None of this Ever Really Happened (5 page)

Yours, Maud Kim Nho

Then there was a letter in bigger, bolder, black handwriting
on typing paper:

P,

It is just dawn and I am just awake and you are on
my mind. Isn't that an old song? Funny how we always
talk in lyrics, you and I: all you need is love, what's
love got to do with it, many a tear has to fall. I love that
about you, your layers upon layers, your allusions, your
asides. A conversation with you needs footnotes and
a reader's guide. But then I love so much about you.
I am quite madly in love with you if you don't mind
my choice of words; see, now you have me doing it.

And why shouldn't we talk in lyrics? We are so
musical, my love. We are all about music, rhythm, beat,
and syncopation. We are a song, you and I. The first
time we did our dance moving together in the dark, it
wasn't sex, it wasn't fucking. It was breathing together,
it was swaying, it was the two of us becoming a third
thing for a moment, moments. I don't remember
what happened to my clothes. I don't remember you
touching me with your hands, not in the usual places,
just my hair and upper arms and lightly on my hips.
And then I realized you were inside me, but it was
hardly the point, it was almost incidental, it was the
way I always thought it should be (another song?).
You can say that our little friend helped, but I don't
think very much; what happened was inevitable.

That is how I feel about us, my darling. We are
inevitable. We are inexorable. We are a juggernaut. I am
very sad that we can not see each over Thanksgiving, but
we shall, as always, have Tuesday, and then while we are
apart, you will have this surprise missive to remind you
of me. Besides, this thing we have is so strong that I don't
need to see you. I am fine. I am happy, safe and secure in
the warmth of our love though we are far apart and long
away from each other. I love you deeply and eternally.

L

"Shit," I thought standing there, my hand unsteady by
the time I had finished reading, looking about for fear someone
would come along and catch me. "What do I do with
this damn thing?" I thought. "Why did I have to read this?"
I thought. "Why couldn't someone feel this way about me?"
I thought. For the first time in almost three years, I badly
wanted a cigarette.

On the ninth day of their march, (Cortes and his)
troops arrived before the strong city of . . . Cuernavaca.
It was . . . the most considerable place for
wealth and population in this part of the country
. . . For, though the place stood at an elevation
of between five and six thousand feet, it had a
southern exposure so sheltered by the mountain
barrier on the north that its climate was . . . soft
and genial.

—W. H. Prescott,
The Conquest of Mexico

H
ERNANDO CORTÉS
, Helen Hayes, and I were attracted
to Cuernavaca by the same Chamber of Commerce
sales pitch; the place has a damn near perfect climate.
We all first went there on R and R. Señor Cortés was taking
a break during his conquest of the Aztec Empire. Miss Hayes
had just been crowned queen of the New York stage. And I
was trying to get away from America for a while so I could
look back at it and write about it. Truth be known, I badly
wanted to be an expatriate. I guess I thought it would look
good on my curriculum vitae. I was at that stage in my life
where I defined myself by the things I did and the people I
hung out with and, having recently found myself predictable
and my life prosaic, my self-improvement plan was simple:
Go somewhere interesting and hang out with better people.

And Cuernavaca is somewhere interesting. It sits just
sixty-four miles south of Mexico City on the initial Pacific
slope of the massive range of volcanoes that cluster around
the capital. Beyond it to the south stretches the vast, verdant
valley of Morelos that supplies many of the flowers we in the
North pay so dearly for during the winter. Cuernavaca is all
about flowers, cloudless winter skies, sidewalk cafés, swimming
pools, and palm trees. Its mean winter and summer
temperatures vary only two or three degrees either side of
seventy-two.

It should not surprise you, then, that in addition to Cortés,
Hayes, and myself, Cuernavaca has at one time or another
attracted the likes of John Steinbeck, Merle Oberon, Ivan
Illich,
Anthony Quinn, Henry Kissinger, Erich Fromm, Gabriel
García Márquez, the last shah of Iran, John Huston, and
Malcolm Lowry, who set his novel
Under the Volcano
there,
plus every Mexican luminary you can think of. These are the
kind of people I went to Cuernavaca looking for, the kind
I wanted to be with and be—artists and writers and freethinkers—
but I found Charlie Duke instead. He introduced
me to, among other things, the time-honored Cuernavaca
pastime of name dropping and taught me the finer points
of expatriation. In no time I fancied myself one of Steve
Goodman's exiles from the old song "Banana Republics,"
hoping "to cure the spirit that's ailing from living in the land
of the free."

