Black Alibi (9 page)

Through this land of the dead, love made its way, nineteen years old, blood warm, eyes bright, breath quick, heart pulsing. She was no longer running. She was in now, that was the main thing. It was just a matter of a minute or two more, and it wouldn’t have been respectful in such a place. But she moved along at an eager little walk, with a double step of added impetus every three or four paces, that was not quite a trot but threatened to be one.

She reached a little circular axis that was a landmark to her. In its center stood an alabaster urn on a slender graceful pediment that she always used to guide herself by. Here four paths Spoked out. The one she had been following continued on beyond, into reaches of the cemetery that were unknown to her. Then there was a lateral one that crossed it at this point, making two more. She knew by experience you turned left at this place to reach her family’s burial plot. Then coming back, of course, you just did the opposite, turned right, to get back on the main avenue leading to the entrance gate.

It was just a little further on now. She followed this lesser, winding, graveled path, with its halfremembered particulars of surrounding. First it led through a depressed open treeless patch, a Sort of meadow of the dead. The depths of this were inked in with blue already. Then it climbed and wound its way through a thick grove of trees, almost like a tunnel, and just past that was her destination. She hadn’t had a chance to notice these things much on her previous visits. Going, Rosita was always chattering away to her. And coming back, more lingeringly, there was an arm about her waist and a low voice murmuring in her ear. This was the first time she’d made her way through here alone.

She arrived finally. She reached the short but head-high length of box hedge that ran along the path for a few feet, marking her family’s plot. She turned in through a gap in it, made her way to the newest of the several monuments and markers it contained, a pylon of bone white, with a bronze wreath clamped to it circling a simple inscription.

DON RAFAEL CONTRERAS Y GALB0

PRAY FOR HIS SOUL

It was at the far end of the enclosure. The rest were just great-aunts and people she had never known.
He
wouldn’t be waiting for her in here, of course. That would have been bad taste. There was a place they had— But first, the respect due one’s dead. She sank down on one knee beside the mound, firmly put all thoughts of that someone else out of her mind for the time being, lowered her head, murmuring a short prayer that was a plea for forgiveness. “Father, forgive me for fooling Mother like this. We didn’t mean to, but we’re both going to be old so long. I’ll have him come to the house and meet her this week, I promise.”

She rose at last, spent several more minutes arranging the flowers she had brought with her about the base of the pylon, moving from side to side to shift them until the effect suited her. Then she dipped her knees, crossed herself, and left the enclosure, with a lingering backward glance. The dead had received their due, and now for the living.

It wasn’t very far away, just a little further over to the left along the same path. It was a little marble pergola, a circular roof supported by slim columns, without any walls. It didn’t belong to anyone; that is to say, it was a “public” structure put up by the cemetery itself, like the benches and the landmark urn farther back. That was where they always met. He’d be waiting for her in there right now. She’d probably see the ember of his impatient cigarette moving around restlessly inside it like a red firefly as she came hurrying up. It was a shame; her getting here late like this would give them hardly any time together at all.

It already looked indistinct in the dusk as she sighted it, a misty blue shape peering through the haze, instead of clear white any more. But what did she care what it looked like, it was who was in it that counted. She made a little crowing sound of mischievous delight as she turned and ran in between two of the fluted columns. “Raul,” she greeted him. “Did you think I’d never—”

It was empty.

Gone! He’d given her up, left without waiting— No, he couldn’t have, the gateman had said he’d just seen him. And if he’d tried to leave after that, the gateman would have told him that she had arrived herself in the meanwhile, and he would have come back looking for her.

She stood there for a moment, uncertainly, in the clear floor space ringed by three semicircular backless benches. He’d be back in a minute. He must have gone just as far as the entrance, to look for her one last time, and the gateman would surely tell him. They must have missed one another in some way; maybe while she was behind tile hedge in her family’s plot, he’d passed by unheard outside. Without noticing her in there, all black against the shadows. Or taken some short cut to the gate that didn’t bring him by there at all. She’d better wait here, where he could find her, or they might miss one another a second time, never get together at all.

