Serenade (24 page)

I tried to argue, got up and tried to catch her, to make her quit that walking around. She slipped away from me. Then she flung herself down on her bed and lay there staring up at the ceiling. When I came to her she waved me away. From that time on she slept in her bed and I slept in mine, and nothing I could do would break her down.

I didn't leave her, I couldn't leave her. It wasn't only that I was insane about her. What was between us had completely reversed since we started out. In the beginning, I thought of her like she had said, as a little dumb
muchacha
that I was nuts about, that I loved to touch and sleep with and play with. But now I had found out that in all the main things of my life she was stronger than I was, and I had got so I had to be with her. It wouldn't have done any good to leave her. I'd have been back as fast as a plane could carry me.

For a week after that, we'd lie there in the afternoon, saying nothing, and then she began putting on her clothes and going out. I'd lie there, trying not to think about singing, praying for strength not to suck in a bellyful and cut it loose. Then it popped in my mind about the priests, and I got in a cold sweat that that was where she was going. So one day I followed her. But she went past the Cathedral, and then I got ashamed of myself and turned around and came back.

I had to do something with myself, though, so when she went I began going to the baseball games. From that you can imagine how much there was to do in Guatemala, that I would go to the baseball game. They've got some kind of a league between Managua, Guatemala, San Salvador, and some other Central American towns, and they get as excited about it as they get in Chicago over a World Series, and yell at the ump, and all the rest of it. Buses run out there, but I walked. The fewer people that got a close look at me, the better I liked it. One day I found myself watching the pitcher on the San Salvador team. The papers gave his name as Barrios, but he must have been an American, or anyway have lived in the United States, from his motion. Most of those Indians handle a ball jerky, and fight it so they make more errors than you could believe. But this guy had the old Lefty Gomez motion, loose, easy, so his whole weight went in the pitch, and more smoke than all the rest of them had put together. I sat looking at him, taking in those motions, and then all of a sudden I felt my heart stop. Was it coming out in me again, this thing that had got me when I met Winston? Was that kid out there really doing things to me that had nothing to do with baseball? Was it having its effect, her putting me out of her bed?

I got up and left. I know now it was just nerves, that when Winston died that chapter ended. But I didn't then. I tried to put it out of my mind, and couldn't. I didn't go to the ball games any more, but then, after a couple of weeks, I got to thinking: Am I going to turn into the priest again? Am I going to give up everything else in this Christ-forsaken dump, and then lose my voice too? It began to be an obsession with me that I had to have a woman, that if I didn't have a woman I was sunk.

She didn't go with me to hear the band play any more. She stayed home and went to bed. One night, when I went out, instead of heading for the park, I flagged a taxi. "La Locha."

"Si, Seńor, La Locha."

I had heard guys at the ball game talking about La Locha's, but I didn't know where it was. It turned out to be on Tenth Avenue, but the district was on a different system from in Mexico. There were regular houses, with red lights over the door, all according to Hoyle. I rang, and an Indian let me in. A whorehouse, I guess, is the same all over the world. There was a big room, with a phonograph on one side, a radio on the other, and an electric piano in the middle, with a stained-glass picture of Niagara Falls in the front, that lit up whenever somebody put in a nickel. The wallpaper had red roses all over it, and at one end was a bar. Back of the bar was an oil painting of a nude, and in the cabinet under it were stacks and stacks of long square cans. When a guy in Guatemala really wants to show the girls a good time, he blows them to canned asparagus.

The Indian looked at me pretty funny, and after he went back, so did the woman at the bar. I thought at first it was the Italian way I was speaking Spanish, but then it seemed to
he
something about my hat. An army officer was at a little table, reading a newspaper. He had his hat on, and then I remembered and put mine on. I ordered
cerveza,
and three girls came in. They stood on the rail and began loving me up. Two of them were Indian, but one of them was white, and she looked the cleanest. I put my arm around her, and after the other two got their drinks, they went over with the officer. One of them turned on the radio, and the other one and the officer began to dance. My girl and I danced. By rights I guess she was fairly pretty. She couldn't have been more than twenty-one or two, and even in the sweater and green dress she had on, you could see she had a pretty good shape. But she kept playing with my hand, and everything I'd say to her, she'd answer in a little high squeak of a voice that got on my nerves. I asked her what her name was. She said Maria.

