Bradbury, Ray - SSC 09 (5 page)

 
          
It
was several mornings after the celebratory fiesta of El
Dia
de
Muerte
, 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
jewelcases
. 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 the 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,
impressed 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
diaz
, senora y senor!
” 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.”

 
          
“
For favor,”
said Joseph.
“
Yo
quiero
veo
las
mommias
,
si
?”

 
          
“
Si
, senor.”

 
          
“
Me
Espanol
es
mucho
estupido
,
es
muy
malo
,
”
apologized Joseph.

 
          
“No,
no,
senor
. 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 with 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.

 
          
“The
soldiers who fought for Father
Morelos
,” said the
caretaker.

 
          
They
walked to the vast pile. They were neatly put in
place,
bone on bone, like firewood, and on top was a mound of a thousand dry skulls.

 
          
“I
don’t mind skulls and bones,” said Marie. “There’s nothing even vaguely human
to them. I’m not scared of skulls and bones. They’re like something
insectile
. If a child was raised and didn’t know he had a
skeleton in him, he wouldn’t think anything of bones, would he? That’s how it
is with me. Everything human has been scraped off
these.
There’s nothing familiar left to be horrible. In order for a
thing to be horrible it has to suffer a change you can recognize. This isn’t
changed. They’re still skeletons, like they always were. The part that changed
is gone, and so there’s nothing to show for it. Isn’t that interesting?”

 
          
Joseph
nodded.

 
          
She
was quite brave now.

 
          
“Well,”
she said, “let’s see the mummies.”

 
          
“Here,
senora,
” said the caretaker.

 
          
He
took them far down the hall away from the stack of bones and when Joseph paid
him a peso he unlocked the forbidden crystal doors and opened them wide and
they looked into an even longer, dimly lighted hall in which stood the people.

 
          
They
waited inside the door in a long line under the
archroofed
ceiling, fifty-five of them against one wall, on the left, fifty-five of them
against the right wall, and five of them way down at the very end.

 
          
“Mister
Interlocutor!” said Joseph, briskly.

 
          
They
resembled nothing more than those preliminary erections of a sculptor, the wire
frame, the first tendons of clay, the muscles, and a thin lacquer of skin. They
were unfinished, all one hundred and fifteen of them.

 
          
They
were parchment-colored and the skin was stretched as if to dry, from bone to
bone. The bodies were intact, only the watery humors had evaporated from them.

 
          
“The
climate,” said the caretaker. “It preserves them.
Very dry.”

 
          
“How
long have they been here?” asked
Joseph.

 
          
“Some one year, some five,
senor
,
some ten, some seventy.”

 
          
There
was an embarrassment of horror. You started with the first man on your right,
hooked and wired upright against the wall, and he was not good to look upon,
and you went on to the woman next to him who was unbelievable and then to a man
who was horrendous and then to a woman who was very sorry she was dead and in
such a place as this.

 
          
“What
are they doing here?” said Joseph.

 
          
“Their
relatives did not pay the rent upon their graves.”

 
          
“Is
there a rent?”

 
          
“
Si
,
senor.
Twenty pesos a year.
Or, if they
desire the permanent interment, one hundred seventy pesos.
But our
people, they are very poor, as you must know, and one hundred seventy pesos is
as much as many of them make in two years. So they carry their dead here and
place them into the earth for one year, and the twenty pesos are paid, with
fine intentions of paying each year and each year, but each year and each year
after the first year they have a burro to buy or a new mouth to feed, or maybe
three new mouths, and the dead, after all, are not hungry, and the dead, after
all, can pull no ploughs; or there is a new wife or there is a roof in need of
mending, and the dead, remember, can be in no beds with a man, and the dead,
you understand, can keep no rain off one, and so it is that the dead are not
paid up upon their rent.”

 
          
“
Then
what happens? Are you listening,
Marie?” said Joseph.

 
          
Marie
counted the bodies. One, two three, four, five, six, seven, eight, “What?” she
said, quietly.

 
          
“Are
you listening?”

 
          
“I
think so. What? Oh, yes! I’m listening.”

 
          
Eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen.

 
          
“Well,
then,” said the little man. “I call a
trabajando
and with his delicate shovel at the end of the
first year he does dig and dig and dig down. How deep do you think we dig,
senor?
”

 
          
“Six feet.
That’s the usual depth.”

 
          
“Ah, no, ah, no.
There, senor, you would be wrong. Knowing
that after the first year the rent is liable not to be paid, we bury the
poorest two feet down. It is less work, you understand?
of
course, we must judge by the family who owns a body. Some of them we bury
sometimes three, sometimes four feet deep, sometimes five,
sometimes
six, depending on how rich the family is, depending on what the chances are we
won’t have to dig him from out his place a year later. And, let me tell you,
senor,
when we bury a man the whole six
feet deep we are very certain of his staying. We have never dug up a
six-foot-buried one yet, that is the accuracy with which we know the money of
the people.”

 
          
Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three.
Marie’s lips moved
with a small whisper.

 
          
’And
the bodies which are dug up are placed down here against the wall, with the
other
compañeros
.
”

 
          
“Do
the relatives know the bodies are here?”

 
          
“
Si
.
”
The small man pointed.
“This one,
yo
veo
?”
It is new. It has been here but one year. His
madre
y
padre
know
him to be here. But have they money?
Ah, no.”

 
          
“Isn’t
that rather gruesome for his parents?”

 
          
The
little man was earnest. “They never think of it,” he said.

 
          
“Did
you hear that, Marie?”

 
          
“What?”
Thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four.
“Yes. They never think of it.”

 
          
“What
if the rent is paid again, after a lapse?” inquired Joseph.

 
          
“In
that time,” said the caretaker, “the bodies are reburied for as many years as
are paid.”

 
          
“Sounds
like blackmail,” said Joseph.

 
          
The
little man shrugged, hands in pockets. “We must live.”

 
          
“You
are certain no one can pay the one hundred seventy pesos all at once,” said
Joseph. “So in this way you get them for twenty pesos a year, year after year,
for maybe thirty years. If they don’t pay, you threaten to stand
mama-
cita
or
little
nino
in the catacomb.”