A Heart for the Gods of Mexico Read online

  “Yes, Mister Key. The lamb is very good tonight.”

  “Fine!… Now go on, Blom.”

  Blomberg looked down at his half-emptied glass, saw nothing, resumed:

  “Yeah. You can imagine what it was like. I’d never seen anyone dying before—and that’s of course what she was doing. Dying! Dying with her eyes wide open, looking at death. It’s changed my feeling about life, Key, believe it or not—God knows I’ve sneered often enough at the messy and muddled and horrible business that life for the most part seems to be—so much of it so dirty and ignoble—but here was Noni all by herself, and with no one to give her a cue, setting such an example of courage as I shall never forget. And so simply. No bravura about it, no melodramatics—just herself.”

  Key lifted his glasses from the table, held the bridge pinched between finger and thumb, his head a little on one side.

  “You like her a lot, don’t you?” he said. “I’m damned sorry.”

  “I’ve always liked her. Yes.”

  “I suppose there’s no mistake, possibly?”

  “Oh no. Not a chance.”

  “I see.”

  There was a pause; they finished their cocktails, and presently Henry brought the two glasses of beer. Blomberg stared out at the walls of Elsinore, his eyes fixed and unseeing. What he was seeing, once more, was the catalpa tree in starlight, the stars showing frostily through the bare branches, and Noni’s white face uplifted beneath it, so intense, so still. He could see her there; he could see her leaning against the doorjamb, with her hands tightly clasped behind her; he could see her suddenly turning to go back into the little basement sitting room. And he could hear her saying quietly, as she learned slightly forward towards him from the low chair: “It seems so ridiculously random, Blom—it’s that that’s so puzzling!”—for all the world as if the problem were a purely metaphysical one, and herself the person in the world least involved.…

  Key was saying:

  “Well, I’m damned sorry. But I still don’t see where Mexico comes in—it makes less sense than ever. You’d think, with a bad heart, and the chance of cashing in any second, the sensible thing was to stay where she is and take it easy. What’s the idea?”

  He gave a little half smile, slightly cocky, as if to say, “Let’s keep it light, for God’s sake, if we can!” and put on his glasses. The effect was in a sense as if he had disappeared.

  “Ah,” said Blomberg, slowly, “that’s the most interesting part of it. Mind you, when I talked with her, she’d only known the full facts for a few hours—she saw the doctor at four; she saw me at eight. But in that time, in that small interval, when most people would have been simply blind with self-pity, or in a state of complete collapse, she had made her plans; discussed it with her lawyer; called up Gil to tell him about it, and had him to the house for half an hour; called up me; and several other people as well, who she hoped might help out with the money problem. She had decided at once, you see, that she owed it to Gil, after holding him off all these years, to get a divorce, and marry him—she wanted to make it up to him, all that lost life, she wanted to give him something—in fact the best thing she had: herself.”

  Key simply stared.

  “But, good God, Blom, it’s insane!”

  “Yeah. I thought so too. I said so. I still think so and say so; and I’ve done every conceivable thing I could to prevent it. Not an atom of use, Key; she won’t argue with me; she just stands there and tells me. You see, the idea is this. A Mexican divorce, for what it’s worth, apparently is much quicker than any other, and cheaper. Twice as quick as Reno, and twice as cheap, and just as good. But the quickness is the main point. She’s not only counting the days—she’s counting the hours. She wants to give Gil as much time as she can. And so, God help us, off we go, the three of us, to Mexico City.…”

  “Ah, here’s the food.”

  “Good. Let’s eat. The little hexagonal okras, by gum!”

  “Somehow, I always feel like whinnying, when I see Henry bringing food—guess I must have been a horse in a previous incarnation. And this here beer, Henry, is very nice, only there ain’t enough of it. Two more, please.…”

  “Sure, certainly, Mr. Key!”

  “It’s crazy. And do you mean to sit there and tell me you’ll go? And that Gil will go? My God, I’d have thought Gil, at any rate, if he’s in love with her——”

  Blomberg lifted a long finger, held it before him, glared.

