Burning Your Boats

by Angela Carter

Out of some kind of dream into which he’s abruptly sunk, the Count says: ‘The seventh bullet belongs to the devil. That is how you pay – ’

  But tonight, he won’t, can’t say any more. He lurches off to bed, to Roxana, who’s waiting for him, as she always does. But why, oh why, is the old man crying? The whisky makes you into a baby . . . but Roxana takes care of you, she’s always taken care of you, ever since she found you.

  Roxana mothers the newcomer, Johnny, too, but she also watches him, with troubled eyes. All he does is play the piano and brood obsessively over the Mendoza gunmen as they sport and play in the bar. Sometimes he inspects the Count’s old rifle, hung up on the wall, strokes the barrel, caresses the stock; but he knows nothing about the arts of death at all. Nothing! And he takes no interest in the girls, that’s unhealthy.

  It seems to Roxana that there’s a likeness between her old man and the young one. That crazy, black-clad dignity. They always seem to be chatting to one another and sometimes they talk in German. Roxana hates that, it makes her feel shut out, excluded.

  Can he be, can young Johnny be . . . some son the Count begot and then abandoned, a child he’d never known, come all this way to find him?

  Could it be?

  Old man and young one, with eyes the same shape, hands the same shape . . . could it be?

  And if it is, why don’t they tell her, Roxana?

  Secrets make her feel shut out, excluded. She sits in her room on the rocking-chair in the dusk, sipping tequila.

  Voices below – in German. She goes to her window, watches the Count and the piano-player wander off together in the direction of the little scummy pond in front of the brothel, which is set back off the main street.

  She crosses herself, goes on rocking.

  ‘Speak English, we must leave the Old World and its mysteries behind us,’ says the Count. ‘The old, weary, exhausted world. Leave it behind! This is a new country, full of hope . . .’

  He is heavily ironic. The ancient rocks of the desert lour down in the sunset.

  ‘But the landscape of this country is more ancient by far than we are, strange gods brood over it. I shall never be friends with it, never.’

  Aliens, strangers, the Count and Johnny watch the Mendozas ride out on the rampage, led by Teresa’s father; a band of grizzled hooligans, firing off their guns, shouting.

  Johnny, calm, quiet, tells the Count how the Mendozas killed his parents when they raided a train for the gold the train carried. His parents, both opera singers, on their way back across the continent from California, from a booking in San Francisco . . . and he far away, in Europe.

  Mendoza himself tore the earrings from his mother’s ears. And raped her. And somebody shot his father when his father tried to stop the rape. And then they shot his mother because she was screaming so loudly.

  Calm, quiet, Johnny recounts all.

  ‘We all have our tragedies.’

  ‘Some tragedies we can turn back on the perpetrators. I’ve planned my revenge. A suitably operatic revenge. I shall seduce the beautiful señorita and give her a baby. And if I can’t shoot her father and mother, I shall find some way of strangling them with my beautiful pianist’s hands.’

  Quiet, assured, deadly – but incompetent. He doesn’t know one end of a gun from the other; never raised his hand in anger in his life.

  But he’s been brooding on this revenge ever since the black-edged letter arrived at his lodgings in Vienna; in Vienna, where he heard how a nobleman made a pact with the devil, once, to ensure no bullet he ever fired would miss the mark . . .

  ‘If you’ve planned it all so well, if you’re dedicated to your vengeance . . .’

  Johnny nods. Quiet, assured, deadly.

  ‘If you’re quite determined, then . . . you belong to the devil already. And a bullet is indeed more merciful than anger, if accurately fired.’

  And the Count has always hated Mendoza’s contempt for himself and Roxana, who live on Mendoza’s charity.

  But Johnny has never used a gun in his life. Old man, old man, what have you to lose? You’ve nothing, you’ve come to a dead end, kept by a whore in a flyblown town at the end of all the roads you ever took . . . give me a gun that will never miss a shot; that will fire by itself. I know you know how to get one. I know –

  ‘I have nothing to lose,’ says the Count inscrutably. ‘Except my sins, Johnny. Except my sins.’

  Teresa, sixteen, sullen, pretty, dissatisfied, retreats into her bedroom, into the depths of an enormous, gilded, four-poster bed looted from a train especially for her, surrounded by a jackdaw’s nest of tawdry, looted glitter, gorges herself on chocolates, leafs through very very old fashion magazines. She hugs a scrawny kitten, her pet. Chickens roost on the canopy of her bed. Maa! maa! a goat pokes its head in through the open window. Teresa twitches with annoyance. You call this living?

