Yes. Tryin to get the hell out. I'd been down there too long. I was just as glad when it did start. You'd wake up in some little town on a Sunday mornin and they'd be out in the street shootin at one another. You couldnt make any sense out of it. We like to never got out of there. I saw terrible things in that country. I dreamt about em for years.
He leaned and put his elbows on the table and took his makings from his shirtpocket and rolled another smoke and lit it. He sat looking at the table. He talked for a long time. He named the towns and villages. The mud pueblos. The executions against the mud walls sprayed with new blood over the dried black of the old and the fine powdered clay sifting down from the bulletholes in the wall after the men had fallen and the slow drift of riflesmoke and the corpses stacked in the streets or piled into the woodenwheeled carretas trundling over the cobbles or over the dirt roads to the nameless graves. There were thousands who went to war in the only suit they owned. Suits in which they'd been married and in which they would be buried. Standing in the streets in their coats and ties and hats behind the upturned carts and bales and firing their rifles like irate accountants. And the small artillery pieces on wheels that scooted backwards in the street at every round and had to be retrieved and the endless riding of horses to their deaths bearing flags or banners or the tentlike tapestries painted with portraits of the Virgin carried on poles into battle as if the mother of God herself were authoress of all that calamity and mayhem and madness.
The tallcase clock in the hallway chimed ten.
I reckon I'd better get on to bed, the old man said.
Yessir.
He rose. I dont much like to, he said. But there aint no help for it.
Goodnight sir.
Goodnight.
THE CABDRIVER would see him through the wroughtiron gate in the high brick wall and up the walk to the doorway. As if the surrounding dark that formed the outskirts of the city were a danger. Or the desert plains beyond. He pulled a velvet bellpull in an alcove in the archway and stood back humming. He looked at John Grady.
You like for me to wait I can wait.
No. It's all right.
The door opened. A hostess in evening attire smiled at them and stood back and held the door. John Grady entered and took off his hat and the woman spoke with the driver and then shut the door and turned. She held out her hand and John Grady reached for his hip pocket. She smiled.
Your hat, she said.
He handed her his hat and she gestured toward the room and he turned and went in, brushing down his hair with the flat of his hand.
There was a bar to the right up the two stairs and he stepped up and passed along behind the stools where men were drinking and talking. The bar was mahogany and softly lit and the barmen wore little burgundy jackets and bowties. Out in the salon the whores lounged on sofas of red damask and gold brocade. They wore negligees and floorlength formal gowns and sheath dresses of white satin or purple velvet that were split up the thigh and they wore shoes of glass or gold and sat in studied poses with their red mouths pouting in the gloom. A cutglass chandelier hung overhead and on a dais to the right a string trio was playing.
He walked to the far end of the bar. When he put his hand on the rail the barman was already there placing a napkin.
Good evening sir, he said.
Evenin. I'll have a Old Grandad and water back.
Yessir.
The barman moved away. John Grady put his boot on the polished brass footrail and he watched the whores in the glass of the backbar. The men at the bar were mostly welldressed Mexicans with a few Americans dressed in flowered shirts of an intemperately thin cloth. A tall woman in a diaphanous gown passed through the salon like the ghost of a whore. A cockroach that had been moving along the counter behind the bottles ascended to the glass where it encountered itself and froze.
He ordered another drink. The barman poured. When he looked into the glass again she was sitting by herself on a dark velvet couch with her gown arranged about her and her hands composed in her lap. He reached for his hat, not taking his eyes from her. He called for the barman.
La cuenta por favor.
He looked down. He remembered that he'd left his hat with the hostess at the door. He took out his wallet and pushed a fivedollar bill across the mahogany and folded the rest of the bills and put them in his shirtpocket. The barman brought the change and he pushed a dollar back toward him and turned and looked across the room to where she sat. She looked small and lost. She sat with her eyes closed and he realized that she was listening to the music. He poured the shot of whiskey into the glass of water and set the shotglass on the bar and took his drink and set out across the room.
His faint shadow under the lights of the great glass tiara above them may have brought her from her reveries. She looked up at him and smiled thinly with her painted child's mouth. He almost reached for his hatbrim.
Hello, he said. Do you care if I set down?
She recomposed herself and smoothed her skirt to make room on the couch beside her. A waiter moved out from the shadows along the walls and laid down two napkins on the low glass table before them and stood.
Bring me a Old Grandad and water back. And whatever she's drinkin.
He nodded and moved away. John Grady looked at the girl. She leaned forward and smoothed her skirt again.
Lo siento, she said. Pero no hablo inglZs.
Est++ bien. Podemos hablar espa-ol.
Oh, she said. QuZ bueno.
QuZ es su nombre?
Magdalena. Y usted?
He didnt answer. Magdalena, he said.
She looked down. As if the sound of her name were troubling to her.
Es su nombre de pila? he said.
S'. Por supuesto.
No es su nombre. su nombre profesional.
She put her hand to her mouth. Oh, she said. No. Es mi nombre propio.
He watched her. He told her that he had seen her at La Venada but she only nodded and did not seem surprised. The waiter arrived with the drinks and he paid for them and tipped the man a dollar. She did not pick up her drink then or later. She spoke so softly he had to lean to catch her words. She said that the other women were watching but that it was nothing. It was only that she was new to this place. He nodded. No importa, he said.
She asked why he had not spoken to her at La Venada. He said that it was because he was with friends. She asked him if he had a sweetheart at La Venada but he said that he did not.
No me recuerda? he said.
She shook her head. She looked up. They sat in silence.
Cu++ntos a-os tiene? he said.
Bastantes.
He said it was all right if she did not wish to say but she didnt answer. She smiled wistfully. She touched his sleeve. Fue mentira, she said. Lo que dec'a.
C-mo?
She said that it was a lie that she did not remember him. She said that he was standing at the bar and she thought that he would come to talk to her but that he had not and when she looked again he was gone.
Verdad?
S'.
He said that she had not really lied. He said she'd only shook her head, but she shook her head again and said that these were the worst lies of all. She asked him why he had come to the White Lake alone and he looked at the drinks untouched on the table before them and he thought about that and about lies and he turned and looked at her.
Porque la andaba buscando, he said. Ya tengo tiempo busc++ndola.
She didnt answer.
Y c-mo es que me recuerda?
She half turned away, she almost whispered. TambiZn yo, she said.
Mande?
She turned and looked at him. TambiZn yo.
In the room she turned and closed the door behind them. He couldnt even remember how they got there. He remembered her hand in his, small and cold, so strange to feel. The prismbroken light from the chandelier that ran in a river over her naked shoulders when they passed beneath. Half stumbling after her like a child.