The Follower, page 11
The old woman reached an open door, from which emanated a faint radiance. She stood by it, gesturing with her hand that Mark should enter. He stepped inside. He was in a bare floored square room lit by three candles stuck in empty liquor bottles, which stood on a wooden highboy. Two large iron beds filled almost half the space. Four wooden chairs were lined up stiffly along the wall. The highboy, gleamingly polished, obviously the pride and joy of the household, dominated the room. On it, between the candles, stood a photograph in a silver frame. Above it, on the grimy whitewashed wall, hung a large poster of the Holy Virgin of Guadalupe. The atmosphere was one of crushing poverty. In spite of its foreignness, it brought Mark memories of Providence.
The room was not empty. On one of the beds a little girl of about eight sat cross-legged. She too was wearing a frock of unrelieved black and was clutching the straw casing of a champagne bottle passionately and possessively as if it were a doll.
The old woman joined him. Now in the candlelight he could see that she was not really old. Although her face was immensely wrinkled and eroded, it was still a young face. She was probably no more than forty. She pulled one of the wooden chairs from the wall, placed it in front of the highboy and indicated that Mark should sit. He realized that she had mistaken his gesture in the patio. She had merely assumed that he was criticizing her hospitality, and wanted to be received in state. He sat down. The five other females collected in the room and stood in shy silence around him.
If they had been hostile, he could have ignored them, searched the house and gone away. But their exquisite politeness, their naive trust crippled him.
He said again, beginning to feel foolish: ‘Doesn’t anyone speak English?’
The little girl, clutching the champagne casing, leaned towards him from the bed, jet-eyed, fascinated. No one spoke. One of the candles above him gutted out. He glanced up instinctively and found himself looking straight at the photograph in the silver frame. It was a photograph of Oscar - Oscar in a formal dark suit, with his hair carefully brushed and gleaming, Oscar, smiling the supercilious, aristocratic smile of a Spanish grandee.
The old woman, seeing where he was looking, laughed suddenly and said:
‘Oscar.’
All the girls tittered proudly and said: ‘Oscar’ too.
A mother and six sisters. He should have realized it earlier.
In some mood of perverse humor Oscar had sent him to his own home.
Mark’s first feeling was anger. Then he started to wonder. If Oscar had sent him on a wild-goose chase simply to cheat him out of two hundred and fifty pesos, would he have risked sending him to his own family? It seemed unlikely. Then what? Perhaps Mark’s original conjecture had been right. Perhaps Oscar was much more deeply involved in the conspiracy than his role as hotel clerk implied. Perhaps Ellie was housed or imprisoned here, and the desire for a two-hundred-and-fifty-peso topcoat had been alluring enough to make Oscar betray his allies.
It was just possible. And, if it were possible, these women were merely feigning stupidity. He looked from one face to the other. The proud giggling which had accompanied the mention of Oscar’s name had subsided. All six women looked back at him passively like gentle jungle animals. Only the little girl on the bed seemed excited. She had dropped her ‘doll’ and had squirmed closer to him until she was almost toppling off the bed. Her lips were half parted in a kind of ecstasy of wonder.
Mark got up from the chair. All the women shied as if they were going to scurry off into the patio, but they did not move.
Mark was angry again, not with the women, but with the day’s bitter frustration. They sensed his anger. He could tell that. Although they stood their ground, they were all tense. The music from the fiesta in the plaza pulsed faintly in the air, not like music but like distant pumping.
He asked harshly: ‘Where is my wife? The American woman?’
All of them stepped backwards as if he had struck them. But they did not answer. Perhaps it was only the product of his own suspicions, but they seemed suddenly knowing, guilty.
‘The American woman,’ he repeated.
From the bed a small but very clear voice said in English:
‘The American woman.’
He spun around. The little girl was smiling up at him with an expression of almost ludicrous pride on her face. One of the girls cried warningly: ‘Lupita.’ She ran to the bed and sat down next to the child, putting an arm around her. All the other women converged into a group.
