The Last Supper: And Other Stories (11 page)

“It is not empty. A few people still live, there. They are the remnant of agony. I saw the agony of Spain myself, and I was a part of it, but the agony of Mexico is something else. All that is hideous and monstrous on this earth has bled Mexico. She has been raped, not thrice, but a hundred times, raped, bled and betrayed. Church and North America taught her lessons and still teach her, and her own rich suck the half empty veins of her body, and this has been for four hundred years. What other people could live through that and remain so strong and proud and brave? Possibly at one time, a hundred thousand people lived in that valley below, and someday a hundred thousand people will live there again. Now only a handful are left. But they have not gone—no, they have not gone. Their children will plow the land, and the land will bloom.”

We walked down the slope of the plateau to a ceremonial ballpark, looking up at the stands where the dukes and knights of the old Indian civilization had sat, and our thoughts filled in the panorama of bright color, of painted walls and painted gods, of banners flying and gold glittering. A little Indian boy joined us there, his flock of goats scattered behind him, munching among the ruins. “If the
senores
desire,” he said, “I will show you where the priests lived.” We said yes and gave him a peso, and his beautiful dark face lit momentarily with a smile of appreciation, and then he and his goats led us down a winding path to a broad ledge where a long row of houses had been partly excavated. They were, invisible from above. “Who told you they are the houses of priests?” Serente asked him, and he replied, “When the curator comes from Mexico City, he instructs me carefully. He tells me that my own people built these houses, and that I must remember all I can, for some day we will rebuild them. When I am older, I will go to the university and study such things and be an archaeologist myself. See, already I think about it. Look on that hillside there.” He pointed to a mountainside, toward the end of the plateau. “Do you see the even space between the trees—like a storm cut a swathe there? Well, I have decided that no trees grow there because a stone road lies beneath the grass, and even the curator did not know that until I pointed it out to him. Next week he will make what we call a
sinking
there. Do you know what a sinking is?” We said we did, and we followed him to other places and listened to more, of his chattering and his uncanny childish wisdom. When we said goodbye to him, he bowed formally with that courtly grace which so many Mexicans have and which no Mexican needs to be taught, and as a host, he invited us to come again and to bring our friends. “Because people do not know what lies on this mountaintop. You must tell them.”

We returned to the car in silence, and in silence we drove down the mountain to the road below. Only when we were well on our way back did I ask Serente,

“Is there any news of the little girl?”

“She died two days ago,” Serente said evenly. “Yesterday, I went to the church where her body lay.” I learned afterwards that he had provided the money for the funeral, but he said nothing about that. “She was a beautiful child,” Serente continued. “I wanted to weep. I am afraid I am becoming sentimental, like a North American, and with a few exceptions, I hate North Americans as much as I hate sentimentality. You are one of the exceptions, my friend, and I am sure you have learned to forgive me the things I say. Anyway, it will comfort you a little to know that in my opinion, she could not have been saved.”

“It doesn't comfort me, and anyway, I think you are lying.”

“Perhaps I am lying. What difference does it make? All children are beautiful, whether in Mexico or in North America. Here they die from dysentery and virus; your people destroy childhood in other ways, and now that you have this splendid toy of yours, your hydrogen bomb, you will be able to spread death among the Chinese children and the Russian children much more economically and profitably than among the Mexicans, where you only use such old fashioned tools as oppression, ignorance, and monopolies in anti-biotics.”

“I have noticed that a number of Mexican companies make anti-biotics and keep the price as high as we do.”

“True and deserving,” Serente sighed. “Some kind of a mood has come over me, and it is best if I just keep my mouth shut now. Anyway, I want to be back in my office before the rain.”