  “Yeah! But you don’t know this, my dear Key: Gil, believe it or not, will not know a thing about it. Not a thing. She won’t tell him, and she won’t let me tell him. She puts it simply that for a year or more—and it’s partly true—she’s been planning to take a trip like this, somewhere to the south, and that now the doc’s told her she needs a change—”

  Key was dumbfounded.

  “Gil won’t know she’s going to marry him?”

  “Oh, sure, that—of course. The divorce and marriage. But the reason for it, just now, and in all this rush!”

  “I see; she’ll marry him and then drop dead on the wedding night! That’s my idea of a swell break for Mister Gil, if anyone was to ride upstairs on a policeman’s horse and ask me! Yeah. Swell. Has she thought of that?”

  “Don’t be a fool—of course she has! And sure it’s crazy—don’t I know it? It might be unspeakably cruel to Gil—Christ, when you think of what happened to him in his first marriage, it’s everything you can say about it. I wanted to yell it at her—I almost did. I even wanted to beat her. But she won’t budge. She says she knows the risk, and will run it, and that Gil’s damned well got to run it, too.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Yes.…”

  They ate in silence. The little Italian newsboy came by as usual with his Evening Records, and Key bought one; the noisy party of undergraduates and girls at the long table got up, pushing back their chairs. They were all a little tight, and they looked cheap. Blomberg had noticed that the German girl at the end of the table, the one with the dog—its lead was fastened to her chair—and the young fellow who sat next to her, the only sensitive-looking face in the crowd, hadn’t spoken more than two words to each other in all this time. Shy? Or a quarrel? He glanced away from them, and briefly out over Stuart Street, thinking idly, even in this fleeting connection, of the wonderful multiplicity of life, its inexhaustible richness. Then he said, looking hard at Key:

  “So now you see. What I said, that it’s an emergency. And the most extraordinary situation in which I ever got myself inadvertently involved. It’s an emergency, Key, get that through your mulish head. And it’s got to be gone through with. As soon as I realized that, I went to work. I’ve been to see everyone I know in Boston, that might be the slightest use, or telephoned to them, and I haven’t found a red cent. Not a cent. Even if we go in day coaches—which Noni insists on, the idiot—we’ll need another hundred bucks, at the very least. And Noni ought not to do it. She ought to go in a Pullman. Three and a half days—sitting up in those god-damned chairs—”

  He shook his head.

  “So I suppose you expect me to put up the hundred bucks.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Try and get it!”

  “Once we get down there it won’t be so bad. It seems Gil’s got a friend, or friends, in Cuernavaca who will put us up.”

  “What I don’t see,” and Key put his head on one side, and half closed his eyes, “is why you’ve got to go. Or what the hell Gil thinks you’re going for, if he doesn’t know the situation. Kind of a fifth wheel, aren’t you? Which will take a lot of explaining. Unless, of course, this Gil is the kind of guy who likes an extra man on his honeymoon!”

  “Don’t make me moan, Key! Noni’s like that, that’s all. And I know it, and Gil knows it. Though of course Gil——”

  “—doesn’t know a thing about it, the poor fish!”

  “If only Noni hadn’t made me swear, I’d tell him.”

  “I think you ought to. I don’t think he oug
ht to be allowed to go, if he isn’t told. No, sir.”

  “No, Key, it can’t be done.”

  “Well, then, how are you going to explain your presence, may I ask?”

  Blomberg hesitated.

  “That’s up to Noni. She can say I’m a sort of chaperon—and there’s something in that, too—or that she’s suggested the trip a long time ago, and didn’t want to break her promise—or simply that I helped to raise the cash. Or a little of all of it. It might get by. I think it will. Gil, damn his funny puritan little soul—my God, Key, my blood boils when I think of him, not lifting a finger, while Noni and I sweat blood to make the whole thing possible—Gil is queer. Sometimes I don’t think he’s got any feelings at all. One of those cold-roast dry-cleaned Bostonians you read about in the books, who may be a roaring volcano within, but certainly never shows it. I suppose he’s been hurt so much that he waits a long time before he makes a move; so Noni says, anyway, and she may be right.”

