Puzzle for Pilgrims (4 page)

“Not particularly.”

Unasked, the waiter brought her another tequila.

“The home farm was quite near the house where we lived. There was an apple orchard. We used to go there all the time. Back of it was a steep hill going up to a copse. In spring it was yellow with cowslips—literally yellow.”

She drank the tequila. I watched her cool, utterly undamaged face, trying to guess what was in her mind.

“We used to play games, the most elaborate games. Martin always invented them. I never could invent anything. One game was this. We put on old white nightgowns over our clothes. Martin made knobbly staffs out of hawthorn. We started up the hill through the cowslips, leaning on our staffs. Although it wasn’t terribly steep, we had to pretend it was. We had to keep on stumbling and falling down and picking up our staffs again and trying to get to the top. But he would never let me get there. I had to die tempting it, sprawled there on the cowslips, smelling them. So sweet.” She looked at the empty glass. “I was the one who fell by the wayside, Martin said.”

“And the point of these juvenile reminiscences?”

She picked up the glass, nursing it. “All the time we were struggling up the hill, we used to sing. Always the same song in horrible squeaky voices. It was a hymn, really. Perhaps you know it. John Bunyan wrote it, I believe. It was Martin’s favorite.”

She inverted the glass and put it down again on the table. The man at the other table was still strumming on his guitar.

“It went like this:

He who would valiant be

’Gainst all disaster,

Let him in constancy

Follow the Master.

There’s no discouragement

Shall make him once relent

His first avowed intent

To be a pilgrim.”

She looked at me, her eyes meaningless, almost vacant again. “That’s always been Martin’s song. And that’s always been Martin’s way. ‘Let him in constancy follow the Master.’ ”

“The Master being what? His writing?”

“In a way. But mostly Martin—Martin with his cheeks puffed out and his tongue between his teeth driving up to the top of the hill. He knows Sally’s wrong for him now. She’s stopping him from being a pilgrim. He’ll never go back.”

“Then he’s in for a pilgrimage to jail.”

She laughed, a small, secret laugh. “What’s jail? It’s only a discouragement.”

I said, “Marietta, be serious. Should I go to Sally? Try and stop her?”

“If you’re that noble, you can talk to her.”

“But it won’t be any good?”

“It won’t do any good.”

“Nothing can stop her?”

“Nothing,” said Marietta languidly, “except a knife in the back. She has her own hill to climb too. God knows where it leads to, but it’s there.”

I said, “If you’re telling the truth, you’ll end up in jail too. You’re taking it very calmly, aren’t you?”

“Calm, darling?” She laughed the little, secret laugh. “I’m not calm. I’m frightened.”

And I realized retroactively that she was telling the truth, that she had been frightened ever since I had found her in my apartment. I knew then that Sally’s threat was genuine and that the danger to Martin and to Marietta was real. Marietta didn’t frighten easily.

I thought she was a little drunk too. And that was even more unusual. She was leaning out of the booth and making the Mexican hissing sound to attract the waiter. He nodded, went downstairs and came with another tequila. I didn’t try to stop her drinking it. So long as tequila helped her, more power to it.

She raised the glass. “To discouragement.”

“Okay, Marietta.”

“To you too. You with those sleepy eyes that look so quiet and aren’t. You with that square, sailor’s face.” She watched me sadly. “You’re a discouragement, too.”

“Me?”

“Because you only like your wife.” She tossed back the thick, clean hair. “If only you liked me.”

“Marietta, I’m all for you. You know that.”

She leaned across the table and put her hand on mine. It wasn’t cool. “You’re not all for me. That’s the point. I want someone who’s all for me.” She paused. “Someone was all for me once.”

“Who?”

“Martin.”

The guitar was still drumming behind her. She twisted around, looking at the man who was playing it.

That was when the American came up the stairs. No one could have missed the American-ness of him. He was tall, husky, with cropped red hair and the swaggering good looks of an Irish cop. He wore a gabardine suit, a little too tight for his wrestler’s body. He also wore a dark blue shirt and a red tie. I recognized him at once as the man who either had or had not been with Sally at the bullfight.

He stared around the bar with faintly amused good humor, making it seem small and foreign. Then he saw us and came straight toward us.

He slapped down a large-knuckled hand on Marietta’s shoulder. “Hi, baby. Sorry I’m late. Got tied up with a bottle of rum.”

