Rennert opened the door of the wardrobe and took a coat from its hanger. Dinner at the hacienda, he had decided, would require it.
As he did so his eyes were on a level with the shelf upon which rested the empty whisky bottle. It had been drained, he saw now, recently, for the sides were moist and a few drops remained in the curvature of the bottom. It was, he supposed, a relic of Arnhardt’s occupancy of the room.
As he walked into the patio a radio blared forth, harsh with static, from the door to the left of the entrance. Remembering that it had been designated as the sala, he went toward it.
It was a room similar to his own but larger and more pretentious. Large gilt-framed portraits of stiff-whiskered gentlemen adorned the blue-tinted walls. Between the two south windows a wooden image of the Virgin of the Remedies looked down sorrowfully upon two plaster nymphs in lascivious embrace on a round refectory table of polished mosaic inlay. In one of the corners stood a huge-bellied jar of blue-and-white Talavera majolica. There was a fragile-looking gilt-and-satin sofa and stiff straight chairs with graceful pipestem legs.
An intruder in the midst of this antiquated elegance, a radio set stood against the west wall: a transmitter in a tall cabinet of baked wrinkled enamel and a receiver beside it on a low bench.
Mark Arnhardt sat wide-legged on a stool before the receiver. He was hunched forward, twirling the dial, so that his broad shoulders strained at the seams of his coat. Thin strains of music filtered through the crackle of static.
He looked around, saw Rennert, and got to his feet.
“Hello, Mr. Rennert, come in and sit down.” The intent to inject hospitable heartiness into his voice was obvious.
He glanced toward the other side of the room, where the young Mexican whom Rennert had seen that afternoon sat by the window, idly turning over the pages of an illustrated magazine.
“Mr. Rennert, this is Mr. Flores.”
The Mexican rose with alacrity, dropped the magazine and came forward with extended hand and a set smile on his dark olive face. He wore now a dark blue suit with a pinstripe of green, a light green shirt, and a maroon and orange tie.
“Delighted, Mr. Rennert, I am sure.” His English was almost perfect, made noticeable only by a certain softness of intonation and a faint lingering on the vowels.
His hand was soft and faintly moist, with a heavy signet ring, and Rennert’s sensitive nose caught the scent of pomade and perfume.
“Will you not sit down?” Flores indicated a chair on the other side of the enraptured nymphs.
Rennert sat down.
Arnhardt stood for a moment, awkwardly, as if trying to think of something to say. He dropped onto the stool again and remarked over his shoulder: “The static’s fierce tonight. We must be in for a change of weather.”
With a cambric handkerchief the Mexican delicately removed perspiration from his forehead.
“It is the humidity,” he said, “that comes before a storm in this part of Mexico.” As if he had fulfilled a conversational duty by his acquiescence with Arnhardt’s statement he turned his head and regarded Rennert with open interest. “Mr. Falter told me that you were going to be with us for a time. You are from San Antonio, I believe?”
“Yes.”
“Ah, a beautiful city, San Antonio. I have spent much time there, on my way to and from the university.”
“You’ve been attending school in the United States?”
“Yes, at the Kansas Agricultural and Mechanical College.” He paused at the end of each sentence as if mentally jotting down a period before proceeding. “I am studying engineering. That is my plane out on the grounds. I was forced down while on my way back to Mexico City. I have had to wait for extra parts to be sent. Several of them I was unable to get in Mexico City and am waiting for them to be shipped from the United States.”
“Unfortunate,” Rennert said.
Flores smiled pleasantly, revealing white pearl-like teeth.
“Not at all. I have enjoyed my stay here on the hacienda. Mr. Falter and Mr. Arnhardt have been most hospitable.” He paused and seemed to be arranging into words the next thought that he wanted to express. “You know, Mr. Rennert, that my most early childhood recollections are of this place. I was born here and lived here until the Revolution. We went then, my family and I, to the United States until it was over. You have looked over the hacienda?”
“Not closely, no.”
“If you will look at the walls on both sides of the door you will see the holes of bullets. They are from the time when the bandits captured the hacienda. My grandfather died then. He could have gone with us to safety but he did not wish to desert the family property.”
He spoke in an unimpassioned voice but Rennert observed the gleam of pride in the dark deepset eyes and the lifting of the chin below the too-masculine mustache.
“Good evening, everyone,” the words were an obbligato to a determined ripple of chimes.
Miss Fahn came into the room. She walked on feet clad in low-heeled shoes that squeaked audibly and laced tightness held her body in uncompromising rigidity yet she managed to put into her entrance some of the effect that Rennert had always associated with the expression “sweeping into a room.” It was more, he decided, than the nicety with which she stopped, equidistant from the three of them, and the manner of an alert hostess with which she looked about her.
