Bradbury, Ray - SSC 21

by Long After Midnight (v1. 1)

  "My God, you can't speak Spanish at all!"

  "Go away," she said to the guide.

  "But I arose for this hour," said the guide.

  The husband swore and got up. "I won't be able to sleep now, anyway. Tell the idiot we'll be dressed in ten minutes and go with him and get it over, my God!"

  She did this and the guide slipped away into the darkness and out into the street where the cool moon burnished the fenders of his taxi.

  "You are incompetent," snapped the husband, pulling on two pairs of pants, two T-shirts, a sport shirt, and a wool shirt over that. "Jesus, this'll fix my throat, all right. If I come down with another strep infection—"

  "Get back into bed, damn you."

  "I couldn't sleep now, anyway."

  "Well, we've had six hours' sleep already, and you had at least three hours' this afternoon; that should be enough."

  "Spoiling our trip," he said, putting on two sweaters and two pairs of socks. "It's cold up there on the mountain; dress warm, hurry up." He put on a jacket and a muffler and looked enormous in the heap of clothing he wore. "Get me my pills. Where's some water?"

  "Get back to bed," she said. "I won't have you sick and whining." She found his medicine and poured some water.

  "The least thing you could do was get the hour right."

  "Shut up!" She held the glass.

  "Just another of your thick-headed blunders."

  She threw the water in his face. "Let me alone, damn you, let me alone. I didn't mean to do that!"

  "You!" he shouted, face dripping. He ripped off his jacket. "You'll chill me, I'll catch cold!"

  "I don't give a damn, let me alone!" She raised her hands into fists, and her face was terrible and red, and she looked like some animal in a maze who has steadily sought exit from an impossible chaos and has been constantly fooled, turned back, rerouted, led on, tempted, whispered to, lied to, led further, and at last reached a blank wall.

  "Put your hands down!" he shouted.

  "I'll kill you, by God, I'll kill you!" she screamed, her face contorted and ugly. "Leave me alone! I've tried my damnedest—beds, language, time, my God, the mistakes, you think I don't know it? You think I'm not sorry?"

  "I'll catch cold, I'll catch cold." He was staring at the wet floor. He sat down with water on his face.

  "Here. Wipe your face off!" She flung him a towel.

  He began to shake violently. "I'm cold!"

  "Get a chill, damn it, and die, but leave me alone!"

  "I'm cold, I'm cold." His teeth chattered, he wiped his face with trembling hands. "I'll have another infection."

  "Take off that coat! It's wet."

  He stopped shaking after a minute and stood up to take off the soggy coat. She handed him a leather jacket. "Come on, he's waiting for us."

  He began to shiver again. "I'm not going anywhere, to hell with you," he said, sitting down. "You owe me fifty dollars now."

  "What for?"

  "You remember, you promised."

  And she remembered. They had had a fight about some silly thing, in California, the first day of the trip, yes, by God, the very first day out. And she for the first time in her life had lifted her hand to slap him. Then, appalled, she had dropped her hand, staring at her traitorous fingers. "You were going to slap me!" he had cried. "Yes," she replied. "Well," he said quietly, "the next time you do a thing like that, you'll hand over fifty dollars of your money." That's how life was, full of little tributes and ransoms and blackmails. She paid for all her errors, unmotivated or not. A dollar here, a dollar there. If she spoiled an evening, she paid the dinner bill from her clothing money. If she criticized a play they had just seen and he had liked it, he flew into a rage, and, to quiet him, she paid for the theater tickets. On and on it had gone, swifter and swifter over the years. If they bought a book together and she didn't like it but he did and she dared speak out, there was a fight, sometimes a small thing which grew for days, and ended with her buying the book plus another and perhaps a set of cufflinks or some other silly thing to calm the storm. Jesus!

  "Fifty dollars. You promised if you acted up again with these tantrums and slappings."

  "It was only water. I didn't hit you. All right, shut up, I'll pay the money, I'll pay anything just to be let alone; it's worth it, and five hundred dollars more, more than worth it. I'll pay."

