They called him “the man who’s going to die,” but in Spanish, and with a sense of Mexican fatalism.
The old man was tall, his eyes unfocused in an unshaven face, with sunken cheeks, and a tussle of translucent hair that gave him a saint’s aura. He might have been handsome once but now his trousers hung on his hips like a clown’s, descending out of reach. Everything about him seemed inevitable as he propped himself against a wall, apparently too stupefied to get out of the sun. Harding recognized something in the man from the moment he spotted him, but he couldn’t quite say what.
“He’s always there. He’s going to die one day,” said Bonita, Harding’s lover.
Through the open hotel window, they could hear Volkswagen taxis crawling up and down narrow streets, a mediocre mariachi band in the distance. A breeze filled curtains in colonial windows. Bonita was on the bed, idly regarding the ceiling as Harding unpacked a small suitcase.
“The dogs will be howling tonight,” he ventured.
“You gringos. Always noticing the negative. Harding, you are an asshole.” She smiled as she spoke, adding: “Why me? Why do I have to fall in love wit’ you?”
She had an accent that never failed to charm him. “I love the way you talk,” he said.
“Fuck you,” she responded in a good-humored way.
Bonita had been the mistress of a Mexican political leader, someone who had adored her, but she had left out of boredom and had taken up with Harding. Harding picked up his camera to take some pictures of her. “For posterity,” he explained.
“Poor me. You’ll put me in an album, add me to your collection,” she lamented.
“There is no collection. I want to record you the way you are now because your youth won’t last. Count on it.”
“You talk like an old man, but you’re younger than my father.”
“Is that why you’re with me?”
“I’m wit’ you because I love you,” she replied with a sigh.
The night before, they had been in a high-ceilinged cantina, a rundown place reverberating with the clatter of dominoes hitting wooden tables; a cranky fan trying to pump thick air outside. The place had walls that hadn’t seen paint since Castro and the boys stepped through the swinging doors in the fifties. Men in crumpled business suits and loosened ties were socializing after work, becoming more vocal with each round of drinks. They jabbed fingers into the air to make a point, having to yell to drown out the noise of rush-hour traffic.
The only female in the bar, Bonita, had tossed back shot glasses of tequila like a man, much to Harding’s amazement. “I once came here with one of my boy friends,” she had explained, but she didn’t follow this up for Harding didn’t want to know about the others. She knew where to draw the line with men.
He recalled being atop one of the pyramids at Teotihuacan, climbing sideways as the steps were too narrow for a straight ascent. Once on top, he and Bonita had raised their arms to heaven and had looked over the dried-out valley with its giant cacti and distant rolling hills. Bonita wanted to make love where the Aztecs had torn the hearts out of human beings. It was a spiritual thing, she insisted, but he found it too morbid. Besides, tourists were beginning to appear, and eyes were everywhere.
“I’m wit’ you, and you only,” she repeated, her coal black eyes on him.
***************************
The next morning birds were chirping, cocks crowing, and then the beetle taxis resumed their toil up and down the narrow streets. People with portfolios appeared; neatly uniformed school children walked with school bags on their backs. The sun was just rising over the hills in the distance. It would be another scorching day.
“When do you want sex, before or after breakfast?” asked Harding.
“What do you think?” Bonita laughed from bed. “Both.”
That morning they strolled past jewelry shops but bought nothing. She did not expect presents because, as she never tired of telling him, she loved Harding. She said it half a dozen times a day, usually after sex – which she seemed never to get enough of. But he offered no assurances. Nothing in life was permanent.
“I’m a romantic,” she lamented. “Poor me. I have to suffer. Why don’ you luv me?”
She said she wanted to bear his children, wanted to be with him forever. He responded, saying it would be a sin to bring children into such a corrupt country as Mexico, a land she had sworn never to leave, while he maintained he could not live in such a place. “Poor me,” she repeated from under her short-cropped hair. But then she wanted breakfast.
They drove on a newly-paved highway to Ixtalpan – she curled up in her seat, looking at him: “I won’ wait for you, you know. I’ve waited for years.”
“You’ve waited two years. And now I’m here…” he ventured, knowing this was not the answer she wanted. There would never be a satisfactory response. “I’m not the type to get married. You knew that when we met. I need to move around.”
Entering Ixtalpan, there were farmers in straw hats working in parched fields, cobble-stoned streets and colonial buildings. They checked into another hotel. Bonita wanted to swim.
In the pool, her small brown body propelled itself back and forth with a barracuda’s precision, slicing through the water effortlessly – a fascinating creature. He noticed a little movement right in Bonita’s wake – a creature struggling to stay afloat. Harding got out his pen to raise the butterfly onto the pool’s edge. Saved for now, he thought.