“Have any of you,” she asked, “seen Mr. Falter?”
“Not for an hour or so.” Rennert got to his feet.
She looked down at her watch as if it were the arbiter in a momentous question which concerned them all.
“It is time for dinner,” she said.
“Is Mr. Falter not in his room?” Flores asked as he stood with an air of patient boredom.
“He doesn’t seem to be. I knocked but he didn’t answer.”
Arnhardt remained seated at the radio, the broad expanse of his back deliberately (Rennert felt) indifferent to the query.
Static grated deafeningly into a string quartet’s rendition of “Cielito Lindo.”
Arnhardt turned the dial again. There was abrupt cessation of noise and an announcer’s voice, weirdly clear, knife-sharp in the hot still air:
“You are listening to station WARE, the voice of the Border, on the Rio Grande.”
A long pause filled with a low humming as of a tautened wire in the wind.
“We have just received word that the tropical hurricane which has been lashing the Gulf of Mexico has unexpectedly turned inland in the direction of Tampico. Storm warnings have been posted along the coast from Brownsville to Vera Cruz. During the next half hour station WARE will sign off, to clear the air for possible distress signals from coastwise shipping caught in the path of the hurricane.”
Their eyes remained riveted on the lighted dial for a moment after the clear urgent voice had ceased. Despite their familiarity with the radio that voice, seeking them out in a hidden pocket of the mountains, had seemed so close that—aside from the disturbing implications of the message—it left a momentary hush upon the room.
“How terrible!” Miss Fahn spoke into the silence. “Those poor people down in Tampico. How helpless they must feet, knowing that storm is coming toward them. And the people on ships—” There was a tightness about her lips that robbed her voice of its note of artificiality. “Shall we go in to dinner,” she said.
As they walked into the patio Rennert found himself walking by her side as Arnhardt and Flores brought up the rear.
She said as they made their way along the paving-stones: “It must be that storm which is causing the humidity in the air tonight.”
“Yes. Tampico is less than two hundred miles away, you know.”
She looked at him quickly.
“You don’t suppose there’s any danger of the storm reaching here?”
“Oh, no, I don’t think so.” Rennert put reassurance into his voice. “If it does its force will have been broken by the mountains.” (He thought: I’m not sure at all It would require more of a barrier than the range which lies between us and the coast to assure us of safety from the vagaries of a tropical hurricane.)
“A storm,” Miss Fahn said, “always alarms me so. My brother died in one. His ship went down somewhere in the China Sea. I believe they call them typhoons there. I have never wanted to look at the ocean again.”
They had come to the door of Falter’s apartment. She turned her head (Rennert felt that she was glad of the excuse to do so) and waited until Arnhardt and Flores came up.
“You might go in and knock on his bedroom door, Mr. Arnhardt. He may have been asleep and not have heard me.”
Arnhardt shrugged.
“If he can’t keep track of the time let him miss out on a meal,” he said gruffly and stalked on.
“I will go if you wish,” Flores said.
He went in while Rennert and Miss Fahn waited. After a moment she walked to the edge of the paving and, with an attempt at casualness which did not deceive him, looked up at the sky.
The Tolmans were walking slowly along the west side of the patio, the girl’s hand resting lightly in the crook of her husband’s elbow. Neither was talking.
Flores came out and said without his usual smile: “Mr. Falter will be with us in a moment. He is not feeling well.”
“Oh.” Miss Fahn’s teeth sank very gently into her lower lip. “Let us walk on,” she said to Rennert.
They met the Tolmans by the dining-room door.
“Good evening, Mrs. Tolman. Good evening, Mr. Tolman,” there was agitation beneath the formality of Miss Fahn’s voice. “Have you folks met Mr. Rennert?”
“Yes,” Tolman answered, “we’ve had the pleasure.” He had on a well-worn linen suit. In a glance Rennert’s practiced eye took in the careful pressing to which it had been subjected and the little spot on the cuff where the coat had been neatly mended. The man’s face bore a pleasant, rather abstracted smile but on each cheekbone was visible a hectic flush.
Ann Tolman’s eyes met Rennert’s for an instant as she murmured: “Good evening, Mr. Rennert.” She wore a printed frock whose crispness and freshness did not quite make up for the white drained look on her face. Rennert noted the quickness with which her gaze left him to travel to Arnhardt, who was standing to one side, his back and one foot propped against the wall, and staring straight ahead of him.
