The Listening Walls (2 page)

2.

A doctor arrived
before eight, a small, jaunty man with a red camellia in his buttonhole. He seemed to know what to expect; his examination was perfunctory, his questions brief. He gave Wilma a small red capsule and a teaspoon of a viscous peach-colored liquid, the remains of which he left on the bureau for future administration.

Afterward, he talked to Amy in the sitting room ad­joining the bedroom. “Your friend, Mrs. Wyatt, is very high-strung.”

“Yes, I know.”

“She claims to have been poisoned.”

“Oh, that's simply her nerves.”

“I think not.”

“No one would want to poison poor Wilma.”

“No? Well, that's not for me to say.” The doctor smiled. He had friendly eyes, the sheen and color of horehound. “But she has, in effect, been poisoned. Her mal­ady is very common among visitors—
turista,
it is called, among other less reputable names.”

“The water . . . ?”

“That, yes, but also the change of diet, injudicious eat­ing, the altitude. The medicine I left for her is a new antibiotic which should take care of her digestive prob­lems. The altitude is a different matter. Even to please the tourist trade, we cannot alter it. So here you are at approximately 7400 feet when you are accustomed to sea level. San Francisco, I believe you said?”

“Yes.”

“It is particularly hard on your friend because she is suffering from high blood pressure. Such people are inclined to be overactive by nature, and at this altitude overactivity can be most unwise. Mrs. Wyatt must be more cautious. Impress that on her.”

Amy did not point out that nobody had been able to impress anything on Wilma for years; but she sighed, and the doctor seemed to understand.

“Explain a little, anyway,” he said. “My countrymen do not take their siestas out of sheer laziness, as the comic strips would have you believe. The siesta is a sensible health precaution under our circumstances of living. You must so advise your friend.”

“Wilma doesn't like to lie down in the daytime. She says it's procrastination.”

“And so it is. A little procrastination is exactly what she requires.”

“Well, I'll do my best,” Amy said, sounding as if her best would be only a slight improvement over her worst. In fact, it seemed to Amy that the two sometimes got mixed up, and her best turned out disastrous and her worst not so bad.

The doctor's eyes moved back and forth across her face as if they were reading lines. “There's another possibil­ity,” he said, “if you're not pressed for time.”

“What is it?”

“You might go down to Cuernavaca for a few days and give your friend a chance to acclimatize more gradually.”

“How do you spell that?”

He spelled it and she wrote it down on a little steel-backed pad with a magnetized pen attached. Rupert had given her the set because she couldn't keep track of pens and was always having to write notes with an eyebrow pencil or even a lipstick. The lipstick ones were necessar­ily abbreviated. R: G.G.w.M B'k s'n. A. Only Rupert could have deciphered this to mean that Amy had taken the Scottie, Mack, to Golden Gate Park for a run and would be back soon.

“Cuernavaca,” the doctor said, “is only about an hour's drive, but it's some three thousand feet closer to sea level. Pretty town, lovely climate.”

“I'll tell Mrs. Wyatt about it when she wakes up.”

“Which probably won't be until tomorrow morning.”

“She hasn't had any dinner.”

“I don't think she'll miss it,” the doctor said with a dry little smile. “You, on the other hand, look as if you need something to eat.”

It seemed heartless to admit to hunger with Wilma ill, so Amy shook her head. “Oh, I'm not really hungry.”

“The dining room remains open until midnight. Avoid raw fruit and vegetables. A steak would be good, no condiments. A Scotch and soda, but no fancy cocktails.”

“I can't very well leave Wilma.”

“Why not?”

“Suppose she wakes up and needs help.”

“She won't wake up.” The doctor picked up his medi­cal bag, stepped briskly to the door, and opened it. “Good night, Mrs. Kellogg.”

“I—we haven't paid you.”

“My charges will be added to your hotel bill.”

“Oh. Well, thank you very much, Dr. . . .?”

“Lopez.” He presented his card with a neat little bow and closed the door behind him loudly and firmly as if to prove his point that Wilma wouldn't wake up.

The card read, Dr. Ernest Lopez, Paseo Reforma, 510, Tel. 11-24-14.

He left behind him a faint smell of disinfectant. While he'd been in the room the smell had been rather reas­suring to Amy: germs were being killed, viruses were falling by the wayside, bad little bugs were breathing their last. But without the doctor's presence, the smell became disturbing, as if it had been put there to cover up older, subtler smells of decay, like spices on rotten meat.

Amy crossed the room and opened the grilled door of the balcony. The sound from the
avenida
was deafening, as if everyone in the city, fresh and rested after a siesta, had suddenly erupted with excitement and noise. It had rained, briefly but heavily, during the late afternoon. The streets were still glistening and the air was thin and crisp and pure. It seemed to Amy like very healthful air, until she remembered Wilma's high blood pressure. Then she closed the door again quickly, as if she half be­lieved that the room was pressurized and she could shut out the altitude with a pane of glass and some iron grill­ing.