  She turned away. When you're sick for a number of years, when you're an only child, the only boy, all of your life, you get the way he is, she thought. Then you find yourself thirty-five years old and still undecided as to what you're to be—a ceramist, a social worker, a businessman. And your wife has always known what she would be—a writer. And it must be maddening to live with a woman with a single knowledge of herself, so sure of what she would do with her writing. And selling stories, at last, not many, no, but just enough to cause the seams of the marriage to rip. And so how natural that he must convince her that she was wrong and he was right, that she was an uncontrollable child and must forfeit money. Money was to be the weapon he held over her. When she had been a fool she would give up some of the precious gain—the product of her writing.

  "Do you know," she said, suddenly, aloud, "since I made that big sale to the magazine, you seem to pick more fights and I seem to pay more money?"

  "What do you mean by that?" he said.

  It seemed to her to be true. Since the big sale he had put his special logic to work on situations, a logic of such a sort that she had no way to combat it. Reasoning with him was impossible. You were finally cornered, your explanations exhausted, your alibis depleted, your pride in tatters. So you struck out. You slapped at him or broke something, and then, there you were again, paying off, and he had won. And he was taking your success away from you, your single purpose, or he thought he was, anyway. But strangely enough, though she had never told him, she didn't care about forfeiting the money. If it made peace, if it made him happy, if it made him think he was causing her to suffer, that was all right. He had exaggerated ideas as to the value of money; it hurt him to lose it or spend it, therefore he thought it would hurt her as much. But I'm feeling no pain, she thought, I'd like to give him all of the money, for that's not why I write at all, I write to say what I have to say, and he doesn't understand that.

  He was quieted now. "You'll pay?"

  "Yes." She was dressing quickly now, in slacks and jacket. "In fact, I've been meaning to bring this up for some time. I'm giving all the money to you from now on. There's no need of my keeping my profits separate from yours, as it has been. I'll turn it over to you tomorrow."

  "I don't ask that," he said, quickly.

  "I insist. It all goes to you."

  What I'm doing, of course, is unloading your gun, she thought. Taking your weapon away from you. Now you won't be able to extract the money from me, piece by piece, bit by painful bit. You'll have to find another way to bother me.

  "I-" he said.

  "No, let's not talk about it. It's yours."

  "It's only to teach you a lesson. You've a bad temper," he said. "I thought you'd control it if you had to forfeit something."

  "Oh, I just live for money," she said.

  "I don't want all of it."

  "Come on now." She was weary. She opened the door and listened. The neighbors hadn't heard, or if they had, they paid no attention. The lights of the waiting taxi illuminated the front patio.

  They walked out through the cool moonlit night. She walked ahead of him for the first time in years.

  Paricutin was a river of gold that night. A distant murmuring river of molten ore going down to some dead lava sea, to some volcanic black shore. Time and again if you held your breath, stilled your heart within you, you could hear the lava pushing rocks down the mountain in tumblings and roarings, faintly, faintly. Above the crater were red vapors and red light. Gentle brown and gray clouds arose suddenly as coronets or halos or puffs from the interior, their undersides washed in pink, their tops dark and ominous, without a sound.
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br />   The husband and the wife stood on the opposite mountain, in the sharp cold, the horses behind them. In a wooden hut nearby, the scientific observers were lighting oil lamps, cooking their evening meal, boiling rich coffee, talking in whispers because of the clear, night-explosive air. It was very far away from everything else in the world.

  On the way up the mountain, after the long taxi drive from Uruapan, over moon-dreaming hills of ashen snow, through dry stick villages, under the cold clear stars, jounced in the taxi like dice in a gambling-tumbler, both of them had tried to make a better thing of it. They had arrived at a campfire on a sort of sea bottom. About the campfire were solemn men and small dark boys, and a company of seven other Americans, all men, in riding breeches, talking in loud voices under the soundless sky. The horses were brought forth and mounted. They proceeded across the lava river. She talked to the other Yankees and they responded. They joked together. After a while of this, the husband rode on ahead.

