DOS CRUCES
Spanish must be proofed
Dos Cruces (Excerpt from The Lancet)
Dos Cruces was a six-hour trip up and down la Sierra Madre followed by a string of vultures and the image of Humphrey Bogart behind every cactus, his revolver leveled at you. It was one of those Mexican hamlets which seemed deserted when you arrived. But then you noticed the head of a boy peering over a wall, then two heads, then three. A man appeared from nowhere, he�s coming towards you with a straw hat in his hand, and you discovered that there�re shops where they sold mescal and cerveza. But they also sold carpets and vases. Then you also noticed that here and there behind doors women worked on looms, thus. now the village looked like only a small square and in that square was a church and a first-aid-station with a red cross which the sun had repainted white. Perched high up on a mountain, only the vultures could look down on Dos Cruces, and the sun�s beams that cut through the air like machetes. Nothing could hide in that luminosity except the Mexicans. But then you discovered that there's also a Cerveceria where, under straw canopies, they served you tacos and beans, tortillas and pulque, and that next to the Cerveceria stood the Hotel El Burro Muerto. They also had police, a school and a pharmacy. Ladislao, the Mexican guide, assured that the town had a population of about one thousand.
The party took shelter in the Cerveceria from where they could see the whole square and note that Dos Cruces also had a movie theater and a big poster announcing that domingo, a la cinquo de la tarde they would play El Doctor Vigaj�. Posters of El Doctor Vigaj� were also hung in the Cerveceria.
"La senorita es l'artista...." somebody said referring to Julie Godsent. She was indeed the actress that played in that movie, although one had to be very famished for news to make her out, strung up by wrinkles like a cheap package. The comment passed as fast as a cockroach, no one paying any attention to it, just as no one had paid attention to the posters.
While Zazajaz, Nathalie and Julie were in the rest-room, Hermosillo, Ladislao's oldest son who had also wanted to come , was waiting trying himself to decode the face of the actress in the poster. The young man had the fault of being good-looking and because of this Zazajaz had renamed him Peccadillo. The picture in the poster was that of Julie Godsent... and all sorts of misgivings were suddenly dawning on the young Mexican.
Meanwhile Isaac and Ravic were shooting dice, while John wrote some postcards --some would be addressed to Ravic, Isaac, Zazajaz, as well as to himself! He constantly needed to remind people en large as well as his closest friends of his existence. He proclaimed himself a writer but his prose had never in fact overcome the barriers of his tabloid.
"La senorita es l'actriz...." Again no one paid attention to the remark.
"Magnifico film," said the innkeeper, a stout creature who had more fringes on himself than hair. "I saw it three times. It's a month already we've had it in Dos Cruces." Now that the innkeeper had spoken, other patrons suddenly appeared and you could hear the glasses skidding on the long counter. But no one talked.
"Ravic have you heard about that disease which affects faggots? I've a friend in Santa Barbara who's dying of it and no one seems to know anything about it," announced John. The latter had decided to write a book about the new scourge but wasn�t yet sure as where it would go. It only affected gay people, it was something unheard of.
"Send him a postcard" commented Isaac, laughing- Isaac�s laughter was like the releasing of inner coil and indeed had little in common with mirth.
"We keep seeing new cases at La Santa Sierra. We still don�t know much about it" Although Ravic and John went back many years, Ravic though that his pal was among those writers who should be turned into suds.
"John, what do you care, you�re not a faggot. Yet" Again Isaac�s laughter. He threw dice with violence, they bounced one time too many. Ravic won but wasn�t focused on the game. Isaac too was nervous, because he couldn�t stay put in a closed room for more than two minutes. He was just too cumbersome: the beard, the hair, the scar on his barrel chest, his battered panama hat, his raucous voice, his pipe, his cane, bugs always chasing him --Isaac Goldman simply knew no limits.
Finally Peccadillo couldn�t resist anymore and came to say something in Ravic's ear. Ravic raised his head and noticed the poster.
"No," he said. "She's not the one. She just looks similar."
"Parecida, simplemente parecida," commented Peccadillo.
When the ladies returned freshly made up, the patrons at the bar pushed their stomach forward and stood stock-still. No one said a word. The only sound was Isaac's cane scratching the floor following the crazy rhythm of one of his knees.
"Ehi, you guys, don't look so serious," said Zazajaz pulling the sombrero of a patron at the bar until it got hooked on his mustache. She was a pro at handling men, all kinds of men. The others laughed.
