A Thorn in the Bush Read online

  The easel creaked as Hoblitt adjusted its position, studied the scene.

  Paulita stopped to thread a needle, used the diversion for a series of new gambits in eye-dodging.

  Mrs. Ross shook her head in admiration. She could not be certain because of the angle, but she thought she saw Hoblitt grin before he again bent to his work. For no reason she could explain, this sent Mrs. Ross’s thoughts into the penetrating character analysis emerging beneath the artist’s brush: passionate but cruel—that was the Paulita of the portrait.

  Anger flared in Mrs. Ross. A damnable young man! Coming in here without asking! Disrupting a nice, orderly life!

  She slammed the French doors as she went inside.

  ***

  Chapter 6

  At noon, Serena bustled in, her shopping basket on one thick, brown arm. The basket bulged with tomatoes, bananas, a brown paper package of meat, a stack of tortillas wrapped in cloth, onions, oranges, a mound of green chili peppers. She began recounting her morning’s net of gossip as she unloaded the basket onto the grey boards of the kitchen table.

  “In the evening of yesterday,” she said, “Don Jaime made for himself a visit to the Señor Hoblitt.”

  Mrs. Ross experienced a cold sensation in her stomach. She stood in the doorway to the dining room, just out of the chalk glare that always filled the kitchen at mid-day.

  “And María Carlotta, who delivered some fruit to the little house just then, saw them drinking together—gin and limes in the large glasses!”

  Mrs. Ross’s lips formed the automatic reply: “How brutal.”

  “And they looked at a painting which the Señor Hoblitt keeps in a locked box when he is not working on it. Don Jaime said he likes this painting very much.”

  “You mean the portrait of Paulita,” sad Mrs. Ross.

  “No, Señora.” Serena crossed to the sink, began rinsing tomatoes in a bowl of water. She spoke over her shoulder: “This is another one. This is probably the one Don Jaime is buying.”

  “Buying?” Mrs. Ross stared at Serena’s brown-clad back, the two dark braids jerking like animated bell-pulls.

  “Yes. María Carlotta says that Don Jaime buys one of the paintings, but she has not seen it. The Señor Hoblitt keeps it in the locked box.”

  The mystery of this caught Mrs. Ross’s interest. And, for some reason, it disquieted her. She thought: What did that fool Jaime say to Hoblitt?

  She said: “Did not María Carlotta overhear their conversation?”

  “Not very much of it, Señora.” Serena crossed to the stove with an earthen bowl which she sat on a rear burner. “The Señor Hoblitt ordered María Carlotta from the house, although he had not completed sorting his fruit. She heard them laughing, however, as she left.” Serena lowered her voice, peered at Mrs. Ross from slitted eyes. “They were discussing espionage! María Carlotta heard the word, and that is all she cares to say about it.”

  Espionage? Mrs. Ross shook her head sharply. She felt that the sense of the conversation had veered off into a region where she could not follow.

  “Espionage!” repeated Serena. She returned to the sink for another bowl.

  Mrs. Ross felt an unexplainable tightness in her throat, wondered if she was coming down with one of the recurrent tropic maladies that she wrote off as the price of the sunshine.

  Serena shuffled back to the stove, poured meat stock into the earthen pot, turned up the gas flame, faced Mrs. Ross. The Aztec features looked flat and avid. “The Señor Hoblitt has given to María Carlotta two positively new pairs of nylons,” she said. She looked accusingly at her employer, who only released nylons when they had runs and must be repaired by the girl in the Tienda Moderna at a cost of fifty centavos each.

  Mrs. Ross pulled at her lower lip. She was thinking about Don Jaime’s visit to Hoblitt. Two hours together! And not the first time, evidently. Then: Espionage?

  Serena’s last announcement registered slowly, expanding like a balloon until it burst on Mrs. Ross’s consciousness: Two pairs of new nylons! A bribe!

  Espionage! It occurred to Mrs. Ross that the kitchen-maid grapevine in San Juan worked in two directions.

  “Has the Señor Hoblitt been asking questions about me?” she demanded.

  Serena’s expression drifted into bland vacuity. “I cannot say, Señora. Maybe yes, maybe no.”

