Dark Carnival (25 page)

    Anna's voice drifted and dreamed and grew quiet again.

    'And then — the day passes and the thunder goes away upon the street. The rain stops. The rainy season's over. The tunnels drip and stop. The tide goes down.' She seemed disappointed, sad it was over. 'The river runs out to the ocean. The man and woman feel the water leave them slowly to the floor. They settle.' She lowered her hands in little bobblings towards her lap, watching them fixedly, longingly. 'Their feet touch and their feet lose the life the water has given them from outside. Their knees touch, and their hips and now the water lays them down, side by side, and drains away and the tunnels are drying. There are just little puddles and wet papers. And there they lie. With little, contented smiles. They don't move and they're not ashamed. Like two children they lie there with the water all gone and their skin drying. They barely touch. Up above, in the world, the sun comes out. There they lie, in the darkness, sleeping, until the next time. Until the next rain.'

    Her hands were now upon her lap, palms up and open. 'Nice man, nice woman,' she murmured. She bowed her head over them and shut her eyes tight.

    Suddenly, Anna sat up and glared at her sister. 'Do you know who the man is?' she shouted, bitterly.

    Juliet did not reply, she had watched, stricken, for the past five minutes while this thing went on. Her mouth was twisted and pale. Anna almost screamed:

    'The man is Frank, that's who he is! And
I'm
the woman!'

    'Anna!'

    'Yes, it's Frank, down there!'

    'But Frank's been gone for years, and certainly not down there, Anna!'

    Now, Anna was talking to nobody, and to everybody, to Juliet, to the window, the wall, the street. 'Poor Frank,' she cried. 'I know that's where he went. He couldn't stay anywhere in the world. His mother spoiled him for all the world! So he saw the cistern and saw how secret and fine it was, and how it went down to the ocean and everywhere in the world, and it was like going back to his mother's womb where it was nice and secret and nobody criticized. Oh, poor Frank. And poor Anna, poor me, with only a sister. God, Julie, how'd we get this way and why didn't I take Frank when he was here! But if I had held on to him he'd have been revolted and so would I, and Frank would have been shocked and frightened and run off like a little boy, and I'd have hated him if he had touched me. Christ, Julie, what good
are
we!'

    'Stop it, this minute, do you hear, this minute!'

    'It's rained three days, and all the time I sat here, and thought. And when I got the idea of Frank, down there, I know it was the place for him, and when I turned on the tap in the kitchen I heard him calling from deep in the cistern, up the long metal piping, calling and calling. And when I bathed this morning he looked out from the little grille in the tube and saw me. I soaped myself to hide myself! I saw his eye shining behind the grille!'

    'A soap bubble,' said Juliet frantically.

    'No, an eye.'

    'A drop of water.'

    'No, Frank's eye!'

    'A piece of metal, a nut or a bolt.'

    'Frank's lovely, seeing eye!'

    'Anna!'

    Anna slumped down into the corner, by the window, one hand up on it, and wept silently. A few minutes later she heard her sister say, 'Are you finished?'

    'What!'

    'If you're done, come help me finish this, I'll be forever at it.'

    Anna raised her head, all pale, all expressionless. Juliet looked upon her with gentle impatience. An impatience so gently all-pervading one could not fight it. There was nothing to get hold of, or fight. It was just a continuing, gentle, tolerant impatience, year on year, year on year.

    Anna rose and glided to her sister. 'What do you want me to do?' she sighed.

    'This and this,' said Juliet, showing her. 'All right,' said Anna, and took it and sat by the cold window timing the rain, and moving her fingers with the needle and thread but knowing how dark the street now was, and how dark the room, and how hard to see the round metal top of the cistern now, there were just little midnight gleams and glitters out there in the black black late afternoon. Lightning crackled over the sky, in a web.

    Half an hour passed. Juliet drowsed in her chair across the room, removed her glasses, placed them down with her work and for a moment rested her head back and dozed. Perhaps thirty seconds later, she heard the front door open violently, heard the wind come in, heard the footsteps run down the walk, turn, and hurry along the black street.

    'What?' asked Juliet, sitting up, fumbling for her glasses. 'Who's there? Anna, did someone come in the door?' She stared at the empty window-seat where Anna had been. 'Anna!' she cried. She sprang up and ran out into the hall.

    The front door stood open, rain fell through it in a fine mist.