The clouds were gathering as we entered Cuernavaca. Serente dropped me at the hotel, shook my hand warmly, and begged forgiveness. But no one could be, angry at him, and therefore no one ever had any need to forgive him. I went upstairs to our apartment and told my wife about the afternoon. The children were still playing in the garden, and she suggested that we go out onto the terrace, and smoke a cigarette, and then there would still be time before dinner for a drink in the restaurant downstairs. The terrace was a favorite place of ours at this time of the day, for during the rainy season, each evening presented a breathtaking and impressive spectacle. Most often, the clouds would begin to gather at about five o'clock, and from our terrace, one had a clear view of a mighty gorge in the mountains, down which a wild river ran. As the rain approached, this gorge would fill with dark green and purple clouds, and the clouds would appear to tumble down through the ravine, even as the river did. The whole vista then became unearthly, full of fright and grandeur, and shot through with wild beams of sunlight, so much like an
El Greco
, but so much more real and colorful.

As this took place, I told my wife what Serente had said about the little girl, and she nodded silently and woefully. Then the rain started, and we, went down to the restaurant.

The manager of the restaurant was a Spanish Republican, the head of the organization of Spanish Republicans in Cuernavaca, and his warm greeting, his gentle smile, and his just as gentle
salud
, brought us back to reality. We invited him to join us, and we drank to life, to the consternation of the butcher Franco, and to the day when Madrid would be the tomb of fascism.

Then we drank to Mexico—to Mexico, the mother, who shelters the oppressed, the driven, the hungry—not to poor, bleeding Mexico, but to Mexico angry with wrong, an old anger, an old and long memory.

We went back to our apartment, and our children were there where they had fled from the rain, playing games of fear and defiance to the mighty peals of thunder, the savage arrows of lightning; and they saw our faces and asked what was wrong. We embraced them and held life in our arms, assuring them that nothing was wrong—only live and grow valiant and proud and strong!

About a week later, walking on
Guerrero
, the narrow, crowded market street of Cuernavaca, the street with the savage and defiant name, we saw him again, riding on his little donkey. “There he is!” my wife said to me, and as if in answer to her words, he raised his head. Oh, how his face had changed! The repose was gone; the peace was gone; and now there was anger, bitterness—and with it a brooding portent of the future. We no longer saw Christ as one sees him in the thousand paintings and sculptures; we saw a Mexican
peon
, whose heart had filled to overflowing and had broken with the weight of sorrow, and we saw that strange, frightening Mexican anger that has amazed the world before and will amaze it again.

Yet that, perhaps, was more truly the face of the man called Christ.

The Power of Positive Thinking

M
RS. EGLESTON WAS AWAKENED BY HER HUSBAND'S
voice, and as she listened, she realized that he was holding a conversation. The only trouble was that the other person her husband was speaking to was not there. At first, with a real sense of alarm, she felt that another person must be in her bedroom, but there was enough moonlight in the room to show her that aside from herself and her husband, each in his and her bed, the room was empty.

“Mark, dear,” she said, “are you awake or asleep?”

“Awake, of course. Would I be talking if I was asleep?”

“Well, some people do talk in their sleep. I never noticed it in you. You do snore, but I must confess that I never noticed you talking in your sleep.”

“Of course not. I never talk in my sleep.”

“But it was you talking, Mark?”

“Yes, it was.”

Mrs. Egleston hesitated for a while, for the obvious question was as obviously improper, and she hesitated so long that her husband began to talk again. Then she felt that it was her duty to ask him.

“Who are you talking to, Mark?”

“God.”

“Oh. Who did you say?”

“God.”

“Well—well, I mean—”

“I suppose you feel it is strange that I should talk to God. That's quite natural. You would feel that it is strange.”

“Well, wouldn't you feel it was strange if you woke up and found me talking to God?” Mrs. Egleston asked plaintively.

“No, not at all. He is everywhere, isn't He? He hears you. So why shouldn't you talk to Him?”

“I never looked at it that way,” Mrs. Egleston said defensively, her thoughts still somewhat clouded by the sleep from which she had been wakened. She tried to think about it now, but it was too sudden and too unexplored a matter for her to grapple with. “Mark?”

“Yes?”

“What do you talk about?”

“Problems. Difficulties. Fears.”

“Oh.”

“We are not wholly free of problems, you know.”

