Bradbury, Ray - SSC 09 (8 page)

 
          
“You’ve
flooded it,” he said.
“Fine!
Get back over on your
side, will you?”

 
          
He
got three boys to push and they started the car down-hill. He jumped in to
steer. The car rolled swiftly, bumping and rattling. Marie’s face glowed
expectantly. “This’ll start it!” she said.

 
          
Nothing
started. They rolled quietly into the filling station at the bottom of the
hill, bumping softly on the cobbles, and stopped by the tanks.

 
          
She
sat there, saying nothing, and when the attendant came from the station her
door was locked, the window up, and he had to come around on the husband’s side
to make his query.

 
          
The
mechanic arose from the car engine, scowled at Joseph and they spoke together
in Spanish, quietly.

 
          
She
rolled the window down and listened.

 
          
“What’s
he say?” she demanded.

 
          
The
two men talked on.

 
          
“What
does he say?” she asked.

 
          
The
dark mechanic waved at the engine. Joseph nodded and they conversed.

 
          
“What’s
wrong?” Marie wanted to know.

 
          
Joseph
frowned over at her. “Wait a moment, will you? I can’t listen to both of you.”

 
          
The
mechanic took Joseph’s elbow. They said many words.

 
          
“What’s
he saying now?” she asked.

 
          
“He
says—” said Joseph, and was lost as the Mexican took him over to the engine and
bent him down in earnest discovery.

 
          
“How
much will it cost?” she cried, out the window, around at their bent backs.

 
          
The
mechanic spoke to Joseph.

 
          
“Fifty
pesos,” said Joseph.

 
          
“How
long will it take?” cried his wife.

 
          
Joseph
asked the mechanic. The man shrugged and they argued for five minutes.

 
          
“How
long will it take?” said Marie.

 
          
The
discussion continued.

 
          
The
sun went down the sky. She looked at the sun upon the trees that stood high by
the cemetery yard. The shadows rose and rose until the valley was enclosed and
only the sky was clear and untouched and blue.

 
          
“Two
days, maybe three,” said Joseph, turning to Marie.

 
          
“Two
days! Can’t he fix it so we can just go on to the next town and have the rest
done there?”

 
          
Joseph
asked the man. The man replied.

 
          
Joseph
said to his wife, “No, he’ll have to do the entire job.”

 
          
“Why,
that’s silly, it’s so silly, he doesn’t either, he doesn’t really have to do it
all, you tell him that, Joe, tell him that, he can hurry and fix it—”

 
          
The
two men ignored her. They were talking earnestly again.

 
          
This
time it was all in very slow motion.
The unpacking of the
suitcases.
He did his
own,
she left hers by the
door.

 
          
“I
don’t need anything,” she said, leaving it locked.

 
          
“You’ll
need your nightgown,” he said.

 
          
“I’ll
sleep naked,” she said.

 
          
“Well,
it isn’t my fault,” he said. “That damned car.”

 
          
“You
can go down and watch them work on it, later,” she said. She sat on the edge of
the bed. They were in a new room. She had refused to return to their old room.
She said she couldn’t stand it. She wanted a new room so it would seem they
were in a new hotel in a
new city
. So this was a new room, with a view of the alley and the sewer system
instead of the plaza and the drum-box trees. “You go down and supervise the
work, Joe. If you don’t, you know they’ll take weeks!” She looked at him. “You
should be down there now, instead of standing around.”

 
          
“I’ll
go down,” he said.

 
          
“I’ll
go down with you. I want to buy some magazines.”

 
          
“You
won’t find any American magazines in a town like this.”

 
          
“I
can look, can’t I?”

 
          
“Besides,
we haven’t much money,” he said. “I don’t want to have to wire my bank. It
takes a god-awful time and it’s not worth the bother.”

 
          
“I
can at least have my magazines,” she said.

 
          
“Maybe
one or two,” he said.

 
          
“As
many as I want,” she said, feverishly, on the bed.

 
          
“For
God’s sake, you’ve got a million magazines in the car now,
Posts, Collier’s, Mercury, Atlantic
Monthlys
,
Barnaby,
Superman
!
You haven’t read half of the
articles.”

 
          
“But
they’re not new,” she said. “They’re not new, I’ve
looked
at them and after you’ve looked at a thing, I don’t know—”

 
          
“Try
reading them instead of looking at them,” he said.

 
          
As
they came downstairs night was in the plaza.

 
          
“Give
me a few pesos,” she said, and he gave her some. “Teach me to say about
magazines in Spanish,” she said.