  Now, they stood together, watching the lava wash down the dark cone summit.

  He wouldn't speak.

  "What's wrong now?" she asked.

  He looked straight ahead, the lava glow reflected in his eyes. "You could have ridden with me. I thought we came to Mexico to see things together. And now you talk to those damned Texans."

  "I felt lonely. We haven't seen any people from the States for eight weeks. I like the days in Mexico, but I don't like the nights. I just wanted someone to talk to."

  "You wanted to tell them you're a writer."

  "Thaf s unfair."

  "You're always telling people you're a writer, and how good you are, and you've just sold a story to a large-circulation magazine and that's how you got the money to come here to Mexico.

  "One of them asked me what I did, and I told him. Damn right I'm proud of my work. I've waited ten years to sell some damn thing."

  He studied her in the light from the fire mountain and at last he said, "You know, before coming up here tonight, I thought about that damned typewriter of yours and almost tossed it into the river."

  "You didn't!"

  "No, but I locked it in the car. I'm tired of it and the way you've ruined the whole trip. You're not with me, you're with yourself, you're the one who counts, you and that damned machine, you and Mexico, you and your reactions, you and your inspiration, you and your nervous sensitivity, and you and your aloneness. I knew you'd act this way tonight, just as sure as there was a First Coming! I'm tired of your running back from every excursion we make to sit at that machine and bang away at all hours. This is a vacation."

  "I haven't touched the typewriter in a week, because it bothered you."

  "Well, don't touch it for another week of a month, don't touch it until we get home. Your damned inspiration can wait!"

  I should never have said I'd give him all the money, she thought. I should never have taken that weapon from him, it kept him away from my real life, the writing and the machine. And now I've thrown off the protective cloak of money and he's searched for a new weapon and he's gotten to the true thing—to the machine! Oh Christ!

  Suddenly, without thinking, with the rage in her again, she pushed him ahead of her. She didn't do it violently. She just gave him a push. Once, twice, three times. She didn't hurt him. It was just a gesture of pushing away. She wanted to strike him, throw him off a cliff, perhaps, but instead she gave these three pushes, to indicate her hostility and the end of talking. Then they stood separately, while behind them the horses moved their hooves softly, and the night air grew colder and their breath hissed in white plumes on the air, and in the scientists' cabin the coffee bubbled on the blue gas jet and the rich fumes permeated the moonlit heights.

  After an hour, as the first dim furnacings of the sun came in the cold East, they mounted their horses for the trip down through growing light, toward the buried city and the buried church under the lava flow. Crossing the flow, she thought, Why doesn't his horse fall, why isn't he thrown onto those jagged lava rocks, why? But nothing happened. They rode on. The sun rose red.

  They slept until one in the afternoon. She was dressed and sitting on the bed waiting for him to waken for half an hour before he stirred and rolled over, needing a shave, very pale with tiredness. , "I've got a sore throat," was the first thing he said.

  She didn't speak.

  "You shouldn't have thrown water on me," he said.

  She got up and walked to the door and put her hand on the knob.

  "I want you to stay here," he said. "We're going to stay here in Uruapan three or four more days."

  At last she said, "I thought we were going on to Guadalajara."

  "Don't be a tourist. You ruined that trip to the volcano for us. I want to go back up tomorrow or the next day. Go look at the sky."

  She went out to look at the sky. It was clear and blue. She reported this. "The volcano dies down, sometimes for a week. We can't afford to wait a week for it to boom again."

  "Yes, we can. We will. And you'll pay for the taxi to take us up there and do the trip over and do it right and enjoy it."

  "Do you think we can ever enjoy it now?" she asked.

  "If it's the last thing we do, we'll enjoy it."

  "You insist, do you?"

  "We'll wait until the sky is full of smoke and go back up."

  "I'm going out to buy a paper." She shut the door and walked into the town.

  She walked down the fresh-washed streets and looked in the shining windows and smelled that amazingly clear air and felt very good, except for the tremoring, the continual tremoring in her stomach. At last, with a hollowness roaring in her chest, she went to a man standing beside a taxi.

