I did not know if I could make her comprehend my wordless explanation, but with another effort I brought the crystal up to my eye and looked at her through it for as long as I could hold it there. And then I could not have spoken, if I would. She was beautiful; more beautiful than I had once thought her, or since remembered her. Among the things I could not remember was her name.
That lightning-streak through her hair caught one’s eye, but it was unnecessary to a loveliness that caught at one’s heart. Her long eyelashes were like the wings of the tiniest black hummingbird. Her brows had the curve of a soaring sea gull’s outflung wings. Even her lips had a winglike lift to each corner: a sort of tiny tuck, which made her appear always to be treasuring a secret smile. When she did smile, though, there was no mistaking it, for she did so then, perhaps at the wondering expression on my own face. The tucks deepened into winning dimples, and the radiance of her face was far more bright than my gold. If the hut had been full of the unhappiest of people—grieving mourners or somber-souled priests—they would have been compelled by her smile to smile in spite of themselves.
The topaz dropped from my feeble hand, and my hand dropped to my side, and I dropped not into another stupor but a healing sleep, and she told me later that I slept with a smile on my face.
I was eminently glad I had come back to Tecuantépec, and had made the acquaintance of that girl—or had made her acquaintance again—but I wished that I could have come in health and strength and in the full panoply of a successful young merchant. Instead, I was bedridden and sapless and flaccid, not very appealing to look at, covered as I was with the scabs of my numerous cuts and scratches. I was still too weak to feed myself or take my own medicines, except from her hand. And, if I was not to smell bad besides, I had to submit even to her washing me all over.
“This is not fitting,” I protested. “A maiden should not be washing the naked body of a grown man.”
She said calmly, “We have seen you naked before. And you must have come naked across half the extent of the isthmus. Anyway”—her smile became teasing—“even a maiden can admire the long body of a handsome young man.”
I think I must have blushed the entire length of my long body, but at least my weakness spared me the mortification of having one part of that body obtrusively respond to her touch, and perhaps send her fleeing from me.
Not since the impractical dreams Tzitzitlíni and I had shared, when we were very young, had I contemplated the advantages of marriage. But it did not require much contemplation for me to decide that I would probably nowhere or never again find such a desirable bride as that girl of Tecuantépec. My head injury was still some way from full recovery; both my thinking and my memory were erratic; but I retained one recollection of the Tzapotéca traditions—that the Cloud People had little reason and less desire to marry outside the Cloud People, and that any of them who did was forever an outcast.
Nevertheless, when the doctor finally gave me leave to talk as much as I liked, I tried to speak words that would make myself attractive to the girl. Though I was only a despised Mexícatl, and at the moment a laughably poor specimen even of that breed, I exerted all the charm of which I was capable. I thanked her for her goodness to me, and complimented her on having a kindliness that equaled her loveliness, and spoke many other cajoling and persuasive words. But among my more flowery speeches, I managed to mention the considerable estate I had already amassed at a yet young age, and dwelt on my plans for enlarging it further, and made it clear that any girl who did wed me would never be in want. Though I refrained from ever blurting out a direct proposal, I did make allusive remarks like:
“I am surprised that such a beautiful girl as yourself is not married.”
She would smile and say something like: “No man yet has captivated me enough to make me surrender my independence.”
Another time I would say, “But certainly you are courted by many suitors.”
“Oh, yes. Unfortunately, the young men of Uaxyácac have few prospects to offer. I think they yearn more to own a share of the inn than to own all of me.”
On another occasion I would say, “You must meet many eligible men among the constant traffic of guests at your hostel.”
“Well, they tell me they are eligible. But you know that most pochtéca are older men, too old for me, and outlanders besides. Anyway, however ardently they may pay court, I always suspect that they already have a wife at home, probably other wives at the end of every trade route they travel.”
I was emboldened to say, “I am not old. I have no wife anywhere. If ever I take one, she will be the only one, and for all my life long.”
She gave me a long look, and after some silence said, “Perhaps you should have married Gié Bele. My mother.”
I repeat: my mind was not yet what it should have been. Until that moment, I had either somehow confused the girl with her mother, or had totally forgotten the mother. I had certainly forgotten having coupled with her mother, and—ayya, the shame!—in the girl’s own presence. Given the circumstances, she must have thought me the most salacious of lechers, to be suddenly courting her, the daughter of that woman.
I could only mumble, in horrendous embarrassment, “Gié Bele … but I remember … old enough to be my own mother….”
At which the girl gave me another long look, and I said no more, and I pretended to fall asleep.
I reiterate, my lord scribes, that my mind had been woefully affected by my injury, and that it was excruciatingly slow to regather its wits. That is the only possible excuse for the blundering remarks I uttered. The worst blunder, the one with the saddest and longest-lasting consequences, I made when one morning I said to the girl:
“I have been wondering how you do it, and why.”
“How I do what?” she asked, smiling that blithe smile.
“On some days your hair has a remarkable white streak through its whole length. On others—like today—it has not.”