    'She's only gone out for a run,' said Juliet, standing there, trying to peer into the wet blackness. 'She'll be right back.
Won't
you be right back, Anna dear? Anna, answer me, you
will
be right back, won't you, my dear sister?'

    Outside, the cistern lid rose and slammed down.

    The rain whispered on the street and fell upon the dropped shut lid all the rest of the night.

IT was a little caricature of a town square. In it were the following fresh ingredients: a candy-box of a bandstand where men stood on Thursday and Sunday nights exploding music; fine, green-patinaed bronze-copper benches all scrolled and flourished; fine blue and pink tiled walks — blue as women's newly lacquered eyes, pink as women's hidden wonders; and fine French-clipped trees in the shapes of exact hatboxes. The whole, from your hotel window, had the fresh ingratiation and unbelievable fantasy one might expect of a French village in the nineties. But no, this was Mexico! and this a plaza in a small colonial Mexican town, with a fine State Opera House (in which movies were shown for two pesos admission: RASPUTIN AND THE EMPRESS, THE BIG HOUSE, MADAME CURIE, LOVE AFFAIR, MAMA LOVES PAPA).

    Joseph came out on the sun-heated balcony in the morning and knelt by the grille, pointing his little box-brownie. Behind him, in the bath, the water was running and Marie's voice came out:

    'What're you doing?'

    He muttered. ' — a picture.' She asked again. He clicked the shutter, stood up, wound the spool inside, squinting, and said, 'Took a picture of the town square. God, didn't those men shout last night? I didn't sleep until two-thirty. We would have to arrive when the local Rotary's having its whingding.'

    'What're our plans for today?' she asked.

    'We're going to see the mummies,' he said.

    'Oh,' she said. There was a long silence.

    He came in, set the camera down, and lit himself a cigarette.

    'I'll go up and see them alone,' he said, 'if you'd rather.'

    'No,' she said, not very loud. 'I'll go along. But I wish we could forget the whole thing. It's such a lovely little town.'

    'Look here!' he cried, catching a movement from the corner of his eyes. He hurried to the balcony, stood there, his cigarette smoking and forgotten in his fingers. 'Come quick, Marie!'

    'I'm drying myself,' she said.

    'Please, hurry,' he said, fascinated, looking down into the street.

    He heard the movement behind him, and then the odour of soap and water-rinsed flesh, wet-towel, fresh cologne; Marie was at his elbow. 'Stay right there,' she cautioned him, 'so I can look without exposing myself. I'm stark. What
is
it?'

    'Look!' he cried.

    A procession travelled along the street. One man led it, with a package on his head. Behind him came women in black rebozos, chewing away the peels of oranges and spitting them on the cobbles; little children at their elbows, men ahead of them. Some ate sugar-canes, gnawing away at the outer bark until it split down and they pulled it off in great hunks to get at the succulent pulp, the juicy sinews on which to suck. In all, there were fifty people.

    'Joe,' said Marie behind him, holding his arm.

    It was no ordinary package the first man in the procession carried on his head, balanced delicately as a chicken-plume. It was covered with silver satin and silver fringe and silver rosettes. And he held it gently with one brown hand, the other hand swinging free.

    This was a funeral and the little package was a coffin.

    He watched his wife from one side of his face.

    She was the colour of fine, fresh milk. The pink colour of the bath was gone. Her heart had sucked it all down to some hidden vacuum in her. She held fast to the french doorway and watched the travelling people go, watched them eat fruit, heard them talk gently, laugh gently. She forgot she was naked.

    He said, 'Some little girl or boy gone to a happier place.'

    'Where are they taking — her?'

    She did not think it unusual, her choice of the feminine pronoun. Already she had identified herself with that tiny fragment of decay parcelled like an unripe variety of fruit. Now, in this moment, she was being carried up the hill within compressing dark, a stone in a peach, silent and terrified, the touch of the father against the coffin material outside; gentle and noiseless and firm inside.

    'To the graveyard, naturally; that's where they're taking her,' he said, the cigarette making a casual filter of smoke across his casual face.

    'Not
the
graveyard?' she asked, looking at him earnestly.

    'There's only one cemetery in these towns, you
know
that. They usually hurry it. That little girl has probably been dead only a few hours.'

