All the Pretty Horses(84)

He said nothing at all?

No.

What did he do?

He got up from the table. He went to his room.

You told him at the table?

Yes.

In front of her?

Yes. He went to his room and the next morning he left before daylight. He saddled a horse and left. He took the dogs. He went up into the mountains alone. I think he was going to kill you.

She was crying. People were looking toward their table. She lowered her eyes and sat sobbing silently, just her shoulders moving and the tears running down her face.

Dont cry. Alejandra. Dont cry.

She shook her head. I destroyed everything. I only wanted to die.

Dont cry. I’ll make it right.

You cant, she said. She raised her eyes and looked at him. He’d never seen despair before. He thought he had, but he had not.

He came to the mesa. Why didnt he kill me?

I dont know. I think he was afraid that I would take my life.

Would you?

I dont know.

I will make it right. You have to let me.

She shook her head. You dont understand.

What dont I understand?

I didnt know that he would stop loving me. I didnt know he could. Now I know.

She took a handkerchief from her purse. I’m sorry, she said. People are looking at us.


IT RAINED in the night and the curtains kept lifting into the room and he could hear the splash of the rain in the courtyard and he held her pale and naked against him and she cried and she told him that she loved him and he asked her to marry him. He told her that he could make a living and that they could go to live in his country and make their life there and no harm would come to them. She did not sleep and when he woke in the dawn she was standing at the window wearing his shirt.

Viene la madrugada, she said.

Yes.

She came to the bed and sat. I saw you in a dream. I saw you dead in a dream.

Last night?

No. Long ago. Before any of this. Hice una manda.

A promise.

Yes.

For my life.

Yes. They carried you through the streets of a city I’d never seen. It was dawn. The children were praying. Lloraba tu madre. Con más razón tu puta.

He put his hand to her mouth. Dont say that. You cant say that.

She took his hand and held it in hers and touched the veins.

They went out in the dawn in the city and walked in the streets. They spoke to the streetsweepers and to women opening the small shops, washing the steps. They ate in a cafe and walked in the little paseos and callejones where old vendresses of sweets, melcochas and charamuscas, were setting out their wares on the cobbles and he bought strawberries for her from a boy who weighed them in a small brass balance and twisted up a paper alcatraz to pour them into. They walked in the old Jardín Independencia where high above them stood a white stone angel with one broken wing. From her stone wrists dangled the broken chains of the manacles she wore. He counted in his heart the hours until the train would come again from the south which when it pulled out for Torreón would either take her or would not take her and he told her that if she would trust her life into his care he would never fail her or abandon her and that he would love her until he died and she said that she believed him.

In the forenoon as they were returning to the hotel she took his hand and led him across the street.

Come, she said. I will show you something.

She led him down past the cathedral wall and through the vaulted arcade into the street beyond.

What is it? he said.

A place.

They walked up the narrow twisting street. Past a tannery. A tinsmith shop. They entered a small plaza and here she turned.

My grandfather died here, she said. My mother’s father.

Where?

Here. In this place. Plazuela de Guadalajarita.

In the revolution.

Yes. In nineteen-fourteen. The twenty-third of June. He was with the Zaragoza Brigade under Raúl Madero. He was twenty-four years old. They came down from north of the city. Cerro de Loreto. Tierra Negra. Beyond here at that time all was campo. He died in this strange place. Esquina de la Calle del Deseo y el Callejón del Pensador Mexicano. There was no mother to cry. As in the corridos. Nor little bird that flew. Just the blood on the stones. I wanted to show you. We can go.

Quién fue el Pensador Mexicano?

Un poeta. Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi. He had a life of great difficulty and died young. As for the Street of Desire it is like the Calle de Noche Triste. They are but names for Mexico. We can go now.

When they got to the room the maid was cleaning and she left and they closed the curtains and made love and slept in each other’s arms. When they woke it was evening. She came from the shower wrapped in a towel and she sat on the bed and took his hand and looked down at him. I cannot do what you ask, she said. I love you. But I cannot.

He saw very clearly how all his life led only to this moment and all after led nowhere at all. He felt something cold and soulless enter him like another being and he imagined that it smiled malignly and he had no reason to believe that it would ever leave. When she came out of the bathroom again she was dressed and he made her sit on the bed and he held her hands both of them and talked to her but she only shook her head and she turned away her tearstained face and told him that it was time to go and that she could not miss the train.