  Her door bursts open. An excited dog follows a flock of squawking chickens into the room; all the chickens roosting on the bed rise up, squawking. Chaos! The dog jumps on to the bed, begins to gnaw at the bloody something he carries in his mouth. Kitten rises on its hind legs to bat at the dog. Teresa hurls chocolates, magazines, screaming – insupportable! She storms out of the room.

  In the courtyard, her mother is slaughtering a screaming pig. That’s the sort of thing the Mendoza womenfolk enjoy! Ugh. Teresa’s made for better things, she knows it.

  She wanders disconsolately out into the dusty street. Empty. Like my life, like my life.

  Willows bend over the scummy pool in front of Roxana’s brothel; it has a secluded air.

  Teresa skulks beside the pool, sullenly throwing stones at her own reflection. Morning, slack time; in voluptuous déshabillé, the whores lean over the veranda: ‘Little Teresa! Little Teresa! Come in and see your auntie!’ They laugh at her in her black stockings, her convent-girl dress, her rumpled hair.

  Roxana’s doing the books, behind the bar, with a pair of wire-rimmed glasses propped on her nose. The Count pours himself elevenses – she looks up, is about to remonstrate with him, thinks better of it, returns to her sums. Morning sunshine; outside on the veranda, the whores giggle and wave at Teresa.

  Johnny idly begins to play a Strauss waltz. Roxana’s foot taps a little.

  The Count puts down his whisky. Smiles. He approaches Roxana, presents his arm. She’s startled – then blushes, beams like a young girl. Takes off her glasses, pats her hair, glances at herself in the mirror behind the bar, pleasantly flustered. Seeing her pleasure, the Count becomes more courtly still. Still quite a fine figure of a man! And she, when she smiles, you see what a pretty girl she must have been.

  Johnny flourishes the keys; he’s touched. He begins to play a Strauss waltz in earnest.

  Roxana takes the Count’s proffered arm; they dance.

  ‘Look! Look! Roxana’s dancing!’

  The whores flock back into the room, laughing, admiring. And begin to dance with one another, girl with girl, in their spoiled negligees, their unlaced corsets, petticoats, torn stockings.

  Maddalena, partnerless, lingers on the veranda, teasing Teresa. Music spills out of the brothel.

  ‘Teresa! Teresa! Come and dance with me!’

  Slowly, slowly, Teresa arrives at the veranda, climbs the stairs, peers through a window as, flushed and breathless, the dancers collapse in a laughing heap.

  She and Johnny exchange a flashing glance. But her aunt catches sight of her. ‘Teresa, Teresa, scram! This is no place for you!’

  At the Mendozas’ dinner-table, her father sits picking his teeth with his knife.

  ‘I want to learn the piano, papa.’

  He continues to pick his teeth with his knife. She didn’t want to learn the piano at the damn convent; why does she want to learn it now? To be a lady, Papa; isn’t she going to have a grand wedding, marry a fine man? ‘Papa, I want to learn the piano.’

  Teresa is spoiled, indulged in everything. But her father likes to tease her; he’ll drag out her pleading as long
as he can. He doesn’t often have his daughter pleading with him. He cuts himself a chunk more meat, munches.

  ‘And who will teach you piano in his hole, hm?’

  ‘Johnny. Johnny at Aunt Roxana’s.’

  He’s suddenly really angry. You see what an animal he can become.

  ‘What? My daughter learn piano in a brothel? Under the eye of that fat whore, Roxana?’

  Maria leaps to her sister’s defence, surging down on her husband with the carving knife held high. ‘Don’t you insult my sister!’

  Mendoza twists her wrist; she drops the knife. ‘I’m not having my daughter mixing with whores!’

  ‘I want to learn piano,’ the spoiled child insists.

  ‘Over my dead body will you go to Roxana’s to learn the piano, not now you are an engaged girl.’

  ‘Then, papa, buy me a piano, let Johnny come here to teach me.’

  A creaking wagon delivers a shiny, new, baby grand in the courtyard of the rotting hacienda, among the grunting pigs and flapping chickens.

  Effortlessly, it’s installed in Teresa’s room; entranced, she picks at the notes. ‘Kitty, kitty, the young man in the black jacket is coming to teach me piano . . .’

