Gun for the Devil-1
American Ghosts and Old World Wonders 作者：安吉拉·卡特 投票推荐 加入书签 留言反馈
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A hot, dusty, flyblown Mexi border town -- a town without hope, without grace, the end of the road for all those whove the misfortuo find themselves washing up here. The time is about the turn of the tury, long after the heroic period of the West is past; and there was never anything heroic about these border raiders, this poverty-stri half-life they lead. The Mendozas, a barbarous hierarchy of bandits, ruown, its corrupt sheriff, its bank, the telegraph -- everything. Even the priest is an appoi of theirs.The oablishment iown with a superficial veneer of elegance is the bar-cum-whorehouse. This is presided over by a curious, apparently ill-matched couple -- an ageing, drunken, ptive European aristocrat and his mistress, the madame, who keeps him. Shes called Roxana, a straightforward, ageing, rather raddled, unimaginative, affeate woman.
She is the sister of Maria Mendoza, the bandits wife -- thats how she obtaihe brothel cession. Roxana and her man, the dying, despairing man they call the t, arrived, the pair of them, out of nowhere, a few years back, penniless, in rags; theyd begged a ride in a farm cart. . . "I"ve e home, Maria, after all this time. . . theres nowhere else to go." Roxanad had a lot of experien the trade; with her brother-in-laws blessing, with his finance, she opened up a bar-cum-brothel and staffed it with girls whod got good reason to lie low for a while -- not, perhaps, the best class of whore. Five of them. But they suit the ers very well; they keep Mendozas desperadoes out of trouble, they service his visitors -- and sometimes theres a casual visitor, a stray passerby, a travelling salesman, say, or a smuggler. The brothel prospers.
And the t, in his soiled, ruffled shirt and threadbare suits of dandified black, lends a little class to the joint; so his life has e to this, he serves to or his mistresss bar. A certain bitterness, a dnity, characterises the t.
The t lets visitors buy drinks for him; he is a soak, but a distinguished one, heless. He keeps a margin of distance about himself -- he has his pride, still, even if hes dying. Hes rumoured to have been, in his day, in the Old try, a legendary marksman. The girls chatter among themselves. Julie, the Yankee, says shes heard that he and Roxana used to do an a a circus. He used to shoot all her clothes off her until she was as naked as the day she was born. As the day she was born!
But hadnt he killed Roxanas lover, no, not her lover but some man shed been sold to, some seamy story. . . wasnt it in San<big>?9９ｌｉｂ.</big> Francisco, oerfront? No, no, no -- everything happened in Austria, ermany, or wherever it is he es from, long before he met Roxana. Hes not touched a gun since he met Roxana. He never shoots, now, even if his old-fashioned, long-barrelled rifle hangs on the wall. . . look! He was too good a shot; they said that only the devil himself -- its best not to pay attention to such stories, even if Maddalena once worked in a house in San Francisco where Roxana used to work and somebody told her -- but the ts shadow falls across the wall; they hush, even if Maddalena furtively crosses herself.
In this town, nobody asks any questions. Who would live here if they had the option to live anywhere else? Poor Teresa Mendoza, pretty as a picture, sweet sixteen, sullen, dissatisfied, she got a few ideas above her statiohey sent her off to a vent to learn how to read and write. What does she o read and write for? Not when shes o live like a pig. But shes going to get married, isnt she? To a rich man? Yes, but hes a rich bandit!
Iernoon, the slack time, Roxana and her sister sit in Roxanas boudoir with the shades down against the gla<tt></tt>ring sun, rog on e rog-chairs, smoking cigars together aly tippling tequila. Maria Mendoza is a r, mannish, booted and spurred bandit herself; savage, illiterate, mother of one daughter only, the beautiful Teresa. "We finally fixed it, Roxana; signed, sealed and almost delivered. . . See, heres the picture of Teresas fiance. . . isnt he a handsome man? Eh? Eh?"
Roxana looks at the cherished photograph dubiously. Another bandit, even if a more powerful ohan Mendoza himself! At least she, Roxana, has mao get herself a man who doesnt urs to bed. And Teresa hasnt eve her intended. . . "No, no!" cries Maria. "Thats not necessary. Love will e, as soon as theyre married, once he gets his leg over her. . . and the babies, my Teresas babies, my grandchildren, growing up in his enormous house, surrounded by servants bowing and scraping." But Roxana is less certain and shakes her head doubtfully. "Anyway, theres nothing Teresa do about it," says her mother firmly; "its all been fixed up by Mendoza, shell be the bandit queen of the entire border. Thats a lot better than living like a pig in this hole."
The Mendozas do indeed live like pigs, behind a stockade, in a filthy, gypsy-like encampment of followers and hangers-on in the grounds of what was once, before the Mendozas took it over, a rather magnifit Spanish ial hada. Now Mendoza himself, Teresas hulking brute of a father, gallops his horse down the corridors, shoots out the windowpanes in his drunkenness. Teresa, the spoiled only daughter, screams at him in fury: "We live like pigs! Like pigs!"