    'A few hours — '

    She turned away, quite ridiculous, quite naked, with only the towel supported by her limp, untrying hands. She walked towards the bed. 'A few hours ago she was alive, and now — '

    He went on, 'Now they're hurrying her up the hill. The climate isn't kind to the dead. It's hot and there's no embalming. They have to finish it quickly.'

    'But to
that
graveyard, that horrible place,' she said, with a voice from a dream.

    'Oh, the mummies,' he said. 'Don't let that bother you.'

    She sat on the bed, again and again stroking the towel laid across her lap. Her eyes were blind as the brown paps of her breasts. She did not see him or the room. She knew that if he snapped his fingers or coughed, she wouldn't even look up.

    'They were eating fruit at her funeral, and laughing,' she said.

    'It's a long climb to the cemetery.'

    She shuddered. A convulsive moving, like a fish trying to free itself from a deep-swallowed hook. She lay back and he looked at her as one examines a poor sculpture; all criticism, all quiet and easy and uncaring. She wondered idly just how much his hands had had to do with the broadening and flattening and changement of her body. Certainly this was not the body he'd started with. It was past saving now. Like clay which the sculptor has carelessly impregnated with water, it was impossible to shape again. In order to shape clay you warm it with your hands, evaporate the moisture with heat. But there was no more passion, no more friction of the enjoyable sort between them.

    There was no warmth to bake away the ageing moisture that collected and made pendant now her breasts and body. When the heat is gone, it is marvellous and unsettling to see how quickly a vessel stores self-destroying water in its fatty cells.

    'I don't feel well,' she said. She lay there, thinking it over. 'I don't feel well,' she said again, when he made no response. After another minute or two she lifted herself. 'Let's not stay here another night, Joe.'

    'But it's a wonderful town.'

    'Yes, but we've seen everything.' She got up. She knew what came next. Gayness, false blitheness, false encouragement, everything quite false and hopeful. 'We could go on to Patzcuaro. Make it in no time. You won't have to pack, I'll do it all myself, darling! We can get a room at the Don Posada there. They say it's a beautiful little town — '

    'This,' he remarked, 'is a beautiful little town.'

    'Bougainvillea climb all over the buildings — ' she said.

    'These — ' he pointed out some flowers at the window ' — are bougainvillea.'

    ' — and we'd fish, you like fishing,' she said in bright haste. 'And I'd fish, too, I'd learn, yes I would, I've always
wanted
to learn! And they say the Tarascan Indians there are almost Mongoloid in feature, and don't speak much Spanish, and from there we could go to Paracutin, that's near Uruapan, and they have some of the finest lacquered boxes there, oh, it'll be fun, Joe. I'll pack. You just take it easy, and — '

    'Marie.'

    He stopped her with one word as she ran to the bath door.

    'Yes?'

    'I thought you said you didn't feel well?'

    'I didn't. I don't. But, thinking of all those swell places — '

    'We haven't seen one-tenth of this town,' he explained logically. 'There's that statue of Morelos on the hill, I want a shot of that, and some of that French architecture up the street. . . we've travelled three hundred miles and we've been here one day and now want to rush off somewhere else. I've already paid the rent for another night. . .'

    'You can get it back,' she said.

    'Why do you want to run away?' he said, looking at her with an attentive simplicity. 'Don't you like the town?'

    'I simply adore it,' she said, her cheeks white, smiling. 'It's so green and pretty.'

    'Well, then,' he said. 'Another day. You'll love it. That's settled.'

    She started to speak.

    'Yes?' he asked.

    'Nothing.'

    She closed the bathroom door. Behind it she rattled open a medicine box. Water rushed into a tumbler. She was taking some stuff for her stomach. He dropped his cigarette out the window.

    He came to the bathroom door.

    'Marie, the mummies don't bother you, do they?'

    'Unh-unh,' she said.

    'Was it the funeral, then?'

    'Unh.'

    'Because, if you were really afraid, I'd pack in a moment, you know that, darling.'

    He waited.

    'No, I'm not afraid,' she said.

    'Good girl,' he said.

    The graveyard was enclosed by a thick adobe wall, and at its four corners small stone angels tilted out on stony wings, their grimy heads capped with bird droppings, their hands gifted with amulets of the same substance, their faces unquestionably freckled.

    In the warm smooth flow of sunlight which was like a depthless, tideless river, Joseph and Marie climbed up the hill, their shadows slanting blue behind them. Helping one another, they made the cemetery gate, swung back the Spanish blue iron grille and entered.

