch the car.”
The old man was horrified. “The kid? Not the old woman? The kid? How much you give him?”
“A buck.”
“Sure,” the old man muttered, “he’ll go to the Midas Muffler and get twenty-three point eight pesos for it. Here,” he said, “take thirty-seven. I jam shame for my people.” He put the number into George’s hand.
“What about the car? You think he’d do anything to the car?”
“No no,” the old man reassured him, “the machine will be fine. You bribed him good.”
Mills made Judith Glazer’s arrangements with the receptionist and returned to the car. The old man was with him, watching him as he unlocked the automobile. “I already gave you your five pesos,” George said. “What do you want now?”
The old fellow shook his head. “You could have done all this over the phone,” he said tragically.
“Is that what you do? Give advice?”
“I am a tout,” he said proudly. “I saved you two hours. It cost you less than a quarter.”
“Yeah, well, when I come back with the lady I work for don’t expect any more.”
“Don’t come back,” he said earnestly, touching George’s arm.
“What?”
“Don’t come back. This is not a good place. For rich gringos.”
Mills, who was only a delegated gringo, and for whom wealth and international travel and the perks of life, sleeping in motels and eating out, were merely assignments, was not so much offended as surprised by the old tout’s warning.
“You listen to him, Misters,” the boy said who had watched his car. “Father Merchant is the wisest tout in all Mexico.”
“He didn’t have such terrific things to say about joo,” George said.
�
��Father Merchant knowing my heart,” the boy said sadly.
Mills opened the car door. “Uhn uh, uhn uh,” Father Merchant said. “Always is it too hot. Crack the window of the side of the passenger three inches, and the window of the side of the driver two, to force the circulation of the air. Carry the towel with you to protect yourself when you touch metal surfaces.” Mills looked at the wisest tout in all Mexico. “Es verdad,” he said. Mills started the engine and began to back out of the space. The old man walked beside the car, trying to hand a card to him through the open window. Mills stepped on the brake and put the car in neutral.
“Please,” he said.
“Nightspot,” said Father Merchant, and gave George the card. “Institute de Cancer too sad. No cover, no minimum. Very refine. Intimate. No clip joint. Sophisticate. Tell them who sent you, they let you sit ringside, close enough to stick your finger up the pony’s asshole. Go, señor. Take the señora. All work and no play make Jack a dull boy.” Mills started to back out again. “Father Ixtlan Xalpa Teocaltiche hears confessions in English. Thursday before 6:00 A.M. mass. He’s been to Chicago. Church of the Conquistador Martyrs.” Mills was out of the space and pulled hard on the wheel to turn into the street. The old man called to him through cupped hands. “On Sundays, at the bullfights? Sol y sombre? Shady side is not always the best choice. You could freeze your nuts off if it’s a cool day.” Mills could see him now in the rear mirror. “Don’t drink the water!” the old tout shouted.
They sat by the small pool in deep lounges, idly watching children play Marco Polo. The kids had driven most of the grownups out of the water, making it impossible for anyone to swim with their excited thrashing and sudden, abandoned lunges that obliterated the pool’s invisible lanes whenever the child who was it moved away from the coping and plunged, eyes shut tight, toward the voices that answered “Polo” in response to his honor-blind “Marco.”
Mrs. Glazer seemed rested, looked better. Mills remarked on this. “It’s my sunburn,” she said. “It covers the jaundice. Oh, Mills,” she said, “I’ve been to the lobby. It’s more hospital here than motel. The guests bring their nurses. Some arrive in ambulances. I saw one with New Jersey plates. Have you looked at the room service menu? The salads and entrees have been approved by the clinic’s nutritionist. Monks openly solicit money to pray for the remission of your cancer. Urchins show you the candles they’ll light if you’ll give them some dinner.
“And everyone’s so hopeful, Mills! As if the decision to come here, break with their doctors, defy science and throw themselves into all the desperate optimisms of last resort were measures in the cure. I myself have not been unaffected. Why, we’ve not been here two days yet and already I’m feeling better than I have in weeks. A little, a little I am. Oh, Mills,” she said, “how are we to know what is so and what is just psychology?”
“From the blood tests,” Mills said, and his charge glanced at him.
“Yes,” she said. “Well, what do we do now?”
“Maybe you should rest.”
“No. No, I’m not tired.”
“Do you want to eat something?”
“I’m not hungry. I’m raring to go. What?”
“Nothing.”
“No, what? What is it?”
“A Mex at the clinic gave me a card.”
“A card?”
“The address of some nightclub.”
“A nightclub? Oh, I don’t think I’m up for a nightclub. Oh,” she said, “a nightclub, a border town nightclub. Exhibitions, you mean. Burros and girls. Fetishists. Consenting adults. I don’t think so, but I’m feeling well enough to spare you. You go, Mills. Take the car.”
“No,” he said, ashamed he had spoken. “I don’t want to go.”
“It’s all right,” she said. “The motel has a caretaker service. All I have to do is notify the desk. Someone checks the room every fifteen minutes. Go on, go ahead. I don’t expect you to be always on duty. Go, you’ve the urge.”
“No. Honest,” Mills said, “I don’t have any urge. It was a joke. When you said you were raring to go. It was a joke.”
