Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [168]
How did one draw that? She couldn’t, not to her satisfaction. But she looked at Don Pedro long enough and hard enough to comprehend him as one aspect of what life would be like in Morelia: around a man like that, life stayed within traditional bounds. His perfection as a type made Don Gustavo look like a pretender, Simpson an outlander, Oliver all but uncouth. Unwilling to accept the implications of what her drawing was leading her to, she gave it up and simply watched.
They were going out for three weeks into the mountains, up trails as steep as ladders, and would be camping in country dozens of miles from any town–justification, she would have thought, for taking every necessity and eliminating every luxury. But she saw go onto those twenty-five mules iron pots and Dutch ovens, bundles of silver knives and forks and spoons wrapped in soft deerskin, china that from the corredor she thought she recognized as Limoges. There were crates of chickens, hampers of fresh fruits and vegetables, hampers of canned goods and vintage wines that had already traveled from Europe by ship, and from Veracruz and Mexico City by train, diligence, and packhorse. There were down pillows in silk covers, linen fit for the trousseau of a duchess. She saw what the Señora Gutierrez y Salarzano said was a camp bed–solid brass, complete with springs and mattress–taken apart and lashed onto two mules.
One by one, as the pack animals were loaded, Don Pedro’s eyes inspected them and gave some signal invisible to Susan. One by one the mozos led them out into the street. The courtyard thinned, the piles of boxes, crates, hampers, and leather maletones were gone. Only the horses remained, in their enormous silver-mounted saddles and their bridles and martingales whose leather was a crust of filigree and rosettes. They stood mouthing their bits and rubbing their noses against the pink pillars, each one held by a mozo in a scarlet sash. Don Pedro looked deliberately around the court, then at the three men standing against the wall. They threw away their cigars and came to him as obediently as acolytes attending a priest.
The ladies were already drifting into line as the men started up the stairs. As in a court ceremony, the gentlemen bent one by one over transparent hands. The ladies gave them murmured adjurations to go with God. But Oliver, at the end of the line, came to a stubborn uncourtly decision that Susan saw take form in his face and manner. Here came Don Pedro bowing, here came Don Gustavo imitating him, here came Simpson, sandy-haired and amused, imitating them both. And here came Oliver shaking, not kissing, each extended hand, and giving each lady in turn a wholly inadequate friendly nod.
Susan was embarrassed for him. In matters such as this he hadn’t the least grace. Then when Don Pedro stood before her, grave and deferential, she put out her hand, saw how brown it was, and lost her own poise. “It is not a hand fit to kiss,” she said in English. “I’ve been too much in the sun.”
Interrupted in his bow, Don Pedro slid his eyes sideward toward Don Gustavo, seeking translation. Don Gustavo translated. Don Pedro returned his gaze to Susan, wagged his head ever so slightly, smiled with a look like mild reproof, and brushed, or did not quite brush, her knuckles with his lips.
Don Gustavo, coming after him, had prepared a compliment: “It is a privilege to salute a hand at once so shapely and so gifted.” He gave her hand a wet smack that she instantly wanted to rub off. Because she felt like kicking him, she smiled with extra warmth.
“Please,” said Don Gustavo. “While we are gone, my poor house is your own. Whateffer you wish, command.” His pale pop eyes crawled on her like slugs. She smelled the pomaturn on his hair.
“Thank you,” she said. “You’re very kind,” and moved her eyes to Simpson, coming up.
Grinning, he bent over her hand, which she felt dangled out there like a hurt paw or