Puzzle for Pilgrims Read Online Free PDF Page B

friend of mine. That’s how I noticed you.”
    “With a friend of yours? No sir, not me. Only hit this town two days ago. Haven’t met a soul except Marietta.” He squeezed her shoulder. “We met up yesterday and did the town, didn’t we, baby?”
    “I suppose so.” Marietta had become very English and precise. “Yes, I suppose that’s what you’d call it.”
    Jake showed me his strong white teeth again. “She dated me up for ten tonight here.” He looked around. “It’s a dump, isn’t it? I guess Marietta goes for dumps.”
    I shouldn’t have been surprised at Marietta’s citrus-grower. Certainly I shouldn’t have been jealous. I had no claims on her. I had made that clear by my stubborn love for Iris. But as Jake went on talking “man’s talk” to me while his hand pawed Marietta’s shoulder, I felt an unreasonable jealousy and disgust. Perhaps I was disgusted by Marietta, who was too beautiful and had too much integrity to be mauled by a great hunk of male flesh in a cheap bar. Perhaps I was disgusted by the man for not realizing that Marietta was so much, much more than the tramp he seemed to take her for.
    I didn’t like him anyway. For some reason I didn’t believe in his fruit farm. There was something subtly but distinctly citified about him. A mechanic, maybe, who’d worked his way up to a garage of his own. And I didn’t believe in his amiability, in spite of the friendly grin. It was laid on too thick, and his blue, Irish eyes were too alert.
    Suddenly, because I didn’t trust him, I started wondering whether both he and Sally were lying. Perhaps they had been at the bullfight together and Sally had given him the high sign to leave her when she noticed me. I knew how devious Sally could be and, since she was essentially sinister, I wondered whether this man could be sinister too.
    Having introduced him, Marietta seemed to have lost interest in him. She had drifted into one of her remote, impregnable silences. I wondered whether she even knew what his hand was doing.
    An Indian with a big sun-bleached straw hat and a beribboned guitar had come to the table and was standing, staring at us patiently. He wasn’t the man who had been playing. He was a professional, an itinerant musician from the street.
    Jake noticed him. He prodded Marietta.
    “Hey, baby, what’s the name of your song? What’s the song you had them playing all last night? ‘La Borrachitá’? Yeah, that’s it.”
    He turned to the musician and spoke to him in surprisingly native sounding Spanish. His face unchanged, the Indian strummed the guitar and started to sing in a high, harsh voice that was oddly moving. I knew the song, of course. It’s been knocking around Mexico for years. It’s pretty and sad. It had been a favorite of Iris’s in the States. Someone had sent her a record.
    As I listened I thought of Iris, and self-pity crept over me. Everything seemed sad, unnecessarily sad, sadness invented for me only.
    The flat voice, empty of all inflection, went on:
     
    Borrachitá, me voy par olvidarle.
    Le quero muchoy el tambien me quere.
    Borrachitá, me voy hasta la capital
    Par servirme al patron
    Que me mandó llamar ante ayer.
     
    A plaintive chord twanged into silence. Jake grinned, said “Swell,” and gave the Indian a peso. The Indian went away.
    I’d been too tied to my own nostalgia to look at Marietta. But I did look then. She was sitting staring straight ahead of her, her chin cupped in her hand. Tears were rolling slowly down her cheeks.
    She picked up her pocketbook, rose, and said very gravely, “I’m going home now.”
    Jake jumped up, fussing around her, keeping his hand on her elbow. “Baby, what’s the trouble? Got the blues?”
    “I’m going home now.”
    “Sure, sure, baby. Don’t worry. Jake’ll take you home, tuck you up for bye-bye.”
    He was guiding her away from the table. Marietta stopped and turned to look back at me. Tears still glistened in her eyes.
    “Peter…”
    Her