“Yes, I do know, Mark,” she said in a conciliatory tone, for she was in analysis, and it was costing Mark a hundred dollars a week. She always felt that Mark resented the hundred dollars a week her therapy cost, and it did no good for her analyst to reassure her that quite the reverse was true, that the money spent helped Mark, released him, and provided expiation for his guilts.

“You don't mind me talking about it, do you, Mark?”

“Not at all.”

“Well—well, really, I don't want to pry, but does He answer?”

“Who?”

“Well, you know—”

“You mean, God? Yes, sometimes, He answers. At other times, He does not.”

“Oh.”

“What do you mean by oh?”

“Nothing. Just oh.”

As she fell asleep, Mrs. Egleston heard her husband declaiming, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want—” And possibly because her night's sleep had been interrupted, she slept later than usual. Mr. Egleston had already left for his office, and Mrs. Egleston had just enough time, to the minute, to take her bath, do her face, dress, get to the hairdresser, and then meet Mrs. Cabot at the Colony for lunch. It was hurry, hurry all the, way, with no real catching up with herself at any point, and such a morning always unnerved her, and today she knew that her hour with Dr. Vaskivich would be utterly profitless.

“You don't look yourself at all, darling,” Mrs. Cabot said to her, after they had ordered. Mrs. Cabot was like a sister to her, not only because they liked each other, but also because Mark and Arthur Cabot were partners down on the Street.

“I don't feel myself,” Mrs. Egleston confessed. “I've been going in circles all morning because I slept until ten, and with a hairdresser's appointment—and it all started because of some silly business with Mark last night.”

“If you think life with Arthur has been any bed of roses since they came back from Bermuda, you're mistaken, darling. But what happened with Mark?”

Mrs. Egleston stared at her broiled mushrooms and shook her head. “I think I want a martini.” She ordered what Mrs. Cabot called a breakfast martini, two parts vermouth and one part gin. “It's either too silly or too something else. I woke up at three o'clock in the morning, and there he was awake and talking.”

“Talking to whom?”

“God.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Cabot.

“That's just what I said.” Then she told Mrs. Cabot the whole story.

Mrs. Cabot wasn't surprised. “Darling,” she said, “I know—believe me. I had it at breakfast. Arthur said grace. Not that I'm one of these hideous atheists, but one has to do these things decently. Kathy and Joey just watched him, and then Kathy complained that she hadn't done her homework in arithmetic, and she has that horrible Miss Bixbey, and what do you think Arthur said? He said, just pray, my dear, just open your heart to God. Well, He won't do my arithmetic, will He, Kathy asked. He can move mountains, said Arthur. Kathy pointed out that the trouble was with Miss Bixbey and not with mountains, and could He move Miss Bixbey? Well, it was so cute, my dear, you would think any normal person would just laugh and take it from where it comes, but Arthur flew into a towering rage, and said that this was the final result of communism in the schools, and what we ought to do about Formosa is to move right into China and give the lot of them the what for, although what on earth it had to do with Formosa, I don't know, and since Kathy's at Bently, I should think we'd be safe from subversives, but there you are, darling.”

“What is it?” asked Mrs. Egleston.

“It's that book they took with them to Bermuda. You remember how Arthur was having a heart attack every day and got so he didn't dare breath, and Mark with cancer—”

“Every time he got a pimple or a boil or an ingrown hair.”

“—and we felt it would be the best thing in the world for both of them to go off to Bermuda alone and get it out of their system and have a fling and maybe sow some late wild oats and let us have some peace?”

“Yes?”

“Late wild oats! Darling, they sowed the wind, and we're reaping the whirlwind.”

“Honey, I don't know what on earth you're talking about.”

“You wouldn't know. Mark may talk to God at night, but no woman, especially his wife, ever heard him be frank. Arthur's different. First thing, he gave me the book.”

“Yes?”

“Well, you know that bond salesman in their office—I think his name is Straus or Strickland or something, anyway the one who's been married four times and has the tic on his lower lip?”