“Poor Wilma,” she said aloud, but the sound didn't emerge the way she intended it to. It came out, tight and small, from between clenched teeth.

She heard her own voice betraying her friendship, and she walked away from it with guilty haste, toward the bedroom.

Wilma was asleep, still wearing her red silk suit, and her bracelets, and her golden eyelids. She looked dead enough to bury.

Amy switched off the lamp and went back to the living room. It was eight o'clock. Across the
avenida
a church bell began to toll, striving to be heard above the clang of trolley cars and the horns of taxis. Back home it was only six o'clock, Amy thought. Rupert would still be working in the garden, with Mack nearby stalking butterflies and Jerusalem crickets, and letting them go, of course, if he caught any, because Scotties were very civilized dogs. Or, if the fog had moved in from the bay, the two of them would be inside, Rupert reading the Sunday papers in the den, with Mack perched on the back of his chair looking gloomily over Rupert's shoulder as if he took a very dim view of what was going on in the world.

The big man and the little dog seemed so vivid, so close, that when the knock came on the door she jumped in shock at the intrusion on her private world.

She opened the door, expecting only the girl with the towels again. But it was an elderly Mexican man carrying an object loosely wrapped in newspaper.

“Here is the box the señora ordered this afternoon.”

“I didn't order any box.”

“The other señora. She wished it initialed. I bring it in person, not trusting my no-good son-in-law.” He removed the newspaper carefully as if he were unveiling a statue. “It is a beautiful box. Everyone agrees?”

“It'
s lovely,” Amy said.

“The purest silver. None purer. Feel how heavy.”

He handed her the hammered silver box. She almost dropped it, its weight was so unexpected in spite of his warning.

He grinned with delight. “You see? The purest of sil­ver. The señora said it looks like the sea. I have never see the sea. I make a box that looks like the sea and I have never see the sea. How is it possible?”

“Mrs. Wyatt—the señora is asleep right now. I'll give it to her when she wakes up.” Amy hesitated. “The box is paid for?”

“The box, yes. My services, no. I am an old man. I run like lightning through the streets, not trusting my no- good son-in-law. I run all the way here so the señora would have her beautiful box tonight. She said, ‘Señor, this box is of such beauty I cannot bear to be without it for one night.' “

It was practically the last thing on earth Wilma would have said but Amy was in no mood to argue.

“For the señoras,” he added righteously, “I run any­where. Even though I am an old man I run.”

“Would four pes—”

“A very old man. With much family trouble and a bad kidney.”

In spite of his age and infirmity and running through the streets he seemed ready to talk at considerable length. She gave him six pesos, knowing it was too much, just to get rid of him.

She put the box on the coffee table, wondering why Wilma, who always made such a fuss about being charged for extraweight baggage on planes, should have bought so heavy an object, and for whom it was intended. Probably for herself, Amy thought. Wilma rarely squan­dered money on other people unless she was in an elated mood, and God knew there was no evidence of that on this trip.

She opened the box. The initials were on the inside of the lid, engraved so elaborately that she had difficulty deciphering them. R.J.K.

“R.J.K.'' She repeated the letters aloud as if to clarify them and to conjure up an image to match them. But the only R.J.K. she could think of was Rupert, and it didn't seem likely that Wilma would buy so expensive a gift for Rupert. Most of the time Amy's husband and her best friend were barely civil to each other.

3.

It was Sunday
afternoon when Wilma awoke from her long sleep. She felt weak and hungry, but her mind was extraordinarily clear, as if a storm had passed through her during the night leaving the inner air fresh and clean.

As she showered and dressed, it seemed to her for the first time in many years that life was very simple and logical. She wished there were somebody around to whom she could communicate this sudden revelation. But Amy had gone, leaving a note that she would be back at four, and the young waiter who brought her breakfast tray only grinned nervously when she tried to tell him how simple life was.

“When you're tired, you sleep.”

“Si, señora.”

“When you're hungry, you eat. Simple, logical, basic.”“Si, señora, but I'm not hungry.”

“Oh, what the hell,” Wilma said. “Go away.”

The waiter had almost ruined her revelation, but not quite. She opened the balcony doors and addressed the warm, sunny afternoon: “I shall be absolutely basic all day. No fuss, no frills, no getting upset. I must concen­trate only on the essentials.”

The first essential was, obviously, food. She was hun­gry, she would eat.

She removed the cover from the ham and eggs. They were black with pepper, and the tomato juice tasted strongly of limes. Why in God's name did they have to put lime juice on everything? It was difficult enough to be basic, without fools and incompetents thwarting you at every corner.

