Long After Midnight (22 page)

 
          
"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.

 
          
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. Everything 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—