A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories (4 page)

“Vamenos, you got the dummy?”

“Here!”

Vamenos, chewing an old cigar, scattering sparks, slipped. The dummy, falling, toppled, turned over twice, and banged down the stairs.

“Vamenos! Dumb! Clumsy!”

They seized the dummy from him. Stricken, Vamenos looked about as if he'd lost something.

Manulo snapped his fingers. “Hey, Vamenos, we got to celebrate! Go borrow some wine!”

Vamenos plunged downstairs in a whirl of sparks.

The others moved into the room with the suit, leaving Martínez in the hall to study Gómez's face.

“Gómez, you look sick.”

“I am,” said Gómez. “For what have I done?” He nodded to the shadows in the room working about the dummy. “I pick Domínguez, a devil with the women. All right. I pick Manulo, who drinks, yes, but who sings as sweet as a girl, eh? Okay. Villanazul reads books. You, you wash behind your ears. But then what do I do? Can I wait? No! I got to buy that suit! So the last guy I pick is a clumsy slob who has the right to wear
my
suit—” He stopped, confused. “Who gets to wear
our
suit one night a week, fall down in it, or not come in out of the rain in it! Why, why, why did I do it!”

“Gómez,” whispered Villanazul from the room. “The suit is ready. Come see if it looks as good using
your
light bulb.”

Gómez and Martínez entered.

And there on the dummy in the center of the room was the phosphorescent, the miraculously white-fired ghost with the incredible lapels, the precise stitching, the neat buttonholes. Standing with the white illumination of the suit upon his cheeks, Martínez suddenly felt he was in church. White! White! It was white as the whitest vanilla ice cream, as the bottled milk in tenement halls at dawn. White as a winter cloud all alone in the moonlit sky late at night. Seeing it here in the warm summer-night room made their breath almost show on the air. Shutting his eyes, he could see it printed on his lids. He knew what color his dreams would be this night.

“White …” murmured Villanazul. “White as the snow on that mountain near our town in Mexico, which is called the Sleeping Woman.”

“Say that again,” said Gómez.

Villanazul, proud yet humble, was glad to repeat his tribute.

“… white as the snow on the mountain called—”

“I'm back!”

Shocked, the men whirled to see Vamenos in the door, wine bottles in each hand.

“A party! Here! Now tell us, who wears the suit first tonight? Me?”

“It's too late!” said Gómez.

“Late! It's only nine-fifteen!”

“Late?” said everyone, bristling. “Late?”

Gómez edged away from these men who glared from him to the suit to the open window.

Outside and below it was, after all, thought Martínez, a fine Saturday night in a summer month and through the calm warm darkness the women drifted like flowers on a quiet stream. The men made a mournful sound.

“Gómez, a suggestion.” Villanazul licked his pencil and drew a chart on a pad. “You wear the suit from nine-thirty to ten, Manulo till ten-thirty, Domínguez till eleven, myself till eleven-thirty, Martínez till midnight, and—”

“Why me
last?
” demanded Vamenos, scowling.

Martínez thought quickly and smiled. “After midnight is the
best
time, friend.”

“Hey,” said Vamenos, “that's right. I never thought of that. Okay.”

Gómez sighed. “All right. A half hour each. But from now on, remember, we each wear the suit just one night a week. Sundays we draw straws for who wears the suit the extra night.”

“Me!” laughed Vamenos. “I'm lucky!”

Gómez held onto Martínez, tight.

“Gómez,” urged Martínez, “you first. Dress.”

Gómez could not tear his eyes from that disreputable Vamenos. At last, impulsively, he yanked his shirt off over his head. “Ay-yeah!” he howled. “
Ay-yeee!
”

 

Whisper rustle … the clean shirt.

“Ah …!”

How clean the new clothes feel, thought Martínez, holding the coat ready. How clean they sound, how clean they smell!

Whisper … the pants … the tie, rustle … the suspenders. Whisper … now Martínez let loose the coat, which fell in place on flexing shoulders.

“
Ole!
”

Gómez turned like a matador in his wondrous suit-of-lights.

“
Ole
, Gómez,
ole!
”

Gómez bowed and went out the door.

