A Change of Skin (43 page)

“I don't understand,” he said. “The gears don't seem to work.”

Javier smiled.

Franz got out and went to the back of the car and opened the engine hood. He put his hands inside. Then he shrugged his shoulders and wiped his hands on his handkerchief.

“This is the end of the road for a while,” he said quietly. “Someone has smashed the gearbox.”

“We'll have to find a mechanic,” said Isabel.

“How long will it take, Franz?” you asked.

He shrugged again. “It'll have to be checked thoroughly. We'll probably have to have the car towed into Puebla. I suppose we can spend the night in Cholula and go on tomorrow.”

“Oh, no,” you groaned. “Is there a hotel?”

“There's a hotel,” Javier said. “It's not too good, but…”

“Look,” said Franz, showing broken wires. “Someone cut the wires from the distributor head.”

“Sure,” you said dryly. You crossed your arms and leaned against the door of the car. “What do you expect? It's that mania for destruction. Someone just got angry at your little car.”

“A patient from the asylum,” Isabel laughed. She finished her drink and walked toward the store to return the bottle.

“I'll go to the gas station and call the AMA and arrange for towing,” said Franz. “But first let's get out the suitcases.”

“Javier, do something, for God's sake,” you said, your arms crossed. “Help him with the bags.”

*   *   *

Δ   You woke up and turned over in bed.

“Oh, you're back now?”

“What do you mean, back? I haven't gone anywhere.”

“What time is it?”

“Going on ten. Let's get something to eat.”

“What for? Besides, it will upset your stomach.”

“Well, my stomach isn't my fault. It's not my fault that we live seven thousand meters straight up, with eagles and snakes.”

“Hold it, Javier, hold it. I haven't said a word.”

“Do me a favor, Ligeia. Get me my medicine and a glass of water.”

“What's wrong?”

“Just acidity, that's all.”

“Don't hog the whole sheet. You always do that.”

“Well, what does Franz say? Will the car be ready in the morning?”

“How should I know? I haven't seen Franz. Wouldn't your stomach feel better if you ate something? Acidity is worse on an empty stomach.”

“The medicine will trick them.”

“Trick who?”

“The damned juices in my stomach.”

“Come on, Javier. Get up, let's do something.”

“What, for example?”

“Well … did you bring the dominoes?”

“Yes. They're there in the suitcase.”

You got up and opened the suitcase.

“I laugh when I remember how you used to eat when you were younger. God, nothing bothered you.”

Javier's eyes said nothing. You felt for the box of dominoes. “When you were just a kid, old man. In New York. When we met at City College and fell in love.” You found the box and shook it. You looked around the room and finally emptied the box out on the night table.

“Remember the black olives? The big black olives? Remember where we ate them?”

“I remember that we drank a very dry white wine and that we were sitting facing the wharf.”

“What was the name of the town? I bet you don't remember.”

“And I remember that we ate a red fish.”

“Aren't you going to get up and play dominoes?”

“Put them on the bed.”

You looked at Javier and sighed and shoved the dominoes on to the bed.

“Bring my pen, Ligeia. It's in my coat pocket. And we'll need a piece of paper.”

“No.”

“We have to keep score.”

“No. Let whoever wins win and that's enough.”

“All right.” Javier mixed the dominoes on the bed.

“The black olives were from Kalamatis. Kalamatis, Javier.”

“Take your pieces.”

“How many do you take when just two are playing?”

“Seven. You know perfectly well that you always take seven. Go on. Open with the sixes.”

“I don't have it.”

“Neither do I. I'll open with the fives.”

“I'm hungry. I'd like some black olives from Kalamatis. You knew the name very well. Why did you pretend you couldn't remember?”

“I didn't remember. And names are of no importance.”

“What does matter, if names don't?”

“I've told you before, Ligeia. The things that come back to you only now and then and unexpectedly. Go on and play.”

You played mechanically, trying to remember things you didn't remember often, objects of terra cotta, alabaster, marble, ivory. You remembered pigeons, bulls, fish, monkeys, sheep, turtledoves, owls, deer, lions, a man carrying a dead goat around his neck.

