with his one good eye. A young man, wearing the straw hat and loose clothing of a worker on a hacienda, clutched a white cloth to his arm; I could see the bright red of blood seeping through the cloth.
When we walked past him, I caught a whiff of aguardiente— late night in the bars. Salvador and I found two plastic chairs, sat, and waited.
The nurse who called my name wore a stiff blue-striped dress with a white apron. Her dark hair was tucked beneath her nurse's cap. I followed her, listening to the stiff rustling of her skirt. She took me to a tiny airless office, where an officious young doctor asked me questions about Tony. The doctor was thin-faced and he wore the scent of disinfectant like an aftershave. I disliked him immediately.
I recited Tony's full name, age, residence, and professional affiliation. Each question seemed to come to me from farther away, as if the doctor were fading in the distance.
"I don't know how long he was there," I said. "I hadn't seen him since the night before. I suppose he must have been out walking very early." My voice was dull. In my imagination, 1 could see the snake, still sluggish from the cool night air, basking in the sun. I imagined Tony, preoccupied with the necessity of locking up his friend and colleague in the nuthouse, stumbling up the trail. I guessed he had not slept after he left me: he sat alone, drinking and considering the shadows.
"Why would he have been walking so early?"
"I don't know."
I knew, but I did not care to say. Why would he stumble through the monte in the pale light of dawn?
Because someone he cared for was crazy; she was talking about secrets in the shadows. He was thinking about me and he did not see the snake.
Tony died in the early afternoon without regaining consciousness. The doctor's English was very good, but I heard a note of disapproval under his professional tone of sympathy. "He had been drinking heavily,"
the young doctor said. "That's probably why he was unable to reach the camp and seek help." He knew so little of the world, this young doctor. He seemed to think that heavy drinking was unusual.
Salvador was there, standing just behind my chair. An orderly had loaned him a shirt that was much too small for him. The shirt was unbuttoned.
"Would you like the body prepared for transport to the States?" the young doctor asked.
He had pens in his pocket and a stethoscope around his neck. He knew nothing of rocks, ruins, herbs, and old bones. Yet his face, as he looked down at the form on his desk, was a match, feature for feature, for the face of the young maize god of the hieroglyphics. He belonged to the rocks and the ruins, this young doctor, but he did not know it.
He looked up from the form and repeated the question. Salvador laid a hand on my shoulder. "Yes," I said then. "Yes. Have the body prepared."
From a pay phone in the hallway, I contacted the university and spoke to the department secretary, a woman my age who knew everything about everyone. She was appropriately shocked, yet still willing to ask—tactfully and carefully— about the circumstances. I did not like this woman and under normal circumstances she did not like me. But now her voice flooded with sympathy and false warmth.
"How terrible," she kept saying. "How terrible."
I could only agree wearily. She was a tinny voice coming to me from far away. She was not real. As I stood in the white hall, listening to her reassurances and sympathy, an orderly walked by. I watched his shadow move on the white wall. Here in the hospital, shadows had edges. They did not blur, one into the other. Here, people were alive or dead, conscious or unconscious. No gray zones of uncertainty. After explaining to the secretary that I would make arrangements to ship the body, after promising that I would call her on the next day, I hung up.
"Perhaps you should stay here in town, sénora," Salvador said. "I will go to camp."
I shook my head. "You know I have to go back."
Salvador shrugged, a tiny movement of his shoulders. He was a practical man. He did not argue. He drove back to camp with the careful dignity of a man in a funeral procession. We said little to each other. I had nothing to say.