  Even if she did know she wouldn’t tell me! thought Mrs. Ross. She realized that she had violated a basic rule of the grapevine: one did not suggest even remotely that one’s own servant revealed private confidences.

  Serena turned away, fussed with the stove.

  Mrs. Ross stared at the woman’s implacable back. At least once a day Serena extinguished the gas flame by trying to coax more heat out of it by fanning it like a charcoal fire. The stupid!

  “I’m not feeling well,” said Mrs. Ross. “I’ll just have some soup. You may serve me in the bedroom.”

  She left before Serena could begin detailing all the deaths from various incurable blights that had stricken San Juan the previous month.

  And it wouldn’t do a bit of good to question Don Jaime, Mrs. Ross thought as she climbed the stairs to her bedroom. He’s close up just like Serena. When you get right down to it, they’re all alike! Always gossiping! No one’s safe from it!

  The bedroom looked shadowy and inviting with all the blinds pulled. Thin strips of slatted light wavered across the bedspread, climbed up the tall mahogany ropero where she kept her clothes on gringo hangers. The bedspread was one Paulita had made: blue herons cross-stitched on a white background.

  Mrs. Ross sat on the edge of the bed, rubbed a hand across the rough surface beside her. The sore throat was growing more pronounced. She sensed the hush outside that came over San Juan at siesta time. A sigh lifted her shoulders.

  Perhaps I’ve been pushing myself too hard lately, she thought. Maybe I should spend a few days in bed. It doesn’t pay to take chances with these Mexican germs.

  She lay back on the bed, her thought growing to decision. Just a day or two in bed. She yawned, listening for Serena with the luncheon tray. And the thought occurred to her that she would be besieged by little cups and bowls of herbal remedies if she stayed in bed. Two tribulations of being ill in San Juan were the sudden martinet officiousness of Serena and the procession of native medicines delivered by narrow-faced girl children with dirty legs and wearing oversized hand-me-down head shawls.

  And there was no stopping Serena’s outpouring of epidemic calamities, each closed by the ominous portents that had warned of disaster: “… if only they had known.”

  ***

  Chapter 7

  On Sunday, the second morning of Mrs. Ross’s “illness,” Serena entered the sick chamber at eight-thirty, shouldering the door open while she protected the breakfast tray in her thick arms. She wore an orange bib apron over her black “church” dress. Her braids were tied off by two bits of silver ribbon rescued from a Christmas wrapping the previous year. On the tray was the diet she considered fitting for the ill: two eggs coddled in milk, orange juice, one piece of dry toast. And instead of coffee, she had brought this morning a cup of Jamaica tea looking faintly pinkish in a yellow cup.

  Mrs. Ross had been awake since the first church bells had begun calling to Mass at five-thirty. But there was no way to get Serena to bring breakfast earlier.

  “The sick need more sleep!” Serena would say. Then would come the calamitous case histories of those who had ignored this warning.

  Mrs. Ross listened to Serena’s sandals slapping across the tile floor, heard them go mute on the serape-rug. She turned, looked up at the maid.

  Serena’s Aztec face held a look of pleased grief. There was a small bandage on the middle finger of her right hand. She had burned herself at the gas stove the previous day. Mrs. Ross knew that the bandage would stay there at least two days past the point of complete healing—a reminder of martyrdom.

  “Father Aguilar said Mass for the repose of Hector Reliquero’s soul this
morning,” said Serena.

  Mrs. Ross blinked. “Oh?” Then she remembered: Reliquero—that’s the young fisherman from Solas who drowned.

  Serena put the breakfast tray on the nightstand while she raised the blinds at the window beside the bed half way. (To raise window blinds all the way in a sick room created great danger.) Still, there was a warm wash of sunshine across the edge of the bed. Mrs. Ross bathed a hand in it. Serena bent, helped her employer sit up, adjusted the nightgown worn at these times as a concession to propriety.

  The glow of sunlight failed to dispel a cold gloom that dripped from the maid’s every motion as she deposited the tray in Mrs. Ross’s lap.

  “On the radio, it was said that an entire busload of religious pilgrims was killed in an accident near Oaxaca last night,” she announced.