  Her mother chaperones her, sitting, lolling in a rocking-chair, sipping tequila. Johnny, neat, elegant, a stranger, damned, with a portfolio of music under his arm, has come to give Teresa lessons. First, scales . . . soon, Czerny exercises. Johnny waits, watchful, biding his time.

  Bored, her mother sips tequila and nods off to sleep . . . A Czerny exercise; Teresa hasn’t quite mastered it. Making a mess of it, in fact. On purpose? Johnny’s presence makes her flutter.

  Johnny stands behind her, showing her where to put her hands. His long, white hands cover her little, brown paws with the bitten fingernails.

  She turns to him. They kiss. She’s eager, willing; he’s surprised by her enthusiasm, almost taken aback. Despises her. It’s going to be almost too easy!

  But where is the seduction to be accomplished? Not in Teresa’s bedroom, with her mother dozing in the rocking-chair. Not in Johnny’s room at the brothel, either, under Aunt Roxana’s watchful eye.

  ‘In church, Johnny; nobody will look for lovers there.’

  A huge, cavernous, almost cathedral, built in expectation of mass conversions among the Indians, now almost in ruins, on a kind of bluff, brooding over the half-ruined village. Empty. And they make love on the floor of the church, the savage child, the vengeance-seeker. Afterwards, triumphant, she buries her face in his breast, shrieking for glee; he is detached, rejoicing in his own coldness, his own wickedness.

  Naked, Teresa wanders down the aisle of the church towards the altar, stands looking up vaguely at the rococo Christ. She pokes out her tongue at her saviour.

  ‘I’ll be here again, soon. I’m going to be married.’

  ‘Married?’

  ‘To a fine bandit gentleman.’ Makes a face. ‘Because I have no brothers, I am the heiress. My son will inherit everything, but first I must be married.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ says Johnny, lost, gone into his vengeance. ‘You won’t be married. I won’t let you be married.’

  Suspicious, at first. Then . . . ‘Do you love me?’ Exultant, shouting. ‘So you love me! You must love me! You’ll take me away!’

  The Count rummages through a trunk in his and Roxana’s bedroom, he gets out old books and curious instruments. The room is full of mysterious shadows. Roxana tries the door, finds that it is locked; she rattles the handle agitatedly. ‘What are you up to? What secrets do you have from me? Is it the old secret? Is it – ’

  The Count lets her in, takes her into his arms. ‘He’ll take the burden from me, Roxana. He wants to, he’s willing, he knows . . .’

  ‘Your . . . son has come to set you free?’

  ‘Not my son, Roxana.’

  She is so relieved that she almost forgets the dark import of what he’s saying. Yet she must ask him: ‘And what’s the price?’

  ‘High, Roxana. Do you love a poor old man, do you love him more than you love your kin?’

  Wide-eyed, she stares at him.

  ‘Yes, old man, I do believe I do. It’s been so long, now, since we’ve been together . . .’

  ‘We’ll be together for ever, Roxana.’

  So he goes on assembling his occult materials and now she helps him. She has only one reservation. ‘The little Teresa, nothing must happen to her . . .’

  ‘No. Not Teresa. What harm has she ever done to anyone? Not Teresa.’

  An eclipse of the moon. In the church, in darkness, at the altar, the Count and Johnny summon the appropriate demon – the Archer of the Dark Abyss. Such a storm! Out of nowhere, a great wind, whirling the dust into a sandstorm. Roxana, alone in her bedroom full of curious shadows, draws the shutters close and mutters prayers, incantations.

  The great wind blows open the doors of the church, sets them creaking on their hinges. Out of the sandstorms, hallucinatory figures emerge and merge, figures of demons or gods not necessarily those of Europe. The unknown continent, the new world, issues forth its banned daemonology.

  The Count has summoned up more than he bargained for. He and Johnny crouch in the pentacle; Aztec and Toltec gods appear in giant forms. The church seems to have disappeared.

  When the ritual is done, all clears; the interior of the church is a shambles, however, the Christ over the altar cast down on its face. Johnny and the Count pick themselves up from the floor, where the wind has left them. The Count is coughing horribly, his face is livid; the rite has nearly killed him.

  Outside, all is calm now, a clear, bright night. The moon is back in the heavens again. Johnny, a man in the grip of a mania, stern, firm, helps the shaking Count to his feet.

