Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories (60 page)

“What? My daughter learn piano in a brothel? Under the eye of that fat whore, Roxana?”

Maria leaps to her sister’s defence, surging down on her husband with the carving knife held high. “Don’t you insult my sister!”

Mendoza twists her wrist; she drops the knife. “I’m not having my daughter mixing with whores!”

“I want to learn piano,” the spoiled child insists.

“Over my dead body will you go to Roxana’s to learn the piano, not now you are an engaged girl.”

“Then, papa, buy me a piano, let Johnny come here to teach me.”

A creaking wagon delivers a shiny, new, baby grand in the courtyard of the rotting hacienda, among the grunting pigs and flapping chickens.

Effortlessly, it’s installed in Teresa’s room; entranced, she picks at the notes. “Kitty, kitty, the young man in the black jacket is coming to teach me piano …”

Her mother chaperones her, sitting, lolling in a rocking-chair, sipping tequila. Johnny, neat, elegant, a stranger, damned, with a portfolio of music under his arm, has come to give Teresa lessons. First, scales … soon, Czerny exercises. Johnny waits, watchful, biding his time.

Bored, her mother sips tequila and nods off to sleep … A Czerny exercise; Teresa hasn’t quite mastered it. Making a mess of it, in fact. On purpose? Johnny’s presence makes her flutter.

Johnny stands behind her, showing her where to put her hands. His long, white hands cover her little, brown paws with the bitten fingernails.

She turns to him. They kiss. She’s eager, willing; he’s surprised by her enthusiasm, almost taken aback. Despises her. It’s going to be almost too easy!

But where is the seduction to be accomplished? Not in Teresa’s bedroom, with her mother dozing in the rocking-chair. Not in Johnny’s room at the brothel, either, under Aunt Roxana’s watchful eye.

“In church, Johnny; nobody will look for lovers there.”

A huge, cavernous, almost cathedral, built in expectation of mass conversions among the Indians, now almost in ruins, on a kind of bluff, brooding over the half-ruined village. Empty. And they make love on the floor of the church, the savage child, the vengeance-seeker. Afterwards, triumphant, she buries her face in his breast, shrieking for glee; he is detached, rejoicing in his own coldness, his own wickedness.

Naked, Teresa wanders down the aisle of the church towards the altar, stands looking up vaguely at the rococo Christ. She pokes out her tongue at her saviour.

“I’ll be here again, soon. I’m going to be married.”

“Married?”

“To a fine bandit gentleman.” Makes a face. “Because I have no brothers, I am the heiress. My son will inherit everything, but first I must be married.”

“Oh, no,” says Johnny, lost, gone into his vengeance. “You won’t be married. I won’t let you be married.”

Suspicious, at first. Then … “Do you love me?” Exultant, shouting. “So you love me! You must love me! You’ll take me away!”

The Count rummages through a trunk in his and Roxana’s bedroom, he gets out old books and curious instruments. The room is full of mysterious shadows. Roxana tries the door, finds that it is locked; she rattles the handle agitatedly. “What are you up to? What secrets do you have from me? Is it the old secret? Is it—”

The Count lets her in, takes her into his arms. “He’ll take the burden from me, Roxana. He wants to, he’s willing, he knows …”

“Your … son has come to set you free?”

“Not my son, Roxana.”

She is so relieved that she almost forgets the dark import of what he’s saying. Yet she must ask him: “And what’s the price?”

“High, Roxana. Do you love a poor old man, do you love him more than you love your kin?”

Wide-eyed, she stares at him.

“Yes, old man, I do believe I do. It’s been so long, now, since we’ve been together …”

“We’ll be together forever, Roxana.”

So he goes on assembling his occult materials and now she helps him. She has only one reservation. “The little Teresa, nothing must happen to her …”

“No. Not Teresa. What harm has she ever done to anyone? Not Teresa.”

An eclipse of the moon. In the church, in darkness, at the altar, the Count and Johnny summon the appropriate demon—the Archer of the Dark Abyss. Such a storm! Out of nowhere, a great wind, whirling the dust into a sandstorm. Roxana, alone in her bedroom full of curious shadows, draws the shutters close and mutters prayers, incantations.

The great wind blows open the doors of the church, sets them creaking on their hinges. Out of the sandstorms, hallucinatory figures emerge and merge, figures of demons or gods not necessarily those of Europe. The unknown continent, the new world, issues forth its banned daemonology.