***************************
Bonita and Harding were in a thermal spa in a marbled room with massage tables and a tub of steaming mineral water.
“My communist boyfriend used to bring me here,” Bonita said.
“To hell with him,” replied Harding. “You’re here with me now. Stop trying to make me jealous. It wont work.”
“Si fascista,” she replied, grinning triumphantly.
The hot tub was surrounded by dusty plastic flowers; above loomed a domed-ceiling decorated with clouds and cherubs. There was soft music playing. It was some drug lord’s idea of paradise.
After adventures in the baths, they left to inspect a dilapidated chapel. With Saint Mary and a dejected Jesus looking on, Harding ordered Bonita to lift up her tee shirt. She easily complied. Bonita had no shame, or was it all guile? He didn’t know which. Click. Click. He took a couple of pictures.
“Immortalized,” he exclaimed. “You’re absolutely beautiful.”
He drove out of town while Bonita sang “I was born to love you…,” over and over again, but she had forgotten the lyrics. A moment later, he missed a turn in the main road and ended up on a dirt path deeply trenched from earlier rainfalls. He was curious where the path would lead, so he kept driving. But then Bonita fell silent. There was cause for concern.
They drove into a bright village square – no soul in sight. He halted. They would have to ask for directions back to the city, but it was siesta time.
A bell began clanging in a church tower. From one of the narrow lanes emerged a procession of peasants carrying a coffin on their shoulders. Men and women, young and old, all with heads bowed, shuffled in the direction of the car. On approach, they parted, streaming around the vehicle like water circumventing a rock. No one looked at the couple in the car; no one made a sound. In the rear-view mirror, Harding noted the procession disappearing over a rise in the fields.
“What was that?” he asked.
“Funeral,” she replied. “Mala suerte. Let’s get out of here.”
***************************
By late afternoon, they were back in the capital, juggling for space in traffic. Harding nearly struck a bus, then suggested Bonita take the wheel. She steered the vehicle effortlessly around cars, between buses, past trucks, negotiating a path. Remarkable, thought Harding.
They were where they had begun, at Bonita’s home. Bonita lay on her bed, one hand between her legs, the other supporting her neck as she sang: “There ain’t no cure for love…,” a tune to which she knew the words. She rocked gently as she sang. As she ended, she folded herself into a fetal position.
“You’re supposed to be a Communist, but like all Mexicans, you’re a martyr to suffering,” he observed.
In the soft light of the evening a tenderness came over him. I’ve been too hard on her, he thought. He wanted to make her happy, but he was too much of a pessimist for the full catastrophe, as someone had called it. Life was too short.
“I’m three years older than when we met. When you seduced me,” she said, in mock accusation.
He watched her, wondering whether her mood would change. It was her birthday, so there would be a party that evening. She had been looking forward to it.
***************************
As the fiesta got under way, she seemed to be enjoying herself. A drink in hand, she fluttered from one group of guest to another, exchanging air kisses here and there, but always with an eye on Harding. When he seemed to take an interest in a female guest, she scowled. She came to him, pulled on his shirt, and lamented he was ignoring her. Then she kissed him full on the lips as though claiming him for herself.
They danced together but Harding felt awkwardly on display, aware she was trying to manipulate him. She tossed back glass after glass of rum and then meandered among her friends, laughing and taking sips out of their drinks as she went.
By two in the morning, Bonita said she was ready for bed, yet she was not ready to sleep. Instead, she had a sly look that said: “I want it now….”
“You know, you’re a nymphomaniac,” he said seriously.
“No!” she retorted.
“Three, four times a day; isn’t that a bit unusual?”
“Not in Mexico,” she replied.
Then she tried another tack: “If you don’ wan’ me, there’s always Bill.” (She pronounced this as Beel.)
“Beel. What Beel? What is that, some kind of insect?”
“Ah, Beel is a man in California. He wants me to come live wit’ him.”
“So, you love this Beel?”
“No, I love you. Only you have a place in my heart.”
Harding was stunned. He had thought he was the only man in her life.
There was a note of triumph in her voice as she added: “I’ve waited long enough for you. I’m not goin’ to wait longer.” She seemed serious. The game was up. She was waiting for a reply.
Yes, I’ll marry her, he thought. But she’s hidden this Bill from me. Instead of responding, he went to the window and parted the curtains to look into the dark street. He was about to say something when, across the road, under a streetlight, he saw a dog nudging a bundle of rags by the wall. Harding strained his eyes to make out what it was. It wasn’t rags. It was the old man he’d seen earlier. Harding turned to look at Bonita, a dark shadow in the darkened room. “The old man is dead,” he murmured.
Scent of Time 