  Mrs. Ross grimaced. Yesterday, it had been the collapse of a building in Italy. Serena’s recording-device memory switched automatically to these things at the first hint of sickness. Global news services kept her saturated with avalanches, floods, train accidents, hotel fires.…

  “Anyone from San Juan on the bus?” asked Mrs. Ross.

  “They have not yet released the names of the dead.” Serena folded her arms, stared at the breakfast tray.

  Alerted, Mrs. Ross studied the array of food, noted the washed-out pinkish-brown of what should have been a cup of coffee. She pointed to it. “What’s that?”

  “Jamaica tea, Señora.”

  “Jamaica tea?”

  “My sainted mother, Señora, if only we had given her Jamaica tea soon enough, I am sure she would not have died when she did.” Serena crossed herself.

  “Take it away.”

  “But Señora!” Serena stiffened into her martinet pose. “It has a delicious flavor and …”

  “I said take it away!”

  Even martinets wilted at this tone. Serena sniffed, as much as to say: “Let your death be on your own shoulders then!” She put the offending cup on the nightstand.

  “Well, what are you waiting for?” demanded Mrs. Ross.

  Serena’s face retained an impassive scowl. She dipped a hand into the pocket of her orange apron, produced a thin package wrapped in tan kraft paper. “The Señor Hoblitt sends you this.” She held it out. “It is a picture.”

  Mrs. Ross accepted the offering. Hoblitt? She unfolded the paper. It crackled, and one corner tore. Inside there lay a tempera crayon sketch of herself. The features were drawn boldly without background, but the artist had removed about twenty years from her age: more pink in the complexion, fewer wrinkles around the eyes, cheeks fuller, hair a dark auburn-red.

  The portrayal looked very much like the Emma Ross who had come to San Juan in nineteen-thirty-seven. For several heartbeats, Mrs. Ross wondered if this might be Hoblitt’s subtle way of telling her that he knew all. Then she calmed herself, thinking: The man isn’t capable of such subtlety. Still, she wondered: Who told him what color my hair used to be? That’s something he couldn’t get just from looking at me.

  “A good likeness, no?” said Serena. “It looks just the way you did when you first came to us.” She nodded. “If you do not want the little portrait, Señora, perhaps you could give it to me. It would be very nice to have.” (And the tone of Serena’s voice added: “… after you are dead.”)

  Mrs. Ross shook her head, studied the sketch. She saw the same kind of character penetration that was revealed in the painting of Paulita and was repelled by it. There was a heavy-lidded, furtive look to her eyes, a sense of watchfulness in the set of the head.

  “Was there a message?” asked Mrs. Ross.

  Serena spoke stiffly, angered by the casual denial of her request: “It is on the back.”

  Mrs. Ross turned the sketch over, saw there in a scrawling hand: “I apologize for snapping at you. Blame it on a lousy breakfast that day. Let’s be friends.”

  How very odd, thought Mrs. Ross. She turned back to the drawing. It was an irritating thing, not at all the way she pictured herself. A thought struck her. She said: “Has this Hoblitt made a large painting of me, Serena?”

  “Who knows?” Serena shrugged. “María Carlotta says there are other paintings which the Señor Hoblitt keeps in a locked box. It is said that he prepares them for the show by foreign artists to be held soon at the University of Mexico. It is next week, I think.”

  Mrs. Ross lifted her attention from the sketch, stared at the ropero opposite the foot of the bed, thought: If he’s made a large portrait like that and displays it at a public showing … She shuddered. God knows who might see it!

  Serena cleared her throat.

  I must do something, thought Mrs. Ross. If he has made such a portrait, perhaps I could buy …

  Again, Serena cleared her throat.

  “What is it?” demanded Mrs. Ross.

  “Don Jaime has sent Dr. Herrera to examine you.”

  Anger flared in Mrs. Ross. “That miserable incompetent! Why does Don Jaime always have to send him? Tell the fool to go back where he came from!”

  Secure in the knowledge of past victories, Serena raised her attention to the ceiling. “He awaits even now outside your door, Señora.” She sighed. “Within the sound of your voice.”