Marietta looked up at him and the blinding smile came. “Hello, Jake.” She gestured across the table at me. “Peter, this is Jake.” She moved over on the bench. “Sit down, Jake.”

He sat down, keeping his hand on her shoulder. She didn’t move away.

I said, “I didn’t know you had a date, Marietta.”

She shrugged vaguely and said again. “This is Jake. He’s in the—the—what is it, Jake? No, don’t tell me. The citrus business.”

“Oranges, lemons, grapefruit, California.” Jake grinned at me. “Glad to see you. Lord’s the name.”

“I’ve seen you already,” I said.

His blue eyes lost their blandness and became guarded, as if I had implied I had seen him somewhere disreputable. “You have?”

“At the bullfight this afternoon.”

The grin came again. “Why, sure.”

“I thought you were with a friend of mine. That’s how I noticed you.”

“With a friend of yours? No sir, not me. Only hit this town two days ago. Haven’t met a soul except Marietta.” He squeezed her shoulder. “We met up yesterday and did the town, didn’t we, baby?”

“I suppose so.” Marietta had become very English and precise. “Yes, I suppose that’s what you’d call it.”

Jake showed me his strong white teeth again. “She dated me up for ten tonight here.” He looked around. “It’s a dump, isn’t it? I guess Marietta goes for dumps.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised at Marietta’s citrus-grower. Certainly I shouldn’t have been jealous. I had no claims on her. I had made that clear by my stubborn love for Iris. But as Jake went on talking “man’s talk” to me while his hand pawed Marietta’s shoulder, I felt an unreasonable jealousy and disgust. Perhaps I was disgusted by Marietta, who was too beautiful and had too much integrity to be mauled by a great hunk of male flesh in a cheap bar. Perhaps I was disgusted by the man for not realizing that Marietta was so much, much more than the tramp he seemed to take her for.

I didn’t like him anyway. For some reason I didn’t believe in his fruit farm. There was something subtly but distinctly citified about him. A mechanic, maybe, who’d worked his way up to a garage of his own. And I didn’t believe in his amiability, in spite of the friendly grin. It was laid on too thick, and his blue, Irish eyes were too alert.

Suddenly, because I didn’t trust him, I started wondering whether both he and Sally were lying. Perhaps they had been at the bullfight together and Sally had given him the high sign to leave her when she noticed me. I knew how devious Sally could be and, since she was essentially sinister, I wondered whether this man could be sinister too.

Having introduced him, Marietta seemed to have lost interest in him. She had drifted into one of her remote, impregnable silences. I wondered whether she even knew what his hand was doing.

An Indian with a big sun-bleached straw hat and a beribboned guitar had come to the table and was standing, staring at us patiently. He wasn’t the man who had been playing. He was a professional, an itinerant musician from the street.

Jake noticed him. He prodded Marietta.

“Hey, baby, what’s the name of your song? What’s the song you had them playing all last night? ‘La Borrachitá’? Yeah, that’s it.”

He turned to the musician and spoke to him in surprisingly native sounding Spanish. His face unchanged, the Indian strummed the guitar and started to sing in a high, harsh voice that was oddly moving. I knew the song, of course. It’s been knocking around Mexico for years. It’s pretty and sad. It had been a favorite of Iris’s in the States. Someone had sent her a record.

As I listened I thought of Iris, and self-pity crept over me. Everything seemed sad, unnecessarily sad, sadness invented for me only.

The flat voice, empty of all inflection, went on:

Borrachitá, me voy par olvidarle.

Le quero muchoy el tambien me quere.

Borrachitá, me voy hasta la capital

Par servirme al patron

Que me mandó llamar ante ayer.

A plaintive chord twanged into silence. Jake grinned, said “Swell,” and gave the Indian a peso. The Indian went away.

I’d been too tied to my own nostalgia to look at Marietta. But I did look then. She was sitting staring straight ahead of her, her chin cupped in her hand. Tears were rolling slowly down her cheeks.

She picked up her pocketbook, rose, and said very gravely, “I’m going home now.”

Jake jumped up, fussing around her, keeping his hand on her elbow. “Baby, what’s the trouble? Got the blues?”

“I’m going home now.”

“Sure, sure, baby. Don’t worry. Jake’ll take you home, tuck you up for bye-bye.”