Involuntarily, in the feminine gesture of surprise, she passed a hand across her face, where for the first time I saw dismay. For the first time those uptilted winglike corners of her mouth drooped downward. She stood still, looking down at me. I am sure my face showed only bewilderment. What emotion she was feeling, I could not tell, but when she finally did speak there was a slight tremor in her voice.
“I am Béu Ribé,” she said, and paused as if waiting for me to make some comment. “In your language, that is Waiting Moon.” She paused again, and I said truthfully:
“It is a lovely name. It suits you to perfection.”
Evidently she had hoped to hear something else. She said, “Thank you,” but she sounded half angry, half hurt. “It is my younger sister, Zyanya, who bears the white strand in her hair.”
I was struck speechless. Again, it was not until that moment that another memory came back to me: there had been not one but two daughters. During my time away, the younger and smaller had grown to be almost the identical twin of the elder. Or they would have been nearly identical but for the younger girl’s distinctive lock of hair, the mark—I remembered that, too—of her having been stung by a scorpion when she was an infant.
I had stupidly not realized that there were two equally beautiful girls attending me alternately. I had fallen passionately in love with what, in my mind’s confusion, I took to be one irresistible maiden. And I had been able to do that only because I had boorishly forgotten that I was once at least a little in love with her mother—their mother. Had I stayed longer in Tecuantépec on my first visit, that intimacy could well have culminated in my becoming the girls’ stepfather. Most appalling of all, during the days of my slow convalescence, I had indiscriminately, simultaneously, with impartial ardor, been yearning for and paying court to both of what might have been my stepdaughters.
I wished I were dead. I wished I had died in the barrens of the isthmus. I wished I had never awakened from the stupor in which I had lain for so long. But I could only avoid the girl’s eyes and say nothing
more. Béu Ribé did the same. She tended my needs as deftly and tenderly as always, but with her face averted from mine, and when there was nothing further to do for me, she departed without ceremony. On her subsequent visits that day, bringing food or medicine, she remained silent and aloof.
The next day was the streak-haired younger sister’s turn, and I greeted her with “Good morning, Zyanya,” and I made no reference to my indiscretion of the day before, for I wistfully hoped to give the impression that I had only been playing a game, that I had all along known the difference between the two girls. But of course she and Béu Ribé must have thoroughly discussed the situation and, for all my hopefully bright banter, I fooled her no more than you would expect. She threw me sidelong glances while I babbled, though her expression seemed more amused than angry or hurt. Maybe it was only the look which both the girls ordinarily wore: that of treasuring a secret smile.
But I regret to report that I was not yet done with making blunders, or of being desolated by new revelations. At one point I asked, “Does your mother tend the inn all the time you girls are taking care of me? I should have thought Gié Bele could spare a moment to look in on—”
“Our mother is dead,” she interrupted, her face going momentarily bleak.
“What?” I exclaimed. “When? How?”
“More than a year ago. In this very hut, for she could not well pass her confinement at the hostel among the guests.”
“Confinement?”
“While she waited for the baby’s arrival.”
I said weakly, “She had a baby?”
Zyanya regarded me with some concern. “The physician said you are not to trouble your mind. I will tell you everything when you are stronger.”
“May the gods damn me to Míctlan!” I erupted, with more vigor than I would have thought I could summon. “It must be my baby, must it not?”
“Well …” she said, and drew a deep breath. “You were the only man with whom she had lain since our father died. I am sure she knew how to take the proper precautions. Because, when I was born, she suffered extremely, and the doctor warned her that I must be the last child. Hence my name. But so many years had passed … she must have believed she was past the age of conceiving. Anyway”—Zyanya twisted her fingers together—“yes, she was pregnant by a Mexícatl outlander, and you know the Cloud People’s feeling about such relations. She would not ask to be attended by a physician or midwife of the Ben Záa.”
“She died of neglect?” I demanded. “Because your stiff-necked people refused to assist—?”
“They might have refused, I do not know, but she did not ask. A young Mexícatl traveler had been staying at the inn for a month or more. He was solicitous of her condition, and he won her confidence, and finally she told him all the circumstances, and he sympathized as wholeheartedly as any woman could have done. He said he had studied at a calmécac school, and that there had been a class in the rudimentary arts of doctoring. So when her time came, he was here to help.”
“What help, if she died?” I said, silently cursing the meddler.
Zyanya shrugged in resignation. “She had been warned of the danger. It was a long labor and a difficult birth. There was a great deal of blood and, while the man tried to stanch the bleeding, the baby strangled in its navel string.”
“Both dead?” I cried.
“I am sorry. You insisted on knowing. I hope I have not given you cause for a relapse.”
I swore again, “To Míctlan with me! The child … what was it?”
“A boy. She planned—if they had lived—she said she would name him Záa Nayàzú, after you. But of course there was no naming ceremony.”
“A boy. My son,” I said, gritting my teeth.
“Please try to be calm, Záa,” she said, addressing me for the first time with warm familiarity. She added, compassionately, “There is no one to blame. I doubt that any of our doctors could have done better than the kindly stranger. As I say, there was much blood. We cleaned the hut, but some traces were indelible. See?”
She swung aside the doorway’s cloth curtain to admit a shaft of light. It showed, on the wooden doorpost, the ingrained stain where a man had slapped it to leave his signature of a bloody hand.