  "Senor," she said.

  "Yes?" said the man.

  She felt her heart stop beating. Then it began to thump again and she went on: "How much would you charge to drive me to Morelia?"

  "Ninety pesos, senora."

  "And I can get the train in Morelia?"

  "There is a train here, senora."

  "Yes, but there are reasons why I don't want to wait for it here."

  "I will drive you, then, to Morelia."

  "Come along, there are a few things I must do."

  The taxi was left in front of the Hotel de Las Flores. She walked in, alone, and once more looked at the lovely garden with its many flowers, and listened to the girl playing the strange" blue-colored piano, and this time the song was the "Moonlight Sonata." She smelled the sharp crystalline air and shook her head, eyes closed, hands at her sides. She put her hand to the door, opened it softly.

  Why today? she wondered. Why not some other day in the last five years? Why have I waited, why have I hung around? Because. A thousand becauses. Because you always hoped things would start again the way they were the first year. Because there were times, less frequent now, when he was splendid for days, even weeks, when you were both feeling well and the world was green and bright blue. There were times, like yesterday, for a moment, when he opened the armor-plate and showed her the fear beneath it and the small loneliness of himself and said, "I need and love you, don't ever go away, I'm afraid without you." Because sometimes it had seemed good to cry together, to make up, and the inevitable goodness of the night and the day following their making up. Because he was handsome. Because she had been alone all year every year until she met him. Because she didn't want to be alone again, but now knew that it would be better to be alone than be this way because only last night he destroyed the typewriter; not physically, no, but with thoughts and words. And he might as well have picked her up bodily and thrown her from the river bridge.

  She could not feel her hand on the door. It was as if ten thousand volts of electricity had numbed all of her body. She could not feel her feet on the tiled floor. Her face was gone, her mind was gone.

  He lay asleep, his back turned. The room was greenly dim. Quickly, soundlessly, she put on her coat and checked her purse. The clothes and typewriter were of no importance now. Everything was a hollowing roar. Eve
rything was like a waterfall leaping into clear emptiness. There was no striking, no impact, just a clear water falling into a hollow and then another hollow, followed by an emptiness.

  . She stood by the bed and looked at the man there, the familar black hair on the nape of his neck, the sleeping profile. The form stirred. "What?" he asked, still asleep.

  "Nothing," she said. "Nothing. And nothing."

  She went out and shut the door.

  The taxi sped out of town at an incredible rate, making a great noise, and all the pink walls and blue walls fled past and people jumped out of the way and there were some few cars which almost exploded upon them, and there went most of the town and there went the hotel and that man sleeping in the hotel and there went—

  Nothing.

  The taxi motor died.

  No, no, thought Marie, oh God, no, no, no.

  The car must start again.

  The taxi driver leaped out, glaring at God in his Heaven, and ripped open the hood and looked as if he might strangle the iron guts of the car with his clawing hands, his face smiling a pure sweet smile of incredible hatred, and then he turned to Marie and forced himself to shrug, putting away his hate and accepting the Will of God.

  "I will walk you to the bus station," he said.

  No, her eyes said. No, her mouth almost said. Joseph will wake and run and find me still here and drag me back. No.

  "I will carry your bags, senora" the taxi driver said, and walked off with them, and had to come back and find her still there, motionless, saying no, no, to no one, and helped her out and showed her where to walk.

  The bus was in the square and the Indians were getting into it, some silently and with a slow, certain dignity, and some chattering like birds and shoving bundles, children, chickens' baskets, and pigs in ahead of them. The driver wore a uniform that had not been pressed or laundered in twenty years, and he was leaning out the window shouting and laughing with people outside, as Marie stepped up into the interior of hot smoke and burning grease from the engine, the smell of gasoline and oil, the smell of wet chickens, wet children, sweating men and damp women, old upholstery which was down to the skeleton, and oily leather. She found a seat in the rear and felt the eyes follow her and her suitcase, and she was thinking: I'm going away, at last I'm going away, I'm free, I'll never see him again in my life, I'm free, I'm free.