The October Country

'Oh, the mummies,' he said. 'Don't let that bother you.'

She sat on the bed, again and again stroking the towel laid across her lap. Her eyes were blind as the brown paps of her breasts. She did not see him or the room. She knew that if he snapped his fingers or coughed, she wouldn't even look up.

'They were eating fruit at her funeral, and laughing,' she said.

'It's a long climb to the cemetery.'

She shuddered, a convulsive motion, like a fish trying to free itself from a deep-swallowed hook. She lay back and he looked at her as one examines a poor sculpture; all criticism, all quiet and easy and uncaring. She wondered idly just how much his hands had had to do with the broadening and flattening and changement of her body. Certainly this was not the body he'd started with. It was past saving now. Like clay which the sculptor has carelessly impregnated with water, it was impossible to shape again. In order to shape clay you warm it with your hands, evaporate the moisture with heat. But there was no more of that fine summer weather between them. There was no warmth to bake away the aging moisture that collected and made pendant now her breasts and body. When the heat is gone, it is marvelous and unsettling to see how quickly a vessel stores self-destroying water in its cells.

'I don't feel well,' she said. She lay there, thinking it over. 'I don't feel well,' she said again, when he made no response. After another minute or two she lifted herself. 'Let's not stay here another night, Joe.'

'But it's a wonderful town.'

'Yes, but we've seen everything.' She got up. She knew what came next. Gayness, blitheness, encouragement, everything quite false and hopeful. 'We could go on to Patzcuaro. Make it in no time. You won't have to pack, I'll do it all myself, darling! We can get a room at the Don Posada there. They say it's a beautiful little town-'

'This,' he remarked, 'is a beautiful little town.'

'Bougainvillea climb all over the buildings-' she said.

'These-' he pointed to some flowers at the window '-are bougainvillea.'

'-and we'd fish, you like fishing,' she said in bright haste. 'And I'd fish, too, I'd learn, yes I would, I've always wanted to learn! And they say the Tarascan Indians there are almost Mongoloid in feature, and don't speak much Spanish, and from there we could go to ParacutIn, that's near Uruapán, and they have some of the finest lacquered boxes there, oh, it'll be fun, Joe. I'll pack. You just take it easy, and-'

'Marie.'

He stopped her with one word as she ran to the bathroom door.

'Yes?'

'I thought you said you didn't feel well?'

'I didn't. I don't. But, thinking of all those swell places-'

'We haven't seen one-tenth of this town,' he explained logically. 'There's that statue of Morelos on the hill, I want a shot of that, and some of that French architecture up the street… we've traveled three hundred miles and we've been here one day and now you want to rush off somewhere else. I've already paid the rent for another night…'

'You can get it back,' she said.

'Why do you want to run away?' he said, looking at her with an attentive simplicity. 'Don't you like the town?'

'I simply adore it,' she said, her cheeks white, smiling. 'It's so green and pretty.'

'Well, then,' he said. 'Another day. You'll love it. That's settled.' She started to speak. 'Yes?' he asked. 'Nothing.'

She closed the bathroom door. Behind it she rattled open a medicine box. Water rushed into a tumbler. She was taking something for her stomach. He came to the bathroom door. 'Marie, the mummies don't bother you, do they?'

'Unh-unh,' she said. 'Was it the funeral, then?'

'Unh.'

'Because, if you were really afraid, I'd pack in a moment, you know that, darling.' He waited.

'No, I'm not afraid,' she said. 'Good girl,' he said.

The graveyard was enclosed by a thick adobe wall, and at its four corners small stone angels tilted out on stony wings, their grimy heads capped with bird droppings, their hands gifted with amulets of the same substance, their faces unquestionably freckled.

In the warm smooth flow of sunlight which was like a depthless, tideless river, Joseph and Marie climbed up the hill, their shadows slanting blue behind them. Helping one another, they made the cemetery gate, swung back the Spanish blue iron grille and entered.

It was several mornings after the celebratory fiesta of El Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead, and ribbons and ravels of tissue and sparkle-tape still clung like insane hair to the raised stones, to the hand-carved, love-polished crucifixes, and to the above-ground tombs which resembled marble jewel-cases. There were statues frozen in angelic postures over gravel mounds, and intricately carved stones tall as men with angels spilling all down their rims, and tombs as big and ridiculous as beds put out to dry in the sun after some nocturnal accident. And within the four walls of the yard, inserted into square mouths and slots, were coffins, walled in, plated in by marble plates and plaster, upon which names were struck and upon which hung tin pictures, cheap peso portraits of the inserted dead. Thumb-tacked to the different pictures were trinkets they'd loved in life, silver charms, silver arms, legs, bodies, silver cups, silver dogs, silver church medallions, bits of red crape and blue ribbon. On some places were painted slats of tin showing the dead rising to heaven in oil-tinted angels' arms.

Looking at the graves again, they saw the remnants of the death fiesta. The little tablets of tallow splashed over the stones by the lighted festive candles, the wilted orchid blossoms lying like crushed red-purple tarantulas against the milky stones, some of them looking horridly sexual, limp and withered. There were loop-frames of cactus leaves, bamboo, reeds, and wild, dead morning-glories. There were circles of gardenias and sprigs of bougainvillea, desiccated. The entire floor of the yard seemed a ballroom after a wild dancing, from which the participants have fled; the tables askew, confetti, candles, ribbons and deep dreams left behind.

They stood, Marie and Joseph, in the warm silent yard, among the stones, between the walls. Far over in one corner a little man with high cheekbones, the milk color of the Spanish infiltration, thick glasses, a black coat, a gray hat and gray, unpressed pants and neatly laced shoes, moved about among the stones, supervising something or other that another man in overalls was doing to a grave with a shovel. The little man with glasses carried a thrice folded newspaper under his left arm and had his hands in his pockets.

'Buenos dias, señora y señor!' he said, when he finally noticed Joseph and Marie and came to see them.

'Is this the place of las mommias?' asked Joseph. 'They do exist, do they not?'

'Si, the mummies,' said the man. 'They exist and are here. In the catacombs.'

'Por favor,' said Joseph. 'Yo quiero veo las mommias, si? '

'Si, señor.'

'Me Español es mucho estupido, es muy malo,' apologized Joseph.

'No, no, señor. You speak well! This way, please.'

He led between the flowered stones to a tomb near the wall shadows. It was a large flat tomb, flush with the gravel, with a thin kindling door flat on it, padlocked. It was unlocked and the wooden door flung back rattling to one side. Revealed was a round hole the circled interior of which contained steps which screwed into the earth.

Before Joseph could move, his wife had set her foot on the first step. 'Here,' he said. 'Me first.'

'No. That's all right,' she said, and went down and around in a darkening spiral until the earth vanished her. She moved carefully, for the steps were hardly enough to contain a child's feet. It got dark and she heard the caretaker stepping after her, at her ears, and then it got light again. They stepped out into a long whitewashed hall twenty feet under the earth, dimly lit by a few small gothic windows high in the arched ceiling. The hall was fifty yards long, ending on the left in a double door in which were set tall crystal panes and a sign forbidding entrance. On the right end of the hall was a large stack of white rods and round white stones.