 
          
“
Quiero
una
publicacion
Americano,”
he said, walking swiftly.

 
          
She
repeated it, stumblingly, and laughed. “Thanks.”

 
          
He
went on ahead to the mechanic’s shop, and she turned in at the nearest
Farmacia
Botica
,
and
all the magazines racked before her there were alien colors and alien names.
She read the titles with swift moves of her eyes and looked at the old man
behind the counter. “Do you have American magazine?” she asked in English,
embarrassed to use the Spanish words.

 
          
The
old man stared at her.

 
          
“
Habla
Ingles?”
she asked.

 
          
“No,
senorita.
”

 
          
She
tried to think of the right words.
“
Quiero
—
no!”
She stopped. She started again.
“Americano—uh—
maggah-zeenas
?”

 
          
“Oh, no,
senorita!
”

 
          
Her
hands opened wide at her waist,
then
closed, like
mouths. Her mouth opened and closed. The shop had a veil over it, in her eyes.
Here she was and here were these small baked adobe people to whom she could say
nothing and from whom she could get no words she understood, and she was in a
town of people who said no words to her and she said no words to them except in
blushing confusion and bewilderment. And the town was circled by desert and time,
and home was far away, far away in another life.

 
          
She
whirled and fled.

 
          
Shop
following shop she found no magazines save those giving bullfights in blood on
their covers or murdered people or lace-confection priests. But at last three
poor copies of the
Post
were bought
with much display and loud laughter and she gave the vendor of this small shop
a handsome tip.

 
          
Rushing
out with the
Posts
eagerly on her
bosom in both hands she hurried along the narrow walk, took a skip over the
gutter, ran across the street, sang la-la, jumped onto the further walk, made
another little scamper with her feet, smiled an inside smile, moving along
swiftly, pressing the magazines tightly to her, half-closing her eyes,
breathing the charcoal evening air, feeling the wind watering past her ears.

 
          
Starlight
tinkled in golden nuclei off the highly perched Greek figures atop the State
theater
. A man shambled by in the shadow, balancing upon his
head a basket. The basket contained bread loaves.

 
          
She
saw the man and the balanced basket and suddenly she did not move and there was
no inside smile, nor did her hands clasp tight the magazines. She watched the
man walk, with one hand of his gently poised up to tap the basket any time it
unbalanced, and down the street he dwindled, while the magazines slipped from
Marie’s fingers and scattered on the walk.

 
          
Snatching
them up, she ran into the hotel and almost fell going upstairs.

 
          
She
sat in the room. The magazines were piled on each side of her and in a circle
at her feet. She had made a little castle with portcullises of words and into
this she was withdrawn. All about her were the magazines she had bought and
bought and looked at and looked at on other days, and these were the outer
barrier, and upon the inside of the barrier, upon her lap, as yet unopened, but
her hands were trembling to open them and read and read and read again with
hungry eyes, were the three battered
Post
magazines. She opened the first page. She would go through them page by page,
line by line, she decided. Not a line would go unnoticed, a comma unread, every
little ad and every color would be fixed by her. And—she smiled with
discovery—in those other magazines at her feet were still advertisements and
cartoons she had neglected—there would be little morsels of stuff for her to
reclaim and utilize later.

 
          
She
would read this first
Post
tonight,
yes tonight she would read this first delicious
Post
. Page on page she would eat it and
tomorrow night, if there was going to be a tomorrow night, but maybe there wouldn’t
be a tomorrow night here, maybe the motor would start and there’d be odors of
exhaust and round hum of rubber tire on road and wind riding in the window and
pennanting
her hair—but, suppose, just suppose there would
Be a tomorrow night here, in this room. Well, then, there would be two more
Posts,
one for tomorrow night, and the
next for the next night. How neatly she said it to herself with her mind’s
tongue. She turned the first page.

 
          
She
turned the second page. Her eyes moved over it and over it and her fingers
unknown to her slipped under the next page and flickered it in preparation for
turning, and the watch ticked on her wrist, and time passed and she sat turning
pages, turning pages, hungrily seeing the framed people in the pictures, people
who lived in another land in another world where
neons
bravely held off the night with crimson bars and the smells were home smells
and the people talked good fine words and here she was turning the pages, and
all the lines went across and down and the pages flew under her hands, making a
fan. She threw down the first
Post,
seized on and riffled through the second in half an hour, threw that down, took
up the third, threw that down a good fifteen minutes later and found herself
breathing, breathing stiffly and swiftly in her body and out of her mouth. She
put her hand up to the back of her neck.