between her and his Mexican wife. The other still existed in
his thoughts. It may even have been why he invited Lillian the very first day
in the taxi.
She couldn’t sleep, having witnessed Hatcher’s
umbilical ties with his native land’s protectiveness. (America alone could
supply crutches if one broke one’s leg, America alone could cure him of malaria,
America-the-mother, America-the-father had been transported into the supplies
shed, canned and bottled.) He had been unable to live here naked, without
possessions, without provisions, with his Mexican mother and the fresh fruits
and vegetables in abundance, the goat’s milk, and hunting.
Close the eyes of memory…but was she free?
Hatcher’s umbilical cord had stirred her own roots. His fears had lighted up
these intersections of memory which were like double exposures. Like the failed
photograph of the Mayan temple, in which by an accident, a failure to turn a
small key, Lillian had been photographed both standing up and lying down, and
her head had seemed to lie inside the jaws of a giant king snake of stone, and
the stairs of the pyramid to have been built across her body as if she had been
her own ghostly figure transcending the stone.
The farther she traveled into unknown places,
unfamiliar places, the more precisely she could find within herself a map
showing only the cities of the interior.
This place resembled none other, with its
colonnade of palm-tree trunks, its walled back set against the rocks, its
corrugated roof on which monkeys clowned. The cactus at night took shapes of
arthritic old men, bearded scarecrows of the tropics, and the palms were always
swaying with a rhythm of fans in the heat, of hammocks in the shade.
Was there no open road, simple, clear, unique?
Would all her roads traverse several worlnd herimultaneously , bordered by the fleeting shadows of other
roads, other mountains? She could not pass by a little village in the present
without passing as well by some other little village in some other country,
even the village of a country she had wished to visit once and had not reached!
Lillian could see the double exposure created
by memory. A lake once seen in Italy flowed into the lagoon which encircled
Golconda, a hotel on a snowy mountain in Switzerland was tied to Hatcher’s
unfinished mountain home by a long continuous cable, and this folding cot
behind a Mexican screen lay alongside a hundred other
beds in a hundred other rooms, New York, Paris, Florence, San Francisco, New
Orleans, Bombay, Tangiers, San Luis.
The map of Mexico lay open on her knees, but
she could not find the thick jungle line which indicated her journeys. They
divided into two, four, six, eight skeins.
She was speeding at the same rhythm along
several dusty roads, as a child with parents, as a wife driving her husband, as
a mother taking her children to school, as a pianist touring the world, and all
these roads intersected noiselessly and without damage.
Swinging between the drug of forgetfulness and
the drug of awareness, she closed her eyes, she closed the eyes of memory.
When she awakened she saw first of all a casuarina tree with orange flowers that seemed like tongues
of flames. Between its branches rose a thin wisp of smoke from Maria’s brasero . Maria was patting tortillas between
her hands with an even rhythm and at the same time watching over genuine
American pancakes saying: “Senorita, I have tortillas a La Americana for
you.”
The table was set in the sun, with Woolworth
dishes and oilcloth and paper napkins.
The young doctor had arrived with his friends.
They would take her back to Golconda.
Maria was gazing at Lillian pensively. She was
trying to imagine that a woman just like this one had hurt Hatcher so deeply
that he never talked about it. She was trying to imagine the nature of the
hurt. She knew that Hatcher no longer loved that woman. But she knew also that
he still hated her, and that she was still present in his
his thoughts. It may even have been why he invited Lillian the very first day
in the taxi.
She couldn’t sleep, having witnessed Hatcher’s
umbilical ties with his native land’s protectiveness. (America alone could
supply crutches if one broke one’s leg, America alone could cure him of malaria,
America-the-mother, America-the-father had been transported into the supplies
shed, canned and bottled.) He had been unable to live here naked, without
possessions, without provisions, with his Mexican mother and the fresh fruits
and vegetables in abundance, the goat’s milk, and hunting.
Close the eyes of memory…but was she free?
Hatcher’s umbilical cord had stirred her own roots. His fears had lighted up
these intersections of memory which were like double exposures. Like the failed
photograph of the Mayan temple, in which by an accident, a failure to turn a
small key, Lillian had been photographed both standing up and lying down, and
her head had seemed to lie inside the jaws of a giant king snake of stone, and
the stairs of the pyramid to have been built across her body as if she had been
her own ghostly figure transcending the stone.
The farther she traveled into unknown places,
unfamiliar places, the more precisely she could find within herself a map
showing only the cities of the interior.
This place resembled none other, with its
colonnade of palm-tree trunks, its walled back set against the rocks, its
corrugated roof on which monkeys clowned. The cactus at night took shapes of
arthritic old men, bearded scarecrows of the tropics, and the palms were always
swaying with a rhythm of fans in the heat, of hammocks in the shade.
Was there no open road, simple, clear, unique?
Would all her roads traverse several worlnd herimultaneously , bordered by the fleeting shadows of other
roads, other mountains? She could not pass by a little village in the present
without passing as well by some other little village in some other country,
even the village of a country she had wished to visit once and had not reached!
Lillian could see the double exposure created
by memory. A lake once seen in Italy flowed into the lagoon which encircled
Golconda, a hotel on a snowy mountain in Switzerland was tied to Hatcher’s
unfinished mountain home by a long continuous cable, and this folding cot
behind a Mexican screen lay alongside a hundred other
beds in a hundred other rooms, New York, Paris, Florence, San Francisco, New
Orleans, Bombay, Tangiers, San Luis.
The map of Mexico lay open on her knees, but
she could not find the thick jungle line which indicated her journeys. They
divided into two, four, six, eight skeins.
She was speeding at the same rhythm along
several dusty roads, as a child with parents, as a wife driving her husband, as
a mother taking her children to school, as a pianist touring the world, and all
these roads intersected noiselessly and without damage.
Swinging between the drug of forgetfulness and
the drug of awareness, she closed her eyes, she closed the eyes of memory.
When she awakened she saw first of all a casuarina tree with orange flowers that seemed like tongues
of flames. Between its branches rose a thin wisp of smoke from Maria’s brasero . Maria was patting tortillas between
her hands with an even rhythm and at the same time watching over genuine
American pancakes saying: “Senorita, I have tortillas a La Americana for
you.”
The table was set in the sun, with Woolworth
dishes and oilcloth and paper napkins.
The young doctor had arrived with his friends.
They would take her back to Golconda.
Maria was gazing at Lillian pensively. She was
trying to imagine that a woman just like this one had hurt Hatcher so deeply
that he never talked about it. She was trying to imagine the nature of the
hurt. She knew that Hatcher no longer loved that woman. But she knew also that
he still hated her, and that she was still present in his
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