Читать книгу Pink Magic - Margaret Lee Runbeck - Страница 5

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I have decided not to bother describing mere landscapes, like a guidebook. I leave these descriptions to others, and concentrate on the great invisible scenery of the heart. Besides, most of the time I have been so engrossed in what is happening that I have not noticed external things. I can easily bone up on that from some travel book just before I go home, so that my parents won’t be disappointed in my trip. Adults are often grossly materialistic about such things, I find.

But one piece of scenery I must comment on. That is the appearance of our party as a whole. Pretty sad, frankly. A few married couples, but obviously not Great Romances. Tame little arrangements, I should say, by which mediocre males exchanged the protection of their names for small creature services, such as mending, listening to dull anecdotes, encouragement before and after miniature combats with the outer world, housekeeping, and, of course, sex. There always seems something furtive and too good-humored about such marriages as these, which I have observed. If there is anything heroic and large about them, it is despair, frittering itself away in small tedium instead of making some great tragic protest, such as one finds in classic drama of the past.

Most of these married couples are also schoolteachers, since they seem the only people... except the emancipated rich... who are free to travel. The other lone females of the party... all with glasses either on or in handy pockets... all looked exactly alike to me. One of the most difficult problems that the young have to solve, in making the necessary adjustment to the rest of the world, is that old people all look exactly alike. This, of course, is because biology has lost interest in them completely, and wastes no effort in differentiating between them. Anonymity is their drab lot. George B. Shaw has said that love is the exciting fallacy that there is some great difference between one person and the rest of his sex. Middle-aged people illustrate this facetious point in a pathetic way. When love has passed, so has individuality, it seems to me.

At any rate, all of the twenty or thirty people in our party resembled each other. Six wore pants, but that seemed to make little difference. They all had pale, sagging faces propped up above the ears by their spectacle frames, while the bottom half of their faces seemed to be sliding into their necks. They all were noxiously cheerful, with a cowardly eagerness to please each other. Their figures were either economical and stingy-looking, as if they had been made as cheaply as possible out of gray odds and ends of anatomy, or they were bulgy and droopy. Both the thins and the fats, however, pushed varying degrees of paunches in front of them as they walked.

We were introduced to all of them by Candee, and when they came to my last name, their eyebrows all flew up in humorous mischievousness, and their weak little eyes asked a quick question of Candee, who always looked roguish and demure, muttering something like “Exactly,” or “That’s right,” as if I were too feeble-minded to realize they were thinking about Daddy’s book.

“Well! So this is Lambie Prowder,” they’d say with horrid heartiness, and I could practically see them galloping upstairs to their rooms and seizing a sheet of paper to write some waggish description home to one of their dull colleagues. No wonder poor Daddy has to have a quiet summer...

Horty and Corney were not unconscious of it, either.

“If you were the type, your name would give you quite a start ahead of the rest of us,” Horty said. “The mere mention of your name sort of brings up the subject.”

“But it’ll never do her any good,” Corney said conclusively.

I could see they were already discouraged about me; or even worse than that, they didn’t consider me eligible enough even to be discouraged about. For all practical purposes, I was as bad as an adult.

But they had their own decks all cleared for action, to borrow a nautical phrase.

Horty said to Candee, “Mother said she had told you about Mrs. Truesberger.”

“Mrs. Truesberger?” Candee looked puzzled.

“Yes. Her dear friend who lives down here, who’s going to have me out to her house,” Horty said glibly.

“Why, no, she didn’t mention it.”

“Oh, I’m sure you’ve just forgotten, darling,” Horty said winsomely. “You know... they went to Vassar together... class of nineteen ought thirty, or some such date?”

“I’m sure I’d have remembered if she had mentioned it,” Candee said bewilderedly.

“Well, no matter,” Horty said, sounding mature and sensible. “Of course she may forget to invite me after all. But my mother hopes...”

Afterwards Corney said, “What’s this Truesberger deal?”

“Just a plant. In case.”

“Good idea. I wish I’d thought of it.”

I let my stupidity show, by mistake. “You mean there isn’t any such person as Truesberger?”

They both imitated my voice. “No, there isn’t any such person, Lambie-burger... but there’s liable to be. In case we can turn up Anybody.”

“You mean a man?”

“We don’t mean a mouse, Sweetie-pet.”

The first two weeks of this whole experience, they were pretty insulting to me. That was one thing that made the final deal so heavenly. They always assumed ... and rightly... that I was a complete blank in all matters of importance. And what is even more annoying in people that I had terrific brains about everything that didn’t matter. I have never been sure which is my worst handicap, my ignorance or my brains. Anyway, Corney and Horty found them equally repulsive, and never let me forget it.

Until, in spite of themselves, they began liking me. And of course the only reason they really liked me was Kimball. Their feeling about me just bounced off of their feeling for him.