We had another dance, but God knows there was no point in keeping that up. I asked her if she wanted to go upstairs, and she was leading me out the door even before the tune was over.

We went up, she took me in a room, and snapped on the light. It was just the same old whore's bedroom, except for one thing. On the bureau was a signed photograph of Enzo Luchetti, an old bass I had sung with years before, in Florence. My heart skipped a beat. If he was in town, that meant I had to get out, and get out fast. I picked it up and asked her who it was. She said she didn't know. Another girl had had the room before she came, a fine girl that had been in Europe, but she had got
enferma
and had to leave. I put it down and said it looked like an Italian. She asked if I wasn't Italian. I said yes.

There didn't seem to be much to do, then, but get at it. She began dropping off her clothes. I began dropping off mine. She snapped off the light and we lay down on the bed. I didn't want her, and yet I was excited, in some kind of a queer, unnatural way, because I knew I had to have her. It didn't seem possible that anything could be over so quick and amount to so little. We lay there, and I tried to talk to her, but there wasn't anything to talk to. Then we had another, and next thing I knew I was dressing. Ten quetzals. I gave her fifteen. She got awfully friendly then, but it was like having a poodle bitch trying to jump in your lap. It was only a little after ten when I got home, but Juana was asleep. I undressed in the dark, got into bed, and thought I would get some peace. Next thing, the conductor threw the stick on me, and I tried to sing, and the chorus stood around looking at me, and I began yelling, trying to tell them why I couldn't. When I woke up, those yells were still echoing in my ears, and she was standing over me, shaking me.

"Hoaney! What is it?"

"Just a dream."

"So."

She went back to bed. Not only the bridge of my nose, but the whole front of my face was aching so it was two hours before I dropped off again.

From then on I was like somebody threshing around in a fever, and the more I threshed the worse the fever got. I went around there every night, and when I was so sick of Maria I couldn't even look at her any more, I tried the Indian girls, and when I got sick of them I went in other places, and tried other Indian girls. Then I began picking girls off the street, and in cafés, and taking them in to cheap hotels off the park. They didn't ask me to register and I didn't volunteer. I paid the money, took them in, and around eleven o'clock left them there and went home. Then I went back to La Locha's and started up with Maria again. The more I had of them the worse I wanted to sing. And all that time there was only one woman in the world that I really wanted, and that was Juana. But Juana had turned to ice. After that one little flash, when I woke her up with my nightmare, she went back to treating me like she just barely knew me. We spoke, talked about whatever had to be talked about, but whenever I tried to push it further than that, she didn't even hear me.

One night the Pagliacci cue began to play, and I was just about to step through the curtain and face that conductor again. But I was almost used to it by now, and woke up. I was about to drop off again, when a horrible realization came to me. I wasn't home. I was in bed with Maria. I had been lying there listening to her squeak about how the rains would be over soon, and then the good weather would come, and must have gone to sleep. I was the star customer there by now, and she must have turned off the light and just let me alone. I jumped up, snapped on the light, and looked at my watch. It was two o'clock. I jumped into my clothes, left a twenty-quetzal note on the bureau, and ran downstairs. Things were just getting good down in the main room. The army, the judiciary, the coffee kingdom, and the banana empire were all on hand, the girls were stewed, the asparagus was going down in bunches, and the radio, the phonograph, and the electric piano were all going at once. I never stopped. A whole row of taxis were parked up and down the street outside. I jumped in one, went home. A light was on upstairs. I let myself in and started up there.

Halfway up, I felt something coming at me. I fell back a step and braced myself for her to hit me. She didn't. She shot by me on the stairs, and in the half light I saw she was dressed to go out. She had on red hat, red dress, and red shoes, with gold stockings, and rouge smeared all over her face, but I didn't catch all that until later. All I saw was that she was got up like some kind of hussy, and I took about six steps at one jump and caught her at the door. She didn't scream. She never screamed, or talked loud, or anything like that. She sank her teeth into my hand and grabbed for the door again. I caught her once more, and we fought like a couple of animals. Then I threw her against the door, got my arms around her from behind, and carried her upstairs, with her heels cutting dents in my shins.

When we got in the bedroom I turned her loose, and we faced each other panting, her eyes like two points of light, my hands slippery with blood. "What's the rush? Where you going?"