I am hungry, I will eat
turned into
I am hungry, I must eat
and finally
I'll eat if it kills me.
By that time she was no longer hungry. The revelation joined its many predecessors in oblivion and life once more became, as it always had been for Wilma, complex and bewildering.

Later in the afternoon Amy returned with an armload of packages. She found Wilma in the sitting room reading a copy of the
Mexico City News
and drinking a Scotch and soda.

Wilma peered over the top of her spectacles. “Buy any­thing interesting?”

“Just a few little things for Gill's children. The stores were jammed. It seems funny, everyone shopping on Sunday.” She put her packages on the coffee table be­side the silver box. “How are you feeling?”

“All right. I must have passed out like a light after the doctor gave me that junk.”

“Yes.”

“What did you do all evening?”

“Nothing.”

Wilma looked faintly exasperated. “You can't have done nothing. Nobody does nothing.”

“I do. I did.”

“What about dinner?”

“I didn't have any.”

“Why not?”

“I was—upset.” Amy sat down stiffly on the edge of a green leather chair. “The box came.”

“So I see.”

“It looks very expensive.”

“It was,” Wilma said. “The least they could have done was wrap it. My purchases are my own private business.”

“Not this one.”

“Obviously not.” Wilma tossed the newspaper on the floor and took off her spectacles. She couldn't read with­out the spectacles, since she was far-sighted, but she could see across the room better without them. Amy's face looked pale and numb. “I gather you noticed the initials?”

“Yes.”

“And concluded, of course, that Rupert and I are madly in love; that we have, in fact, been carrying on an affair for years and years behind your . . .”

“Shut up,” Amy said. “I hear the girl in the bedroom.”

Consuela had let herself in with her passkey and was now making up the beds. Her shoulders slumped and her feet dragged from weariness because she'd had a fight with her boyfriend that had lasted well into the night. The cause of the fight was, to Consuela, absolutely ridic­ulous. All she did was pilfer a black nylon slip from 411, but her boyfriend became very angry and told her she would lose her job and accused her of trying to steal the smell off a goat if she got the chance. Besides all that, the slip had been too small for her and she'd torn the seams attempting to force it over her hips.

Life was unfair. Life was cruel as a bull's horn. Con­suela groaned as she changed the sheets, and made small suffering sounds as she slopped a little water around the washbasin.
Why would I steal the smell off a goat?

“You're jealous,” Wilma said softly. “Is that it?”

“Of course not. It just doesn't seem proper to me. And if Gill finds out he'll make a big fuss about it.”

“Don't tell him, then.”

“I never tell him things. But he always finds out in some way.”

“Why do you still care what your brother thinks, at your age and weight?”

“He can cause a lot of trouble,” Amy said. “He's al­ways been suspicious of Rupert anyway. I don't know why.”

“I could tell you why, but you wouldn't like it. You probably wouldn't even listen.”

“Then why bother telling me?”

“I'm not going to.” Wilma finished her drink. “So you don't care whether I give Rupert the box, just so long as Gill doesn't find out about it. That's very funny.”

“Not to me, it isn't. And I don't see why you had to buy such an expensive gift in the first place.”

“Because I wanted to. You wouldn't understand. You haven't done anything because you
wanted
to in your whole life. I have. I do. I saw this box in the window of a little shop and it reminded me of something Rupert said once, that the sea looked like hammered silver. I never really understood what he meant until I saw the box. So I bought it. I simply went in and bought it, without thinking of money, or you, or Gill, or all your weird, com­plicated…”

“Not so loud. The girl . . .”

“The hell with the girl. The hell with the box, too. Take the damn thing and throw it over the balcony!”

“We can't very well do that,” Amy said quietly. “There are too many people on the street. Someone might get hurt.”

“But that's what you'd like to do, isn't it?”

“I don't know.”

“Oh, admit it. Admit something for a change. You want to get rid of the box.”

“Yes, but…”

“Do it then. Chuck the thing over the railing. That'll be the end of it. And good, good riddance.”

In the bedroom Consuela let out a little bleat of pro­test. To throw a silver box out into the street like gar­bage would be a terrible sin. Suppose someone very rich saw it falling through the air and caught it and became even richer—Consuela groaned at the thought of such injustice and cursed herself for her stupidity in pretend­ing to the two ladies that she couldn't speak English. Now she could not present herself to them and state her case: I am a very poor and very humble peasant. Sometimes I am even tempted to steal. . . .

No, that would not have been good, giving them ideas about her stealing. Perhaps it was just as well that she had pretended not to know English. This way she could simply confront the ladies, looking very poor and humble and honest, and they might offer to give her the box.

Consuela glanced in the mirror above the bureau. How did one go about looking honest? It was not easy.

