“We’ve come far enough,” Elizabeth said. “I want to go back.”
“Now take the stairs to the left.”
Franz moved on and after a moment Elizabeth hurried after him. He ducked his head to enter the stairs. The ceiling here was loose adobe bricks, unsafe, dangerous. He climbed slowly. Finally he emerged in a vaulted gallery decorated with a frieze in vegetable colors. It was the core, the solidity that supported the great mass above. Franz moved into the gallery and Elizabeth followed him. Javier next. You, Isabel, held back, standing near the top of the stairs. Elizabeth stared around her and felt dizzy. Light bulbs hung far apart, high above, faintly illuminating the frieze, which consisted of a succession of round-headed locusts, round skeletons with round eyes, sunken cheeks, hollow nostrils and sharp teeth, in three colors: yellow, red, and black.
Javier moved forward to lecture: “The locusts, gods of the mountain. Plague of the harvest, yet at the same time its guardian.”
Franz turned his back on the frieze and rested his head against the wall. Elizabeth also leaned against the wall staring at the locusts’ red teeth.
“Red, the death color,” Javier went on. “Yellow, life.” He studied the frieze thoughtfully. “The locust brings forth both life and death. Like all of the ancient Mexican gods, it is ambiguous. It belongs to a cosmogony of paradox in which death is life’s prerequisite, life is death’s herald.”
Franz was not listening. He had turned his back on all of you, leaning with his forehead against the frieze.
“Those monsters simply laugh at the pleasant saints in the chapel up there,” Javier said, looking toward the ceiling. “They make frightening faces and scare the cabbage-headed little Virgin.”
You had held back, Isabel, at the entrance to the gallery, hugging yourself with folded arms, looking at Franz, Javier, and Elizabeth as if they were three actors on a stage that every moment moved farther away from you. Listening to Javier’s cold, precise comments. And now at last Franz’s voice, strident, metallic, with the echoing resonance of this chamber deep in the earth:
“Javier! That wasn’t your voice! I tell you, it wasn’t your voice!”
And Javier replied quietly, “No, Franz, it wasn’t,” as Franz was already moving toward him with his hands at his sides and his fists clenched. Javier suddenly lost his composure and began to tremble. He looked at Elizabeth beseechingly, but Elizabeth had merely stepped back and watched as Franz moved forward, perspiring, his shirt-sleeves rolled above the elbow, his muscles tense. With his gray eyes he stared at Javier and Elizabeth saw in that gaze all the cruelty and almost childlike tenderness she had loved in Franz, the cruelty and tenderness that are prerequisites for each other, a necessary fusion, serene inner life and violent outer life, loss, self-apology, action impelled by orders given long ago and still obeyed, action and dream long ago, blind, confident, insane, but always action, lumbering forward gracelessly toward Javier’s opposing absolute passivity, Javier facing a rendering of accounts he had not written, pitying and waiting for the attack he would welcome. They touched and Franz’s arms went around Javier to wrestle him to the ground while Javier’s arms went around Franz to embrace him, hold him, be near him. And as they gripped each other, the attack ended as suddenly as it had begun. The tension between violent strength and accepting weakness dissolved and very slowly they pressed their bodies together, joined at the belly and the thighs, still embracing each other without now admitting their true intention, a violent embrace of hatred transforming itself, as the two women looked on, into desire that neither of the women could understand or participate in. A sensual, excited embrace between two men who drew back their hands, their heads, and their feet, but remained locked together at the loins in a way that neither had expected, neither had foreseen, each of them suddenly become a sleepwalker in the damp, stifling gallery beside the frieze of darkness and mystery, the red and yellow and black locust gods of life and death, each of them now far from this place and this moment but each calling to the other to return and join him and each about to disappear, and Javier trembles and whispers something: the tomb of the dead gods is moving, swaying, it’s a quake, an earthquake, take cover … Earth rains down from the vaulted loose adobe overhead … The walls shake, shake … centuries and centuries collapsing … and the locusts hold the weight of seven stone pyramids on their feeble backs … Loose adobe bricks … friezes crushed … walls, steps, galleries, the church above swaying … And noise can bring down hills, even mountain peaks … darkness falling upon them from above … everything falling, falling … Ligeia leaping forward to embrace Franz … Isabel grabbing Javier, trying to pull him toward Franz and Elizabeth … Javier takes her arms and