Mark dropped to his knees and took both of the child’s tiny hands in his own. ‘You speak English?’
The girl on the bed dragged at the child and said again: ‘Lupita.’
But the child was still watching Mark enraptured. Very slowly she said: ‘I speak English in the school.’
‘Where’s the American woman?’ asked Mark. ‘Tell me. Where is the American woman?’
The mother almost shouted: ‘Callate, chiquita.’
But the child smiled at Mark a smile of ravishing sweetness. She tugged one hand out of his grip and, picking up the champagne casing, pointed with it across the patio.
‘The American woman is in the other room.’
The room was very still. Suddenly Mark heard a rustle behind him. He jumped up and turned. The mother and all the daughters were moving cautiously towards the door.
‘Hey,’ he called.
They all swung back to watch him, panic showing in their widened eyes and parted lips. Then, as he started forward, they scattered like hens stampeded in a chicken yard. He was caught up in their hysterical flight. The mother and two of the daughters reached the door before him. Another girl plunged into the frame at exactly the same instant as he and, for a moment, they were wedged there together. He could feel her soft warm flesh yielding to his elbow; her dusty-smelling rebozo flicked his cheek. The yellow dog, reappearing from nowhere, was flirting around them, jumping and yelping. An extra shove catapulted the girl and himself through the doorway into the patio. The girl staggered and clutched at his arm for support. Once she had steadied herself, she gave a thin scream and fled with the others. They all swooped away like large, shabby moths into the darkness.
He stood a moment, trying to get his bearings. The immense excitement of having at last found Ellie confused him. And this black, cluttered patio was a type of architecture to which he wasn’t accustomed. The other room? Where would the other room be? The women had not run to Ellie. He was sure of that. Their chaotic flight had been planless - nothing more than a primitive impulse to escape from danger.
He peered through the darkness. The dog was nipping playfully at his trouser leg and clinging with its teeth to the cloth. He shoved it with his foot. It whimpered with pleasure and bit into the trouser leg again, enjoying the game.
Ahead to his right he could make out a faint radiance - the light from a candle, perhaps, seeping through the cracks of a shuttered window. He started towards it. The dog was still mauling his trousers. He had to drag it with him.
As he moved forward, the light grew more distinct. He started to run. He stumbled against a stone pillar which supported a large plant in a kerosene can. The plant toppled and crashed to the ground. He tripped and fell sprawling over it The dog moaned with fright. Then it was licking his cheek with a warm, rubbery tongue.
He jumped up again. The dog pranced and barked around him. As he started forward once more, it leaped up and caught at his sleeve with its teeth. It dangled there, squirming like a fish on a line. He shook it off. The light did come from a window. He could tell that now. Then there must be a door.
He ran straight into a wall. His fingers, groping over the rough surface, found a door frame. Moving down the panelling they reached a handle. He turned it. It was locked. He was shaking now as if he had a fever. Behind him, a thin night piping came from the covered birdcage. He shook at the door handle. The meagre wooden panels quivered.
‘Ellie.’
The dog shrilled a falsetto bark and hurled itself at the back of his knee. He crashed against the door with his shoulder. The lock snapped on the first try. The door sagged inwards.
He crossed the threshold. Inside, the air was stale with a heavy, sweetish stuffiness. A single candle in an empty bottle sent light and shadow quivering around a bare, poverty-stricken room. An iron cot stood against a side wall. Lying on it, with a serape thrown over her, was a girl.
Her face was turned to the wall. Her head was in shadow. She was merely a huddled, anonymous female body. But in the first instant of corroding relief he recognized his wife.
It was suddenly as if neither time nor space had separated them. He ran to the low bed. He dropped to his knees at her side.
‘Ellie.’
She did not stir. Until then he hadn’t wondered at her not moving when he broke down the door. Now dread invaded his vitals.
‘Ellie.’