Martínez fixed his eyes to his watch. At ten sharp he heard someone wandering about in the hall as if they had forgotten where to go. Martínez pulled the door open and looked out.

Gómez was there, heading for nowhere.

He looks sick, thought Martínez. No, stunned, shook up, surprised, many things.

“Gómez! This is the place!”

Gómez turned around and found his way through the door.

“Oh, friends, friends,” he said. “Friends, what an experience! This suit! This suit!”

“Tell us, Gómez!” said Martínez.

“I can't, how can I say it!” He gazed at the heavens, arms spread, palms up.

“
Tell
us, Gómez!”

“I have no words, no words. You must see, yourself! Yes, you must see—” And here he lapsed into silence, shaking his head until at last he remembered they all stood watching him. “Who's next? Manulo?”

Manulo, stripped to his shorts, leapt forward.

“Ready!”

All laughed, shouted, whistled.

Manulo, ready, went out the door. He was gone twenty-nine minutes and thirty seconds. He came back holding to doorknobs, touching the wall, feeling his own elbows, putting the flat of his hand to his face.

“Oh, let me tell you,” he said. “
Compadres
, I went to the bar, eh, to have a drink? But no, I did not go in the bar, do you hear? I did not drink. For as I walked I began to laugh and sing. Why, why? I listened to myself and asked this. Because. The suit made me feel better than wine ever did. The suit made me drunk, drunk! So I went to the
Guadalajara Refritería
instead and played the guitar and sang four songs, very high! The suit, ah, the suit!”

Domínguez, next to be dressed, moved out through the world, came back from the world.

The black telephone book! thought Martínez. He had it in his hands when he left! Now, he returns, hands empty! What? What?

“On the street,” said Domínguez, seeing it all again, eyes wide, “on the street I walked, a woman cried, ‘Domínguez, is that
you?
' Another said, ‘Domínguez? No, Quetzalcoatl, the Great White God
come from the East,' do you hear? And suddenly I didn't want to go with six women or eight, no. One, I thought. One! And to this one, who knows
what
I would say? ‘Be mine!' Or ‘Marry me!'
Caramba!
This suit is dangerous! But I did not care! I live, I live! Gómez, did it happen this way with you?”

Gómez, still dazed by the events of the evening, shook his head. “No, no talk. It's too much. Later, Villanazul …?”

Villanazul moved shyly forward.

Villanazul went shyly out.

Villanazul came shyly home.

“Picture it,” he said, not looking at them, looking at the floor, talking to the floor. “The Green Plaza, a group of elderly businessmen gathered under the stars and they are talking, nodding, talking. Now one of them whispers. All turn to stare. They move aside, they make a channel through which a white-hot light burns its way as through ice. At the center of the great light is this person. I take a deep breath. My stomach is jelly. My voice is very small, but it grows louder. And what do I say? I say, ‘Friends. Do you know Carlyle's
Sartor Resartus?
In that book we find
his
Philosophy of Suits....'”

And at last it was time for Martínez to let the suit float him out to haunt the darkness.

Four times he walked around the block. Four times he paused beneath the tenement porches, looking up at the window where the light was lit; a shadow moved, the beautiful girl was there, not there, away and gone, and on the fifth time there she was on the porch above, driven out by the summer heat, taking the cooler air. She glanced down. She made a gesture.

At first he thought she was waving to him. He felt like a white explosion that had riveted her attention. But she was not waving. Her hand gestured and the next moment a pair of dark-framed glasses sat upon her nose. She gazed at him.

Ah, ah, he thought, so that's it. So! Even the blind may see this suit! He smiled up at her. He did not have to wave. And at last she smiled back. She did not have to wave either. Then, because he did not know what else to do and he could not get rid of this smile that had fastened itself to his cheeks, he hurried, almost ran, around the corner, feeling her stare after him. When he looked back she had taken off her glasses and gazed now with the look of the nearsighted at what, at most, must be a moving
blob of light in the great darkness here. Then for good measure he went around the block again, through a city so suddenly beautiful he wanted to yell, then laugh, then yell again.

