Clash of Star-Kings by Avram Davidson Read Free Book Online

my
chula
landlady has all kinds of goodies waiting in honor of the fiera. Come around tomorrow for breakfast, okay?”
    Already the streets were emptying. The Clays proceeded past the kitchen where they saw the two older women and the girl bustling about laying a table, opened the door into the back patio and proceeded through the gloom to their own apartment. “Well, that was interesting,” said Jacob, brightly.
    “Hey, honey, what’s for supper?” Sarah, with a pang of sheer horror, remembered the still-largely-unwashed pile of pots and dishes and cutlery — and the evil barrel of water, icier and freezinger than ever! Fortunately, before she could reply, in bustled young Marinita, prettily aproned, and carrying a neat stack of well-filled dishes. She smiled, she spoke, she lifted a napkin, she withdrew.
    Sarah’s spirits soared. “Well, isn’t
this
nice,” she cried. “Our landlady has made holiday goodies, too! Look, look, all kinds of luscious things — two, no three kinds of tamales! and tacos and tostados and enchiladas, and — look! look! Quesadillas, too! Oh, yummy! See how they’re made with colored corn-meal, red ones and blue ones and even green ones. Oh — ”
    Jacob said, “Eat, eat. Later, we’ll talk…. Don’t bother setting the table, let’s eat them with our fingers as the Mexicans do.”
    Sarah said, serenely, entirely forgiving the landlady for denuding the patio, “Very well, if that’s the way you want to do it, that’s the way we’ll do it. Who needs knives and forks? … Yum yum yum yum….”So much for washing in ice water. And tomorrow breakfast at Macauley’s. Now — if wicked Lupita would only turn up before lunchtime tomorrow — !
    • • •
    And while most of the people in that part of town through which the procession had already passed were snug and happy in their houses, eating traditional foods and dipping them in special
mole
sauces and washing it all down with lots of pulque, there was still a good stretch of town through which the procession had yet to pass…. And this included a rather bad stretch of town, the ward called the
Barrio Occidental
, or Western District. Here were the most tumble-down houses, the filthiest pulquerias, the raggedyest children, the raunchiest whorehouses, the highest proportion of glowering faces and of drunken brawls and slashings. And here a curious sort of ceremony sometimes customarily attended the procession’s passage — a dozen or so of the younger men would halt the procession and ask, with truculent politeness, to be allowed the honor of bearing the catafalque through the barrio. The offer was always refused (when it was made, which wasn’t always); sometimes there was a bit of shoving and pushing, usually the occidentales were bought off with presents of dulces, cigarettes, feria-foods. But, if so or not so, the procession after a short while continued on its way past the sullen, scowling faces of the neighborhood Indios.
    But not tonight. Not quite.
    “With permission, carriers — ” Permission was not granted.
    Almost immediately the women who carried the gifts or bribes in case they be needed sensed that something was not as usual. They hastened forward with their baskets of sweets, tobaccos, snacks … only to be knocked down, to see their baskets and contents trampled underfoot in the sudden rush forward upon the catafalque. They screamed, there were shouts and curses, clubs thudded, knives were drawn and flashed, the orderly procession-dissolved into a riot. One of the carriers clutched his bloody arm. The catafalque sagged. It was swept to and fro. It dipped and it swayed in the dim light here, where no festive lamps burned and tapers fell or were burned out. Luis, who had followed, rushed first this way and that, not knowing what to do.
    “The Hermit! Save the Holy Hermit! Asesinos! Thieves!”
    It was very dark now, like a scene from Hell, and then, in a sudden hellish burst of light caused by the untimely