    It was several mornings after the celebratory fiesta of El Dia de Muerte, the Day of the Dead, and ribbons and ravels of tissue and sparkle-tape still clung like insane hair to the raised stones, to the hand-carved, love-polished crucifixes, and to the above-ground tombs which resembled marble jewel-cases. There were statues frozen in angelic postures over gravel mounds, and intricately carved stones tall as men with angels spilling all down their rims, and tombs as big and ridiculous as beds put out to dry in the sun after some nocturnal accident. And within the four walls of the yard, inserted into square mouths and slots, were coffins, walled in, plated in by marble plates and plaster, upon which names were struck and upon which hung tin pictures, cheap peso portraits of the inserted dead. Thumb-tacked to the different pictures were trinkets they'd loved in life, silver charms, silver arms, legs, bodies, silver cups, silver dogs, silver church medallions, bits of red crêpe and blue ribbon. On some places were painted slats of tin showing the dead rising to heaven in oil-tinted angels' arms.

    Looking at the graves again, they saw the remnants of the death fiesta. The little tablets of tallow splashed over the stones by the lighted festive candles, the wilted orchid blossoms lying like crushed red-purple tarantulas against the milky stones, some of them looking horridly sexual, limp and withered. There were loop-frames of cactus leaves, bamboo, reeds and wild, dead morning-glories. There were circles of gardenias and sprigs of bougainvillea, desiccated. The entire floor of the yard seemed a ballroom after a wild dancing, from which the participants have fled; the tables askew, confetti, candles, ribbons and deep dreams left behind.

    They stood, Marie and Joseph, in the warm silent yard, among the stones, between the walls. Far over in one corner a little man with high cheekbones, the milk colour of the Spanish infiltration, thick glasses, a black coat, a grey hat and grey, unpressed pants and neatly laced shoes, moved about among the stones, supervising something or other that another man in overalls was doing to a grave with a shovel. The little man with glasses carried a thrice folded newspaper under his left arm and had his hands in his pockets.

    '
Buenos diaz, senora y senor
,' he said, when he finally noticed Joseph and Marie and came to see them.

    'Is this the place of
las mommias
?' asked Joseph. 'They do exist, do they not?'

    '
Si
, the mummies,' said the man. 'They exist and are here. In the catacombs.'

    '
Por favor
,' said Joseph. '
Yo quiero veo las mommias, si?
'

    '
Si, senor
.'

    '
Me Espanol es mucho estupido, es muy malo
,' apologized Joseph.

    'No, no, senor. You speak well! This way, please.'

    He led between the flowered stones to a tomb near the wall shadows. It was a large flat tomb, flush with the gravel, with a thin kindling door flat on it, padlocked. It was unlocked and the wooden door flung back rattling to one side. Revealed was a round hole the circled interior of which contained steps which screwed into the earth.

    Before Joseph could move, his wife had set her foot on the first step. 'Here,' he said. 'Me first.'

    'No. That's all right,' she said, and went down and around in a darkening spiral until the earth vanished her. She moved carefully, for the steps were hardly enough to contain a child's feet. It got dark and she heard the caretaker stepping after her, at her ears, and then it got light again. They stepped out into a long white-washed hall twenty feet under the earth, into which light was allowed by geometric interstices of religious design. The hall was fifty yards long, ending on the left in a double door in which were set tall crystal panes and a sign forbidding entrance. On the right end of the hall was a large stack of white rods and round white stones.

    'Oh, skulls and leg-bones,' said Marie, interested.

    'The soldiers who fought for Father Morelos,' said the caretaker.

    They walked to the vast pile. They were neatly put in place, bone on bone, like firewood, and on top was a mound of a thousand dry skulls.

    'I don't mind skulls and bones,' said Marie. 'They're not human at all. There's nothing even vaguely human to them. I'm not scared of skulls and bones. They're like something insectivorous. Like stones or baseball bats or boulders. If a child was raised and didn't know he had a skeleton in him, he wouldn't think anything of bones, would he? That's how it is with me. Everything human has been scraped off
these
. There's nothing familiar left to be horrible. In order for a thing to be horrible it has to suffer a change you can recognize. This isn't changed. They're still skeletons, like they always were. The part that changed is gone, and so there's nothing to show for it. Isn't that interesting?'