“Hasn’t it been warm today?” Miss Fahn was saying in a preoccupied manner, half her attention on Falter’s door. “I thought it would be, so I told Maria this morning to prepare a salad for dinner tonight, something crisp. Her ideas of salads are really impossible.”
Ann brought her attention back: “But didn’t you know that Lee had returned?”
“Lee?” Miss Fahn frowned. “No, I didn’t. I’d hoped that we had gotten rid of him for good. Maria’s cooking may be lacking in some respects but I always feel—well, so much more comfortable if she’s in the kitchen. I feel so much freer to give her suggestions. Well, here comes Mr. Falter at last.”
Something about the sharp way she said it made Rennert turn. He saw at once that something was wrong.
“Shall we go in?” Miss Fahn said hurriedly to Rennert. As he escorted her into the room she whispered: “It’s perfectly obvious what the trouble is. This has happened before but never so bad as this. It will be better if we pretend that we don’t notice it.” She raised her voice and indicated the chair on her right. “You may take this place, Mr. Rennert.”
As Rennert held her chair for her he was observing Falter, who was making his way to the opposite end of the long table. The man’s face was gray ash beneath his tan and little beads of perspiration glistened on his forehead. He stood for a moment, one hand gripping the edge of the table, and stared straight at a bowl of white carnations in the center. He dropped heavily into his chair.
Rennert took his place beside Arnhardt. Flores sat beyond the latter and, on the opposite side, the Tolmans. Rennert was feeling decidedly uneasy. Falter wasn’t drunk, he knew that. He was in pain, however, and, unless he read his face wrongly, was keeping himself going by sheer force of will.
The kitchen door creaked and Lee came into the room with a soup-laden tray.
Miss Fahn glanced at him and frowned.
“Lee!” her voice was imperative. “Haven’t you forgotten something?”
Lee looked at her. His face was blank but his eyes glittered as they reflected the light of the unshaded electric bulb.
“No, miss, not forget anything. Soup all hot. Burn like—”
She checked him with an uplifted hand.
“That will do, Lee. I am referring to your white jacket. Didn’t I tell you always to wear it when you were serving? Please go and put it on at once.”
The steaming bowls tilted perilously as the Chinaman began to shift his hands.
“Too hot, miss, to wear goddamned jacket. Kitchen hot like—”
“That’s enough, Lee. Please go and put that jacket on. Do it before you serve the soup.”
Lee’s lips moved soundlessly, the soup slid toward the other end of the tray and he turned back into the kitchen.
“So trying,” Miss Fahn was saying to Rennert in an undertone, “to preserve the conventions in a country like this.” She went on, something about “keeping servants in their places” and “Englishmen who always dress for dinner, even in the tropics.” Rennert was thinking: She is a little girl in pigtails, playing at keeping house and aping with the air of a grande dame a world that isn’t hers. Then she was clearing her throat and addressing the table: “Did you hear the dreadful news that just came over the radio? About the hurricane that was due to strike Tampico this evening? I think that a prayer would be appropriate—a prayer for the safety of those who are upon the sea tonight, whose lives are in danger.”
She lowered her chin to rest upon a cameo brooch and in the strained hush that fell upon them began to intone: “Eternal Father, strong to save, whose arm doth bind the restless wav.…”
Rennert ventured a glance about the table.
Arnhardt was leaning back in his chair, staring across the carnations in the Talavera jar at Ann Tolman’s hair, to which the electric light was lending a metallic sheen. (Rennert’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. There was something almost fierce about the intensity of the young man’s gaze and a softness, in that unguarded moment, about the rough outlines of his face.)
“… the mighty ocean deep its own appointed limits kee.…”
Flores sat upright in his chair, as with one hand he marshalled knife and fork and spoon into position. There was an openly derisive smile on his lips.
Stephen Tolman held his head slightly inclined but was regarding Falter sideways.
“… hear us when we cry to Thee, for those in peril on the se.…”
The fingers of both Falter’s hands were grasping the tablecloth, their tendons white against the tight skin. The cords of his temples stood out, glistening with perspiration.
“… who didst brood upon the chaos dark and rude…”
A chair crashed against the tiles.
Miss Fahn raised her head, a startled look on her face.
Falter had gotten to his feet and was swaying to and fro. He raised a hand and brushed it across his eyes.
“What’s the matter with these lights?” he demanded thickly.
“Why, nothing at all, Mr. Falter.” Miss Fahn’s voice was edged with acerbity. “If you will just sit down—”
He took away his hand and fixed, with difficulty, his eyes on the electric light.
“Who in the hell,” he said, “put a yellow bulb in there?”
He fell forward. An outstretched hand struck the Talavera jar, overturning it and the white carnations.