stupefied nostril. And this ragged eaten cincture in his navel into which a pudding might be spooned. Ninety-seven, ninety-eight! Names, places, dates, things!
'This woman died in childbirth!'
Like a little hungry doll, the prematurely born child was wired, dangling, to her wrist.
'This was a soldier. His uniform still half on him--'
Marie's eyes slammed the furthest wall after a back-forth, back-forth swinging from horror to horror, from skull to skull, beating from rib to rib, staring with hypnotic fascination at paralyzed, loveless, fleshless loins, at men made into women by evaporation, at women made into dugged swine. The fearful ricochet of vision, growing, growing, taking impetus from swollen breast to raving mouth, wall to wall, wall to wall, again, again, like a ball hurled in a game, caught in the incredible teeth, spat in a scream across the corridor to be caught in claws, lodged between thin teats, the whole standing chorus invisibly chanting the game on, on, the wild game of sight recoiling, rebounding, reshuttling on down the inconceivable procession, through a montage of erected horrors that ended finally and for all time when vision crashed against the corridor ending with one last scream from all present!
Marie turned and shot her vision far down to where the spiral steps walked up into sunlight. How talented was death. How many expressions and manipulations of hand, face, body, no two alike. They stood like the naked pipes of a vast derelict calliope, their mouths cut into frantic vents. And now the great hand of mania descended upon all keys at once, and the long calliope screamed upon one hundred-throated, unending scream.
Click went the camera and Joseph rolled the film. Click went the camera and Joseph rolled the film.
Moreno, Morelos, Cantine, Gomez, Gutierrez, Villanousul, Ureta, Licon, Navarro, Iturbi; Jorge, Filomena, Nena, Manuel, Jose, Tomas, Ramona. This man walked and this man sang and this man had three wives; and this man died of this, and that of that, and the third from another thing, and the fourth was shot, and the fifth was stabbed and the sixth fell straight down dead; and the seventh drank deep and died dead, and the eighth died in love, and the ninth fell from his horse, and the tenth coughed blood, and the eleventh stopped his heart, and the twelfth used to laugh much, and the thirteenth was a dancing one, and the fourteenth was most beautiful of all, the fifteenth had ten children and the sixteenth is one of those children as is the seventeenth; and the eighteenth was Tomas and did well with his guitar; the next three cut maize in their fields, had three lovers each; the twenty-second was never loved; the twenty-third sold tortillas, patting and shaping them each at the curb before the Opera House with her little charcoal stove; and the twenty-fourth beat his wife and now she walks proudly in the town and is merry with new men and here he stands bewildered by this unfair thing, and the twenty-fifth drank several quarts of river with his lungs and was pulled forth in a net, and the twenty-sixth was a great thinker and his brain now sleeps like a burnt plum in his skull.
'I'd like a color shot of each, and his or her name and how he or she died,' said Joseph. 'It would be an amazing, an ironical book to publish. The more you think, the more it grows on you. Their life histories and then a picture of each of them standing here.'
He tapped each chest, softly. They gave off hollow sounds, like someone rapping on a door.
Marie pushed her way through screams that hung net-wise across her path. She walked evenly, in the corridor center, not slow, but not too fast, toward the spiral stair, not looking to either side. Click went the camera behind her.
'You have room down here for more?' said Joseph.
'Si, senor. Many more.'
'Wouldn't want to be next in line, next on your waiting list.'
'Ah, no, senor, one would not wish to be next.'
'How are chances of buying one of these?'
'Oh, no, no, senor. Oh, no, no. Oh no, senor.'
'I'll pay you fifty pesos.'
'Oh, no, senor, no, no, senor.'
In the market, the remainder of candy skulls from the Death Fiesta were sold from flimsy little tables. Women hung with black rebozos sat quietly, now and then speaking one word to each other, the sweet sugar skeletons, the saccharine corpses and white candy skulls at their elbows. Each skull had a name on top in gold candy curlicue; Jose or Carmen or Ramon or Tena or Guiermo or Rosa. They sold cheap. The Death Festival was gone. Joseph paid a peso and got two candy skulls.
Marie stood in the narrow street. She saw the candy skulls and Joseph and the dark ladies who put the skulls in a bag.
'Not really,' said Marie.
'Why not?' said Joseph.
'Not after just now,' she said.
'In the catacombs?'
She nodded.
He said, 'But these are good.'
'They look poisonous.'
'Just because they're skull-shaped?'
'No. The sugar itself looks raw, how do you know what kind of people made them, they might have the colic.'
'My dear Marie, all people in Mexico have colic,' he said.
'You can eat them both,' she said.
'Alas, poor Yorick,' he said, peeking into the bag.
They walked along a street that was held between high buildings in which were yellow window frames and pink iron grilles and the smell of tamales came from them and the sound of lost fountains splashing on hidden tiles and little birds clustering and peeping in bamboo cages and someone playing Chopin on a piano.
'Chopin, here,' said Joseph. 'How strange and swell.' He looked up. 'I like that bridge. Hold this.' He handed her the candy bag while he clicked a picture of a red bridge spanning two white buildings with a man walking on it, a red serape on his shoulder. 'Fine,' said Joseph.
Marie walked looking at Joseph, looking away from him and then back at him, her lips moving but not speaking, her eyes fluttering, a little neck muscle under her chin like a wire, a little nerve in her brow ticking. She passed the candy bag from one hand to the other. She stepped up a curb, leaned back somehow, gestured, said something to restore balance, and dropped the bag.
'For Christ's sake.' Joseph snatched up the bag. 'Look what you've done! Clumsy!'
'I should have broken my ankle,' she said, 'I sup-pose.'
'These were the best skulls; both of them smashed; I wanted to save them for friends up home.'
'I'm sorry,' she said, vaguely.
'For God's sake, oh, damn it to hell.' He scowled into the bag. 'I might not find any more good as these. Oh, I don't know, I give up!'
The wind blew and they were alone in the street, he staring down into the shattered debris in the bag, she with the street shadows all around her, sun on the other side of the street, nobody about, and the world far away, the two of them alone, two thousand miles from anywhere, on a street in a false town behind which was nothing and around which was nothing but blank desert and circled hawks. On top the State Opera House, a block down, the golden Greek statues stood sun-bright and high, and in a beer place a shouting phonograph cried AY, MARIMBA … corazon … and all kinds of alien words which the wind stirred away.
Joseph twisted the bag shut, stuck it furiously in his pocket.
They walked back to the two-thirty lunch at the hotel.
He sat at the table with Marie, sipping Albondigas soup from his moving spoon, silently. Twice she commented cheerfully upon the wall murals and he looked at her steadily and sipped. The bag of cracked skulls lay on the table….
'Senora …'
The soup plates were cleared by a brown hand. A large plate of enchiladas was set down.
Marie looked at the plate.
There were sixteen enchiladas.
She put her fork and knife out to take one and stopped. She put her fork and knife down at each side of her