The first few days in Mexico City were plain H—— To begin with, I was financially embarrassed. The School had provided us with two meals a day, and we ourselves were supposed to buy our third meal. But by the time I had paid my taxi fare and tips from the railway station, and a few other such minor items, I was practically without funds.

I knew that Estrellita would come to our hotel as soon as she possibly could, but in the meantime I just had to pretend I wasn’t hungry. And for someone like me to pretend I am not hungry is to pretend I have died and been buried. But at least my hunger was a constant reminder of Estrellita, in the midst of people who didn’t understand her, and who made fun of my friendship with her whenever I happened to open my mouth about her.

“What on earth did that floozie see in Lambie?” they sometimes asked Candee in my very presence.

“Never mind,” Candee said fatuously, “Lambie is a very lovely child.”

At first, of course, I had tried to explain to them how much we had in common... how alike we were under all the surface differences, how noble she was, and something about her aristocratic background. But I saw I was merely casting pearls before oysters, or whatever the platitude is.

The School was being held in a most interesting old hotel, which was originally built as a palace, as everything old in Mexico seems to have been. It later became a nunnery, although it was a bit festive-looking for that. Inside was a huge patio, around which all the rooms were built. A brick gallery ran around the second floor, and a weary fountain muttered to itself in the center of the patio. Tables and umbrellas were placed around the patio for meals to be served on. In the mornings we did our painting here, attended by an instructor who came from the University. There were a few other guests in the hotel, but not really Anybody.

The very first night in the old hostel, something rather terrifying happened to me. Candee and we three girls occupied a little corner suite. There were two very high-ceilinged rooms connected by a huge bathroom with whimsical plumbing and a floor that slanted so that you had to climb a hill to get to the shower. When anybody took a shower, the stream ran nimbly across our bedroom floor to a puddle under my bed. We had long windows with a decrepit rusty balcony looking out onto the street and the Alameda. Candee slept on a day bed in what was supposed to be a sitting room, and we three slept interchangeably in a double bed and a single bed. At first, when nobody liked me, they made me sleep in the single bed, but later on, when Horty and Corney wanted to ask me about things, they sometimes even quarreled about who was to sleep in the double bed with me. Delirious situation!

Well, the first night we were in Mexico City, I was pretty tired (and hungry). Candee was supposed to go to the airport and meet a late-comer, and Horty and Corney decided to go with her, just to see if Anybody turned up.

“I think you’d better come, too, Lambie dear,” Candee said.

But I knew there’d be the matter of sharing the taxi fare, which would be embarrassing for me. And besides I wanted to read a copy of Guy de Maupassant in the original which I had found down in the lounge. The serious deficiency in Miss Winslow’s French Department is that its vocabulary omits so many vital words. Vital to de Maupassant, at any rate.

“No, I think I’ll brush up on my French,” I said.

“It’s not French we need here, Dope,” Horty said. “If you want to brush up on something, it’d better be Spanish.”

“In a pinch my French may help,” I said with dignity.

“Speaking of pinches... I got a nice one today,” Corney murmured dreamily.

“French is the language of diplomacy,” I reminded them stiffly.

“You’re not apt to meet any diplomats, Lumpie-dumpling, pinch or no pinches,” Horty said. But nevertheless I stayed behind.

“No matter who taps on the door, you’re not to answer,” Candee said. “And if the telephone rings...”

“My mother talked to me,” I said stiffly.

“I’ll bet she did,” Corney remarked, “but it was wishful thinking on her part, I’m afraid.”

“Now, girls,” Candee murmured, reprovingly, as she did in my defense a dozen times a day.

But my mother had talked to me, very seriously, and I knew all about the dangers of Mexico, where an entirely different standard of safety exists. My mother, who sometimes reverts to a sugary Victorianism which she must reach way back into her grandmother’s girlhood to find, had one of those twilight sessions with me which make everybody’s skin crawl with discomfort.

“Now, Ursula, before you start on this trip, I must speak frankly about something.”

“Yes, Mummy,” I said, feeling lace pantalettes sprouting under my skirts.

“You know you’re very precious to your father and me.”

“Of course, I’ll be very careful crossing streets,” I said glibly, hoping to throw her off the scent, if possible.

“No, darling. This is another kind of safety I’m thinking about.”

“I won’t eat any fresh fruits or uncooked vegetables,” I said imploringly, giving her a chance and hoping to heck she’d rescue herself while she could. “I’ve heard all about the dysentery problem down in Mexico.”

“That’s true, dear. But this is something else,” Mummy said doggedly. “You know, you have something which is much more precious than you could possibly realize, and you must take the greatest possible care of it. Once it is lost, a girl’s life is forever marred.”

Mummy’s face wasn’t looking at all like itself now. It was a nauseating picture of parenthood, in its most muggy phase. She went on gulping out ready-made euphemisms and figures of speech, until I thought I’d toss up my cookies. And I sat there gazing at her owlishly from behind my glasses, wondering just how low the human spirit could abase itself.

