Lucius Shepard - The End of Life as We Know It

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THE END OF LIFE

AS WE KNOW IT

by Lucius Shepard

What Lisa hated most about Mexico were the flies, and Rich-ard said, Yeah, the flies were bad,

but it was the lousy attitude of the people that did him in, you know, the way the waiters ignored you

and the taxi drivers sneered, the sour expressions of desk clerks-as if they were doing you a big

favor by letting you stay in their fleabag hotels. All that. Lisa replied that she couldn't blame the

people, because they were proba-bly irritated by the flies; this set Richard to laughing, and though

Lisa had not meant it to be funny, after a moment she joined in. They needed laughter. They had

come to Mexico to Save Their Marriage, and things were not going well... except in bed, where

things had always gone well. Lisa had never been less than ardent with Richard, even during her

affair.

They were an attractive couple in their thirties, the sort to whom a healthy sex life seems an

essential of style, a trendy accessory to pleasure like a Jacuzzi or a French food proc-essor. She was

a tall, fey-looking brunette with fair skin, an aerobically nurtured slimness, and a face that managed to

ex-press both sensuality and intelligence ("hooker eyes and Vas-sar bones," Richard had told her);

he was lean from handball and weights, with an executive touch of gray in his black hair and the

bland, firm-jawed handsomeness of a youthful an-chorman. Once they had held to the illusion that

they kept fit and beautiful for one another, but all their illusions had been tarnished and they no longer

understood their reasons for maintaining them.

For a while they made a game of hating Mexico, pretend-ing it was a new bond between them,

striving to outdo each other in pointing out instances of filth and native insensitivity; finally they

realized that what they hated most about the coun-try were their own perceptions of it, and they

headed south to Guatemala where-they had been informed-the atmosphere was conducive to

romance. They were leery about the reports of guerrilla activity, but their informant had assured them

that the dangers were overstated. He was a seasoned traveler, an elderly Englishman who had spent

his last twelve winters in Central America; Richard thought he was colorful, a Graham Greene

character, whereas Lisa described him in her journal as "a deracinated old fag."

"You mustn't miss Lake Atitlin," he'd told them. "It's ab-solutely breath-taking. Revolution there is

an aesthetic impos-sibility."

Before boarding the plane Richard bought the latest Miami Herald, and he entertained himself

during the flight by be-moaning the decline of Western civilization. It was his con-viction that the

United States was becoming part of the Third World and that their grandchildren would inhabit a

mildly poi-soned earth and endure lives of back-breaking drudgery under an increasingly Orwellian

government. Though this conviction was hardly startling, it being evident from the newspaper that

such a world was close upon them, Lisa accorded his view-point the status of wisdom; in fact, she

had relegated wisdom in general to be his preserve, staking claim herself to the tra-ditional feminine

precincts of soulfulness and caring. Some-times back in Connecticut, while teaching her art class at

the Y or manning the telephones for PBS or Greenpeace or what-ever cause had enlisted her

soulfulness, looking around at the other women, all-like her-expensively kept and hopeless and with

an eye cocked for the least glimmer of excitement, then she would see how marriage had decreased

her wattage; and yet, though she had fallen in love with another man, she had clung to the marriage

for almost a year thereafter, unable to escape the fear that this was the best she could hope for, that

no matter what steps she took to change her situation, her life would always be ruled by a canon of

mediocrity. That she had recently stopped clinging did not signal a slackening of fear, only that her

fingers were slipping; her energy no longer sufficient to maintain a good grip.

As the plane came down into Guatemala City, passing over rumpled green hills dotted with shacks

whose colors looked deceptively bright and cheerful from a height, Richard began talking about his

various investments, saying he was glad he'd bought this and that, because things were getting worse

every day. "The shitstorm's a 'comin', babe," he said, patting her knee. "But we're gonna be

awright." It annoyed Lisa no end that whenever he was feeling particularly accomplished his language

became countrified, and she only shrugged in re-sponse.

