Weep for Me

by John D. MacDonald

  “Yes?”

  “I thought our Adela might make your visit here more pleasant. Is it quite fair of you to propagandize her? She has been talking to the kitchen staff, and I have found myself with a disciplinary problem.”

  “That’s a shame,” I said.

  “You make it remarkably easy for me to dislike you, Cameron.”

  I left without answering him. I went back to my room. Adela was sitting on her heels in her corner. She stood up eagerly. “Now you eat?”

  “Please.”

  She scurried off and came back with my breakfast. Papaya, and eggs, Mexican style, and bitter black coffee, and tiny sausages. As she served it, I saw the purpled bruise on the underside of her arm, just below the short sleeve of the pale blue uniform.

  “What’s that?”

  She looked at her arm, gave me a brilliant smile. “Nothing, señor. I am talking to the cooks about this thing of one person not owning another person. They are laughing. But the Señor Flores does not like such talk. This is a mark of his hand only, while he is talking to me. Very angry.”

  “But you don’t mind?”

  “What?”

  “You don’t care? You’re not angry?”

  “Was it a whip? Was it a club? A hand, only.”

  I ate silently for a time, puzzling over her attitude. When she moved the sugar closer, I said, “So now you think I’m wrong?”

  “Oh, no, señor.”

  “Then what?”

  “I am a stupid girl. I have no school. If I say to myself, Adela, you are a thing owned by the Señor Flores, then it is easy for him. I see that. I think about what you say. No, I am not a thing. But I let him think I am as before. And that is easy for me. Because one day I can leave this place.”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  She looked sad. “I cannot go to Sola de Vega. Finding me quick. To another village, perhaps. There is more laughing in the villages. You would know that if you could come to mi tierra.”

  I finished breakfast. While she was gone with the dishes, I put on the trunks and went out across the beach to the water. I could not see the Flora. After I swam in the tepid water, I lay on the packed, damp sand where the tide had receded and let the sun stun me. Later it would be too hot to be in the sun. Some tone was coming back to my muscles. And something had dulled regret. As though, back in Mexico City, when I had looked into that mirror, some part of me had died.

  Now Emily and I would be separated forever. She had entered her private hell. She had spent her life schooling herself for that hell. When I rolled onto my back the sun came crimson through my closed eyes. Surf drummed heavily, near at hand. I thought about Schumann. Flores’ scruples might be highly developed. But Schumann looked as though he could be purchased for one hundredth the amount of money I would be taking out to the dinghy. Midnight. Maybe, by one o’clock, sea creatures would be tearing at my body. I tried to feel fear. I reached down into myself, seeking apprehension. There, in the sun’s blazing heat, it didn’t seem to matter.

  I tried to solve the riddle of Flores. Certainly he could sense Schumann’s unreliability. Possibly, with Flores, it was an odd trick of conscience. He would fulfill his portion of the obligation scrupulously, and from then on, it was up to the gods.

  On the other hand, possibly Flores had some hold over Schumann that guaranteed that Schumann would take me to the promised destination.

  I had a lazy daydream. Very vivid. With a gun in my hand and Emily slung over my shoulder, I was shooting my way across the beach to the dinghy. Somehow, in the dream, Emily turned into Jo Anne. I turned into Errol Flynn. With a hardy, enigmatic smile on my manly lips and a fierce gleam in my eye, I saved the day, saved the lady, rode off into an honorable sunset. Virtue triumphed. Honesty was the best policy. I didn’t really rob a bank. I was an undercover man, assigned to Emily, hoping she would lead me to the crooks who had pulled the Brinks job in Boston.

  Now I could go back and ride in the back of the open car, sitting on the top of the back seat, waving to all the people who lined the sidewalks. Paper streamers floating down out of the bank windows. Brass band strutting and thumping away behind me. Sure, that’s good old Kyle Cameron. Hell, he sat next to me in junior high. Always said he was going to amount to something.