“You know what I’m talking about, don’t you, dear?” she said at the end of a prickling five minutes.

“No, Mother,” I said in a pant.

She looked as if she could slap me, but I continued to look as obnoxious and guileless as possible.

“Now you listen to me,” she said crossly, “I’m telling you that you’re not to speak to one single man.”

“No, ma’am,” I said, rejecting the quip about how-about-a-married-one?

“You’re not to be alone in a room with a man, or in a taxi. You’re not to go out on the street by yourself, even in the daytime.” Her face was very red and angry now, and I suddenly felt a fiendish desire to torture her.

“But, Mummy, why not?” I asked in a seven-year-old angel voice.

“Because I tell you not to,” she said, resorting to the most egregious violation of child psychology known to man or beast.

“But what would happen to me, Mummy dear?” I asked with breathless innocence.

“A man would get you,” Mummy said. “Some horrid man. And he’d... well, he might... Lambie, try to use your intelligence.”

“I am trying,” I said in a whimper.

“Latins have very strange standards. They assume that if a young girl is unchaperoned, that she is... that they can...” Mummy was distressing herself almost to the perspiration point. “I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you. If, through your stupid innocence, some man...”

“Stole the three hundred dollars you’ve given me to spend?” I said very loudly, looking her frankly in the eye.

“Exactly,” she said, looking back brutally. “Well, you get the point anyway.”

Of course I did. I was born knowing the point, naturally.

So after the girls and Candee had gone, I amused myself imagining what I’d do if some hot-breathed Latin did come to my door, and take a passkey out of his pocket, and... A few minutes of this imagining, combined with even the loose translation of de Maupassant (thanks to Miss Winslow’s prudery), finally had me really scared. I decided that even though I was pretty sleepy, I’d better stay awake until the others came back about midnight. And I certainly should leave on the lights. I wanted to shove the bolt on the inside of the door, but I was afraid to get out of bed. Finally, however, I made it, shaking in every limb. The bolt clanged with the sound of doom as it slid across the crack of the door. Then I ran and jumped back under the covers, shivering and shaking deliciously.

Finally I realized I had fallen asleep, for I was waking up. The room was blazing with light, and to my horror someone was rapping on my door. I cowered under the covers. The rapping came again. And at the same moment the telephone rang. I was afraid to answer it. The rapping continued, and someone rattled the door. Then in a moment came something even more frightening. A man’s voice, a very Latin voice, put its lips to the keyhole, and spoke to me through the door. He spoke in a husky whisper, filled with passion.

“Lemmie, open the door,” he said. “Lemmie, please open the door.” And under that, I heard him cursing in Spanish.

How had he discovered my name? My intelligence was acting with clear, incisive analysis. He must have intercepted some of my mail... he must have discovered who my father is... he must have read some of Mummy’s written caution and have deduced that I am a protected and beloved child. My heart was pounding so it shook the whole bed. Perhaps he was a kidnapper, looking for ransom...

“Lemmie, please.” He was continuing now, and speaking more loudly, throwing caution to the winds.

Now there seemed to be others around my door, and the rapping went on. Perhaps he had brought a gang with him, a kidnaping ring, working internationally.

“Lemmie...”

Then something horrid and vulgar happened. American, I’m sorry to say. A loud man’s voice called out from the next room.

“Hey, lady... let him, for Pete’s sake, so the rest of us can get some sleep.”

I burrowed down under the covers, pulling them up over my head, so that I need not listen to the terrible scene. After a few minutes, I came up to listen, and there was scuffling and noise, and then footsteps retreating down the stone stairs. Perhaps the police had finally come and apprehended him. At last I fell asleep.

In the morning when I finally waked up, I was alone in the room and the lights were still blazing. I got up cautiously and dressed, trying to decide whether or not I would tell the others about the terrible thing which had almost happened to me. They might think I was making it up; perhaps I had better just say nothing about it at all.

I brushed my teeth, and went down to breakfast, feeling pale and still somewhat shaken.

Horty and Corney and the great smear of anonymous fellow students over twenty-five were all gathered in the patio eating their breakfasts. They hailed me derisively when I came down the steps from the second floor.

“There she comes, the lug,” Horty said. “Fine roommate you are!”

Candee, looking rumpled and weary, was only slightly more pleasant. “Ursula, my dear, what a healthy sleeper you must be.”

“What d’you mean?”

“Why, we raised the dead last night, trying to get into our bedrooms. But we couldn’t wake you up. We had to manage without toothbrushes, or anything else. We had to sleep just anywhere...”

“And you, Sleeping Beauty, had bolted the door,” Corney said disgustedly. “We rang the telephone right beside your ear. The night clerk went up and tried to force the bolt. He called you and called you until the people in the other room got furious... You must sleep like a log!”

“I do,” I said with embarrassment. “My mother told me I’d never get into trouble, if I could just learn to sleep like a log.”