draws her back … everyone shouting, screaming … rock crashes down separating the two couples, a mass of dead stone, broken bricks, old adobe … Javier and Isabel run … They escape down the stairs, down the corridor, followed by the thunder of falling earth and rock … Some day it had to happen … Ligeia and Franz have remained, trapped on the other side, where there is no way out … Locked behind the collapse of the hill-pyramid … Yes, he hears their voices, their shouts … Ligeia screaming his name … Franz shouting … Ligeia screaming that she can’t get her breath … And they’re trapped, trapped … Isabel and Javier hear them and embrace … Javier hugs her, kisses her … “Now we will love each other,” he says. “We’ll have to love each other…” Isabel squeezes his hand and they go down the tunnel holding hands, see the exit shining in the distance like an incandescent point … Holding hands they emerged into the sun, the sun, the night sun … They had gone in in darkness and they came out into the shining sun … They got into the car … Now only two of them, Isabel and Javier, Javier and Isabel … Isabel drives … They go toward the hotel, Isabel looking straight ahead with a motionless face, through the streets of Cholula, past the smooth-skinned emaciated dogs that run barking after them, past the big-bellied women and the soldiers with knife-scarred faces … the car bounces across ruts and holes … And Javier can read Isabel’s mind … Yes, she is telling herself, I can be his strength, his inspiration, his everything, but he doesn’t understand that. He thinks that he is sacrificing himself. That when he married Ligeia he destroyed his ambitions. Married her, lived with her, slept with her. A way of dying … If I only had more experience, Isabel is thinking, if I could let him know what I know. But even if I did, by living with him, sleeping with him, marrying him, he would still not be convinced … that it’s not too late … That is what she is thinking … it’s what she has to be thinking as she drives from the pyramid to the hotel, Javier thinking for her: his dream is not lost but only with me can it come true, with me who can be his strength, his harmony, his peace, he understanding that this is what I was born for, that I can’t live alone, that I must be joined to him, a man I can understand: I want to be his earth, his roots, his air, I want to tremble when his hands touch my nipples, his lips kiss my clitoris, his breath goes into my ear. I want to lie on the bed and have him lie upon me and take me as I take him, together, without victory, without defeat, I want to praise him without shame, to stare at him without modesty, to touch him without haste, to live and make love without haste, the long slow mornings waiting for the always new surprise that will come when he wakes: that’s it, that’s what I want, and all the rest too, to learn his likes and dislikes, to cheer him up when he’s depressed, to listen to records with him, to read with him, travel with him, nurse him when he’s sick, go to the drugstore and buy his razor blades, his shaving cream, his soap, his soda bicarb, see him dance with another woman, see him angry, sleeping as if, without ever telling me, he always knows that I am with him, supporting him, nurturing him, that I don’t want to possess him for myself or to see myself, but to be all that he needs while remaining outside him: not that he should cease to suffer but that he should find the suffering he needs in my suffering, not that he should have no doubts, but that in me … that’s it, that’s it: that he should accept everything not as if it were fated but only as if it were necessary: things happen to us not because of destiny but because we need them to happen, and so I will be able to hold off destiny, fate, circumstances, fatality, prevent them from touching him until I offer them to him transformed by me, by Isabel, and if he understands, that is how it will be, how it will have to be; a woman is never overcome by a man but overcomes herself in order to love him and be his; there is never rape, every woman always lets herself be taken; there is no love that does not rest upon humiliation; and that is why I am here, why I took this trip to the sea with him; maybe he’ll understand … The car stops in front of the hotel … They get out … slam the doors … enter the hotel … ask for the key to Isabel’s room … walk along the halls … hear the fountain in the glass-roofed patio … open the bedroom door … Isabel throws herself on the bed crying … Javier unbuttons his shirt … wads it into a ball and wipes his armpits with it … takes off his shoes, covered with dust, and his trousers, and sits on the bed to take off his socks … keeps his underwear on and sits holding his socks … he is thinking that maybe she believes she understands, but she doesn’t understand … she thinks she does, but she doesn’t … she wants to offer herself to him now … she is hoping that he will unbutton her dress, but