Two roads leave the smoggy Valley of Mexico and cross
the mountains to Cuernavaca. Both begin at an elevation of
7,400 feet, climb to 10,000 feet, and descend to 5,000, all in
that sixty-four miles. And while travelers on one road can
often see the other, the two take very different trips. It sometimes
seems to me that the first is the road of the future. It is
very handsome with bold red shoulders and flowering hedges
dividing its four lanes. It is also an engineering marvel that
sweeps in giant parabolas higher and higher to the very crest
of the pass, where one can encounter snow in the winter and
from which one can see what seems like the rest of the continent
and, with a little imagination, the blue line of the Pacific
Ocean on the horizon.

The second road belongs to the past. It corkscrews up the
mountainside twisting and grunting every inch of the way. It
goes through villages rather than past them, and beside it Indian
women squat selling birds or beads or the tough Indian
corn called
elote
which is boiled, slathered with mayonnaise
and sprinkled with Parmesan cheese. This road travels across
highland meadows, near alpine lakes and through forests of
pine and spruce that defy every stereotype of Mexico, and at
one point it passes a line of simple white crosses that mark the
spot where, nearly eighty years ago, Francisco Serrano and
other revolutionary leaders being transported to the capital
as prisoners were lined up and gunned down by their guards.
The crosses always remind me that Maximilian and Carlota,
their coach drawn by twelve white mules, used this ancient
trail, and Benito Juárez in his black carriage and Stephen A.
Austin, and perhaps even Cortés, or Montezuma, borne on
his litter by six strong warriors.

Both roads are worth traveling. I suggest that you drive
one down and the other back. Of course, you may intend to
never come back, in which case you should take the old road.

And you should be informed that paradise appeals to
everyone,
even Mexicans, even the 99 percent of Mexicans
who don't live in rococo mansions and go to the dentist in
Houston. There are places in Cuernavaca set aside for cabdrivers
and shopkeepers, and Los Canarios is one of them.
This ramshackle resort was all Lydia Greene and I could find
or afford the holiday weekend we first hit town.

Actually, Los Canarios sounded pretty good on paper:
pool, garden, games, outdoor restaurant and bar, shops, palm
trees, and lush vegetation. The problem was that all of this
was shoehorned onto one small, seedy city block and most of
it was dirty, dilapidated, and broken. Out on the street towering
above the place was a big, broken sign dating, I suppose,
from a time when the owners thought they might be able to
attract wealthy Americans as guests. It read: Los Canarios.
Hotel of Lux.

Just across the street from Los Canarios is the other
Cuernavaca.
Las Mañanitas, an old hacienda that the city
has grown out to surround, is one of the continent's loveliest
small inns and restaurants. Behind its high walls topped with
shards of broken glass one finds peacocks sitting on velvet
lawns, cool blue pools, and perfect gardens. On the grass and
verandas are a few quiet tables and many attendants in white
jackets who pour your wine, light your cigarette and, on
cool evenings, build fires in portable braziers just to warm
your feet.

The last time I saw Charlie Duke, we ate dinner at Las
Mañanitas. The first time I saw Charlie Duke, I was playing
Frisbee with our dog Art out underneath the trees at Villa
Katrina. Charlie came down the curving, cobblestone driveway
carrying a trayload of margaritas and hors d'oeuvres
above his head.

The Villa Katrina was the weekend retreat of the German-Mexican
Kronberg-Mueller family. It was situated on four
acres of semiformal gardens that sloped down to a rugged
barranco, or canyon stream, and consisted of a gatehouse; a
main house complete with servants' quarters, red tile roof,
balconies, and a vast veranda; and a three-bedroom furnished
guest house. Charlie lived in the gatehouse. We had
just rented the guest house.

Charlie was a tall, broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped,
strikingly handsome man of forty-five whose manner, depending
on your mood, could be described as genteel, effete,
or even effeminate. Sitting on the bench out in the middle of
the lawn, he talked an absolute blue streak, and he talked as
if we were old friends, mentioning people, places, and events
for whom and which I had no frame of reference. I went back
to our bungalow that afternoon and laughed at him. What a
boob. Almost at once Charlie became for me a sad emblem of
what most expats really are: people who have way too much
leisure time with which they do almost nothing but go out to
lunch, drink, gossip, worry about their health, self-medicate,
and complain about their gardeners.

But if Charlie was facile, he was also sincere. He insisted
on adopting us and from that day on we became "the kids."

He believed so strongly that we were friends that I didn't have
the heart not to pretend we were, too.

Any doubt we had about Charlie's sexuality was dispelled
by his constant talk of Stella. She was his "girlfriend" and
lived in a hotel in town built around the ruins of the palace
of Malintzin, Cortes's Indian mistress. Charlie said the hotel
was lovely and the food among the best in Cuernavaca,
so one night we went there to eat. Halfway through dinner
the curtains were drawn on a private dining room across the
veranda, and there sat Charlie, gaily drinking and playing
cards with three women, the youngest of whom was at least
seventy. Our food was only fair, and we left without saying
hello.