  And the daydream changed. Another crook was avenging those I had brought to justice. With a telescopic sight on his rifle, he shot me off the back seat of the open car. I was laid out in state in the middle of the bank floor. Mounds of white flowers. Slender tapers. Grinter snuffling and knuckling his swollen eyes. Jo Anne, white-faced, kneeling, weeping.

  Adela touched my shoulder gently and broke the dream. “You are burning, señor.” I opened my eyes. She knelt beside me. My chest was turning an angry pink. I got up and went back to the room. It was very dim after the blazing beach. The sun had made me feel weak and dizzy, as though I had come back from far places. I sat numbly on the edge of the bed. She went away, came back with a bottle of oil.

  She pushed me back gently. I lay on my back, my eyes half closed. With lips pursed in concentration, she poured oil into the palm of her hand, spread it gently over the red burn on my chest, on the tops of my thighs. She had wound the heavy red braids around her head, pinned them in place in coronet fashion.

  She padded gently over to the windows, closed the blinds against the harsh light, came back to me, and began to rub the oil into my skin.

  “Sleep, señor,” she whispered.

  I closed my eyes. Her hands were firm, yet gentle. She hummed a quiet melody, deep, throbbing in her throat. When I woke up, much later, there was no soreness in the burn. She was gone. And so was a lot of the day. I wondered if it could be my last day. Again I tried to taste fear and this time a little came, metallic in my throat, a cold hollowness in my belly.

  A sound began to intrude. I could barely hear it. A thin mewling, like the sound a kitten makes. It seemed to come from the direction of the door. I walked to the door and listened. It came from right outside the door. I pulled the door open. Adela sat on her heels, her hands covering her face. The sound came from her.

  “What is it?”

  She glanced up at me through stained eyes. “Ai,” she said softly. “Ai.” It was the cry of pain and grief too great to be born.

  “Come in here.”

  She came obediently. I closed the door. “Now tell me.”

  Her face became an Indio mask. She shook her head.

  “No good to tell you, señor.”

  “Maybe I can help you. I’d like to help you.”

  Her eyes went naked for a moment and then filled with tears again. “Not me. It is you to be helped.”

  “Why? How?”

  She took my hand and pulled me over toward a chair. “Sit.” I sat and she knelt beside the chair, still holding my hand. “In the kitchen, cook told me you are going. Tonight. I do not know where. I am wishing to know. I do not know why. You are not like anybody I know. So I say I will find out.” She pointed. “A boat is out there to take you. I know that. A captain is here. A bad man. And a man of my people who works for him. His name is Joaquín. A silly man. A stupid man.” Her voice was growing more tense and her two hands were tight on mine. “I find Joaquín and I make the eyes. I tease him. I tell him he is strong and I am a poor stupid village girl. All to find out where you go tonight. Because I think maybe I go there too, one day. He laughs. I let him kiss me, a little, and he smells of the fish. I tell him he is wise. Then he tells me he comes back. He says an anchor makes him rich, maybe as much as a thousand pesos. He blinks his eyes and rolls them. I do not understand. And then he takes me to a quiet place. He whispers that tonight they teach a fool norteamericano to swim. And the norteamericano swims with an anchor tied to his feet, and when he does not come up, too bad, they must keep his money. Ah, señor, it is you for this teaching to swim.”

  It was too vivid. The fear came strong. It made me want to cry out. I fought it and it slowly receded.

  “Don�
�t cry,” I said.

  “They kill you. I made him say. They kill you!”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  She looked up at me with streaming eyes.

  “No importa? But you die!”

  I gently released my hand. “I have been dying for three months.”

  “Enfermo? Sick?”

  “Sickness of the soul. Do you know that word?”

  “Soul? Like heart, I think. Corazón.”

  “That’s right.”

  “That is why you have no fat and your eyes are tired.”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you tell me of this sickness, señor, Sometimes it is good to tell a thing.”

  “There was a girl, with hair like sunlight. A small girl, and very happy. We were to be married. I worked in a bank. At times I thought I did not like the bank and did not like the thought of being married. Do you understand?”