I did not suffer a relapse. I continued to mend, my brain gradually clearing of its cobwebs and my body regaining its weight and strength. Béu Ribé and Zyanya continued to wait upon me alternately, and of course I was careful nevermore to say anything to either of them that could be construed as paying court. Indeed, I marveled at their tolerance in having taken me in at all, and in lavishing so much care upon me, considering that I had been the primary cause of their mother’s untimely death. As for my entertaining any hope of winning and wedding either girl—although I sincerely and perversely still loved them equally—that had become unthinkable. The possibility of their ever having been my stepdaughters was a matter of mere speculation. But that I had sired their short-lived half brother was an unalterable fact.
The day came when I felt well enough to be on my way. The physician examined me and pronounced my pupils again normal in size. But he insisted that I give my eyes some time to get used to full daylight again, and that I do so by going outdoors only a little longer each day. Béu Ribé suggested that I would be more comfortable if I passed that time of adjustment at the inn, since there happened to be a room empty there right then. So I acceded, and Zyanya brought me some of her late father’s clothes. For the first time in I do not know how many days, I again donned a loincloth and mantle. The sandals provided were far too small for me, so I gave Zyanya a tiny pinch of my gold dust and she ran to the market to procure a pair of my size. And then, with faltering steps—I was really not so strong as I had thought—I left that haunted hut for the last time.
It was not hard to see why the inn had become a favored stopping place for pochtéca and other travelers. Any man with good sense and good eyesight would have pleasured in putting up there, simply for the privilege of being near the beautiful, almost twin hostesses. But the hostel also provided clean and comfortable accommodations, and meals of good quality, and a staff of attentive and courteous servants. Those improvements the girls had made deliberately; but they had also, without conscious calculation, permeated the air of the whole establishment with their own smiling good spirits. With servants enough to do the scullery and drudgery work, the girls had only supervisory duties, so they dressed always in their best and, to enhance their twin-beauty impact on the eye, always in matching colors. Though at first I resented the way the inn’s guests leered at and jested with the innkeepers, I later was grateful that they were so occupied with flirtation that they did not—as I did—one day notice something even more striking about the girls’ garb.
“Where did you get those blouses?” I asked the sisters, out of the hearing of the other tradesmen and travelers.
“In the market,” said Béu Ribé. “But they were plain white when we bought them. We did the decoration ourselves.”
The decoration consisted of a pattern bordering the blouses’ bottom hems and square-cut necklines. It was what we called the pottery pattern—what I have heard some of your Spanish architects, with a seeming amazement of recognition, call the Greek fret pattern, though I do not know what a Greek fret is. And that decoration was done not in embroidery thread, but in painted-on color, and the color was a rich, deep, vibrant purple.
I asked, “Where did you get the color to do it with?”
“Ah, that,” said Zyanya. “It is nice, is it not? Among our mother’s effects we found a small leather flask of a dye of this color. It was given to her by our father, shortly before he disappeared. There was only enough of the dye to do these two blouses, and we could think of no other use for it.” She hesitated, looked slightly chagrined, and said, “Do you think we did wrong, Záa, in appropriating it for a frivolity?”
I said, “By no means. All things beautiful should be reserved only to persons of beauty. But tell me, have you yet washed tho
se blouses?”
The girls looked puzzled. “Why, yes, several times.”
“The color does not run, then. And it does not fade.”
“No, it is a very good dye,” said Béu Ribé, and then she told me what I had been delicately prying to find out. “It is why we lost our father. He went to the place which is the source of this color, to buy a great quantity of it, and make a fortune from it, and he never came back.”
I said, “That was some years ago. Would you have been too young to remember? Did your father mention where he was going?”
“To the southwest, along the coast,” she said, frowning in concentration. “He spoke of the wilderness of great rocks, where the ocean crashes and thunders.”
“Where there lives a hermit tribe called The Strangers,” added Zyanya. “Oh, he also said—do you remember, Béu?—he promised to bring us polished snail shells and to make necklaces for us.”
I asked, “Could you lead me near to where you think he went?”
“Anyone could,” said the older sister, gesturing vaguely westward. “The only rocky coastline in these parts is yonder.”
“But the exact place of the purple must be a well-kept secret. No one else has found it since your father went looking. You might remember, as we went along, other hints he let drop.”
“That is possible,” said the younger sister. “But Záa, we have the hostel to manage.”
“For a long time, while you were tending me, you alternated as innkeepers. Surely one of you can take a holiday.” They exchanged a glance of uncertainty, and I persisted, “You will be following your father’s dream. And he was no fool. There is a fortune to be made from the purple dye.” I reached out to a potted plant nearby and plucked two twigs, one short, one long, and held them in my fist so that equal lengths protruded. “Here, choose. The one who picks the short twig earns herself a holiday, and earns a fortune we will all three share.”
The girls hesitated only briefly, then raised their hands and picked. That was some forty years ago, my lords, and to this day I could not tell you which of the three of us won or lost in the choosing. I can only tell you that Zyanya got the shorter twig. Such a trivially tiny pivot it was, but all our lives turned on it in that instant.