“Take it.”

And many urns for the serpents. Yes, above all the serpent, the lion, and the bull. The three of them together.

“I was remembering things today, Javier. At Xochicalco and again later when we were at the river.”

“Damn, you've ruined my double-six.”

“Two-six. I can run it alone. Double-six. Six-five. There, I'm out.”

“I'll mix them again.”

“Careful. One of them is under the sheet.”

“Yes. Ligeia.”

“What?”

“You've forgotten something.”

“What?”

“My medicine and a glass of water.”

“I'm sorry. I'll go get them now.”

“And something else.”

“What?”

“I wasn't there, Ligeia. I wasn't there.”

Why did you insist on saying that he was too there and that he must recall the names of the white wine and the black olives? You went into the bathroom and turned on the light. All that he needed to know he could learn from looking at pictures in a book or reading a travel guide, couldn't he? You looked among the medicines for the bottle of Maalox. That would be enough to tell him that the palace of Minos rises above olive orchards on a pale rocky mountain. You found the bottle and turned on the faucet to fill the glass. In the midst of cypress trees, ravines, vines, laurel shrubs. The water came out brown with rust and you emptied the glass. That all day long crickets can be heard, that at Knossos the earth is reddish and the bulls painted on the walls are the same color. You turned off the light and stopped just inside the door. That there are vineyards all around and in the palace storerooms are great many-handled urns that were used to store grain. That the entire palace is a beehive of rooms, cloisters, archives, shops, halls, bedrooms, sunken baths. You went back into the bedroom. Javier had just finished mixing the dominoes again. And a stage for theater.

“Here, Javier. But you can't drink this water.”

“That's all right. I can take the medicine straight.”

“What were you saying to yourself just now?”

“Nothing. Well … that the only thing living there was a pen where a single pig rooted and scared away the hens and then scratched himself against the stones of the wall.”

“So you
were
there.”

“No, Ligeia.”

“And you were on Herakleion, too. And on Rhodes. And at Falaraki on the beach. Falaraki, Javier, Falaraki, don't you remember? You have to remember…”

“I have the double-six.”

“Look, how long did we stay at Falaraki?”

“I don't know. Just as long as you please. We were never there in the first place. Go on and play.”

“We stayed in a white cottage half buried in the sand. With narrow little windows. White with plaster. Yes, and it had … I don't know. Forgive me, Javier.”

Javier gathered up his dominoes. He deliberately tipped over those that you were holding upright.

“Javier, I told you…”

“Look, what I remember is a building black from coal smoke, a house where your mother served matzo balls and passed bitter gossip along to your brother and your father never understood anything that was happening, and if you want to remember something, remember that and not that silly cottage beside the sea.”

You jumped up from the bed. “What difference does it make to you? You weren't there.”

“And I wasn't in Greece, either.”

“But I was.”

You paced back and forth between the end of the bed and the wardrobe, thinking. That you had arrived at Falaraki in darkness, in a little boat that had brought you from the pier at Rhodes. And when you reached Falaraki, all you could see was the black loin of the mountain. The captain offered you glasses of ouzo with water and the boat rocked heavily. And since that moment you have always understood that Greece has always lived beside the sea because the sea is its promise, the mirage that never vanishes, a second earth visible all day to the eyes of those who would like to abandon their real earth, flat and dry, where only olive trees flourish and everything else, hyacinth, oleander, lilies, hibiscus, is a perfume, an intoxication, an alchemy created to reply to the sea's beauty and give men a reason to remain on land. You thought that you asked Javier to write it down for you. But he …

“Shit, Javier. I'm hungry. I'm going to order something to drink.”

You put on your robe and went out in the hall.

“He wasn't there,” Javier said to himself as you, in the hall, shouted: “Clerk! Bellboy! Miss! Hey, whoever's in charge here! What sort of a dump is this, anyhow?”

“The Cholula-Hilton,” Javier murmured.

A young Indian appeared.

“What drinks do you have? Tequila? Do you have Damiana liqueur?”

The youth nodded yes, no, again and again, constantly smiling. He went away. You dropped on the bed.