  Key, leaning forward on the table with his elbows, sat with lowered eyes. What was he thinking? The small face was composed and unreadable. Certainly the quick reference to the hundred dollars had come in rather too soon, and not too happily—and Key’s laconic “try and get it” hadn’t sounded too promising. But that he was interested and curious, even if incredulous and disapproving, was perhaps evident; there were even traces of sympathy. But what train would he be taking for Concord from the North Station? And how much time was left? Better not raise the point, of course. He said, feeling a little false:

  “Yeah. I’m the money-raiser. They always pick a Jew when they want money! As I was saying to myself just before I met you …”

  “And incidentally, what happens to your job, while all this goes on! Not to mention Gil’s. It seems to me your gal Noni expects quite a lot.”

  “Easy. I’m only on piecework now, and I can always pick it up, any time. And Gil doesn’t get paid, anyway, not for his work with the Legal Aid; he volunteers. He’s got a little income; I don’t know how much. I could even take some reading down there with me—not that I’d get much done.”

  “What does she look like?”

  “Noni?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Noni.…”

  He spoke the name as if in a sort of bemused, almost incredulous, evocation; then continued:

  “Not pretty, Key—too irregular a face for that—cheekbones too high—but sometimes beautiful as all get-out. Medium height to smallish—slender;—very fair skin, very white hands. A Norse look about her; very blonde; eyes like the fringed gentian, if that means anything to you—bluest things you ever saw. But as a matter of fact you don’t know quite what she looks like, somehow, because what you always notice in her face is the movement, the light. The naughtiness, and the courage. She laughs simply delightfully; and when she does, she always turns her face just a little, just a little away from you, but keeps her eyes towards you—very shy and very bright. She is shy. But the shyness gives her a lovely abruptness and boldness. You feel that she’s got to see and tell the truth, or her feelings, or whatever—and she does. My God, what honesty! I’ve often thought, you know, that she’s the nakedest soul I’ve ever met.…”

  “Good Lord, Blom!”

  “What do you mean!”

  “I’m beginning to understand. I think I’m beginning to understand.”

  “I only wish you did, Key. She’s the sort of woman you’d do anything for. And I don’t know—it’s funny. That stuffy little house of hers has been like a home to me—and I guess it’s been that for a good many others. It’s alive. It glows. It’s got a heart. Everything in her life has gone into it, onto the walls—it’s all Noni, all the way from tomboy and pigtails, and Nonquitt in the summer, and dances and orchids at the Somerset, and the disaster with Giddings, down to the secretarial work, and the social service, and the music, and now the broken heart. She plays the piano very badly, but more movingly than anyone else I ever heard, bar none. Always Bach, nothing but Bach. Gil can play rings around her—Gil could have been a professional if he’d wanted to—but it doesn’t mean a thing by comparison. You ought to see her at a concert—her face opens like a flower—she clasps her hands flatly together, and leans her face sideways on them, and goes a million miles away. I just sit and look at her, it’s as good as the music. Better! How do some people do that—doesn’t seem quite fair, Key, does it, that some people have that astonishing integrity of living or loving, or seeing and feeling—really love and feel—while the rest of us poor guys have to wait and be told when to love. Not Noni. She goes to it like the bee to the flower, absolutely as if she and it were the same thing. I’ve stood outside the house in the dark, when she didn’t know I was there, and listened to her playing, without lights—and I can honestly say that it was about as near the pinnacle of happiness as I could get.… A pity you never would come down there, Key—you and your notions.”

  “Yeah. Me and my notions. What about yours.”

  “What.”

  “It’s all becoming blindingly clear, like a sunrise in a melodrama in the best Woolworth style, complete with a noble sacrifice. You know, you almost make me sick.”

  “Speak.”

  “So you’re willing to do all this, at the drop of a hat, and on a shoestring—practically give up your job, spend all your savings, run yourself ragged to raise money, work your head off and generally worry yourself to death, and all to provide a goody-goody little husband for the gal you’re in love with!”