"They all need to go to the dentist," said Isaac. "What can they eat with those teeth?"
"Listen who�s talking. You need to see a barber, a manicure, a pedicure and a dentist first of all, " said Zazajaz.
"Who ME! " Now Isaac had problems finding a subject that could appropriately follow his great pronoun. "Forget about playing" he moaned pushing the game away. Then he remembered something. "Ehi, Ravic, I want you to take a look at a small cyst I have on my head." He took Zazajaz�s mirror from her bag. When she saw it she had one of her classic fits for which she was more famous than her movies.
"You give me back my mirror. For Chrissake, you are so inconsiderate. I divorced my fourth husband for exactly that reason." She literally yanked the mirror from Isaac�s hands. The mirror.... her confidante, her silent partner in all her victories. Zazajaz Parambor, the famous Los Angeles hostess with the uncertain chronology. It was said that she came from an obscure region of Transilvania. She was now in her mid sixties. Having outlived a great many number of best-men and witnesses, the few left who remembered her innumerable husbands did it with a sense of stunned disbelief. Aristocrats, sportsmen, actors, bankers, movie producers, moguls and tycoons all had in their turn paid their respects to this new Circean enchantress.
Isaac answered something that sounded like magilla. Zazajaz of course replied in sync. Both she and Isaac could be terribly gross. Ravic frowned, he just couldn�t take Zazajaz and Isaac arguing. Furthermore he couldn�t understand why he was there. He was worried about a patient he had left in LA. The outcome of an operation on a lung fistula had been less than satisfactory. But Nathalie had insisted. He should have said yes instead of no. All important decisions depended on those two shortest words.
In the meantime at the counter doubt and innuendo kept twitching the array of mustache.
"Es ella.... "
"L�actriz de El Doctor Vigaj�... "
"E la otra es Nathalie Forest, l�actriz de Splendore Entre Los Arboles
"Me parece muy vieja"
"Es ella. Verdad... "
"Nathalie Forest e Julie Godsent. Seguro. Seguro.... "
Ravic understood Spanish. "Careful, Julie," he said pointing to the poster at his shoulder. "Try to be inconspicuous. You, too, Nathalie." Working in a Mexican institution in Los Angeles, he knew how Mexicans could be easily inflammable.
"Ah!" On seeing the poster Julie's blood stopped, and when it started again it was in reverse. She was still stuck on the Russian steppes, fleeing on a sled, hiding from the Reds, looking for Vigaj�. She was John�s date, but they kept very much incommunicado: she was sent a postcard with a wrong stamp, one she�d never receive it.
"Ravic."
Nathalie bent over him and said: "I'm so happy to be here with you." . Ravic was not handsome and yet the moment she saw him handsome he became immediately the handsomest of all men. But he found her infusion of happiness misplaced. Many things kept being misplaced in his life. There were moments in which the doctor still felt like a stylus caught in the wrong groove.
"Then we go!" said Zazajaz. I can't wait to see these carpets." The carpets were the reason behind the trip: the place was renowned for its handmade carpets. Having heard about them, Zazajaz couldn't live without them, Julie Godsent couldn't breathe without them, Nathalie wondered how she could have lived until then without one.
Isaac halted the trembling of his knees and gave Zazajaz a wad of money. She took it and said: "How gross of you." He said something that luckily no one could hear. He could handle his lady with his little toe. To have Zazajaz in his roster was a symbol of status. Alimony for Zazajaz could be deducted from taxes: marrying her was an exploration of the extreme frontiers of masochism.
"Peccadillo!" Zazajaz was impatient. "Ca alors," She used her French sparingly, just to remind people that once she had been European.
"I�m ready." Peccadillo was standing by the door. Dos Cruces lied ablaze and deserted, softly covered by the large shadow of the vultures, the only living things seemed to be some hens scratching about an old charabanc and Ladislao feeding his truck with buckets of water as if it were a horse.
When the women left, Isaac gave a sigh which rid the place of all mosquitoes and roaches for at least ten minutes. Now the door of the Cerveceria squeaked and Ladislao was back. Having said "Que tal" a half a dozen time, he took the game of dice and began to play by himself. The trip was a fiasco. Their lives were a fiasco. They were waiting for the women to finish with their carpets and go back.
Suddenly an ambulance appeared.
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