The Count has summoned up more than he bargained for. He and Johnny crouch in the pentacle; Aztec and Toltec gods appear in giant forms. The church seems to have disappeared.

When the ritual is done, all clears; the interior of the church is a shambles, however, the Christ over the altar cast down on its face. Johnny and the Count pick themselves up from the floor, where the wind has left them. The Count is coughing horribly, his face is livid; the rite has nearly killed him.

Outside, all is calm now, a clear, bright night. The moon is back in the heavens again. Johnny, a man in the grip of a mania, stern, firm, helps the shaking Count to his feet.

“Where is the weapon?”

“He has come. He’s waiting. He’ll give it to us.”

Outside, against the wall, so still he’s almost part of the landscape, an Indian sits in the dark, poncho, slouch hat, waiting, impassive.

The Count, leaning heavily on Johnny, greets the Indian with some courtly ceremony. But Johnny barks: “Got the gun?”

“I got it.”

The gun changes hands. Johnny grabs it.

“How much?”

“On account,” says the Indian and grins. “On account.”

He tips his hat. His pony, in the graveyard, grazes on a grave. The two Europeans watch him walk towards his pony, mount, ride. In the immense stillness of the night, his hoofbeats diminish.

Johnny inspects the Winchester repeater in his hands; it looks perfectly normal. Not used to guns, he handles it clumsily. His disappointment is obvious.

“What’s so special about it? Could have bought one in the store.”

“It will fire seven bullets,” says the Count, impassive as any Indian. “And the seventh bullet is the one that
he
put in it, it belongs to him.”

“But—”

“The seventh bullet is the devil’s own. He will fire the seventh shot for you, even though you pull the trigger. But the other six can’t miss their targets. Though you’ve never used a gun before.”

Incredulous, Johnny takes aim, fires at a movement in the darkness. He rushes towards the scream. His target, Teresa’s kitten, dead.

“Five left now, for your own use,” says the Count. “Use them sparingly. They come at a high price.”

Teresa wants her kitten. “Kitty! Kitty!” But the kitten doesn’t come. “The dogs have eaten it,” says Teresa’s mother. “And hold still, Teresa, you’re wriggling like an eel; how can I fit your wedding-dress … ?”

It’s a store-bought wedding-dress, come on the stagecoach from Mexico City. All white lace. And a veil! In front of the clouded mirror in Teresa’s bedroom, Maria pops the veil on her daughter’s head; what a picture. But Teresa sulks.

“I don’t want to get married.”

Too bad, Teresa! Tomorrow you must and will get married.

I won’t. I won’t!

You won’t wheedle your father out of this one, not this time.

Teresa, in her wedding finery, picks out a few notes of the “Wedding March” on her piano; furious, she slams the lid shut.

Johnny, at the piano in the whorehouse, plays a few bars of the “Wedding March”; a wedding guest, drunk, flings his glass at the mirror behind the bar, smashing it. The whores superstitiously huddle and mutter. The place is packed out with wedding guests, all notable villains. But there is too much tension to be any joy. Roxana, unsmiling, rings up the price of a replacement mirror on her cash register. The Count, morose, stoops over his drink at the bar. The wedding guests treat him with genial contempt.

Teresa creeps out of her bedroom window, steals along the street, conceals herself hastily in the shadows when an Indian on a pony comes riding down the street.

Her lover waits for her by the scummy pond. Take me away. Save me! He strokes her hair with the first sign of tenderness. Perhaps he
will
take her away, if she can bear to look at him after the holocaust. Perhaps …

It’s very late, now. Only the Count stays up. He’s gazing at the recumbent form of a wedding guest passed out on the floor, snoring. The whores have stuck a feather hat on the visitor’s head, taken off his trousers, daubed his face with rouge.

When Johnny comes in, the Count silently pours him a drink. He looks at the boy with, almost, love—certainly with some emotion.

“I could almost ask you …”

Johnny smiles, shakes his head, whistles a few bars of Chopin’s “Funeral March”.

“But then … be good to the little Teresa. ‘The prince of darkness is a gentleman …’ ”

Maybe. Maybe not. But, maybe …

How Teresa’s hair tangles in the comb! A great bustle in the Mendoza encampment; they’ve got a carriage for her, decked it with exuberant paper flowers. But she herself is nervous, anxious; she chews at her underlip, she lets the women dress her as if she were a doll. Her mother, oddly respectable in black, weeps copiously. Teresa, in her wedding-dress and veil, suddenly turns to her mother and hugs her convulsively. The woman returns the embrace fiercely.