Just tonight that had to happen, when the time was so short anyway! She sat down forlornly on one of the three benches. Presently, even in the murky light that filled the place, she made out something on the floor. A half-smoked cigarette lying at her feet. Another. A half dozen, strewn all over. She picked the nearest one up gingerly between two fingers, held it directly under her eyes in the obscurity. Part of the trade name still hadn’t been consumed. “Exquisito.” Those were his, she knew them. She smiled compassionately. Poor boy, she could see him now, pacing back and forth, fretting at the long delay.

She continued to hold it for a while, looking at it. It was a part of him. It was the most she could have of him for a moment or two, until he got back here himself.

She whispered to it. “Little cigarette, does he love me? Did he miss me, because I wasn’t here? Tell me, how did he act? Did he whisper my name when he’ held you in his mouth? You should know, you were very close to him.” She touched it caressingly with the tip of one finger. She was very young yet.

It was taking him long to come back from the gate. He wouldn’t fail to come back, though; the gateman would surely tell him he’d seen her. It would be foolish not to wait, now that she was here. This was the only place where they could be unseen, alone together for a moment or two. It was different when she’d brought Rosita. Rosita was one’s own age, understood, even aided and abetted one. With Rosita they could have taken a lingering farewell of one another, even out in full sight at the main gate. She would have waited tactfully out of earshot, or walked ahead of them, leaving them to follow to the carriage with arms linked, heads inclined together’. But with Marta along! She’d better stay where she was. He’d show up any minute.

How strange it was. You met someone, and suddenly the whole world became different. She remembered the first time they’d met. It wasn’t so long ago, just a few Sundays ago, but already she couldn’t recall what life had been like before that time, before there’d been a “him.” It was on a Sunday afternoon, at the
cine
. Her mother bad had one of her spells, and Marta was too strict to go to a
cine
on Sunday, so Rosita had gone with her. You had reserved seats at a
cine
on Sunday afternoons, you rented them by the season and you occupied the same ones every time you went, so he must have known her by sight, watched her each time the lights went up at intermission, for a long time before. Well, she had noticed him herself, but you couldn’t stare of course. You could only let eyes meet eyes for a passing instant.

Then when they came out that afternoon, they found that a terrific downpour was drenching the streets. They huddled there helplessly under the sidewalk canopy along with everyone else, unable to move, while the theater doorman blew his whistle up and down the street—that querulous sound just then, chiming in upon her thoughts from somewhere in the distance, reminded her of that day, brought it before her more vividly than ever—calling up carriages and cabs and anything on wheels to the rescue. But everyone else kept getting them, and the two of them, she and Rosita, would have stood there stranded for there was no telling how long, if he suddenly hadn’t appeared at their side and forced a passage for them, and arbitrarily commandeered the latest one standing at the curb, to the exclusion of—

Suddenly she was upright, with a sort of shock of delayed timing coursing through her. That had been the gateman’s whistle that had blended in so patly with the stream of her thoughts, back there before!

She ran out between the columns, stood poised for an instant on the two low steps that formed the structure’s flooring, listening with frightened intensity. It came again; then, piping, sounding miles and hopeless miles away across the darkness. Farther away than she could ever hope to reach in time. The second and the last warning, and after that—they just locked up without waiting any longer. He must have missed her in some way, the gateman, just as she and Raul had missed one another. Because obviously they would have to do more than just blow a whistle at the gate, in a place of this size. Perhaps on his last tour of warning around the grounds he had failed to come near this pergola, never realizing there was anyone sheltered in it. And she, in her day dreaming, had failed to note the distant flicker of his lamp—if be used one—or grasp its significance. Or perhaps he had mistaken someone else who had passed him on her way out, garbed in mourning as she was, for herself, and not bothered to come in looking for her at all. He was nearsighted, after all.

