Cities of the Plain(81)

He feinted with the switchblade. He smiled. They circled.

What does he see, the suitor. Does he still hope for some miracle? Perhaps he will see the truth at last in his own intestines. As do the old brujos of the campo.

He stepped in with his knife and feinted at the boy’s face and then the blade dropped in a vanishing arc of falling light and connected the three bars by a vertical cut to form the letter E in the flesh of his thigh.

He circled to the left. He flung back his oiled hair with a toss of his head.

Do you know what my name is, farmboy? Do you know my name?

He turned his back on the boy and walked slowly away. He addressed the night.

In his dying perhaps the suitor will see that it was his hunger for mysteries that has undone him. Whores. Superstition. Finally death. For that is what has brought you here. That is what you were seeking.

He turned back. He passed the blade again before him in that slow scythelike gesture and he looked questioningly at the boy. As if he might answer at last.

That is what has brought you here and what will always bring you here. Your kind cannot bear that the world be ordinary. That it contain nothing save what stands before one. But the Mexican world is a world of adornment only and underneath it is very plain indeed. While your world—he passed the blade back and forth like a shuttle through a loom—your world totters upon an unspoken labyrinth of questions. And we will devour you, my friend. You and all your pale empire.

When he moved again the boy made no effort to defend himself. He simply slashed away with his knife and when Eduardo stepped back he had fresh cuts on his arm and across his chest. He flung back his head again to clear his lank black locks from before his face. The boy stood stolidly, following him with his eyes. He was drenched in blood.

Dont be afraid, said Eduardo. It doesnt hurt so bad. It would hurt tomorrow. But there will be no tomorrow.

John Grady stood holding himself. His hand was slick with blood and he could feel something bulging through into his palm. They met again and Eduardo laid open the back of his arm but he held himself and would not move the arm. They turned. His boots made a soft sloshing sound.

For a whore, the pimp said. For a whore.

They closed again and John Grady lowered his knife arm. He felt Eduardo’s blade slip from his rib and cross his upper stomach and pass on. It took his breath away. He made no effort to step or to parry. He brought his knife up underhand from the knee and slammed it home and staggered back. He heard the clack of the Mexican’s teeth as his jaw clapped shut. Eduardo’s knife dropped with a light splash into the small pool of standing water at his feet and he turned away. Then he looked back. The way a man might look getting on a train. The handle of the huntingknife jutted from the underside of his jaw. He reached and touched it. His mouth was clenched in a grimace. His jaw was nailed to his upper skull and he held the handle in both hands as if he would withdraw it but he did not. He walked away and turned and leaned against the warehouse wall. Then he sat down. He drew his knees up to him and sat breathing harshly through his teeth. He put his hands down at either side of him and he looked at John Grady and then after a while he leaned slowly over and lay slumped in the alleyway against the wall of the building and he did not move again.

John Grady was leaning against the wall on the opposite side of the alley, holding himself with both hands. Dont sit down, he said. Dont sit down.

He steadied himself and blew and got his breath and looked down. His shirt hung in bloody tatters. A gray tube of gut pushed through his fingers. He gritted his teeth and took hold of it and pushed it back and put his hand over it. He walked over and picked up Eduardo’s knife out of the water and he crossed the alley and still holding himself he cut away the silk shirt from his dead enemy with one hand and leaning against the wall with the knife in his teeth he tied the shirt around himself and bound it tight. Then he let the knife fall in the sand and turned and wobbled slowly down the alleyway and out into the road.

He tried to keep off the main streets. The wash of the lights from the city by which he steered his course hung over the desert like a dawn eternally to come. His boots were filling up with blood and he left bloody tracks in the sand streets of the barrios and dogs came into the street behind him to take his scent and raise their hackles and growl and slink away. He talked to himself as he went. He took to counting his steps. He could hear sirens in the distance and at every step he felt the warm blood ooze between his clutched fingers.

By the time he reached the Calle de Noche Triste he was lightheaded and his feet were reeling beneath him. He leaned against a wall and gathered himself to cross the street. No cars passed.