She picked up the carpet sweeper and headed for the sitting room, already making plans for the silver box. She would sell it and buy lottery tickets for tomorrow's draw­ing. Then, on Tuesday morning when her winning num­ber was published in the papers, she would tell her boyfriend to go kiss a goat, thumb her nose at the hotel man­ager, and leave immediately for Hollywood where she would have her hair bleached and walk among the movie stars.

She spoke in Spanish, sounding very poor and humble. “If the good ladies will excuse me, I have come to clean the room.”

“Tell her to go away and come back later,” Wilma said.

Amy shook her head. “I don't know how.”

“I thought you took Spanish in high school.”

“That was over fifteen years ago and only for a semes­ter.”

“Well, find the book of common phrases for tourists.”

“We—I left it on the plane.”

“Oh, for God's sake. Well, get rid of her some way.”

Consuela had discovered the silver box on the coffee table and was making excited noises over its beauty, its craftsmanship, and the number of lottery tickets it was worth.

“She must be talking about the box,” Amy said.

“Let her talk.”

“If you're just going to throw it away anyway, you could give it to her instead.”

“I could,” Wilma said, “but I won't. And who said I intended throwing it away?”

“You did. You practically promised.”

“Nothing of the sort. I said if
you
wanted to throw it away you were to go ahead and do it. But you didn't have enough nerve, so you lost your chance. The box is mine. I bought it for Rupert and I'm giving it to Rupert.”

Consuela, cheated out of her blond hair and her movie stars, squawked in protest and held her hand against her heart as if it were breaking.

Wilma glared at her. “Go away. We're busy. Come back later.”

“Oh, you are a wicked one,” Consuela moaned in Span­ish. “A selfish one, a bad one. Oh, may you spend eternity in hell.”

“I can't understand a word you're saying.”

“Oh, I wish you could, you black witch with the evil eye. Children grow pale and sicken when you look at them. Dogs put their tails between their legs and slink away. . . .”

“I've had enough of this,” Wilma said, addressing Amy. “I'm going to the bar.”

“Alone?”

“You're perfectly welcome to come along.”

“It's so early, barely five o'clock.”

“Then stay here. If you can dig up some of that high school Spanish of yours, I'm sure you and the girl can have a ball.”

“Wilma, don't drink too much when you're in this mood. It will only depress you.”

“I'm already depressed,” Wilma said. “
You
depress me.”

At seven o'clock Amy set out to look for her.

The hotel operated two bars, an elaborate one on the roof with a lively orchestra, and a smaller one be­tween the lobby and the dining room for people who preferred martinis without music. Amy tipped the ele­vator boy two pesos and asked him what direction Wilma had taken.

“Your friend in the fur coat?”

“Yes.”

“First she went up to the roof garden. A little time later she came down again. She said the marimbas made it too noisy to talk.”

“Talk?” Amy said. “To whom?”

“The American.”

“What American?”

“He hangs around the bar. He is what you call home­sick, for New York. He likes to talk to other Americans. He is harmless,” the boy added with a shrug. “A no­body.”

They were at a table in a corner of the crowded bar, Wilma and the harmless American, a dark-skinned, blond-haired young man in a garish green and brown striped sport coat. Wilma was doing the talking and the young man was listening and smiling, a trained profes­sional smile without warmth or interest. He looked harm­less enough, Amy thought. And he probably was—except to Wilma. Two marriages and two divorces had taught Wilma nothing about men; she was both too suspicious and too gullible, too aggressive and too vulnerable.

Amy crossed the room uncertainly, wanting to turn back, but wanting even more to be reassured that Wilma was all right, not drunk, not nervous.
This is the wrong place for her. Tomorrow we'll go to Cuernavaca as the doctor suggested. It will be more restful, there will be no homesick Americans.

“Why there you are,” Wilma said, very loudly and gaily. “Come on, sit down. I'd like you to meet a fellow San Franciscan. Joe O'Donnell, Amy Kellogg.”

Amy acknowledged the introduction with a slight nod and sat down. “So you're from San Francisco, Mr. O'Donnell?”

“That's right. But call me Joe. Everybody does.”

“I somehow got the impression you were from New York.”

O'Donnell laughed and said easily, “Woman's intui­tion?”

“Partly.”

“Partly the sport jacket, maybe. I had it tailored in New York. Brooks Brothers.”

Brooks Brothers, my foot
, Amy thought. “Indeed? How interesting.”

“Let's have a drink,” Wilma said. “You sound too sober, Amy dear. Sober and mad. You're always getting mad; you just don't show it like the rest of us.”

“Oh, stop it, Wilma. I'm not mad.”

“Yes, you are.” Wilma turned to O'Donnell and put her hand on his sleeve. “You want to know what she's mad about? Do you?”