Johnny kisses the photographs of his father and mother. It’s time. Unhandily carrying the rifle, in his music student’s black velvet jacket, elegant, deadly, mad, he goes towards the church.

They’ve put back the rococo, suffering Christ; Johnny crouches beneath him, hiding under the skirts of the altar cloth. He tests the weight of the gun in his hand, peers through the sights.

The Count won’t go to the wedding. No, he won’t! He won’t get out of bed. Please, Roxana, don’t you go to the wedding, either! What? Not see my little niece Teresa get married? And you should come, too, you irreligious old man. Aren’t you fond of Teresa?

But the Count is sick this morning. He can’t crawl out of bed. He coughs, stares at the ominous bloodstains on his handkerchief.

“I’m dying, Roxana. Don’t leave me.”

Though the bridegroom has arrived already, a huge brute, the image of Teresa’s father. He takes his place before the altar. The congregation rustles. The organ plays softly.

Roxana, late, troubled, untidily dressed, slips in at the back of the church.

Teresa steps out of the flower-decorated carriage in front of the church. She’s really worried, now, looking desperately around for Johnny. Her mother kisses her, again; this time, the girl doesn’t respond, she’s got too much on her mind. Her mother and the Mendoza women folk enter the church. Her father, a little dressed up, boots polished, offers her his arm.

Traditional gasps as she walks down the aisle—isn’t she lovely! Even if her eyes search round and round the church for her rescuer. Where can he be? What will he do to save me?

The organ rings out.

Teresa arrives beside her bridegroom. From beneath her veil, she gives him a swift glance of furious dislike. The priest says the first words of the wedding service.

Johnny flings back the altar cloth, leaps on the altar, shoots point-blank the wide-eyed, open-mouthed Mendoza.

Mendoza tumbles backwards down the altar steps.

Silence. Then, shouting. Then, gunfire. Havoc!

But no bullet can touch Johnny; he shoots the bridegroom as the bridegroom leaps forward to attack him; shoots three—four—into the crowd of Mendoza desperadoes, two men fall.

Teresa, in her wedding finery, stands speechless, shocked.

Her mother, wailing, rushes from the crowd towards her dead husband.

Johnny aims, shoots Maria. She drops dead on to the body of her husband.

Teresa at last wakes up. She rushes through the havoc in the church; she is appalled, the world has come to an end.

Roxana fights free of the crowd and goes running after her. The church is a melee of shots, noise, gunsmoke.

Outside the church, the girl and woman meet. Teresa can’t speak. Roxana hugs her, grabs her hand, pulls her down the path, towards the whorehouse.

Johnny erupts from the church door. Now he’s like a mad dog. Blazing, furious, deadly—carrying a gun.

By the scummy pool, Roxana hears Johnny coming after them. She drags Teresa faster, faster—the girl stumbles over her white lace hem, now filthy with dust and blood. Faster, faster—he’s coming, the murderer’s coming, the devil himself is coming!

The Count’s mistress and the beloved little Teresa run towards the whorehouse, where the Count gazes out of the window; run towards him, with the madman hot on their heels.

The Count opens the whorehouse door.

He’s carrying the rifle that hangs on the wall of the bar.

Slowly, shakily, he raises it.

He’s aiming at Johnny.

Teresa sees him, breaks free of Roxana’s hand, dashes back towards her lover—to try to protect him? Some reason, sufficient to her hysteria.

Johnny, startled, halts; so the old man’s turned against him, has he? The old man’s turned his own magic rifle on the young one, the acolyte!

He takes aim at the Count, fires the seventh bullet.

He’s forgotten it’s the seventh bullet, forgotten everything except the sudden ease with which he can kill.

He fires the seventh bullet and Teresa drops dead by the side of the scummy pool. Her lace train slides down into the water.

The Count bursts into a great fit of tears. Roxana kneels by the dead girl, uselessly speaks to her, closes her eyes gently. Crosses herself. Gives the weeping Count, slumped on the whorehouse veranda, a long, dark look.

The crowd spills out of the church. Johnny drops his gun, turns, runs.

Coda

Almost the desert. White, fantastic rocks, sand, burning sun. Johnny stole one of the Mendozas’ horses; now it founders beneath him. He shades his eyes; there’s a village in the distance …