“Who was Alexander Hamilton?” Javier said idly. He was building a castle with the dominoes.

“George Arliss, my love.”

“Juárez?”

“Paul Muni. He and Arliss split the biographical parts. Richelieu, Pasteur, Zola, Wellington. Voltaire, Rothschild.”

“Good. Who invented the telephone?”

“Don Ameche.”

“The electric light?”

“Spencer Tracy.”

“The news services?”

“Edward G. Robinson.”

“
Beau Geste,
first and second?”

“Ronald Colman, Ralph Forbes, Neil Hamilton. Gary Cooper, Ray Milland, and Robert Preston; Mary Brian or Susan Hayward; Noah Beery or Brian Donlevy; William Powell or J. Carrol Naish.”

“Excellent, Ligeia. You pass.”

“Oh, I used to see three or four movies a week. Sometimes more. All of us belonged to fan clubs. But you don't remember. I bet you don't remember James Cagney squeezing a grapefruit in Mae Clarke's face. Or Clark Gable on the hatch of the
Bounty.
Or Errol Flynn as Captain Blood dueling on the Spanish Main.” You laughed and drew your robe over your breasts. “Poor Olivia de Havilland was in all those movies. All of them, always pretty, sighing, her face deadly serious. The girl who was really elegant was Kay Francis. Very languid, very slender.”

Javier yawned and his castle of dominoes collapsed.

“We all tried to imitate Kay Francis. We would try to make our voices nasal like hers. We'd practice lying down on a sofa, sipping a cocktail. Of course her sofas were always covered with white fur. Then Carole Lombard came along with a new style. A woman's spontaneity. Wackiness, comedy. We wanted to leave home forever and have careers in Manhattan, to be like Rosalind Russell and marry someone like Cary Grant. Ha, Javier. Garbo was something else again. She was simply divine. A woman who belonged to the gods. And John Garfield, John Garfield! He died fucking. Yes, I pass, all right!”

The Indian youth entered carrying a tin tray with a bottle of tequila on it, two small glasses, a saucer of slices of lemon, and a salt shaker. Printed on the tray was
Cerveza Corona la Rubia de Categoría.
He put the tray on the night table and said he was sorry, they had no Damiana.

“What a pity. It's an aphrodisiac.” You gave the boy a peso. He smiled and hesitated. “Go on, take it.”

You poured the two glasses and passed the salt shaker and the lemon slices to Javier. He squeezed lemon into his glass and sprinkled the rim of the glass with salt. “This won't be good for my stomach, Ligeia. You know that.”

You looked at each other as he slowly sipped his tequila.

“John Garfield,” Javier sighed. He looked up at the ceiling, with his glass in his hand. “You know, when you witness death, it changes you. Cruelly, unnecessarily. You never want to think again of the man who died. John Garfield.”

“Forget John Garfield. Never mind him. Forget him.” You drank the clear liquid squeezing the lemon into your lips and sucking the salt that you had on your fist.

Javier drank. He spat a lemon seed.

“But you don't want to forget anything, do you?” You took your wristwatch from the night table and stared at it for several minutes. Later you were going to tell me that once again you were thinking that when it first started, you hadn't wanted to blame his attitude on something so simple as your having opened one of his letters. A letter you didn't even read. You had preferred to blame it on yourself, on your slowness in responding to the immediate passion you had both felt when you first met. Or, rather, on your insistence that passion should be more than passion, that it should uncover his broken, hidden mask. You had told yourself that was the reason for the new silences, for the new kind of happiness which for you was indeed happiness, though different, for the behavior that was never decisive, for the long hours alone in the apartment while Javier went out to explore the streets of Mexico City. And you didn't realize at the time that gradually your passion was becoming merely a feeling that went on calmly from day to day without moments of crisis or climax. A sentiment, a direction rather than movement in that direction. You told me that once, Dragoness. Or maybe it was I who told you. You went on to say that a sentiment locks us up inside ourselves, does not, like passion, throw us into the arms of others. Passion is shared; sentiment is not. And now as you sipped your drink you realized that twenty years ago you had sought to return to passion by finding it in Javier's writing, not only the words but the act.