The Zigzag Way by Anita Desai Read Free Book Online Page A

a maid limped up to let him in, he felt duly apologetic, saying, “I had booked a room here, were you expecting me?” At her uncomprehending look, he decided to try another tack and simply ask “Is Doña Vera in?”
    No, he was told by a shake of the head, and after he had taken in his bag and deposited it on the tile floor of the entrance hall, he wandered out to wait for her in the great courtyard formed by the three wings of the house. In its center was a fountain with a twinned pair of stone dolphins spouting into mossy jars. Beyond it, the land sloped down toward the corral. Chairs were set out under a feathery-leafed tree on that slope. He strolled down to it and stood looking, from a new angle, at the depression below filled with bleached grasses and still water. The sun was going down behind the mountain at his back and its shadow was slanting across the valley he had driven over to arrive here.
    He stood with his hands on his hips, looking down at the horses in the corral that were pawing the earth and rubbing their flanks against the wooden fence in a blur of dust and chaff. Then, breasting the tall grasses like a swimmer emerging from a lake, another horse appeared; mounted on it was a slight, shrunken figure he scarcely recognized from the salon in Mexico City. No longer the fantastically attired and theatrical creature she had appeared there, she was merely a small wiry figure in nondescript khaki who barely stood out in that overwhelming landscape. Yet there was no denying that in the way in which she appeared a natural part of the scene, she had made it her own, and Eric found himself helplessly submitting to the notion of her as the mythical figure she was made out to be by those who knew her reputation.
    A young boy came out of one of the tile-roofed stables by the corral and helped her dismount. They talked, patting the horse’s neck and flanks and steadying the animal on its impossibly long legs and delicate hoofs before it was led away. Now that Doña Vera was standing on solid ground, dressed in jodhpurs and boots, her white hair tucked under a hat, she seemed so much less formidable a being that Eric dared to step out from the shadow of the tree so she could see him.
    Coming up the path between the crackling grasses, holding them aside with her whip, she called, “Have you brought pastries?”
    Eric, taken aback, not aware that he was supposed to have brought pastries, raised his hand to smooth down his hair as he always did when embarrassed, and mumbled, “Umm, no—I’m sorry—”
    She shot him an irritated look as she walked past, switching her whip. Eric reminded her that he had telephoned to request accommodation, which he had been told was available at her hacienda.
    â€œWhy?” she asked, sharp as a crack of the whip in her hand.
    He struggled to form an answer. Clearly, she was demanding one that lived up to her standards and expectations. And they were so high, she seemed to say by lifting her nose into the air and looking down it at him. Just then a maid came out of the house toward the tree and the garden chairs with a glass of lemonade on a tray; she was followed by a flock of small pug dogs, tripping along hurriedly on their toes and yipping with excitement at seeing their mistress.
    Doña Vera scooped up one in her arms and seated herself. Accepting the glass of lemonade, she drank thirstily, keeping the glass away from the eager, wanting pug, and did not seem to think it at all necessary to ask Eric either to sit or to drink too. The little dog leaping about her face, tickling her chin with its velvet folds, made her laugh delightedly and spill some of the lemonade down her front.
    Knowing himself entirely irrelevant to the scene, Eric tried to explain. “I heard your lecture in Mexico City last week, you see—”
    She allowed herself to be distracted from her pleasures, although with irritation. “You have an interest in