Returning, he drifted, oblivious, eyes half closed, and seeing him in the door, the others saw not Martínez but themselves come home. In that moment, they sensed that something had happened to them all.

“You're late!” cried Vamenos, but stopped. The spell could not be broken.

“Somebody tell me,” said Martínez. “Who am I?”

He moved in a slow circle through the room.

Yes, he thought, yes, it's the suit, yes, it had to do with the suit and them all together in that store on this fine Saturday night and then here, laughing and feeling more drunk without drinking as Manulo said himself, as the night ran and each slipped on the pants and held, toppling, to the others and, balanced, let the feeling get bigger and warmer and finer as each man departed and the next took his place in the suit until now here stood Martínez all splendid and white as one who gives orders and the world grows quiet and moves aside.

“Martínez, we borrowed three mirrors while you were gone. Look!”

The mirrors, set up as in the store, angled to reflect three Martínezes and the echoes and memories of those who had occupied this suit with him and known the bright world inside this thread and cloth. Now, in the shimmering mirror, Martínez saw the enormity of this thing they were living together and his eyes grew wet. The others blinked. Martínez touched the mirrors. They shifted. He saw a thousand, a million white-armored Martínezes march off into eternity, reflected, rereflected, forever, indomitable, and unending.

He held the white coat out on the air. In a trance, the others did not at first recognize the dirty hand that reached to take the coat. Then:

“Vamenos!”

“Pig!”

“You didn't wash!” cried Gómez. “Or even shave, while you waited!
Compadres
, the bath!”

“The bath!” said everyone.

“No!” Vamenos flailed. “The night air! I'm dead!”

They hustled him yelling out and down the hall.

 

Now here stood Vamenos, unbelievable in white suit, beard shaved, hair combed, nails scrubbed.

His friends scowled darkly at him.

For was it not true, thought Martínez, that when Vamenos passed by, avalanches itched on mountaintops? If he walked under windows, people spat, dumped garbage, or worse. Tonight now, this night, he would stroll beneath ten thousand wide-opened windows, near balconies, past alleys. Suddenly the world absolutely sizzled with flies. And here was Vamenos, a fresh-frosted cake.

“You sure look keen in that suit, Vamenos,” said Manulo sadly.

“Thanks.” Vamenos twitched, trying to make his skeleton comfortable where all their skeletons had so recently been. In a small voice Vamenos said, “Can I go now?”

“Villanazul!” said Gómez. “Copy down these rules.”

Villanazul licked his pencil.

“First,” said Gómez, “don't fall down in that suit, Vamenos!”

“I won't.”

“Don't lean against buildings in that suit.”

“No buildings.”

“Don't walk under trees with birds in them in that suit. Don't smoke. Don't drink—”

“Please,” said Vamenos, “can I
sit down
in this suit?”

“When in doubt, take the pants off, fold them over a chair.”

“Wish me luck,” said Vamenos.

“Go with God, Vamenos.”

He went out. He shut the door.

There was a ripping sound.

“Vamenos!” cried Martínez.

He whipped the door open.

Vamenos stood with two halves of a handkerchief torn in his hands, laughing.

“Rrrip! Look at your faces! Rrrip!” He tore the cloth again. “Oh, oh, your faces, your faces! Ha!”

Roaring, Vamenos slammed the door, leaving them stunned and alone.

Gómez put both hands on top of his head and turned away. “Stone me. Kill me. I have sold our souls to a demon!”

Villanazul dug in his pockets, took out a silver coin, and studied it for a long while.

“Here is my last fifty cents. Who else will help me buy back Vamenos's share of the suit?”

“It's no use.” Manulo showed them ten cents. “We got only enough to buy the lapels and the buttonholes.”

Gómez, at the open window, suddenly leaned out and yelled. “Vamenos! No!”

Below on the street, Vamenos, shocked, blew out a match and threw away an old cigar butt he had found somewhere. He made a strange gesture to all the men in the window above, then waved airily and sauntered on.

Somehow, the five men could not move away from the window. They were crushed together there.

“I bet he eats a hamburger in that suit,” mused Villanazul. “I'm thinking of the mustard.”

“Don't!” cried Gómez. “No, no!”