Nothing That Meets the Eye (12 page)

In the hotel, Alejandro wore either white or gray flannel with a red flower always in his buttonhole. It was his job to welcome guests, see that their rooms were satisfactory, that their breakfast orders were correctly filled before the trays left the kitchen, to invite lonely women guests out for cocktails occasionally, the bills to be paid by the hotel. He flew smoothly about the two-story patioed building, set a vase of bougainvilleas in a certain room, brought raw meat for the dog in another, replaced small light bulbs with larger ones, and gave every guest the impression that he or she was his favorite. There was never a complaint against Alejandro, and there were many tips, many commendations to Señor Martinez. When some of the señor's friends remarked that Alejandro had reformed, the señor did not know what they meant.

Alejandro did not earn quite as much as he had as a guide, but his new position carried greater dignity, and dignity was important, the Countess had told him, to an American woman who considered marrying a Mexican. Since starting his job at the hotel, his ambition to marry a wealthy American woman had returned with new force. He was so much better equipped now. He longed to succeed.

Only the wealthiest women merited his invitations to cocktails. He made engagements with wealthy women staying at other hotels, too. All the bills were sent to Señor Martinez with notations that they were for such and such señoras or señoritas stopping at the hotel. Often he invited young ladies to the hotel to spend the evening in a room that happened to be free. This deception might have gone on indefinitely, if not for one indiscretion that would certainly have brought the severest tongue-lashing from the Countess.

Concha had married Antonio, who was now twenty-four and still not graduated from the guide class. Alejandro and Concha saw each other every Saturday night, when Antonio was busy taking tourists on a round of the bars until they closed at midnight. Antonio was now trying to teach Pancho, their fourteen-year-old cousin, how to be a guide, so he was quite occupied. Pancho tagged along with him everywhere, even on Saturday nights, and since he was as serious and stupid as Antonio, Alejandro knew he would turn out the same way as his brother—adequate as a guide, perhaps, but without a very interesting future.

Alejandro and Concha were fond of each other, but far from being in love. It was just that they enjoyed reliving the childhood amor they had known six years before. Concha liked to laugh, and Alejandro laughed so much more than Antonio. And it amused Alejandro to give horns to his brother.

It was Concha's birthday. Señor Martinez was in Mexico City overnight on business, and the bridal suite in the hotel happened to be free. Alejandro thought it would be fun to bring Concha there. Concha was delighted with the idea. She and Alejandro went to the hotel, telephoned down for rum and tostadas with sour cream, and pretended they were newlyweds. At eleven-thirty when they came downstairs, whom should they see behind the desk but Señor Martinez. Alejandro said, “Buenas noches, señor,” like a gentleman, escorted Concha home, but he knew it was the end. Señor Martinez knew that Concha was a married woman who lived in the village. Alejandro could have bribed the help, but not Señor Martinez, who would never forgive him. Alejandro was discharged that same night.

Alejandro was too optimistic to fear that Antonio would hear of the evening through Señor Martinez, but he spent over a thousand pesos bribing the staff. For a few days, Alejandro felt nervous and resentful. He was a little afraid of his brother, though when he watched him in the plaza from time to time, he could see no change in him. And when the idea occurred to him that Antonio might take action, he dismissed it as he dismissed his family—he had lived at the hotel since his return from Acapulco—because Antonio was essentially as stupid and ineffectual as his parents. Meanwhile, Alejandro had moved in with an emotionally starved American woman resident of the village, whose young Mexican husband had just abandoned her. He had often called on her before, and now she welcomed him for as long as he cared to stay.

Not long after his discharge from the hotel, on one of the afternoons he was idling about the village, too proud, still too well off to worry about earning more money so soon, he wandered into a bookshop off the plaza and saw Mrs. Kootz. Mrs. Chester Kootz came every summer to the village and stayed three or four months. Though she was a millionairess and a widow, Alejandro had never considered her because she was so ugly. She wore her hair in a gray bun that could hardly be seen under the strands that escaped it and that hung down like gray rags. Her dresses were uniformly gray, too, and so shapeless they might have been slept in. The joke was, she had been cited year after year as one of the ten wealthiest women of America, and that if she did not look it, then she must be all the wealthier for not spending money on adornment.