After clearing customs they rented a car and drove to Pan-ajachel, a village on the shores of Lake

Atitlan. There was a fancy hotel on the shore, but in the spirit of "roughing it" Richard insisted they

stay at a cheaper place on the edge of town-an old green stucco building with red trim and an arched

entranceway and a courtyard choked with ferns; it ca-tered to what he called "the bleeding-ear set," a

reference to the loud rock 'n' roll that blasted from the windows. The other guests were mostly

college-age vacationers, a mixture of French and Scandinavians and Americans, and as soon as they

had unpacked, Lisa changed into jeans and a work shirt so she would fit in among them. They ate

dinner in the hotel dining room, which was cramped and furnished with red wooden tables and chairs

and had the menu painted on the wall in English and Spanish. Richard appeared to be enjoying

him-self; he was relaxed, and his speech was peppered with slang that he hadn't used in almost a

decade. Lisa liked listening to the glib chatter around them, talk of dope and how the people treat

you in Huehuetenango and watch out if you're goin' to Bogota, man, 'cause they got packs of street

kids will pick you clean.... These conversations reminded her of the world in which she had traveled

at Vassar before Richard had snatched her up during her junior year. He had been just back from

Vietnam, a medic, full of anguish at the horrors he had seen, yet strong for having seen them; he had

seemed to her a source of strength, a shining knight, a rescuer. After the wed-ding, though, she had

not been able to recall why she had wanted to be rescued; she thought now that she had derived

some cheap thrill from his aura of recent violence and had applied it to herself out of a romantic need

to feel imperiled.

They lingered over dinner, watching the younger guests drift off into the evening and being

watched themselves-at least in Lisa's case-by a fortyish Guatemalan man with a pencil-line mustache,

a dark suit, and patent-leather hair. He stared at her as he chewed, ducking his eyes each time he

speared a fresh bite, then resuming his stare. Ordinarily Lisa would have been irritated, but she found

the man's conspicu-ous anonymity appealing and she adopted a flirtatious air, laughing too loudly

and fluttering her hands, in hopes that she was frustrating him.

"His name's Raoul," said Richard. "He's a white slaver in the employ of the Generalissimo, and

he's been commissioned to bring in a new gringa for the harem."

"He's somebody's uncle," said Lisa. "Here to settle a fam-ily dispute. He's married to a dumpy

Indian woman, has seven kids, and he's wearing his only suit to impress the Ameri-cans."

"God, you're a romantic!" Richard sipped his coffee, made a face and set it down.

Lisa bit back a sarcastic reply. "I think he's very romantic. Let's say he's staring at me because he

wants me. If that's true, right now he's probably thinking how to do you in, or maybe wondering if he

could trade you his truck, his means of livelihood, for a night with me. That's real romance.

Passion-ate stupidity and bloody consequences."

"I guess," said Richard, unhappy with the definition; he took another sip of coffee and changed

the subject.

At sunset they walked down to the lake. The village was charming enough-the streets cobbled, the

houses white-washed and roofed with tile; but the rows of tourist shops and the American voices

acted to dispel the charm. The lake, how-ever, was beautiful. Ringed by three volcanoes, bordered

by palms, Indians poling canoes toward scatters of light on the far shore. The water was lacquered

with vivid crimson and yellow reflection, and silhouetted against an equally vivid sky, the palms and

volcanic cones gave the place the look of a prehistoric landscape. As they stood at the end of a

wooden pier, Richard drew her into a kiss and she felt again the explo-sive dizziness of their first

kiss; yet she knew it was a sham, a false magic born of geography and their own contrivance. They

could keep traveling, keep filling their days with exotic sights, lacquering their lives with reflection,

but when they stopped they would discover that they had merely been pre-serving the forms of the

marriage. There was no remedy for their dissolution.

Roosters crowing waked her to gray dawn light. She remembered a dream about a faceless lover,

and she stretched and rolled onto her side. Richard was sitting at the window, wearing jeans and a

T-shirt; he glanced at her, then turned his gaze to the window, to the sight of a pale green volcano

wreathed in mist. "It's not working," he said, and when she failed to respond, still half-asleep, he

buried his face in his hands, muffling his voice. "I can't make it without you, babe."

She had dreaded this moment, but there was no reason to put it off. "That's the problem," she

said. "You used to be able to." She plumped the pillows and leaned back against them.

He looked up, baffled. "What do you mean?"

"Why should I have to explain it? You know it as well as I do. We weaken each other, we exhaust

each other, we depress each other." She lowered her eyes, not wanting to see his face. "Maybe it's

not even us. Sometimes I think marriage is this big pasty spell of cakes and veils that shrivels

everything it touches."

"Lisa, you know there isn't anything I wouldn't ..."

"What? What'll you do?" Angrily, she wadded the sheet. "I don't understand how we've managed

to hurt each other so much. If I did I'd try to fix it. But there's nothing left to do. Not together,

anyway."

He let out a long sigh-the sigh of a man who has just finished defusing a bomb and can allow

himself to breathe again. "It's him, right? You still want to be with him."

It angered her that he would never say the name, as if the name were what counted. "No," she said

stiffly. "It's not him."

"But you still love him."

