“God knows, Noni; I suspect the train’s already late—”
“Quite a lot, I think—!”
“And we don’t know how far Cuernavaca is—”
“No. I suppose, at this hour of the night — it’s unlikely?”
“And this day of the month, and this year—”
“Where are we anyway? I wouldn’t be in the least surprised if I woke up in Boston—!”
“Yes, it doesn’t exist.…”
Gil tried to read the detective magazine: Noni nodded over the Megha Duta. Noni tried to read the detective magazine: Gil nodded over the Megha Duta. I Cover the Death House. Guns, Blondes, and Speed. Burning legs, burning lips, the singed smell of the executioner! And gilded Lil, tossing off nickel beers in the bar, after her farewell visit to her condemned husband! Guns, Blondes, and Speed.
“Well, I hope he’s there. Otherwise we’ve got to try to get into a hotel.”
“O God, our help in ages past.”
“And I wonder what kind of a house he’s got — did you say he was Bohemian, Gil?”
“Bohemian? No, I wouldn’t say Bohemian. I met him on a ship.”
The echoes of the past came around them briefly, with faint evocation; Noni was looking at her hands, her fingernails, with fatigued amusement; Noni came back from the lavatory a little distressed (for it was filthy), but making a weary joke of it; Noni lay back with her hand over her eyes, tired, while Gil gazed beyond her at the darkening landscape. Nightfall, nightfall; the train falling around the curve of the world—
And in fact the train had now become positively suicidal. It was at last rushing downhill, hurling itself precipitately down the mountainsides, down gorges, down tunnels and valleys, lurching in breakback fashion around screaming bends, falling and then checking momentarily in the pitch darkness, only to resume its headlong disastrous plunge to Mexico City. It was unbelievable. Noni was a little frightened: so was Gil. So for that matter was himself. Gil said:
“And when you remember how that rail at Queretaro bent down two inches—you saw it, Noni — you just kind of wonder.”
“They might as well jump straight down and be done with it!”
“Just about.”
“It’s as good as Coney Island!..”
But abruptly, and as if with purpose, the blonde girl had come back to her seat, had put on her hat with firm fingers, was getting down her bag; the train was slowing; passengers were rising, peering out of windows; another train passed them going north, at a switch point; there were rows of lights, there were buildings. Could it be?… Half past eleven; they were an hour late. And now the tolling bell, melancholy and slow, ylang — ylang, ylang — ylang, and the slowing train still slower, and the long platform with running figures; and suddenly Gil was exclaiming — as he stared down through the window—
“It’s Hambo — look, it’s Hambo — Noni — with a stick as tall as himself!”
“He’s come to meet us — isn’t he a darling?”
The round red face glared up at them affectionately, the fat fist lifted a forked stick towards them in signal; he was walking slowly alongside the train, grinning. So this was Hambo; and now everything would be simple.… And this familiar world, this train, would be lost forever.
IV
“Ommernous, that’s what it is, ommernous, every bit of it is ommernous!”
And not least the alien sky, with those gizzard-colored thunderheads already piling up, as Hambo said they always did in the evening, now that it was the rainy season; and not least the smells of these filthy little streets, if streets they could be called; and not least the stinking green-gray water that flowed down the gutters. The landscape, with its great red and brown mountains, everywhere visible round the sprawling white-walled mountain town, was all very handsome; and so — when it came flashing out through the clouds — was Popocatepetl; and so were the savage unfamiliar trees and flowers. It was everything that Hambo said for it. Yes, indeed! But also, it was ommernous. As for Noni—!
He had been walking a long time; exploring, with an indifferent eye, the sights of Cuernavaca; getting himself lost in the narrow streets, and finding himself again. Twice he had arrived at the same odd little church, apricot-colored, its stiff little façade framed (as if parenthetically) by two tall curved cypresses. Twice he had stumbled down to the bridge — and this was indeed fantastic! — which crossed that incredible tree-filled gorge. The fernlike trees were so interlaced across it that one thought of course it must be very shallow; only when one looked a second time did one glimpse — far below — and with a sudden contraction of the heart — tiny rocks and ripples in the filtered sunlight, knotted roots on the dank sides of the narrow little canyon, and the sinister suckers of the creepers, venomous and dark, hanging down hundreds of feet in search of a foothold. The barranca. To turn away from that was a relief; but what was there to turn to? The streets were all alike, the Indians were all alike; the truth was that he hated everything, everything was wrong. The market bored and irritated him; so did the sound of a foreign language, Spanish; so did the rows of stalls and barrows in the two little squares that formed the center of the town. Who the devil wanted pots or laces or belts or bead necklaces, or those dreary little messes of food — a few beans, peppers, peanuts, pods, squash seeds — on a tray? Or ears of corn simmering in little pans — so, anyway, it looked — of hot axle grease!.. No, it was all hateful. And to come upon that sign, that mysterious sign — Quo Vadis? Inhumaciones—and to wonder what it meant, and to find out—that had been the last straw! For when he had reached the open door of the little shop, and had peered in, it was to discover that it was an undertaker’s. A tasteful display of coffins — all sizes and colors — neatly stowed on shelves — and a young man in the act of tacking gray satin, very tenderly indeed, to a small kite-shaped coffin lid. And the cynical question, “Quo Vadis?”…
The truth was, they never should have done it. The midnight drive out over the mountains, immediately after getting off the train — the abrupt changes in altitude, so that even Gil and himself had been quite deafened — this had been absolute madness; they should never have listened to Noni and Hambo. Never. Though of course nobody had thought it was as far as all that, or as high; and Hambo had been in entire ignorance of the situation, and he himself powerless to speak. It was a trap. Nothing but a trap! “Only an hour,” Hambo had said, grinning and patting the steering wheel; but Christ, he hadn’t mentioned that you had to climb over the backbone of the continent to do it! And suddenly then, in the dark car, to feel Noni stiffening beside him, stiffening and gasping, thrusting her hands out desperately as if to find something to hold on to, then turning her face fiercely downward against his arm, lest the look of agony be seen, be seen by Gil — the terrible strong shudders of the body, in its powerful instinctive struggle against the enemy within — and all the while the pathetic heroic effort to minimize the convulsion, and to protect poor frightened Gil. “No,” he said aloud; “no, things can’t be like that, no.…”
Turning a corner at random, he stumbled a little on the cobbles, saw the square with the fountain once more before him, and decided he might as well go to Charlie’s at once — where he was to meet Hambo — and wait there. It was nearly time anyway — or wasn’t it? And besides, his teeth were chattering — which was damned funny, as it was very hot — and a drink would do him good. Charlie’s, anyway, was unmistakable — you could see the sign a mile off, a little corner café with open stone arches and red-covered tables, facing the palace square. Cafés, in fact, were everywhere. There was another one next door, and outside this was a crowd of Indians, in their white and pink cottons, trying to get into — or out of, it was difficult to say which — a ramshackle bus. The driver was racing the engine, which rose to a shattering but somehow decrepit roar, a bell began clanging rapidly in the porch of the café, a bird, a really extraordinary bird — at that moment he saw it in its cage, over the gunny sack partition between the two cafés — began simultaneously to scream a contrapuntal and Bachlike thing, which ascended by concealed half tones, and suddenly the bus shot away around the corner of the square, on two wheels, two young men running after it and swinging up on the rear step as it went. The astonishing bird song had stopped as abruptly as it had begun — after a brilliantly complicated climb of perhaps half an octave — and the entire separate uproar attending the departure of the bus had ceased. He ordered his whisky and sat down.