In a bitter mood, Alejandro flirted brazenly with Mrs. Kootz in the bookshop. Mrs. Kootz glanced at him, dragged on her cigarette, and chose a book. She had known Alejandro by sight since he had been a little centavo-beggar at the bus stop. Alejandro smiled cockily to himself and strolled out of the bookshop in the tracks of Mrs. Kootz's run-over oxfords. She started up the lane that led to the big house she always rented. But the way was so steep, Alejandro lazily turned back, slouched onto a bench in the shade of the plaza's trees, locked his fingers over his flat waist, and dozed for a while, lulled by the hum of Spanish voices around him, by the squeals of children at play.

The idea took form in the middle of a little dream: he was enjoying some delicious pleasure because he was married to Mrs. Kootz and had money. The dream fell away, but the idea remained. He would court Mrs. Kootz and try to marry her. It made him snicker now to think about it. But would the Countess laugh? Alejandro quit the shade of the plane tree as Gautama had quit his Bodhi Tree, with a purpose.

At about six that evening, Alejandro glanced up at the balcony of a bar in the plaza and saw Mrs. Kootz at a table alone, drinking one of her brandies. Alejandro went up the stairs without even raking a comb through his hair or pulling his thumbs down the sides of his collar, his habit before going into action. He walked directly to her table, and asked if he might join her.

She drew on her cigarette, squinted up at him, then gestured to the opposite chair.

Alejandro changed his tactics from those of the afternoon. Now he was the gentleman the Countess would have advised him to be. He behaved as if the sleek Countess had been sitting opposite him instead of dowdy Mrs. Kootz. He asked if she was enjoying her stay, and she replied not particularly, that she came every year because of her asthma. She spoke briefly of her ailment and with an unfeminine frankness. She was interested in buying a house in the village but couldn't because she was not a citizen or a permanent resident. This gave an opening for the remark that if she married a Mexican, she could buy it in his name, but even he felt it so pointed he could not say it.

“Do you know the Countess Lomolkov?”

Mrs. Kootz shook her head. “Who's she?”

“A lady who was here in the spring. From New York, too. We spent a month together in Acapulco.”

Mrs. Kootz said nothing.

Alejandro talked pleasantly for nearly an hour, but nothing of his charm seemed to penetrate. Mrs. Kootz only drank brandy after brandy, sipping from a glass of Carta Blanca as a chaser. Then she said something about the fleas in her leather chair eating her alive and that she wanted to go. He accompanied her to her house, lending her an arm over the rough spots. He lingered at her door, waiting to be asked in to dinner.

“Good night,” she said, without glancing over her shoulder.

Alejandro turned away cheerfully, remembering the hundred-peso bill she had taken out to pay the check, one of many others in her big worn alligator wallet. He had insisted on paying the check, of course. Appraisingly he looked at her dark green convertible parked in the alley, flecked with Mexican mud, but still showing its thirty-five-thousand-peso lines.

In the plaza he saw Antonio and Pancho. Antonio came toward him with one hand outstretched.

“Is from your mother,” Antonio muttered in Spanish as he passed him at arm's length, as if he did not want to befoul himself with touching him. Even Pancho had barely greeted him with a nod.

Alejandro looked at what had been dropped into his hand. It was a rosary with a small silver cross he had seen before. He had not been home in over two months, and evidently his mother was concerned for his soul.

With a big bouquet of red frangipani, Alejandro called on Mrs. Kootz the next morning at eleven. A Mexican girl opened the gate, then went to see if Mrs. Kootz would admit him. Finally Mrs. Kootz herself came slowly down the flagstone walk, frowning against the sun and the smoke from her cigarette, wearing the same dress she had worn yesterday. Her forefinger was in the pages of Guizot's History of France.

“What's up?” she asked hoarsely.

“Good morning.” He smiled, twiddling the bouquet. “I beg to see you a moment. Inside?”

She looked at him. “Come on in.”

He followed her up the steps to the front hall and into a large sunny room with a tile floor and scatter rugs, with comfortable-looking corners that held books and reading lamps and Mexican leather easy chairs. Mrs. Kootz went toward one corner where a laden ashtray and an open bottle of brandy showed she had been sitting.

“Drink?” she asked, refilling her glass.

Alejandro shook his head. “These are for you.” He advanced with the bouquet and bowed as he presented it.

She took the flowers as if she had not noticed them before. “Thanks,” she said in a tone of surprise. “Juana?” When the girl appeared, she gave her the flowers and made gestures at a nearby vase. “Aq-wah.”

The girl started to remove the tamarind pods from the vase she had indicated.

“No, not that one,” Mrs. Kootz said impatiently. “Find an empty one.”

The girl looked blank.

