PARTISAN REVIEW
since the flight of the girl he had lived with. He didn't want any more
of that now or ever.
And so one night, about five months after their separation, the
image of Amada stalked with a sound of trumpets through the mid–
night walls of
his
apartment. She stood like some apparition of flame
at the foot of his bed, all luminous from within as an X-ray picture.
He saw the tall white bones of her standing there, and he sat bolt–
upright in the sweat-dampened covers and gave a loud cry: then he
fell back on his face to weep uncontrollably till the coming of morn–
ing. When daylight was coming, even before the windows had turned
really white, he rose to pack his valise and arrange for the trip to
Laredo, to find the lost girl and bring her back into the empty room
in
his
heart. He assumed without thinking that Laredo was where
she would be, because it was where he had found her.
He was not wrong about that. She had returned to Laredo five
months ago but not to the Texas Star where he had found her. The
manager of the hotel pretended to have no knowledge of the girl but
the Mexican porter told
him
that he would find her
in
the home of
her family on the outskirts of town, in a house without number on
a street without name, at the bottom of a steep hill on which stood
an ice-plant.
When Kamrowski arrived at the door of the gray wooden house
to which these directions took him- a building no more than a shack
which leaned exhaustedly on the edge of a steep and irregular road
of grey dust- all of the female family came to the door and talked
excitedly among themselves, brushing him avidly up and down with
their eyes, half smiling and half snarling at
him
like a pack of wild
dogs. They seemed to be arguing almost hysterically among them–
selves as to whether or not this stranger should be admitted. He was
so sick with longing to see the lost girl that he could not bring out the
little Spanish he knew.
All
he could say was Amada, more and
more loudly. And then all at once, from some recess of the building,
a loud, hoarse voice was lifted like the crow of a cock. It had a ring
of anger but the word called out was the affectionate name she used
to call him. Rubio, which meant blond. He swept past the women,
brushing them aside with both arms, and made for the direction from
which the fierce call had come. He fairly hurled himself against the
warped door and broke into a room which was all dark except for
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