All this in a single, horrified pause on the steps, quicker even than her fluttering garments could settle about her into motionlessness. And to add to her dismay, she realized only now that it had grown completely dark while she was sitting in there waiting. Even the afterglow of the sun was gone now. Only a slight greenish blackness, like oxidized metal, above the trees in the west, showed where it had been. The rest was dark, dark, dark; night was in possession and had caught her in its trap.

She was running along the winding graveled path now. She thought she’d never run so fast in her life before. A spray of gravel flew up, like sea foam, at the tiny prows of her plunging feet. Through the tunnel of trees. Down into the declivity of the meadow of the dead. Up again on the other side. Past the box hedge behind which her father and the great-aunts lay. A sob of helpless appeal winged back toward it as she darted by: “
Papacito!
” The whimper of a frightened thing, tossed over her shoulder as she fled headlong past the place. To someone who once could have protected her—but couldn’t now any more.

The trees were invisible against the black sky. But under them, and far too visible, the white of the monuments and the markers made blurred gray ghost shapes here and there. An angel poised on one toe threatened to spring out at her from ambush, seize her about the neck with both arms tightly entwined, bring her down. She screamed, and shied aside, and nearly fell, then went floundering on again.

A wind seemed to come sighing up out of the earth around her, damp and moldy with the aroma of long-buried things. It wasn’t just static, it seemed to pursue her, threading through the trees, winding down the path after her, moaning, trying to claim her for its own. The pathway under her was just a gray ribbon, an indistinct tape, stretched across the dark. It never seemed to end, it never would end—

This was panic, and she knew it, and she knew it must be conquered or she would never reach the gate alive. Even as she tottered on, chest exploding and collapsing at each in-and exhalation, she fought to regain her self-control. It’s all right, Conchita, nothing will happen; it’s all right, don’t be a fool. In just a moment more you’ll reach that landmark of the urn, and then you turn left—remember?—and after that just the one broad central avenue takes you to the gate, nothing to it. Call out now, from here—they’ll hear you, they’ll wait, they’ll hold it open. Call Out SO they’ll know; you should have already, from the moment you first heard the whistle.

She didn’t think she’d have breath enough left, but she managed somehow. Shrilly, falteringly, jerky with the vibration of her continued running. “Gateman! Gateman, wait! I’m still in here! Don’t close yet! Wait until I get there—”

Then she couldn’t any more, there wasn’t enough strength of lung left. She was wavering from side to side as it was, no longer able to keep. to a straight course. And the treacherous gravel, so easy to tread upon when you were at rest, seemed to roll and sidle under her feet, unbalancing her.

The urn! Oh, saints be praised, the urn at last! Rearing there before her, higher than her head, seeming to swim against the darkness without sup. port, until the lesser pallor of its pediment had come into focus under it.

To the left now, she warned herself harassedly; to the left, be careful— She couldn’t even tell for a moment which it was. The heart. The heart was always on the left. She put her hand to it, and its pounding was almost a physical hurt, like hammer blows against the hollow of the hand. She let it guide her, swerved around toward that side, and the urn was whisked from sight behind her, like something worked on invisible strings.

The broad, paved alley that led straight to the gate lay before her now, and the worst was over. Its firm surface was easier to run on than the shifting gravel, but she couldn’t gain much added advantage, she was already too exhausted. She tottered waveringly on; she daren’t falter now. She tried to call out again, and found she couldn’t. A muted, strangled sound, that scarcely outdistanced her herself, was all that she could utter. It seemed to tear at her suffocating throat. “Leave the gates open, wait for me—!”

Straight and broad the avenue stretched before her, its side boundary lines drawing to a shadowy junction in the darkness ahead that kept eluding her, never came any closer. Behind her, that same malignant wind that smelled of the clamminess of tombs and the stench of rotted coffins seemed to have turned at the urn just as she had, seemed to be keeping up its insatiable, humming pursuit, even down this straightaway. It was like running down a track of perpetual motion, whose reverse direction ate up all the gain you made, kept you standing still at a fixed point after all, though limbs and heart and lungs wore themselves out.