Alejandro rapped out a sentence or two in Spanish and Juana left the room promptly.

Mrs. Kootz stared after the girl, said “Damn,” and tossed off the brandy. She put another cigarette in her mouth, but before Alejandro could get her a light, she had struck on her thumbnail one of the American wooden matches she always carried about her.

“Do you like Wagner?” Alejandro asked, fingering a biography of Wagner that lay on a table.

“Some. His art songs.” She sat down heavily in her chair.

“He is too noisy for me,” Alejandro said prissily.

Mrs. Kootz looked at him as she had looked at the flowers. “Say, what's your name?”

“Alejandro. Alejandro Palma, at your service.” He bowed again, then seated himself gently on the arm of a divan. “Do you know why I came to see you, Mrs. Kootz?”

“Why?”

He stood up. An amused smile had forced itself to his lips and he lowered his head. “Because I am in love with you.” He had decided the simple, direct approach was best. “I admire your mind, your . . .” But what could he say about her? The hag!

Mrs. Kootz got up, too, started to pour another brandy, then strolled out onto the side porch, the only move inspired by self-consciousness she could recall ever making.

Alejandro was beside her, insinuating his slight body into her arms. He kissed her before she could recover from her surprise to thrust him away, kissed her again.

A few yards below and in front of them, a girl named Hermalinda Herrera glanced up from her own roofless terrace, where she sat chewing gum and reading the latest issue of Hoy, and saw an unbelievable sight: the “bad boy” Alejandro kissing Señora Kootz muy caliente and the
señora
liking it, too! That afternoon, the whole village learned of it.

No one would have believed it, if Alejandro and the señora had not been seen together so often thereafter. Could they be thinking of getting married? Alejandro's Mexican girlfriends twitted him, and he told them frankly that he was going to marry the señora and for her millions of pesos. He told the guides in the plaza and his friends in Cesar's Cantina. Whether it got back to Mrs. Kootz before he clinched the marriage was no worry to him. It would sound like typical gossip, might even be good propaganda: he was having trouble convincing Mrs. Kootz that their getting married was at all possible, that someone could love her and want to make her his wife. Mrs. Kootz had somehow forgotten she was a human being, but he was teaching her to remember. But the bridge between the two languages did not seem likely to be crossed. Only the Mexicans seemed to talk, and Mrs. Kootz had no Mexican friends and only a nodding acquaintance with a few Americans.

They were married in a little chapel of the village with the traditional ceremony of two rings and thirteen pieces of silver money, symbolic of the union of their worldly estates. Antonio would not even look at Alejandro now when they met, and Concha only stole sidelong glances at him. All his Mexican friends were in awe of him, and he could make them comfortable with him only by getting them drunk.

Immediately, Señora Palma bought in the name of Alejandro Palma the house she had rented for so many years from Ysidro Barrera, a gift shop owner in the village. Interior decorators came from New York and Mexico City and argued with one another over the deployment of mountains of furniture and drapes Señora Palma had ordered, and when they at last went to work, each seemed bent on making his or her contribution as hideous as possible in order to blame the others. The house became a famous atrocity of the town, and Señora Palma allowed groups of gaping tourists to shuffle through it twice a day, conducted by guides who told them it was an example of the “luxuriant embellishment” of the Americans who had made the village their permanent home, which it was, and told them it was exquisite, which most of them believed. Señora Palma was flattered, as she had been flattered by Alejandro's attentions. She had grown less introverted, and for a while Gibbon, Toynbee, Guizot, and Prescott were forgotten in the planning of her house and the honeymoon trip she and Alejandro would make in the fall. After the house was running smoothly under the care of three maids who would be paid two hundred pesos each per month, she and Alejandro were going to drive in the green convertible to Mexico City, New Orleans, Charleston, New York, the American West, San Francisco, and home again, enjoying themselves where they found things to enjoy, spending money as they pleased. She had never known what pleasure it was to have money until Alejandro showed her how to spend it. She had never known what pleasure companionship was, or what it was to be loved. And she was proud of him: he was handsome, and his grooming inspired a kind of terror and reverence in her. Most of all, and with her self-analyzing temperament she realized it and admitted it, the novelty of him pleased her, the fact that he was a Mexican, that he was so young, that despite all the odds he had come so far with his ludicrous ambitions, his veneer of cosmopolitan gentleman. And his crumbs of information on the Negro problem, Wagnerian music, and Russian history! In another environment such determination might have made a Napoleon of him, or a Henry Ford. As a historian, she respected his intensity.