  “Let him wait! And bring me some coffee!” Mrs. Ross took up her toast, dipped it into the milk and coddled egg, began eating. She thought: I wonder how much money Hoblitt would want for …

  “But coffee makes danger before a visit of the doctor!” Serena looked horrified that Mrs. Ross would not remember this witch signal of disaster.

  Mrs. Ross swallowed a bite of her food, took a deep breath, composed herself. She recalled a similar argument during her previous illness. But she had learned even before that how to meet such situations. One did not lunge into them head on: one rolled with the punch.

  “If I must see the doctor to get my coffee, then I must,” said Mrs. Ross. “Send the fool in, then bring me the coffee.”

  “If the doctor says it is permitted,” countered Serena.

  Mrs. Ross closed her eyes, held her temper. The effort showed in the tightness of her voice: “I will see Dr. Herrera.”

  “Yes, Señora.” Serena bowed herself out of the room backward, as though withdrawing from the presence of royalty.

  Dr. Herrera replaced her in the doorway, strode into the room, calling out: “Ah, ha, what have we here?” His Spanish was full of dropped endings, short vowels—the Mexico City accent.

  “Indisposition, no more,” snapped Mrs. Ross. She took a final bite of the toast, put the tray beside her on the bed.

  The doctor put his bag on the floor, pulled up a cane chair. It creaked under him. Dr. Herrera was a large man—both tall and broad—with a square, heavy-jowled face, Indian-black hair touched by grey at the temple. He radiated a confidence that soothed sick tourists. Beyond a few medical terms, the doctor spoke perhaps fifteen words of English. Among them: “Hello there.” “Goodbye now.” and “Take this as directed.”

  “No malaise of the stomach?” he asked. (Dr. Herrera was convinced, with some justification, that most North Americans’ medical problems originated in the stomach or intestines.)

  “I’m not a tourist!” barked Mrs. Ross.

  “But, of course,” said Dr. Herrera. “Was I not in the courtroom on the day you became a citizen of our beloved country?”

  “Maybe you were,” agreed Mrs. Ross. Then: “You’ll notice they didn’t expropriate my properties!”

  “To be sure.” Dr. Herrera put a hand to her forehead, looked thoughtful. “The appetite is good?”

  “Yes! If that fool Serena would only fix me some decent food.”

  The doctor took his hand away, patted the edge of the bed. “The indisposition: does it pain you in any particular place?”

  Mrs. Ross felt that she was being bullied. She pushed back into the pillows, muttered almost against her will: “A little soreness of the throat, no more.”

  “Ah, but one must not leave these things unattended.” One of
Dr. Herrera’s ape-like arms reached down to the floor beside him. He unsnapped the bag, removed a tongue-depressor. “Let us observe the throat, eh?”

  “It’s not that bad,” protested Mrs. Ross. And, indeed, she could barely feel the soreness that had kept her wakefully irritated during the night.

  “All the same,” insisted Dr. Herrera. He moved the depressor toward her mouth.

  Mrs. Ross found herself going through the ridiculous routine of saying, “Ahhhhh.” It made her cough.

  When the coughing spell subsided, Dr. Herrera said: “I will send the girl with an injection. You have picked up a little virus. There is some around here just now.”

  “No injections!” protested Mrs. Ross.

  Dr. Herrera ignored the interruption. He removed a glass tube of pills from his bag. “And here is some Viotalidina, just in case there is an involvement of the stomach, eh? I will leave these with Serena. One little pastilla every four hours. And you must increase your intake of liquids.”

  “Let Serena take the pills,” growled Mrs. Ross. Then: “Oh, and tell her it’s permitted for me to have coffee.”

  Dr. Herrera grasped the bag, lifted his bulk out of the cane chair. He smiled, a tourist-soothing, confident expression that made him look like a Buddha with hair. “But of course. You will drink the coffee to wash down the pastillas.” He bowed. “I will look in on you in two days.”

  Mrs. Ross, seeing that she would pay for her coffee by swallowing the pills, started to protest, then resigned herself to the inevitable. It occurred to her that the Mexicans always rolled with a punch. Trained to it from infancy! she thought.

  “Goodbye now,” recited Dr. Herrera in English.

  Serena returned after showing the doctor to the door. She brought coffee and one of the pills. A look of gleeful malice filled her face—especially around the eyes. “The doctor says …”