Puzzle for Pilgrims by Patrick Quentin

It was pathetically obvious now.
    I brought out of my pocket the ring that had dropped from Iris’s finger in Sally’s house.
    “Your ring, Martin?”
    He looked mildly puzzled. “Where on earth did you find it?”
    I was going to answer, but Iris swung round on me, the yellow balloon bobbing on its string. Her eyes were blazing with hatred.
    “A filthy, low-down trick.”
    Martin said, “What’s the matter, Iris?”
    “He’s tricked you. The ring was at Sally’s. I—I didn’t know he’d got it. He’s tricked you into admitting you were at Sally’s. And Sally’s dead.”
    In spite of the shock of knowing my wife could hate me, I felt a sense of relief. Was this then all it had been, the terror in Iris that had made her faint? Had it just been that she had found Martin’s ring there and was terrified of what he might have done to Sally? Just Martin now? Not Iris?
    I watched Martin’s face absorbing what Iris had said. The change was a complex of so many emotions that it almost gave the impression of stupidity.
    “Dead? Sally dead?”
    “Yes, yes.” Iris turned on me again. “Go away, Peter. Leave us alone.”
    “But—”
    “Leave us alone. Can’t you leave us alone?”
    The steam organ was playing again, a sweet, halting tango. Iris’s eyes bored into me, willing me out of existence, willing the destruction of everything except Martin.
    I felt beaten, whipped. I said, “I’ll go to Paco’s. Look for Marietta. Join me later.”

Twelve
    I left them. I didn’t look back, but I could see them in my mind, standing there close together, oblivious to the thronging merrymakers, Martin slight, golden, to be protected, always to be protected, and Iris…
    As I pushed my way through clusters of children, women with babies slung in shawls at their breasts, and soft-stepping Indians, a wave of excitement swept over the square. People at the far end, near the cathedral, started shouting and then a man darted into the Zocalo from a dark side street. On his shoulders he carried a big, brashly colored effigy of a bull, bedecked with a scaffolding of fireworks. Already the fuse was sputtering gold in the darkness. I remembered that the fiesta of Santa Prisca always climaxed with a fireworks bull, and some of the mass excitement infected me.
    The man was alone now in the center of a jostling circle. With a quick flare, the first layer of fireworks ignited. Squibs banged. Red, blue, and yellow stars soared into the air and with them a rain of silver. Wildly bucking like a mock bull, the man charged the crowd, which scattered before him, shouting, screaming, laughing. The stars, the hissing, snapping squibs, exploded around them.
    In the weird multicolored light, the red cardboard bull on the man’s shoulders reminded me of the bullfight, of Sally’s jumping up, clapping her little hands, staring bright-eyed.
    Blood and the ballet, Peter. Dressed up for death. That’s the only thing that excites them, isn’t it? Death.
    The second layer of fireworks blazed with an even greater sparkle and hubbub. The square was afire with the thrill of it. And I thought, This isn’t death. Sally was death with her deep, dead malice, Iris is death with her love like a disease. And Marietta?
    I wanted to see Marietta. I hurried into a side street, past the dimly glowing door of a pulque dive, headed toward the entrance to Paco’s.
    You have to go upstairs to Paco’s. Drinks are served on a balcony looking down on the Zocalo. It has a certain shabby pretense to elegance. That’s why the tourists go there. I climbed to the tiny hallway. Crowded in the entrance, a marimba and two violins were playing loudly, competing with the organ below. The noise was deafening.
    A scattering of people stood at the inside bar. A few American women in the wrong clothes, schoolteachers probably, were giggling through their idea of the rumba with venal Mexican boys. Other people, Mexican and tourist, were strewed around at tables. French windows