Puzzle for Pilgrims Read Online Free Page A

Marietta Haven. The real Marietta was always elusive. If she was spring, it was spring with a late frost and a sad backward glance at winter. You felt that, deep inside her, something secret was locked. There’s a street in Mexico City called the street of the Niños Perdidos—the lost children. Sometimes I thought of Marietta like that—a lost child. And sometimes, when her cool green eyes forgot me for her own incalculable reflections, I thought of her as Ixtacihuatl, the Sleeping Woman, the snowbound, brooding volcano that watches over Mexico City.
    I never knew why she talked to me that first night, or why, having come into my life, she stayed. But then I never could tell what she was thinking or feeling or even if she was thinking or feeling anything. She hardly ever talked about Martin, Iris, or Sally, either—only an occasional phrase that dropped into the conversation when it was least expected.
    We saw each other every day, but there had never been talk of a romance or even of an affair between us. And yet she must have known dozens of other men in Mexico City, although she never spoke of them and I never saw them. Sometimes I wondered if she was a very good person who knew what a raw deal her brother had given me and was trying to make compensation. Sometimes I wondered if she was just a bum after free drinks—because I always paid.
    She went everywhere with me, except to the bullfights. She didn’t like the bulls. That’s why I’d been alone that afternoon when I met Sally.
    The drive home from the bull ring ended in the quiet, tree-lined block of the Calle Londres where my apartment was. I left the car on the street and walked to the door leading to my patio. Someone had left a large, shiny rooster, with its feet tied together, pegged into the brown strip of grass outside the door. It watched me with a baleful eye.
    Near it, but detached from it, an Indian squatted on the sidewalk behind a cloth on which lay a dozen tiny mounds of peanuts and a plate of cucumbers, fancily cut into slices. He was there all day every day. I had never seen him sell anything.
    I ducked under the bougainvillea vine and went up the steps to my apartment, which had its own outside entrance on the second floor. I let myself in, thinking how I was going to dislike the emptiness inside.
    But the living room wasn’t empty. Marietta was sitting in a cream brocade chair by the window, drinking tequila. She sat cross-kneed, showing long, thoroughbred legs. She never wore a hat, and her dark hair gleamed in the late sunshine, brown with a touch of gold and seemingly in motion like the gold-splashed water of a trout stream. She was elegant and cool, as always, the way you expected English women to look in The Tatler when you hadn’t actually seen The Tatler for a long time.
    She got up and came to me.
    “The velador let me in, Peter. He’s used to me now. He probably thinks I’m the Mexican equivalent of your little piece of fluff.”
    She had an unopened envelope in her hand. She held it out to me. She wasn’t smiling and something was wrong for her. I could tell that at once.
    “Here’s a letter from your wife,” she said. “It’s just come special delivery. You’d better read it. I have a feeling something nasty is brewing.”

Three
    I opened the thin air-mail envelope.
     
    Peter: I’m frightened for Martin. Sally was here yesterday. She threatened him again. And this time it’s real. She says she knows something. I don’t know what it is but something he’s done here, and she says she has proof. She says if he doesn’t go back to her, she’s going to the police. Why are people like that allowed to live? I hate her. I could kill her. Peter, do you remember that you offered to help me with her? I never dreamed I’d take you up on it. But pride doesn’t seem important any more. Martin will never leave me—whatever she does. I know that. Peter, please, someone’s got to stop her. I can’t. There isn’t anyone but