He put his hand on her arm. Almost roughly he pulled her around on to her back. Her face moved slowly into the dim candlelight. The shock was like ice on the nape of his neck.
Her fair hair lay in limp disheveled tangles. Her face - the face which had almost faded from his memory and then sprang vividly back to be the only real face in the world for him - was almost unrecognizable. It was still beautiful. Nothing could destroy its beauty. But it was empty as an idiot’s face. The lips hung in a meaningless smirk. The eyes, blue and very wide open, looked up at him without any expression at all.
He knew she was not dead; he could see the slow rise and fall of her breasts. But this, because he didn’t understand it, was almost more horrible.
He said: ‘Ellie.’
Something pressed against his knee. The yellow dog had crept up to him. It was sitting on its haunches, its tongue lolling out, looking at Ellie with alert interest.
‘Ellie.’
She did move then. Her whole body changed its position like a child in a profound dream. He felt lost in a world where he didn’t belong.
Two little bubbles of saliva swelled on her lower lip and burst. She giggled.
‘Ellie.’
She giggled again, a low, chuckling giggle like a dirty message scribbled on a wall.
16
THE giggle unmanned him. Almost for the first time in his adult life he was completely without a plan. He put his hands on her arms and, half raising her from the bed, shook her violently. Some of the dazed blankness left her face. She gave a little grunt. Her eyes roamed and settled on his. For a moment they seemed to show a gleam of understanding. Then they dulled.
Out of the terrible confusion in his mind the thought came that she was insane. Once he had been taken through a mental hospital. He had seen inmates lying like that, stare-eyed, immobile, all their humanity swallowed up in a blind vegetable apathy. He stopped shaking her. Words tumbled out of him.
‘Ellie, baby, it’s me. It’s Mark. I’m here. I’m Mark. I’m here.’
Her head moved slightly. Her eyes were fixed on his again, and for the first time he noticed that the pupils were constricted almost to slits. A vague memory told him that the pupils dwindled under the influence of some sort of narcotic, a little of the horror was crowded out. She was under dope. That’s what they’d done to her. They’d brought her here to imprison her. With only Oscar’s fluttering women-folk as jailers they had doped her for safety’s sake.
He forgot his fear then. In its place came a murderous anger against Frankie and George.
The dog gave a sudden delighted yelp and started to drag at something. He looked down automatically. Ellie’s handbag, its mouth agape, lay on the floor by the bed. The dog had the strap in its teeth and was worrying it tentatively. He picked the handbag up, snapped it shut and looped it on his arm. He bent over his wife again, saying:
‘Ellie, Ellie.’
One of her arms started to move upwards. Her wedding ring and the dark sapphire which he had given her the day before their marriage gleamed in the flickering candlelight. The hand crawled with a gentle creeping of fingers around his neck. Her skin was warm and dry. She didn’t say anything. There was nothing to indicate that she had the faintest realization of who he was. But the trustful clinging of her arm touched him to the core.
He lifted her other hand up to his neck. Her fingers caught obediently to the collar of his topcoat. He pushed his arms under her and carried her off the bed. The grey and black serape slid on to the floor, revealing the fact that she was wearing a black suit which was shockingly creased and stained.
The dog whimpered, ran to the open door and paused, glancing back with cocked ears. He followed it into the patio. The darkness was portentously silent. He thought of the six Mexican women, hovering somewhere in the shadows.
The dog jumped around them, ran ahead and paused again. It thought it was going to be taken for a walk. It wasn’t headed towards the door through which he had entered the house. Maybe there was another exit. He followed the dog. It galloped forward. Soon he heard expectant whines and the sound of claws scratching on wood. He caught up. The dog was sniffing eagerly at what seemed to be a rough wooden gate in the wall. Mark released one hand from Ellie, fumbled, found a bolt, scraped it back and swung the door inwards on creaking hinges.