“Because I won’t think less well of you, you know. People are curious about what they think of as depravity. The act means nothing. The curiosity’s at least as depraved as anything the girl will do with the beast.”
“I never put it in any animal,” Mills said, hurt. “I ain’t never licked instep or spanked ass or sniffed panty. I never gave pain or asked for it. It never came up.”
“Well I have,” Mrs. Glazer said. “Nearly all those things. What difference does it make?”
“You have?”
“I was a madwoman eleven years.”
Which was when it came up. Welcome to Mexico, he thought. Bienvenidos to the border towns!
They drove, at the woman’s discretion, through Ciudad Juarez, Mrs. Glazer in the wide back seat murmuring the turns, calling their routes, demanding the sights. She pronounced herself dissatisfied with Twelfth of August Avenue, the long main street, all appliance stores and tire shops, and asked that Mills show her the clinic. Somehow he found his way back to the low stucco buildings of that morning, and drove into the parking lot. A watchman stopped them. “All close,” he said, “finito.”
“Should you give him a tip?”
The man poked his flashlight through the open window into the back of the car.
“Hey,” Mills said, “turn that off. You’re shining it in the lady’s eyes.”
“It’s all right,” she said. “It’s his job, Mills.”
George turned to look, following the tight white beam that lay across his shoulder like a rifle. Judith Glazer sat prim as a confirmation girl, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes lowered. She looked like someone in a tumbril. Inexplicably, the guard crossed himself.
“Give him money,” Mrs. Glazer said. “He may be an old lover.”
“What for? Why’d he do that?”
“He saw my condition,” she said.
“Are you tired?” Mills asked. “Do you want me to take you back?”
“Not at all.”
They passed the church where the priest who had been to Chicago heard confessions in English. And stopped for a light on the corner where the nightclub was situated. It was on a narrow street with much traffic. A boy came up to the driver’s window and offered to watch their car.
“No,” Mills said. “We’re not parking.”
“No,” the boy said, “till the light changes.”
“Maybe we ought to start back,” Mills said when they were driving again. “It’s pretty late.”
“No,” she said, “I’m enjoying my joy ride.”
“You had a long trip yesterday. All the way from a different country.”
“If you’re tired I’ll drive.”
“No,” Mills said. “That’s all right.”
“Let me. I feel like driving.”
“You’d better not.”
“Pull over. If you’re afraid you can go back in a cab.”
“Please, Mrs.”
“I want to,” Mrs. Glazer said. “My pill is wearing off and I’m beginning to feel uncomfortable. It would distract me.” She was kneading her thighs and legs with her hands, taking her flesh and squeezing as if she would wring water from it. “If only I could get the knots out,” she said.
“I’m turning back,” Mills said.
“I told you no,” Mrs. Glazer said. “I don’t want to. If you insist on driving you may, but I won’t go back. I was crazy more than a decade, shut up when I could have been traveling. What’s the good of being rich anyway? I never got anything for my money but the best care. In the end I simply grew out of my madness anyway. Now I’m dying. That watchman saw it with a flashlight. I don’t want the best care. That’s why I came to this place. That’s why I chose you to bring me. Perhaps it will be like the last time. Perhaps I’ll grow out of my cancer too. Don’t you dare turn back.”
“You’re the doctor,” Mills said gloomily.
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“I am,” she said, “yes. Don’t sulk, Mills. Look at the countryside.” They had left the city and entered the desert.
“It’s the idea of the pain,” Mills said when they had driven perhaps five more miles.
“Did you say something?”
“It’s the idea that somebody only three feet away has pain. It fills up the space. It’s all you can think about so it’s all I can think about too. I can’t stand it if I know my wife has a headache. I get mad at her for telling me.”
“I’ll take my pill,” she said.
“You took one before we left the motel. It isn’t four hours.”
“What do you think will happen? Do you think I’ll become addicted? Turn around,” she said. “There’s nothing here.”
In the city, children were sleeping on the sidewalks. They lay solitary, curled as dogs on the pavement. A small girl lay on her back, her arms thrown out behind her head. She looked like someone floating in a pool toy.
“God is good,” Mrs. Glazer said.
“Sure.”
“He really is. He’s a genius. He creates the poor and homeless and gives them a warm climate to sleep it off in. Shall we wake them? Shall we give them money?”
“They’re street kids. They’d have their knives in me as soon as I shook their shoulder.”
“I want you to go back,” she said. “Give them twenty pesos each.”
Mills left the motor running. He woke the children and put money in their hands while Mrs. Glazer sat in the back seat and looked on through the rolled and dusty windows.
It was how they spent their first days in Mexico. Mills gave Mrs. Glazer’s money away. Considerable sums. As much, he estimated, as the rental car would cost, or his motel room. Often as much as a hundred pesos to an individual beggar. They crossed themselves before their benefactress’s deputy with beggars’ gratitude, conferring the lavish, sinister blessings of the down-and-out. It was not his money. It was not their benediction. And he had a sense of proxy encounter, a delegate notion of agented exchange. At first he followed their responses in a dictionary, nervously had them repeat themselves when he did not understand, and scrupulously relayed their thanks in English equivalencies, rendering the tone and degree of already hyperbolized requital, hoping to suggest to the woman that the poor and homeless were on to her.
George Mills Page 30