And abruptly, almost as if she had known what he was thinking, she was saying, with sleepily turned head, her cheek pressed against the chairback:
“You don’t regret it, Blom, do you—?”
“Of course not, darling. I never was so happy in my life.”
“Neither was I! And now you must be very nice to Gil.”
Her eyes were wide open again, and still; again they exchanged a leisurely look of unhurried understanding, in which all the future lay between them like a long-familiar landscape, every beloved feature of which was wonderfully known to them. It was all there, every bit of it: the years like seed, the years like furrows, the years like sheaves. Noni at Nonquitt, freckled, sailing an eighteen-footer; Noni in Boston, bringing back a basket of daffodils and music from Faneuil Hall, or standing in line for the symphony concerts; Noni climbing the dark mountains of Mexico. Noni with himself and her devoted Gil, and then — Gil and himself alone, looking back.… And as they gazed at each other, motionless, save for the quivering of arm against arm, or hand in hand, with the everlasting vibration of the train, it was as if, in that wide landscape of all life, they could see themselves, now here, now there; now in one part of the landscape and now in another; by the rocky shore of a sea, on a hillside, in a park, in a dark street; walking quickly side by side, walking always in swift unison, their faces turned towards each other, their hands now and again touching, but always, where ever they happened to be going, with perfect knowledge of a shared purpose and view, a known and accepted destiny. This was their life. This had been their life.… And then, quickly, the Norse-blue eyes were laughing in the tired face, and he himself was laughing, and they shook their heads at each other for rebuke of such silliness, and Noni once more composed herself for sleep, gave a little wriggle for comfort, and turned her face away.
Whoo-whoooo-whoo-whoo—!
But he was not awake at Saltillo, although he thought he had been awake all night; he could have sworn that he had known each separate time that each of the babies had cried, and the voice of each, and the voice of each of the mothers; but when he awoke, and saw the great gray fan of dawn behind and over the mountains, and the brown twilight close against his window, it was to find that the train had stopped at a tiny little station, a mere adobe hut, white-walled and deserted in the wilderness, and on its front, painted in large black letters, the incredible name: Encantada. Encantada! Enchanted, the Enchanted Town. It was the enchanted mesa of Krazy Kat. He turned quickly to tell Noni, but of course she was gone, she had gone back to Gil. In the profound stillness of early morning, the train then began to move, glided away from the forlorn and deserted station, where not a soul was to be seen. A little mud-walled town was now visible, on the dark scrubby slope of the mountain, as forlorn and deserted as the station; and then, standing alone in the desert, his back to the sharply outlined mountains in the east, a solitary shrouded figure came into view, an Indian, wrapped closely in his sarape, standing immovable and secret as a rock to watch the passage of the train. It was incredible; it was a dream. It was exactly, to be sure, what he had just been dreaming — that landscapes are like states of mind, like feelings, like apprehensions. The little town called Encantada, deserted by all save that brooding and inscrutable hooded figure — and at this, of all hours, the morning twilight of a desert among mountains — all this was obviously much more intimately a part of himself than a mere geographical section of a continent.… He had known it before; as now, too, he felt that he had known before the miles and miles of sagebrush and mesquite, the straggling rows of broken prickly pear beside the railway line, the Spanish bayonet, the iron and copper-colored mountains saw-toothed against the cloudless and burning sky. It was no surprise to see a wolf loping unhurriedly away towards the foothills, nor the citadels of prairie dogs, nor the buzzards sailing in pairs, sailing and wheeling, their wide moth wings almost motionless. It was a dream, a continuous dream; all day it unfolded in identical character; and at breakfast and at lunch, in the peculiar Mission dining car, with its black oak beams and gaudy Mexican pottery, they agreed that it was something they had all dreamed, all three of them, long ago, and many times.
“And those date palms, walking up and down the hills like sad little families,” said Noni.
“Or like men charging a hill in open formation.”
“But so attitudinizing, so tragic and comic! And so compassionate!”
“Yes. They’re really absurd.”
“The little ones, especially!”
It was all a dream: and in it now, too, were the manifest distortions of fatigue; the rocks too angular, the soil too red, the Indians too many and too sullen, the train too crowded. The suave violinist from San Luis Potosi gave Noni cards to his maternal “ont” in Mexico City: she ran a pension. They must go to see Roberto Soto, the Charlie Chaplin of Mexico; and a bullfight; and a cockfight. He had learned his English in school; he had played in the symphony orchestra in Mexico City; he knew Chavez. The Spaniards despised the pure-blooded Spaniards of Mexico. Pulque was the ruin of the peons. Pulque? Yes, pulque. And these desert stretches, with the maguey, and that other gray brushlike bush, from which it was possible to make rubber — but farther south the country would be more beautiful. Yes.
The blonde girl had joined the three married women with their babies: the young man with the cowboy hat sat alone in the seat, sulking. He was listening, but pretending not to listen, to the loud conversation, the sallies of wit, the screams of laughter, behind him. Parrot laughter: cold and fierce. Monterrrrrey, the blonde girl was saying, rolling the r brilliantly and mercilessly, Monterrrrrey, something about Monterey, and they all rocked with uncontrollable and malicious laughter. She was punishing him now; she had become the life of the party: the demure young thing whom he had tried to seduce was keeping the whole train in an uproar. The conductors — there seemed to be two of them — came and joined them, so did the beer man; so did an Indian woman with a hen in a basket. And always they were coming back to that everlasting Monterrrrrey.
Sure enough, the landscape had changed, was changing; and while the mountains still kept their indomitable stations, color of slate, color of bronze, stained with dark blood, the valleys opened outward and downward in richer greens, in corn fields, in grain fields, and here, too, were mountain streams, the land was no longer waterless, and now a small river running and sparkling, where before were only dried beds of rock. Pink churches stood among the trees, and yellow churches; far below the turning train the wide-hatted white-clad little figures of laborers could be seen, stooping in the rich fields. And here, by the tracks, grew goldenrod, already in bloom, strayed all the way from New England.… It was in the dusk that Noni discovered it, with her hand on the pane — Noni looking down into the purple valley below them, where now the lights had already begun to twinkle. Time with a hundred eyes, time the star spider! — the train had increased its speed once more, it was on the last stretch, it was hurrying home.
“Do you suppose he’ll meet us? Do you suppose Hambo will be there?”