  “Men of my village also, when the days begin to grow more hot.”

  “And then came the dark girl, the one señor, Flores now has.”

  “Ah, the evil one! Clearly, she is evil.”

  “I wanted her. She wanted money. I had none. So I took money from the bank, where I was trusted, and I came to your country with her.”

  “It was a spell, a magic she put on you.”

  “No. I am also an evil one.”

  “Foolish. Not evil.”

  “That is why dying does not seem important. I have nothing left. No pride. I am a criminal and I am ashamed.”

  She was kneeling by the chair and she sat back on her heels. She had ceased crying. Again the obsidian Indio blankness had taken over her face, and looking into her eyes was like looking into the black shadow of an Azteca pyramid.

  She stood up and walked to the door, shot the bolt, turned and leaned against the door, holding herself so that the pale blue uniform was taut across her body.

  “The señor, has fear, no?”

  “The señor, has fear, yes,” I said with a grimace, not quite achieving a smile.

  “You cannot get out of this place. You will die, señor.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “It is something you must know and understand. Does the señor have sons?” Her expression was unreadable.

  “I have no children. Why?”

  “In my village a certain thing is known. It is hard to die. It is harder to die without sons. It is triste. How do you say? A sadness. An emptiness. If there is a son, then a man does not die altogether.”

  “Why are you saying this?”

  The Indio look faded away, leaving her face soft and vulnerable. She held out her hands. “Strong hands, señor. For work. A son would be cared for. He would have the health. You could make a son in me, señor. His life would be good. I promise that. And knowing a son is made, it is not so hard to die, no?”

  The corners of my eyes began to sting. I looked away from her. “I told you of dying for many months, Adela. It did something to me. Now I am no good. No good with a woman. That is how señor Flores took the girl with the dark hair.”

  Her mouth twisted with contempt. “Love with that one would be like death. To make a son is like life. It is easy to see.”

  I looked at her and glanced away. Something compulsive about her eyes brought my glance back to her.

  “It would be no good,” I said.

  She unfastened the coronet braids. With nimble fingers she unbraided the waxed cedar hair, then combed the strands with her fingers. She never took her eyes from me. The hair fell in soft dark waves to her shoulders. She unbuttoned her pale blue uniform from throat to hem. She slipped it from her shoulders and tossed it carelessly toward the serape. She wore nothing under the uniform. Her breasts were firm and heavy, warmly brown. In the uniform she had looked stocky, heavy-hipped. Naked she was Eve, Juno, a brown Diana.

  As she took her first slow step toward me, her cheeks glowing red under the dark skin, the sun, slanting in from the white beach through a slit of the blinds, turned her flank to purest gold.

  As she walked toward me, she said, as though reassuring a child, “It is no harm to try, Kyle.”

  Chapter Twenty

  When dusk was in the room, like gray-blue smoke, and the sea had become muted, she braced herself on one elbow beside me, smiling down into my face.

  She pressed her right hand firmly against her abdomen. “It is a funny thing, how certain I am. I know in my heart. I know a child is made. I know it is a son. In love I could feel that a child is made. How do I know that?”

  “I felt the same.”

  “There is promises to make, Señor Kyle. But first, why did you weep during love?”

  I couldn’t tell her why. Maybe some of them were the tears that could not be shed during the past months. I said, “A person weeps when a thing is beautiful. A scene, a poem. I don’t know.”

  “Your tears fell on my cheeks. Like a burning rain. Or like wax from a candle. I must promise.”

  “Promise what?”

  A fierce and savage determination changed her face. “I will leave this place. He will be born in a village. I will care for him until he needs me no longer. He will go to school and he will speak this English and write it, also. There will never be shame in him.”

  “What will you tell him about me?”

  “His father was a man who died bravely. That is enough, no?”

  “Perhaps I won’t die bravely, Adela.”

  “Ai, you will. It is a thing I know.” Her eyes glowed.