He was guiding her away from the table. Marietta stopped and turned to look back at me. Tears still glistened in her eyes.

“Peter…”

Her hand went out to me and then dropped down. I knew she was trying to ask me not to let her go home with Jake. But I was confused and mad and somehow hurt that she’d sneaked the date up on me. I wanted to hurt her too.

I said, “I guess your friend can take care of you okay. Night, Jake. See you, Marietta.”

She turned to Jake without a word. Submissively she let him lead her toward the stairs.

As they passed a crowded table, two of the Mexicans at it started screaming. They leaped up, tossing back their long black hair, cursing and hitting wildly at each other. One of them staggered back against the wall and whipped out a knife.

Jake swung round, and spat Spanish at them. From nowhere, it seemed, there was a gun in his hand. He covered them both, leaned forward grinning, and flicked the knife out of the Mexican’s hand. Both men slumped sulkily into their seats. Marietta was staring blankly. Jake slipped the gun back into his coat, waved back at me, and took her arm again.

I saw their heads as they descended the stairs, Marietta’s wonderful dark head and Jake’s cropped red hair. Then they were gone.

Alone at the table, a sense of frustration swept over me. Marietta had gone off with a gun-toting citrus-grower she didn’t want, who might also be a hidden ally of Sally’s. I was sitting in a bar, and nothing had been done. Martin wouldn’t go back to Sally. Sally would go to the police. Martin, and maybe Marietta, would have to face some criminal charge which was neither true nor effectively cooked up.

I should have been happy about it. If things worked out that way, Iris might come back to me. But what would be the good of that? Who wanted a wife when she was eating her heart out for another man?

Suddenly I decided I’d spar with Sally and fight it out for Iris and Marietta and Martin. God knows, it was against my own interests, “noble” dime-store chivalry. But anything was better than this—anything.

I thought of Martin then, beautiful, golden Martin in the field of yellow cowslips—always getting to the top of the hill and never letting Marietta get there. I thought of Iris too, in Acapulco, tormenting herself with fear of what Sally could do to Martin.

Martin with his public-school prefect’s gravity, his charm, his so-called genius, and his dubious career, Martin whom three women wanted and who wanted only to be a pilgrim.

They all called Sally a monster. But Sally was only fighting to keep her husband, the way I was not fighting to keep my wife.

It seemed to me then that the real monster was Martin.

I guess I was a little drunk.

I drove home past the Alameda, dark and faintly sinister now, and down the stately boulevard of the Paseo de la Reforma. Mexico City shuts up early at night. Except for the occasional glitter of a night club entrance, the town stretched around me emptily, not like a real town, like something two-dimensional built out of cardboard on a Hollywood set.

At the Calle Londres, the Indian and his peanuts had gone. So had the rooster. But a car, a new scarlet convertible coupé, was parked outside my house. I drove past to the garage, left my car, and walked back. When I reached the iron gate to the patio and rang for the
velador,
the red coupé was still there. I didn’t bother with it until I heard its door open behind me and the patter of high heels on the cement sidewalk.

I turned. Sally Haven was there, the yellow coat still slung over her shoulders. The nearest street light was some way off. It made the yellow coat gleam, and the heavy yellow hair, and her eyes. The rest of her was in shadow. The curious chiaroscuro exaggerated her dollish smallness.

“I waited. I had to see you. It was cold, but I waited.”

Her hand moved forward and touched mine. It was light as an insect against my skin with the dry hardness of an insect.

The chain clattered off and the
velador
was opening the gate.

“Come in,” I said, hating the thought of it but remembering my decision. She snuggled deeper into the coat and slid her hand through my arm.

“It was cold, but I waited. I didn’t want to miss you.”

I took her up the iron staircase and let her into the apartment. I turned on the lights. The apartment was a suite in one of those majestic French-style mansions that had been built in Porfirio Diaz’s day. The original Second Empire furniture was still there.

“Charming,” said Sally. And then, “Iris found it, didn’t she?” She let the coat drop off her shoulders onto the floor and left it there, not bothering. Her eyes, never missing anything, rested on the two empty glasses and the ash tray with Marietta’s lipstick-stained butts. “A visitor,” she said. “A woman.” She laughed, half coquettishly. “And at the bullfight I was so sorry for you because you said you were alone.”