he turns his back on her and she lies there crying, meek, submissive, humble now after the hell of the afternoon with Ligeia … he unbuttons her yellow shantung dress, looks at her back covered with droplets of sweat … she is thinking, he reflects, about her humility, her strength to endure … She shrugs her shoulders to wriggle out of the dress and he looks at her nude, sweat-beaded body … She is thinking of a life of tenderness and compassion in which she, sacrificing her possibilities, will guide a poor unsuccessful author back to creativity, giving him through herself a second birth, confidence … beneath her protective wing she will make him sit down and do his daily stint, now and then bringing him a cup of herb tea to calm his colitis … Why not? He grunts and throws his socks down … No, she doesn’t understand … she doesn’t understand that Ligeia, his poison, his toxin, is also his life, his habit, that without that habit his world would collapse … that he prefers Ligeia, with her barrenness and her routines, to someone else who would be equally barren and have worse routines … that he prefers Ligeia because she is violent and given to extremes, that anything else would be flat and tasteless … and with any woman he would merely go on breathing, chewing, swallowing, digesting, seeing, touching, smelling, the same tube called a man that stretches from his mouth to his anus … she does not understand that he no longer writes books but reports for a committee of the United Nations, that he is just as he would be no matter what he did, for all he can do is fill out his allotted time, no more … Tender and compassionate … she thinks she understands, but she doesn’t … she lies there, motionless, nude, thinking that she understands and not realizing that she too makes demands … insists on understanding me and overwhelming me with her pretended gifts, her subjugation given with loyalty, insists that I live only for her, only so that she can care for me, flatter me, protect me, nurture me, she and she alone: an iron instinct that I can never break, no, neither I nor any man … I cannot transform either myself or the world so that all of us, men and women alike, can be alone and solitary, alone when we want to be alone, joined to others when we need it, always free to choose and decide, to be the same or different, to belong to and possess whomever we care to … Can she understand this?… She is waiting for me to move nearer … she doesn’t understand why I don’t go to her and touch the nipples she is offering me … For her, humiliation; for me merely freedom, necessary, rationaclass="underline" can she understand?… will she allow me to be openly unfaithful?… Oh, no, she won’t … I know that well … And then the disillusionment, the tears, the hurt feelings, the certainty that I don’t know how to appreciate her or I would not leave her for anyone, and finally the hatred, the rebellion, her own unfaithfulness: a betrayal that I would not want to face and accept, for from the beginning she would have denied freedom and now she would be claiming it … And who am I talking about? My head aches, hurts … Bring me an aspirin … Isabel, bring me an aspirin … now … Isabel who is Ligeia … she will be Ligeia … and she knows it … she’ll want everything for herself alone … all my time … all my love … and will be disillusioned, hurt … will hate me … will give me Ligeia’s hell again … He looks at her … She does not move toward him … Maybe she in her turn is mind-reading … What can he do except stay with Ligeia, the familiar port, rather than venturing to begin again, risk everything with a fear he will not conceal, simply so that Isabel may become his new Ligeia, new young flesh, rosy lips, heavy pubis, hard breasts, firm thighs … how young they are and how they show themselves at first, how they respond when there is neither old habit nor old understanding, how charming is young clumsiness, what a discovery, what a surprise … He gets up from the bed … Isabel lies there, naked, her legs spread, waiting for him … He looks for and finds the black shawl … No, no man wants to repeat life … Isabel will never be Ligeia … Isabel will be a fleeting love … forever beautiful, a sweet, warm memory, never old … He takes the shawl in his hands and stretches it … He wants to he alone … I want to be alone, Isabel, don’t you understand that?… And you will remain young … Always young … I promise you your youth as I walk toward you with Ligeia’s black shawl in my hands … You will never age and I will always remember you as you are, as you were … Isabel’s arms rise to receive him … Quickly he slips the shawl around her neck and twists it … She doesn’t suspect yet … she thinks that my fury is merely a new proof of love … that today I offer her once again a new and different experience … and I tighten the shawl, tighten it, and do not look at her bulging eyes, at her open mouth with the protruding tongue … how long, my God, her tongue is …