  ‘Where is the weapon?’

  ‘He has come. He’s waiting. He’ll give it to us.’

  Outside, against the wall, so still he’s almost part of the landscape, an Indian sits in the dark, poncho, slouch hat, waiting, impassive.

  The Count, leaning heavily on Johnny, greets the Indian with some courtly ceremony. But Johnny barks: ‘Got the gun?’

  ‘I got it.’

  The gun changes hands. Johnny grabs it.

  ‘How much?’

  ‘On account,’ says the Indian and grins. ‘On account.’

  He tips his hat. His pony, in the graveyard, grazes on a grave. The two Europeans watch him walk towards his pony, mount, ride. In the immense stillness of the night, his hoofbeats diminish.

  Johnny inspects the Winchester repeater in his hands; it looks perfectly normal. Not used to guns, he handles it clumsily. His disappointment is obvious.

  ‘What’s so special about it? Could have bought one in the store.’

  ‘It will fire seven bullets,’ says the Count, impassive as any Indian. ‘And the seventh bullet is the one that he put in it, it belongs to him.’

  ‘But – ’

  ‘The seventh bullet is the devil’s own. He will fire the seventh shot for you, even though you pull the trigger. But the other six can’t miss their targets. Though you’ve never used a gun before.’

  Incredulous, Johnny takes aim, fires at a movement in the darkness. He rushes towards the scream. His target, Teresa’s kitten, dead.

  ‘Five left now, for your own use,’ says the Count. ‘Use them sparingly. They come at a high price.’

  Teresa wants her kitten. ‘Kitty! Kitty!’ But the kitten doesn’t come. ‘The dogs have eaten it,’ says Teresa’s mother. ‘And hold still, Teresa, you’re wriggling like an eel; how can I fit your wedding-dress . . . ?’

  It’s a store-bought wedding-dress, come on the stagecoach from Mexico City. All white lace. And a veil! In front of the clouded mirror in Teresa’s bedroom, Maria pops the veil on her daughter’s head; what a picture. But Teresa sulks.

  ‘I don’t want to get married.’

  Too bad, Teresa! Tomorrow you must and will get married.

  I won’t. I won’t!

  You won
’t wheedle your father out of this one, not this time.

  Teresa, in her wedding finery, picks out a few notes of the ‘Wedding March’ on her piano; furious, she slams the lid shut.

  Johnny, at the piano in the whorehouse, plays a few bars of the ‘Wedding March’; a wedding guest, drunk, flings his glass at the mirror behind the bar, smashing it. The whores superstitiously huddle and mutter. The place is packed out with wedding guests, all notable villains. But there is too much tension to be any joy. Roxana, unsmiling, rings up the price of a replacement mirror on her cash register. The Count, morose, stoops over his drink at the bar. The wedding guests treat him with genial contempt.

  Teresa creeps out of her bedroom window, steals along the street, conceals herself hastily in the shadows when an Indian on a pony comes riding down the street.

  Her lover waits for her by the scummy pond. Take me away. Save me! He strokes her hair with the first sign of tenderness. Perhaps he will take her away, if she can bear to look at him after the holocaust. Perhaps . . .

  It’s very late, now. Only the Count stays up. He’s gazing at the recumbent form of a wedding guest passed out on the floor, snoring. The whores have stuck a feather hat on the visitor’s head, taken off his trousers, daubed his face with rouge.

  When Johnny comes in, the Count silently pours him a drink. He looks at the boy with, almost, love – certainly with some emotion.

  ‘I could almost ask you . . .’

  Johnny smiles, shakes his head, whistles a few bars of Chopin’s ‘Funeral March’.

  ‘But then . . . be good to the little Teresa. “The prince of darkness is a gentleman . . .”’

  Maybe. Maybe not. But, maybe . . .

  How Teresa’s hair tangles in the comb! A great bustle in the Mendoza encampment; they’ve got a carriage for her, decked it with exuberant paper flowers. But she herself is nervous, anxious; she chews at her underlip, she lets the women dress her as if she were a doll. Her mother, oddly respectable in black, weeps copiously. Teresa, in her wedding-dress and veil, suddenly turns to her mother and hugs her convulsively. The woman returns the embrace fiercely.

  Johnny kisses the photographs of his father and mother. It’s time. Unhandily carrying the rifle, in his music student’s black velvet jacket, elegant, deadly, mad, he goes towards the church.