Problems in the brothel! The pianist has run off with the prettiest of all the girls; theyre heading south to start up their own place, she res her husband wont chase her down as far as Acapulco. They wait for the stagecoach to take them away, sitting on barrels in the general store with their bags piled around them; the coach drops one passehe driver goes off to water the horses. Any work here for a piano-player? Why, what a ce!
Hes from the north, a gringo. And a city boy, too, in a velvet coat, with such long, white fingers! He winces when he hears gunfire -- a Mendoza employee boisterously shooting at chis iter. How pale he is. . .a handsome boy, nice, refined, educated voice. Is there everace of a fn at?
Like the t, he is startlingly alien in this primitive, semi-desert enviro.
Roxas maternally at the sight of him; he delights the t by playing a little Brahms o-of-tune, honky-tonk piano. The ts eyes mist over; he remembers. . . The servatoire at Vienna? it be possible? How extraordinary. . . so you were studying at the servatoire at Vienna? Although Roxanas delighted with her new employee, her lip curls, she is a natural sceptic. But hes the best piano-player shes ever heard.
And, anyway, nobody really asks questions in this town, or believes any answers, for that matter. He must have his reasons for holing up in this godforsaken place. The jobs yours, Johnny; you get a little room over the porch to sleep in, with a lo it to keep the girls out. They get bored. . . dohem bother you.
But Johnny is in the grip of a singular passion; he is a grim and dedicated being. He ighe girls pletely.
In his bedroom, Johnny places photographs of a man and a woman -- his parents -- on the splintered pine dressing-table; pins up a poster for the San Francisco Opera House on the wall, Der Freischütz. He addresses the photographs. "Ive found out where they live, Ive tracked them to their lair. It wont be long now, Mother and Father. Not long."
Hoofbeats outside. Maria Mendoza is ing to visit her sister, riding astride, like a man, while her daughter rides side-saddle like a lady, even if her hair is an unbed haystack. She looks the wild bandit-child she is. But -- now shes an engaged woman, her father forbids her to visit the brothel, even to pay a formal call on her good aunt! Ride bae, Teresa!
Sullen, she turns her horse round. Looking back at the brothel as she trots away, she sees Johnny gazing at her from his window; their eyes meet, Johnnys briefly veil.
Teresa is momentarily fused; then spurs her horse cruelly, gallops off, like a wild thing.
In the small hours, when the brothel has finally closed down for the night, Johnny plays Chopin for the t. Tears of seal nostalgia roll down the old mans cheeks. And Vienna. . . is it still the same? Try not to remember. . . he pours himself another whisky. Then Johnny asks him softly, is it true what hes heard. . . stories circulating in the faraway Austro-Hungarian Empire; the t starts.
The old legend, about the man who makes a pact with the devil to obtain a bullet that iss its target. . .
An old legend, says the t. In the superstitious villages, they believe such things still.
All kinds of shadows drift in through the open window.
The old legend, given a new lease of life by the exploits of a certain aristocrat, who vanished suddenly, left everything. And the Mendozas, here, the bandits -- arent they all damned? Vicious, cruel. . . wouldnt a man whos sold his soul to the devil feel safest amongst the damned? Amongst whores and murderers?
The t, shuddering, pours yet another whisky.
Is it true what they used to whisper, that the t -- this t, you! old man -- had a reputation as a marksman so extraordinary that everyohought he had supernatural powers?
The t, rec himself, says: They said that of Paganini, that he must have learned how to play the fiddle from the devil. Sinan being could have played so well."
"And perhaps he did," says Johnny.
"Youre a musi, not a murderer, Johnny."
"Stranglers and piano-players both need long fingers. But a bullet is more merciful," suggests Johnny obliquely.
Out of some kind of dream into which hes abruptly sunk, the t says: "The seventh bullet belongs to the devil. That is how you pay --"
But tonight, he wont, t say any more. He lurches off to bed, to Roxana, whos waiting for him, as she always does. But why, oh why, is the old man g? The whisky makes you into a baby. . . but Roxana takes care of you, shes always taken care of you, ever since she found you.
Roxana mothers the newer, Johnny, too, but she also watches him, with troubled eyes. All he does is play the piano and brood obsessively over the Mendoza gunmen as they sport and play in the bar. Sometimes he is the ts old rifle, hung up on the wall, strokes the barrel, caresses the stock; but he knows nothing about the arts of death at all. Nothing! Aakes no i in the girls, thats uhy.
It seems to Roxana that theres a likeness between her old man and the young ohat crazy, black-clad dignity. They always seem to be chatting to one another and sometimes they talk in German. Roxana hates that, it makes her feel shut out, excluded.
he be, young Johnny be. . . some son the t begot and then abandoned, a child hed never known, e all this way to find him?
Could it be?
Old man and young one, with eyes the same shape, hands the same shape. . . could it be?
And if it is, why dont they tell her, Roxana?
Secrets make her feel shut out, excluded. She sits in her room on the rog-chair in the dusk, sipping tequila.
Voices below -- in German. She goes to her window, watches the t and the piano-player wander off together in the dire of the little scummy pond in front of the brothel, which is set back off the main street.
She crosses herself, goes on rog.
