Seduction of the Minotaur by Anaïs Nin Read Free Book Online

her. Whether or
not he felt ashamed of taking strangers through the scenes of his native
village, ashamed to be paid for invading burials and weddings, he walked as if
he were leading them all to places of ill fame, as perhaps he had.
    The other tourists treated him with unusual
cordiality. They felt isolated and mistook him for a bridge of friendship
between themselves and the natives. They fraternized with him as if he were a mediator
as well as an interpreter. They drank with him and slapped his back.
    But Lillian saw him as the deforming mirror
which corrupted every relationship between tourist and native. Only the plight
of the American prisoner drove her to follow him through streets she had never
crossed before, beyond the market and behind the bullring.
    They were in the tenement section, a
concentration of shacks built of odds and ends, newspapers on tin slabs, palm
trees, driftwood, cartons, gasoline tins. The floors were dirt and hammocks
served as beds. The cooking was done out of doors on braziers. No matter how
poor the houses, they were camouflaged in flowers, and at each window hung a
singing bird. And no matter how poor the laundry on the line was like a palette
from which all the Mexican painters could have drawn their warmest, most
burning colors.
    Why did the plight of the American prisoner
affect her so keenly? The knowledge of his being a stranger in a country whose
language he did not speak? She visualized him in jail, drinking the polluted
water which made all foreigners sick with dysentery, perhaps being bitten by
mosquitoes injecting him with malaria.
    All her protectiveness was aroused, so that
even the guide no longer seemed like a pimp selling the intimate life of
Golconda, but a man of kindness, capable of understanding that tourists could
be in genuine trouble and not always absurdly rich and powerful figures.
    The jail had been built inside a discarded and
ruined church. The original windows were heavily barred. The original ochre and
coral still remained on the walls and gave the prison a joyous air. The church
bells were used to call the prisoners to meals, bedtime, or to announce an
escaped convict.
    The guide was familiar with the place. The
guards did not stop playing cards when he entered. They needed shaves so badly
that if they had not worn uniforms one might have taken them for prisonerslace retained a smell of incense which mixed with
the smell of tobacco. Some of the stands which had supported statues now served
as coat racks, and gun racks. Belts filled with cartridges were thrown over the
holy water stoup. A single statue of the Virgin, the dark-faced one from
Guadalupe, had been deemed sufficient to guard the jail.
    “ Buenos dias . ”
    “ Muy buenos dias . ”
    “The lady is here to visit the American
prisoner.”
    One of the guards who had been asleep now
pulled out his keys with vague hesitancies. He considered giving the keys to
the guide and returning to his siesta, but suddenly his pride awakened and he
decided to play his allotted role with exaggerated arrogance.
    Inside, the walls of the prison were painted in
sky blue. The ceilings retained their murals of nude angels, clouds, and
vaporous young women playing harps. The cots were all occupied by sleeping
prisoners. The American stood by the iron door of his cell watching the arrival
of the visitor.
    His thin, long-fingered hands held onto the
bars of the cell door as if he would tear them down. But in his lean, unshaved
face there was a glint of irony which Lillian interpreted as a show of courage.
He was smiling.
    “It was good of you to come,” he said.
    “What can I do for you? Should I telephone the
American consulate?”
    “Other people have tried that but he will not
bother. There are too many of us.”
    “Too many of you?”
    “Well, yes, Americans without papers, runaways
from home, runaways from the draft, escaped criminals, displaced persons who
claim to be Americans, ex-politicos, ex-gangsters,