  Off came the dark glasses: Key’s blue eyes were laughing. Blomberg felt his own smile expand and contract, forced into his staring eyes the expression he willed, a far and shrewd foresight, a contemplative wisdom superior to the absurd antics of time. This could be turned to advantage. It was nearly eight o’clock, Key would now move towards the North Station, something must be done, or decided, soon. He must call up Gil, call up Noni, get, or not get, the tickets from Mr. Albumblatt at the South Station—he had promised the little man that he would be back before ten—and after that, packing, or helping Noni to pack. Time with its hundred hands, Time with its thousand mouths! The vision of a train came sharply, too, before him—all trains that he had ever seen or known; the melancholy, slow ylang-ylang, ylang-ylang, of the little switch engine in the frost-bound train-yard; the profound cries of freight trains climbing dark defiles of mountains at midnight; rows of phantom lights sweeping across a lonely station-front. And the transcontinental track, the curved parallel rails embracing the three-thousand-mile-long curve of the submissive and infinitely various earth, from night into day, into night again—this, too, he saw, deep in Key’s eyes. And Noni, solitary as a bird, on the great circle to Mexico.… He said, as if he were only formulating these very things:

  “Not in love with her, Key, no.”

  “Yes.”

  “Not in love with her, no. I love her, yes—I’m not in love with her, it’s been for years. Do you love sunsets and sunrises? Or your own left hand?”

  “You don’t convince me.”

  “You don’t listen.”

  “I’m listening.”

  Their voices had insensibly softened, and it was on a quieter note still that Blomberg went on.

  “It’s been for years, and always just like that; just like this—even, and calm, and leisurely, and serene, on both sides. There never was anything else, not a trace. I never wanted to make love to her, and she never made the slightest sign that she wanted to be made love to. In a way, it was really too good and too deep for that—don’t smile, such things do happen. I love her, I think in a sense she loves me, just as I think she loves Gil. But she has very odd and individual, and perhaps old-fashioned, views about sex—she gave me a lecture once, when I was a little tight and tried to kiss her, and it was one of the most moving things I ever heard. I wish I could remember it. It was like being talked to by Emily Dickinson, or the sunny slope of a New England pasture in spring. Something about the soul’s election, the soul’s eligibility—said ve
ry quietly, but with intense conviction, said very shyly, too, as if it were something infinitely precious to her. As I’m sure it was.”

  “You interest me strangely.”

  “Yes. For the whole doctrine of sex as pleasure, and promiscuity as a kind of loving kindness to all—you know, the preachings of the shabby little bedroom philosophers of Greenwich Village and Beacon Hill, who under the guise of brotherly love turn all their womenfolk into prostitutes—she has nothing but contempt. Not even contempt. It just doesn’t mean anything to her. It just seems to her a little dirty. But Noni loves. Everyone who knows her knows that, and everyone who knows her loves her. I’m damned if I know what it is, Key. I suppose sex must play a part in it, but if so it’s so deep and anonymous as to become in effect spiritual. You don’t have to believe me, but it’s true.”

  “Okay, just for fun I’ll believe you, Blom! And what about some coffee.”

  “Turkish coffee medium.”

  “Make it two, Henry. And bring me the bill.”

  “Yes, sir; certainly, Mr. Key.”

  “And to go back to what you said, about my being a fifth wheel, and raising the question of my going with them at all—and the effect on Gil—well, that’s the answer. Noni needs me. Noni loves us both, and knows that we both love her, in our very different ways, and what she needs right now is love. She wants to take all—I was going to say, all she loves—with her—for she’s going off to die. What could be more natural? Do pretend to try to understand it, Key—it scares me and horrifies me, the whole thing, I can’t tell you how much, but all the same I think it’s wonderful, it’s like the creation of a work of art, a piece of superb music. What can I do but say yes, and try to do everything I can to help her?”

  “Work of art!… If it’s a work of art, I’m a horse thief. And you’re a sucker!”

  “No, it’s the most heroic thing I ever encountered. And the noblest. She’s taking this pitiful little tag-end of her life, this handful of days with already a shadow across them, and making of them, and of us—herself and Gil and me—a farewell symphony; like that one of Haydn’s, which you probably don’t know——”