"Speak English, we must leave the Old World and its mysteries behind us," says the t. "The old, weary, exhausted world. Leave it behind! This is a new try, full of hope. . ."
He is heavily ironic. The a rocks of the desert lour down in the su.
"But the landscape of this try is more a by far than we are, strange gods brood over it. I shall never be friends with it, never."
Aliens, strangers, the t and Johnny watch the Mendozas ride out on the rampage, led by Teresas father; a band of grizzled hooligans, firing off their guns, shouting.
Johnny, calm, quiet, tells the t how the Mendozas killed his parents when they raided a train for the gold the train carried. His parents, both opera singers, on their way back across the ti from California, from a booking in San Francisco. . . and he far away, in Europe.
Mendoza himself tore the earrings from his mothers ears. And raped her. And somebody shot his father when his father tried to stop the rape. And then they shot his mother because she was screaming so loudly.
Calm, quiet, Johnny rets all.
"We all have our tragedies."
"Some tragedies we turn ba the perpetrators. Ive planned my revenge. A suitably operatic revenge. I shall seduce the beautiful senorita and give her a baby. And if I t shoot her father and mother, I shall find some way of strangling them with my beautiful pianists hands."
Quiet, assured, deadly -- but inpetent. He doesnt know one end of a gun from the other; never raised his hand in anger in his life.
But hes been brooding on this revenge ever sihe black-edged letter arrived at his lodgings in Vienna; in Vienna, where he heard how a nobleman made a pact with the devil, oo ensure no bullet he ever fired would miss the mark. . .
"If youve pla all so well, if youre dedicated to your vengeance. . ."
Johnny nods. Quiet, assured, deadly.
"If youre quite determihen. . . you belong to the devil already. And a bullet is indeed more merciful than anger, if accurately fired."
And the t has always hated Mendozas pt for himself and Roxana, who live on Mendozas charity.
But Johnny has never used a gun in his life. Old man, old man, what have you to lose? Youve nothing, youve e to a dead end, kept by a whore in a flyblown town at the end of all the roads you ever took. . . give me a gun that will never miss a shot; that will fire by itself. I know you know how to get one. I kno>.９9ｌiｂ.</samp> --
"I have nothing to lose," says the t inscrutably. "Except my sins, Johnny. Except my sins."
Teresa, sixteen, sullen, pretty, dissatisfied, retreats into her bedroom, into the depths of an enormous, gilded, four-poster bed looted from a train especially for her, surrounded by a jackdaws of ta<samp></samp>wdry, looted glitter, ges herself on chocolates, leafs through very very old fashion magazines. She hugs a sy kitten, her pet. Chis roost on the opy of her bed. Maa! maa! a goat pokes its head in through the open window. Teresa twitches with annoyance. You call this living?
Her door bursts open. Aed dog follows a flock of squawking chis into the room; all the chis roosting on the bed rise up, squawking. Chaos! The dog jumps on to the bed, begins to gnaw at the bloody something he carries in his mouth. Kitten rises on its hio bat at the dog. Teresa hurls chocolates, magazines, screaming -- insupportable! She storms out of the room.
In the courtyard, her mother is slaughtering a screaming pig. Thats the sort of thing the Mendoza women folk enjoy! Ugh. Teresas made for better things, she knows it.
She wanders dissolately out into the dusty street. Empty. Like my life, like my life.
Willows bend over the scummy pool in front of Roxanas brothel; it has a secluded air.
Teresa skulks beside the pool, sullenly throwing sto her own refle, slack time; in voluptuous déshabillé, the whores leahe veranda: "Little Teresa! Little Teresa! e in and see your auntie!" They laugh at her in her black stogs, her vent-girl dress, her rumpled hair.
Roxanas doing the books, behind the bar, with a pair of wire-rimmed glasses propped on her he t pours himself elevenses -- she looks up, is about to remonstrate with him, thinks better of it, returns to her sums. M sunshine; outside on the veranda, the whiggle and wave at Teresa.
Johnny idly begins to play a Strauss waltz. Roxanas foot taps a little.
The t puts down his whisky. Smiles. He approaches Roxana, presents his arm. Shes startled -- then blushes, beams like a young girl. Takes off her glasses, pats her hair, gla herself in the mirror behind the bar, pleasantly flustered. Seeing her pleasure, the t bees more courtly still. Still quite a fine figure of a man! And she, when she smiles, you see what a pretty girl she must have been.
Johnny flourishes the keys; hes touched. He begins to play a Strauss waltz in ear.
Roxana takes the ts proffered arm; they dance.
"Look! Look! Roxanas dang!"
The whores flock bato the room, laughing, admiring. And begin to dah one anirl with girl, in their spoiled negligees, their unlaced corsets, petticoats, torn stogs.
Maddalena, partnerless, lingers on the veranda, teasing Teresa. Music spills out of the brothel.
"Teresa! Teresa! e and dah me!"
Slowly, slowly, Teresa arrives at the veranda, climbs the stairs, peers through a window as, flushed and breathless, the dancers collapse in a laughing heap.
She and Johnny exge a flashing glance. But her aunt catches sight of her. "Teresa, Teresa, scram! This is no place for you!"
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