  I knew that were she permitted to watch, I would die bravely enough. I reached out and traced the line of her breast with my fingertips. She slid down beside me, her face against the side of my throat, one arm across my chest, one brown warm thigh across mine. She snuggled closer and gave a contented sigh.

  I said, “I must give you some of the money. It is under the bed. It will help you.”

  “No,” she said in a sleepy voice.

  “Why not?”

  “I cannot use it. It is not of Mexico. They will say I am a thief, surely.”

  “You will take my pesos, though. There is not much.”

  “If you wish, señor Kyle.”

  “There are only about twelve or thirteen hundred pesos.”

  She sat up abruptly. “It is a great fortune! He gives me sixty pesos each month. It is almost two years of pay.”

  “It is of no use to me, Adela.”

  “Thank you,” she said, and slid back into her former position. Soon the very last of the daylight would be gone. The last daylight. She murmured in her own tongue, reached across me, and tugged until I turned toward her. I was held, then, in a great warm vise, taken into the life beat that pulsed at the heart of it, taken and submerged in that life pulse, drawn into a slow beating like that of the sea, imbedded deep and slow, deep and slow, into an aching primitive sweetness, into a deep honeyed promise of new life, from twoness into oneness, from lazy hunger into rocking warmth, held close and carried, along with the sea sound, up, and slowly up, to a thing that caught us for a time, and twisted us, then let us slowly down into a softness, into a shudder, into a long sigh, shared, that mingled our warm breathing.

  After a long time she dressed in darkness, came back to the bed, printed her lips on mine in farewell, and said, “It is much to remember, querido.”

  I pressed the pesos into her hand and she went silently into the night. The bolt clicked, the door opened and shut, and I was alone with fear.

  I turned the lights on, showered, dressed very carefully. I had a strong consciousness of my body, of legs and arms and chest and belly, of skin over the pulsing blood, of white nerve fibers imbedded in the tissues, of teeth and nails and hair.

  It is a sad thing to die when you finally find a reason for living. Jo Anne would have been like that. I knew it. And I knew what I had given up, for the sake of a dark-eyed woman with a body that was a whip with which to punish me.

  I looked at my eyes in the mirror. Behind my eyes I saw the placid cattl
e of Chicago mooing their way into the mechanized death that ended when the inspector stamped the grade on the flayed flesh.

  Before Adela, I would have submitted myself just as peacefully.

  Now there was pride. A new sort of pride. Your father died bravely. Did bravery consist of holding out your ankles so they could get the anchor knot tied properly and with the least amount of trouble?

  Every man an Errol Flynn. Grin like Flynn. I showed my teeth. I succeeded only in looking a bit silly.

  I took my shoes off, turned off the lights, and slipped out of the room. I half expected that a guard would have been posted. There was none. I went down to the corner and went down to the door where I had stood and heard the rawness of Emily’s voice in pain.

  I tried the door. It was locked. I listened, heard Flores say something in a completely casual voice. Emily answered in a very low tone.

  I tapped lightly at the door.

  “Quien es?” called Flores.

  I mumbled something without words. I heard his light step, the clack of the lock. I drew my right fist back.

  As the door swung open. I struck at his face as hard as I could. I was still operating in a Flynn fashion. The sound was just as satisfying as the crack on a movie sound track, and he went reeling backward, fighting for balance, just as do Flynn’s opponents. The only flaw was that my right fist felt as though it had been cracked between sledge and anvil. The pain drew my lips back and I went in, kicking the door shut behind me.

  Emily stood by a big canopied bed. She was looking at me. Her eyes were wide, startled. The light was behind her. She wore a nightgown that was high at the throat, that reached to the floor, wide and full.

  After one quick glance at her, I looked back at Flores just in time to see the backs of his legs hit a small table, see him go down with a crash of broken glasses and pitcher, a heavy thud of strong shoulders and back against the tiles.

  He bounded up like a great cat, blood on his mouth. He spat on the tiles, kicked the table out of the way, and came toward me. That was in the Flynn script too. Now I should hit him and knock him down again. And then again, until he pleaded for mercy.