Women In Their Beds by Gina Berriault

Author:Gina Berriault
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Catapult
Published: 2017-10-10T00:00:00+00:00

since he did not care to go to the trouble of transferring to the bus, he proposed to the driver of the taxi carrying him from the airport in Mexico City that he continue to be carried on to Cuernavaca, and so he was—out through the city and up into the mountains above deep, immense valleys from which wisps of smoke rose high into the silent afternoon. They arrived in a rosy sunset. He took rooms in a small and exclusive hotel and ate his supper in the garden where peacocks and cranes stalked over the lawn and flew up with a clapping of wings to roost on the lower limbs of the trees whose large, fire-colored blossoms fell to the ground with the sound of a small, soft fruit. The moon rose, a warm erratic wind rose, and excited by the enchanting conditions which he interpreted as propitious he strolled out through the lobby to the taxis. The woman in the café, where he asked to be driven, was to act as his liaison with Kruper. Twelve years ago, even five years ago with three novels to his name, he could not, he mused, have approached so confident of his welcome as now. Surely a man of wide and eclectic ranging through the literature of the world, classic and current, Kruper would recognize the name of Klipspringer and think twice, think six times, before turning him away.

“Aquí?” he asked as the taxi swung up before the open door of a dim, hole-in-the-wall café with three tables, lopsided cloths, and four customers, three of whom were sprawled around one table.

“Aquí,” said the driver. On the other side of the street rose a massive stone wall, along the top of which men sat with their backs to the street, or, since they were so high, to the night sky. “A la izquierda,” said the driver, “es el Palacio de Cortés.” So it was obvious the café to the right was his destination. He had expected it to be brighter, cleaner, but might it not, just as well, be dingy and with a narrow staircase in the kitchen leading up to a room where the great man paced the floor? Or was he the heavy, elderly man alone at a table, with his gray hair shaven close and his jowls hanging over the collar of his soiled shirt and his small, pale eyes fixed in austere curiosity on Klipspringer’s head poking out the taxi window?

Shaken by the conviction that the man was Kruper, Klipspringer sat down at the empty table, unable to speak, likening his abashment to that of a young novice ushered into the presence of Conrad. A number of flies flew up from the cloth, and beyond their darting bodies he saw emerge from the kitchen a girl who met the description of Kruper’s youngest daughter given him by the young man in Phoenix. One thick braid hung over a shoulder and lay on her large bosom that swelled against the embroidered blouse.

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