For several weeks we felt like the lords of the Villa Katrina.
The Kronberg-Muellers had yet to appear (we had
rented through an agent), Charlie went on vacation, and
the maid and gardener who lived behind the garage were
seldom seen. We picked limes and bananas from the trees
just outside our door, gamboled on the lawns, mused in the
gardens, even sat on the grand veranda and dipped into the
very Mexican pool. (Its elaborate imported pump and filter
system had never been connected, and it could be filled
only by garden hose, which took a couple of days by which
time the water was already fairly dirty.) Then one morning I
came home from my morning coffee downtown to find two
gardeners at work, the windows all thrown open, rugs being
beaten and linen aired. Shortly after that a chauffeur-driven
Dodge Neon (it is one of the idiosyncrasies of Mexico that
people are less expensive there than machines) rolled down
the driveway and disgorged Mrs. Kronberg-Mueller herself,
her town maid, her daughter Cynthia, and her sister Louise
Speicher.

Katrina Kronberg-Mueller sat down on the veranda and
stayed there. She was a stately lady of about eighty who kept a
tiny silver bell at her side to ring for service. She spoke Spanish
with an uncompromising Yankee accent that suggested
that she found all those strange things native speakers did
with their tongues and lips quite obscene.

Cynthia was in her forties. She wore too much makeup
and her hair in a style that hadn't been popular since just after
the Second World War. She belonged in an Edward Hopper
painting. According to Charlie, Cynthia had had an unhappy
marriage and a daughter who had taken up radical politics.
So Cynthia had taken up poetry. She had published a slim
volume with a San Francisco vanity press and talked of her
editor as if he called her every other day.

One evening we were invited for drinks, and we entered
the main house for the only time. We sipped sweet wine in
the living room, which had the feel of a hunting lodge with
its massive fireplace, and we listened to Katrina's life story.

Katrina met Señor Kronberg-Mueller at a party in Boston
before the second war. He sang in a rich baritone, and she
fell in love. After a whirlwind romance, they were married.
They sailed on a steamer for Veracruz and from there took
the old narrow-gauge British-built rail line up and across the
mountains to the capital.

Shortly after World War II, Señor Kronberg-Mueller built
Villa Katrina as a present to his wife. Then he died. Katrina
stayed in Mexico. Perhaps it was because she had a family
there or two lovely homes, but I suspect it was because she
had a place. She was an aristocrat. Had she been one in Boston
before the war, she would not be one now. There was no
aristocracy to go home to. In Mexico she could still ring her
little silver bell.

And so, in a sense, could Lydia and I. We found ourselves
admitted to some places and invited to others just because we
were Americans, had fair skin, and spoke English. Actually,
we were a couple of struggling artists, but no cold-water flat
for us. We had a lovely house completely and tastefully furnished,
French doors, red tile floors and gardens and gardeners
outside every arching window all for a fraction of what
it would have cost at home. Famous people were said to live
next door and across the street. We were among—if not of—
the elite.

So was Charlie Duke. He grew up in a small town in
Kansas and married his first girlfriend while he was still a
teenager. They had three kids in quick succession, and fought
almost constantly. When the marriage broke, Charlie severed
all ties and headed for Florida. There he attended college,
taught, and worked at various sales jobs for several years.
But the grass grew under his feet, and he began to explore
the Caribbean on his vacations. One of his trips took him to
Veracruz and then Mexico City, and he fell in love. He took
a job teaching at an American school and settled in for the
duration.

Before long Charlie met his second wife. She was somewhat
older than he was and worked for Mexico City's English-language
newspaper. As a result, she was on everyone's guest
list. This was right up Charlie's alley. A natural gossip, he
was born with a doily on his lap and a petit four between his
finger and thumb.

"Sylvia got absolutely blotto, of course," he said. "We were
mortified. She went on and on about poor Renaldo revealing
the most intimate, the most scandalous . . . and, oh yes, we finally
got the lowdown on the phony count. He has vanished,
disappeared into thin air, and with one million pesos worth
of Marta's negotiable bonds. Can you believe it? Not a trace.
She has had a total breakdown and is in a sanitarium in Valle
de Bravo."

"Uh-huh," I said. I did not know—nor had I ever heard
of—a single one of these people, and I came to realize that
Charlie's "we" included him and anyone else he knew, had
been with or had seen. But if that anyone was you, his pretentiousness
seemed harmless and was even sometimes
flattering.

Charlie and his second wife lived in a luxurious villa in
the San Angel colony of the capital and in their brief and
glorious life together, they hit every embassy party, celebrity
event, and costume ball in town.

"What happened?" I asked.