"Where you think? To the Locha, where you come from."

That was one between the eyes. I didn't know she had even heard of La Locha's. But I dead-panned as well as I could.

"What's the locha? I don't seem to place it."

"So, once more you lie."

"I don't even know what you're talking about. I went for a walk and got lost, that's all."

"You lie, now another time you lie. You think these girl no tell me about crazy Italian who come every night? You think they no tell me?"

"So that's where you spend your afternoons."

"Yes."

She stood smiling at me, letting it soak in. I kept thinking I ought to kill her, that if I was a man I'd take her by the throat and choke her till her face turned black. But I didn't want to kill her. I just felt shaky in the knees, and weak, and sick. "Yes, that is where I go, I find little
muchacha
for company, little
muchacha
like me, for nice little talk and cup of chocolate after siesta. And what these little
muchacha
talk? Only about crazy Italian, who come every night, give five-quetzal tip." She pitched her voice into Maria's squeak.
"Sí. Cinco quetzales."

I was licked. When I had run my tongue around my lips enough that they stopped fluttering, I backed down. "All right. Once more I'll cut out the lying. Yes, I was there. Now will you stop this show, so we can talk?"

She looked away, and I saw
her
lips begin to twitch. I went in the bathroom, and started to wash the blood off my hand. I wanted her to follow me in, and I knew if she did, she'd break. She didn't. "No! No more talk! You no go, then I go!
Adiós!"

She was down, and out the front door, before I even got to the head of the stairs.

I ran out on the street just as a taxi pulled away from the corner. I yelled, but it didn't stop. There was no other taxi in sight, and I didn't find one till I went clear around the block to the stand in front of the hotel. I had him take me back to La Locha's. By that time there were at least twenty cabs parked up and down the street, and things were going strong in all the houses. It kept riding me that even if she had gone in the place, they might lie to me about it, and I couldn't be sure unless I searched the joint, and that meant they would call the cops. I went to the first cab that was parked there and asked him if a girl in a red dress had gone in any of the houses. He said no. I gave him a quetzal and said if she showed, he was to come in La Locha's and let me know. I went to the next driver, and the next, and did the same. By the time I had handed out quetzals to half a dozen of them, I knew that ten seconds after she got out of her cab I would know it. I went back to La Locha's. No girl in a red dress had come, said the Indian. I set up drinks for all hands, sat down with one of the girls, and waited.

Around three o'clock the judiciary began to leave, and after them the army, and then all the others that weren't spending the night. At four o'clock they put me out. Two or three of my taxi drivers were still standing there, and they swore that no girl in a red dress, or any other kind of dress, had come to any house in the street all night. I passed out a couple more quetzals, had one of them drive me home. She wasn't there. I routed out the Japs. It was an hour's job of pidgin Spanish and wigwagging to find out what they knew, but after a while I got it straight. Around nine o'clock she had started to pack. Then she got a cab, put her things in it, and went out. Then she came back, and when she found out I wasn't home, went out. When she came back the second time, around midnight, she had on the red dress, and kept walking around upstairs waiting for me. Then I came home, and there was the commotion, and she went out again, and hadn't been back since.

I shaved, cleaned the dried blood off my hand, changed my clothes. Around eight o'clock I tried to eat some breakfast and couldn't. Around nine o'clock the bell rang. A taxi driver was at the door. He said some of his friends had told him I was looking for a lady in a red dress. He said he had driven her, and could take me to where he left her. I took my hat, got in, and he drove me around to a cheap hotel, one of those I had been to myself. They said yes, a lady of that description had been there. She had come earlier in the evening, changed her clothes once and gone out, then came back late and left an early call. She hadn't registered. About seven thirty this morning she had gone out. I asked how she was dressed. They just shrugged. I asked if she had taken a cab. They said they didn't know. I rode back to the house, and tried to piece it together. One thing began to stick out of it now. My being out late, that wasn't why she had left. She was leaving anyway, and after she had moved out she had come back, probably to say goodbye. Then when she found I wasn't there she had got sore, gone to the hotel again, changed into the red dress, and come back to harpoon me with how she was going back to her old life. Whether she had gone back to it, or what she had done, I had no more idea than the man in the moon.