Arcadio by William Goyen Read Free Book Online Page B

was at my fullest. Perhaps you will someday remember me. In it you will see me wild-looking, something dangerous in my facial glance, in my dark Mescan flashin face of burnin eyes and red lips with some of the red still on them if you’ll notice and my black head of curling hair, tis a wondrous thing this photo and shows me how I was, if you don believe me now. Perhaps you will remember me. And while you gaze awhile upon it I will play my frenchharp, the waltz called “The Waltz of the Spotted Dog,” my favorite through the years and the only song I know. You wan hear?

8
My Mother Chupa’s Song Continued
    SO SAID SHE WAS twenty-one when she run away from my father and me. You wan hear it? With her dress torn off her back said she run into the night, looking back to see a drunk man running crazy after her, falling and getting up and floundering and running and falling, until she did not look back any more. Chupita! she heard a voice cry. But my mother did not look back and run on.
    For some time she traveled in the company of a blond man that was excaping the Law which was in pursuit of him. This man Joel had stolen enough money for him and my mother Chupa to flee comfortably from city to city, living in pretty good hotels and eating in good cafés. Joel gambled and kept winning, my mother said. But when he suddenly lost everything they had to live with nothing in terrible places. My mother said she suffered bad from poverty. She was often dirty and hungry. Which led her to despise herself, she said. The blond man Joel wanted to rob a place but my mother would not offer her help as an accomplice, dressed like a man as he suggested and showing a revolver to a bank clerk. It was somewhere in Sonoma County that the blond man Joel wanted to make this robbery, my mother remembered and told me. You want to ask which particular town I’m sure but please to hold your questions I like to tell my story in as much of one piece as I can, por favor—chiquito . The way you would not interrupt a singer and his song, comprendes . My mother Chupa would not lend her hand to a robbery. She would, however, agree to loiter nearby in an alley and wait for Joel to finish his deed. She was dumb enough to believe that he would come out of the bank like he was just another person who had cashed a small check and walk on calmly away with her—which was precisely his plan, according to what my mother Chupa told me. My opinion is that Chupa my mother should have cut herself away right then and there from Joel the blond man, given him the shake-off; but of course I see that the poor woman was in love with him and afraid to lose him, and afraid to be alone in the world, way up in the Valley of the Moon in Sonoma County California, God only knows which town, she never told me.
    Of course they blew off the crown of Joel’s blond head. And right before my mother’s eyes while she stood in her appointed place looking in Joel’s face as he come towards her. He fell at her feet and she fell upon him—and all the bank money that had fallen out—and held him to her. You’ve blown his brains out she screamed to the Police. Get out of the way lady, the Police shouted to her, you’re cradling a dangerous criminal wanted over the entire Valley of the Moon. Well he’s not wanted any more my mother said she said, as they pulled her up from the crownless Joel. In her bosom was a hundred-dollar bill and two twenties which she’d slipped there. Said she saw Joel’s blue eyes looking green at her through the red blood. Do you know this robber? the Police asked her. No, I’m in the nature of a Good Samaritan, said she told them. Then please go on your way, he’s beyond any Good Samaritan, let go of him lady.
    That’s how my mother Chupa started the next piece of her life, bloodstained with a blond man’s blood and with one hundred and forty dollars of stolen bank cash in her bosom in far up