American Ghosts & Old World Wonders (7 page)

           
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 senorita 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 women folk 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 forever, 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.