The dog bounded out. He followed into a deserted alley. The women had made no attempt to stop him. It was a strange, flat way to escape after so much effort had gone into finding Ellie.
Music bellowed from the fiesta in the square. You scream, I scream, We all scream for ice-cream. The dog loped away up the alley.
The dusty path through adobe walls sloped downwards to the left towards a main street where a single street light showed. A burro, with a length of corrugated iron tied to its back, was tethered to a scrawny oleander bush. A child’s pink balloon, escaped from the fiesta, floated over a wall, trailed its string across the corrugated iron and then, after a moment in which it seemed to knot itself to the donkey’s tail, was caught in a breeze and soared upwards.
Suddenly Mexico, which had never seemed completely real to him, had become a dream world. He lost all contact with it. He was carrying Ellie through a picture or through a fantasy in someone else’s mind.
Her cheek had come to rest against his. Her lips nuzzled against his ear.
‘Ellie, baby,’ he whispered.
‘Ellie, baby,’ she echoed in a small, thin voice.
‘It’s Mark, honey.’
‘It’s Mark, honey.’
His throat constricted. He wanted to hit something, to destroy something and that way to jar himself out of this feeling of unreality. He carried her down the alley to the street which was on the fringes of the square. Colorful crowds were streaming in both directions, but the throng was not as dense as it had been in the square itself. A few cars crawled at tortoise pace down the middle of the road. One of them was a taxi. As Mark’s gaze fell on it, it stopped and an enormous woman in black maneuvered herself out, entangled in a huge bunch of Easter lilies. That’s what he wanted, he thought vaguely. A taxi was what he wanted.
He braced himself to shove his way through the swarming bodies. But it was not necessary. Everyone, even a group of swirling feathered dancers, moved aside to make a path for them with grave, formal politeness. Once one of Ellie’s sandals knocked against a woman’s shoulder and fell off. A whole group of people stopped to retrieve it. One of them slipped it shyly on to Ellie’s foot again. An Indian wearing a great white straw hat, with two tiny boys clinging to his trousers, opened the taxi door. Mark lifted Ellie inside and climbed in after her. The Indian shut the door.
Mark took Ellie in his arms. She giggled again. Her hand, moving at random, found his. The little finger curled delicately around his thumb.
Slowly he became aware that the driver had twisted in his seat and was watching him from bright eyes.
‘¿Un medico? ¿El Senor quiere un medico?’
He paid attention with an effort.
‘¿Un medico?’ asked the driver again. Shyly he tried English. ‘You want a doctor, yes?’
An unknown Mexican doctor pawing Ellie, asking embarrassing questions, insisting perhaps on the police? No, he couldn’t face a doctor. Not now.
He shook his head. ‘A hotel,’ he said.
‘The Hotel Reforma? Is nice. Is a good hotel.’
‘No, not the Reforma. And not a hotel near the Reforma.’
‘Then the Hotel Mirador? Is close. Is good.’
‘Okay. The Mirador.’
After an interminable period of crawling and horn-honking, the taxi broke free of the fiesta crowd and plunged down a long, almost deserted street. Behind the anger and shock, part of Mark’s mind had started to function automatically. George had taken Ellie from the Hotel Granada and had imprisoned her under dope at Oscar’s house. Why? What was the pattern? Were George and Frankie playing some small-time kidnap racket for a ransom? Or did all this somehow still link up with Victor? If only he could find some sense, some thread, he might be able to steady himself. But the questions wobbled and scattered like an image on a television screen losing its focus.
Ellie’s finger was still clinging to his thumb. She leaned heavy and inert against his shoulder. He tried to take in the enormous fact that he had found her. She had been hedged around with mystery and danger, and yet against all odds he had found her. There should be a feeling of triumph.
But there wasn’t. Ellie had always been to him something vivid, animated, more full of life than any other person he had ever known. This speechless, senseless body hunched against him was almost repulsive to him. It was some nightmare travesty of his wife created by George and Frankie.
