A Change of Skin (18 page)

You heard the key scratching, Elizabeth, searching for and finding the keyhole. Then silence as he remembered that it had to be upside down, the serrated edge up, and the scratch as he tried again, this time with too much force, for that lock required

“Gentleness, almost tenderness, as if you were threading the eye of a needle or making a cheese soufflé…”

He tried a third time, now inserting the key slowly, and the lock turned and you heard the squeak of the hinges and then the creaking of a board in the floor and all these very habitual sounds irritated you precisely because they were so habitual, pointless, involuntary, yet so significant, his steps across the living room, a pause as he picked up the mail, a tearing of paper as he slit the envelopes with his fingernail, the soft sound as he sat down on the sofa, then again the step you knew so well approaching the bedroom and

“That disgusting politeness, that night for the first time, the first time you had ever used it with me, your fingers tapping the door as if you had to warn me, as if you were afraid you might find me with a lover and wanted to avoid a scene, or as if you were playing a game with the first girl you ever slept with, and above all, and this was your irony, as if you wanted to flatter me with a show of respect I had never asked of you, treating me like your hired housekeeper, and maybe you didn't mean it that way but that was how I took it and I was as furious because that afternoon a survey-taker came and asked me if I was listening to station XEW and without asking me wrote down on his tablet that my occupation was ‘housekeeper.' That eternal Mexican ‘may I,' that damned monotonous and completely false, merely decorative courtesy which is valued because it provides a contrast for your violence and brutality: before you drive the knife into the belly of your wife's lover you tell him to make himself at ease, your home will always be his home. Then you opened the door and came in and I saw your body and your hair and eyes and hands and for a moment I felt you as I liked to feel you, handsome, warm, generous, ready to do anything to please me. And it was that that disturbed me more than anything, Javier. That absolute and unreserved admiration I felt for you, the gratitude I felt because you loved me and knew how to love me, my gratefulness for what each of us gave the other. And I really was grateful to you. It was thanks to you that I had escaped from New York, the Bronx, from Gershon and Becky and dead Jake. Yet I felt that to feel so grateful was somehow belittling to me, and again and again I had a deep urge to show myself to you differently, in a way that would be just as honest and more dignified but that you, with your good looks and your constant tenderness, would not let me attempt. And I knew, not that night, no, nor the following day, but many days, maybe even many months, a long time afterward, I knew that I had to let you know me in order to force you to let me know you. Our mere possession of each other, so complete, was blocking me up and shutting me off and denying a possibility that I carried inside myself and that could lead you to love me not the same, differently, but with just as much intensity. I wanted you to be not just gentle and amiable and obliging, but what you really were, what I didn't know about you. If we could be ourselves completely, our love would be the richer for it.

“You rapped on the door most politely and waited and came in and I said, ‘Here, this letter came for you.' I had opened it. You took it without a word. You put it in your pocket and went out of the room. You didn't seem angry with me for having opened it. Fifteen minutes later we were eating supper together and both of us were smiling as if nothing had happened.”

This you have offered, Father, to your ancient seed.

*   *   *

Δ   The Volkswagen left the winding stretch of road and moved swiftly beside a field where sandy-colored calves were playing. The descent was toward dry pastures, down a spur of the Sierra Madre Oriental. Beyond the plain, in the distance, the mountains rose in successive walls of mute transparent blue, each fainter than the one before. The calves ran and jumped, rolled and tumbled, jerked their heads from side to side, kicked up their hind legs. Across the field was a grove of round-topped elms where only a few weeks ago the calves had dropped from their mothers.

Franz slowed and Javier spread the map on his knees and hunched over it and announced, “We'll have to ford a river. There's no bridge.”

“God,” you sighed. “Why didn't we go straight on to Veracruz?”

“Well, it wasn't I who insisted on seeing Xochicalco and Cholula.” Javier folded up the map again.

“There, Franz, ask that man,” you said, pointing ahead to a figure walking slowly beside the road.

Franz slowed to a crawl. Isabel put her head into the window and called out, “Which way to the ford?” just as you were saying, “Please, señor, where is…” When Isabel interrupted you, you became silent. Franz stopped the car.