"That's not the point! I still love you, but love . . ." She drew up her legs and rested her forehead

on her knees. "Christ, Richard. I don't know what more to tell you. I've said it all a hundred times."

"Maybe," he said softly, "maybe this discussion is prema-ture."

"Oh, Richard!"

"No, really. Let's go on with the trip."

"Where next? The Mountains of the Moon? Brazil? It won't change anything."

"You can't be sure of that!" He came toward the bed, his face knitted into lines of despair.

"We'll just stay a few more days. We'll visit the villages on the other side of the lake, where they

do the weaving."

"Why, Richard? God, I don't even understand why you still want me ..."

"Please, Lisa. Please. After eleven years you can try for a few more days."

"All right," she said, weary of hurting him. "A few days." "And you'll try?"

I've always tried, she wanted to say; but then, wondering if it were true, as true as it should be, she

merely said, "Yes."

The motor launch that ran back and forth across the lake between Panajachel and San Augustin

had seating room for fifteen, and nine of those places were occupied by Germans, apparently

members of a family-kids, two sets of parents, and a pair of portly, red-cheeked grandparents. They

reeked of crudity and good health, and made Lisa feel refined by com-parison. The young men

snapped their wives' bra straps; grandpa almost choked with laughter each time this happened; the

kids whined; the women were heavy and hairy-legged. They spent the entire trip taking pictures of

one another. They must have understood English, because when Richard cracked a joke about them

they frowned and whispered and became standoffish. Lisa and Richard moved to the stern, a

superficial union imposed, and watched the shore glide past. Though it was still early, the sun

reflected a dynamited white glare on the water; in the daylight the volcanoes looked depressingly real,

their slopes covered by patchy grass and scrub and stunted palms.

San Augustin was situated at the base of the largest volcano, and was probably like what

Panajachel had been before tourism. Weeds grew between the cobblestones, the white-wash was

flaked away in places, and grimy, naked toddlers sat in the doorways, chewing sugar cane and

drooling. Inside the houses it was the Fourteenth Century. Packed dirt floors, iron cauldrons

suspended over fires, chickens pecking and pigs asleep. Gnomish old Indian women worked at hand

looms, turning out strange tapestries-as, for example, a design of black cranelike birds against a

backdrop of purple sky and green trees, the image repeated over and over-and bolts of dress

material, fabric that on first impression seemed to be of a hundred colors, all in perfect harmony.

Lisa wanted to be sad for the women, to sympathize with their poverty and par-ticular female plight,

and to some extent she managed it; but the women were uncomplaining and appeared reasonably

con-tent and their weaving was better work than she had ever done, even when she had been serious

about art. She bought several yards of the material, tried to strike up a conversation with one of the

women, who spoke neither English or Span-ish, and then they returned to the dock, to the village's

only bar-restaurant-a place right out of a spaghetti western, with a hitching rail in front and skinned

sapling trunks propping up the porch roof and a handful of young, long-haired American men

standing along the bar, having an early-morning beer. "Holy marijuana!" said Richard, winking.

"Hippies! I won-dered where they'd gone." They took a table by the rear win-dow so they could see

the slopes of the volcano. The scarred varnish of the table was dazzled by sunlight; flies buzzed

against the heated panes.

"So what do you think?" Richard squinted against the glare.

"I thought we were going to give it a few days," she said testily.

"Jesus, Lisa! I meant, what do you think about the weav-ing?" He adopted a pained expression.

"I'm sorry." She touched his hand, and he shook his head ruefully. "It's beautiful ...I mean, the

weaving's beautiful. Oh, God, Richard. I don't intend to be so awkward."

"Forget it." He stared out the window, deadpan, as if he were giving serious consideration to

climbing the volcano, sizing up the problems involved. "What did you think of it?"

"It was beautiful," she said flatly. The buzzing of the flie-sintensified, and she had the notion that

they were telling her to try harder. "I know it's corny to say, but watching her work . . . What was her

name?"

"Expectacion."

"Oh, right. Well, watching her I got the feeling I was watching something magical, something that

went on and on . . ." She trailed off, feeling foolish at having to legitimize with conversation what had

been a momentary whimsy; but she could think of nothing else to say. "Something that went on

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THEENDOFLIFEASWEKNOWITbyLuciusShepardWhatLisahatedmostaboutMexicoweretheflies,andRichardsaid,Yeah,theflieswerebad,butitwasthelousyattitudeofthepeoplethatdidhimin,youknow,thewaythewaitersignoredyouandthetaxidriverssneered,thesourexpressionsofdeskclerks-asiftheyweredoingyouabigfavorbylettingyoustayin...

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Lucius Shepard - The End of Life as We Know It

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