The man was old, gray-haired, with bent shoulders. He walked mechanically and as if he were carrying a heavy load on his back. Old and gone. Exhausted by labor and years. And when he turned slowly and faced you, his forehead was wrinkled as if it were still bound by a porter's headband, a strap that he had worn for decades, the burden on his back shifting to the movements of his tired thin body as he came and went from the mountains with firewood. He stopped and stared at you and took off his tattered straw hat, a peasant's hat with a flat low round crown and wide unraveling brims. Once it had been white, now it was bands of black and dull yellow. Franz set the hand brake and leaving the engine running got out and walked toward the old man and both you, Dragoness, and Isabel watched, though Javier did not, and you tried to hear but because of the sound of the idling engine you couldn't. You saw Franz reach the old man and unbutton his hip pocket and take out his wallet as he spoke to the man and the man answered, stretching an arm and pointing to the right. He stood with his hat flat on his chest and his arm across it and with a completely expressionless face he looked at Franz and at the car. It was a face with a thick mustache around a large mouth, the lips invisible. He was very small, not so high as Franz's shoulders, and he was dressed in rags and patches: a shirt that originally had been white and had no buttons, so that he must have put it on by pulling it down over his head, loose in front over the belly, a somewhat military-looking collar, wide sleeves that reached halfway down his arm. White tight pants, also without buttons, that extended to the mid-calf and were secured around the waist by the two bands that were part of the waist, not by a belt. Long ago the first tears and holes had been repaired with patches of white cotton cut from some older, worn-out garment, and then the patches had grown tired and had come apart and had had to be patched themselves, so that now he seemed to be dressed in a web of threads, a vague integument of joined rags that all together were simply one large rag. And his worn sandals seemed integral with his callused, gnarled, dusty old feet, not separate objects. Franz took out a peso bill and spoke and the old man laughed and covered his mouth with a brown hand and with the same hand wiped his nose and Franz held the bill to him and the old man laughed again while looking at Franz with half-closed eyes and an expression that now was a little malicious, ferocious. He took the bill and turned his back and walked on, slow, old, mechanical. Franz returned to the car.

“The road to the ford is just ahead on the left.”

“But he pointed to the right,” you said, Dragoness.

“Yes,” said Franz. “He wanted to deceive us.”

The Volkswagen passed the old man and he removed his hat but did not stop his slow trot. Ah, Macehual.

A paved road appeared.

“There, you see?” you said. “It is to the right.”

*   *   *

Δ   “Oberon,” you said, nestling against Franz's shoulder. He nodded.

One day in May the concierge brought them a card from Herr von Schnepelbrücke. It was an invitation to have dinner with him in a small neighborhood restaurant. Their June examinations were near and neither of them could afford to take an evening off from studies, so Franz went to Herr Urs's door and tapped. The dwarf answered but did not open the door. Franz explained their situation and in his splendid deep voice Herr von Schnepelbrücke said that he understood and would hope to have the pleasure of inviting them out again once they had successfully passed their exams, as he was sure they would. He did not come into the hall, he spoke from behind the closed door. And that was how it always was: they never saw him, never heard a sound from him. They were curious and would have liked to question the concierge, but being two months behind in their rent, they found it best to stay away from that sharp-voiced woman, who, when she was not boasting about the excellence of the house and the good breeding of its tenants, was shrilly and zealously trying to collect for its anonymous owners. They had had their troubles with the concierge and they avoided her as much as possible. Even to stop to say good afternoon was to risk indignity, a humiliating tirade.

Once they passed their examinations, however, they would have their revenge. They planned a celebration and had invited a number of their classmates. They owned the only refrigerator in the student community and would stock it with wine and beer. Their guests would all bring additional bottles. A costume party. A real blast.

“The day we were examined we almost danced all the way home. We had both passed. We cracked jokes, sang songs. But in front of the house we found the concierge standing with her apron raised to her face, biting her nails. She called to us to run, quick, quick. We imagined some disaster. A short circuit in the refrigerator. The ice had melted and run over the room. Or a fire had started.”

As they hurried up the stairs, the concierge explained. Something was wrong with Herr von Schnepelbrücke. He had not been seen since day before yesterday. She was sure that he had not come out of his room, neither to go to his meals nor to pick up dolls to repair. And his door was locked. Something had happened! Franz took the knob and turned it. The door was locked, all right. Ulrich put his mouth near the door and shouted. “Herr von Schnepelbrücke! Open the door, sir!” “I tell you I've already tried the master key,” said the concierge. “It's barred inside.” At once they ran against the door with their shoulders while the concierge wailed and crossed herself and said she would report them to the landlord if the door was damaged. The rickety bar finally gave. The door opened. They ran inside, one looking for the light switch while the other opened the drawn curtains.

They found themselves in the midst of an amazing confusion. Broken dolls hung from wires attached to the ceiling, a whole array of little figures that as Franz and Ulrich bumped into them knocked against each other, emitting small cries and complaints. Twenty dolls hanging with wires twisted around their small necks. Blond wigs and black wigs. Tulle skirts. Patent-leather slippers. Staring porcelain eyes. They were not surprised, at first, for they knew Herr Urs's occupation. Then they looked closer and were astonished. The dolls had a shocking peculiarity. All that were female had some male garment or characteristic; all that were male had something female. A hussar wore a lace bodice beneath his gold-buttoned fur jacket. A girl in crinoline showed off military boots and carried a whip in her hand. A train conductor with a striped cap was dressed in cambric panties. A little Chinese girl with black braid and silver hairpins possessed a small male phallus carefully glued between her legs, the plaster still damp and unpainted.

“Stop, Franz,” you said quietly, Elizabeth. He was exceeding his role, surprising you with something that perhaps was not subtle but that you had not expected. Now, however, you could guess what would follow. Good nose, Dragoness.

“Then, while the concierge covered her face with her apron and began to pray, we looked at the walls and found the same kind of incongruence. On the one hand, there were canvases of the most ordinary and traditional scenes. A ship entering harbor. A party lunching on the bank of a river. The rooftops of Munich. Flowers in Chinese vases. That sort of thing. And on the other hand, paintings that were deformed and insane or obscene. Vague shapes with gaping mouths and terrified eyes. Hands with long curling fingernails. Heaps of excrement. Animals copulating. Dead, rotting snakes and elephants swarmed over with flies. Severed smiling heads of bulls and boars. A tiny man carried high in the air by the claw of a gigantic invisible bird.”

“I know, Franz. I know. You don't have to go on. I can see it.”

They stared around the room and entirely forgot why they had entered. Then gradually, little by little, they both became aware of the dominating object in the room, an enormous old-fashioned four-poster bed, its mahogany posts carved with climbing vines and topped by urns. “A wide bed, Lisbeth, a vast desert of a bed, the kind they don't make any more. Huge pillows. The covers in confusion. Beneath the bedspread, extending up under one of the lace pillows, a tiny shape. We lifted the pillow and saw his head. His enormous head.”

“I know it already, Franz. Caligari and the Sleepwalker, lost in a white labyrinth. You don't have to go on.”

He lay there as if sleeping. Like a child having a nightmare. Sleeping with his eyes and mouth open, his black hair down over his forehead, his hands joined under one cheek. Small and made even smaller because his short legs were drawn up and bent. Yellow and old like a centuries-old papyrus.

Ulrich touched one of the sleeping shoulders and prodded it. He put his hand to the temple of Herr von Schnepelbrücke and felt for a pulse. He announced that Herr von Schnepelbrücke was dead. “Do you know whether he has any relatives?” Franz asked the concierge. With her head and hands she indicated that she did not know. “Where he keeps his money?” Again no. “Someone may owe him something on these dolls or perhaps for one of his paintings,” Ulrich suggested, and both of them smiled. The concierge was wailing again. What was she to do? What was she to do? A dwarf dead in one of her best rooms. Suppose the other tenants were to learn? Everyone would move out. The house would be emptied overnight.