The Angel Clock
Hays, Agee
314 THE ANGEL CLOCK By AGEE HAYS MANUELA was going to the relojero's again to see if the angel clock was there. She had on her green dress trimmed with pale yellow bands like the blossoms of...
...Manuela who is to marry our Ramon," she said, "must have a clock with angels...
...Then, too," droned Ramon, "the new clock costs more pesos than we have...
...My father and mother gave it for your happiness, when they could not afford to do so...
...Like the great dona's...
...Manuela, dressed in her green and pink, watched it tensely...
...It was square like a box...
...She had seen one in the house of a fine dona where she had once gone with her mother, to work...
...Back and forth...
...he declared...
...It is laughing because it has come between me and my angel clock," she would whisper fiercely to the friendly grey walls...
...Now that she had one, how could she expect ever to own another...
...The relojero says he will take the square clock as pay on the other one...
...But Manuela hated it...
...Manuela's black eyes were hard...
...Manuela had never noticed how coarse the curtains were and how rough the kind grey walls...
...Ramon was very happy for Manuela was still attractive to him and kind...
...If you wish it, then, little jewel...
...Manuela was careful about her dress and from her mother, Pepita, she knew that pink and green match, for did not the guisante flowers prove it...
...She looked miserably at the bend in the dusty road where old, bent trees with lacy foliage hid the Rio Grande...
...The clock went silently and smoothly like a snake...
...But our clock was a gift, chiquita," he repeated...
...Her tortillas and enchiladas were savory and her adobe the cleanest in Baredo...
...After that, Manuela's desire for a clock with angels was a passion eating her happiness...
...He took off his tall sombrero so slowly that the little bells around the brim hardly jingled...
...It was a mound of glass with little angels riding around inside on a track...
...Only she knew that the square, ugly clock which every second ticked loudly at her was the cause...
...Only great landowners in Baredo had, before this, owned clocks...
...Back and forth...
...When Ramon came in, he looked at the shelf and pretended to be pleased...
...All her life she had wanted it...
...We could not buy it if we would...
...he exclaimed...
...She told Ramon...
...There is not a more wonderful clock in all of Mexico...
...And the green voile dress was cheap...
...But what would old Lisena and Lope say when they paid their weekly visit to admire the wedding gift...
...Ramon was astounded and hurt...
...As soon as Ramon, her husband, had left for the gardens of Don Santiago, Manuela had hurried to get ready...
...The village had been very silent in the lazy afternoon sun and Lisena had moved her brown, wrinkled face solemnly...
...Manuela squeezed the glass mound as her sandaled feet marked the deep and hot dust of the camino homeward...
...Back and forth...
...Then she rinsed the brown tazas from which they had drunk their coffee, and spread blankets over fragrant straw in the second room...
...Lope had put a red blanket over his stooped shoulders, combed out his white beard and hair with his fingers, and punched out the dents in his sombrero...
...He made clocks there and sent them everywhere...
...Only Manuela knew that the clock was not so wonderful as they thought...
...He had walked for miles in front of his laden cart with its two great wheels, guiding his oxen into the city...
...Manuela would not hear...
...I have it—the angel clock," she refrained...
...In his window he had a clock with angels that rode back and forth...
...He had a wart in one eyebrow and a broad nose and he wore shoes instead of sandals...
...The four little windows of their abode were framed in dull blue against the grey mud, and the straw roof was almost grey...
...On the shelf, the golden angels moved silently and grandly under their glass canopy...
...Her lips felt thick...
...Ay, Manuelita, ay," she sighed...
...Back and forth...
...It was as if someone had closed a huge gate in front of her...
...She pushed her hands over her face...
...Many more pesos the angel one would have cost," he said sadly...
...She had on her green dress trimmed with pale yellow bands like the blossoms of the mesquite tree and, to match it, a pink lace head scarf...
...But Manuela was sad...
...Ramon's dark face was sad, but he took Manuela into his arms...
...The finest ladies in Mexico have no better...
...The relojero lifted his warty eyebrow and smiled with one yellow tooth showing under his moustache...
...Without a look at the square box of a clock squatting on the shelf, she emerged...
...One day she could stand it no longer...
...Manuela had pretended and Ramon had been truly delighted...
...Now a little and a little more as Don Santiago pays you...
...The house is dingy...
...Her hands were fat and homely...
...Ramon had built a shelf for it in the most conspicuous place in the house...
...she gasped...
...He took the square clock and handed her the other...
...They did not look at Ramon...
...How ugly and coarse he seemed...
...Manuela knew she had said this and she knew that the ancient couple had lived on frijoles and had no guests for many months that on Manuela's wedding day, they could place before her the great desire...
...It jangled out the hours like the sound the milkman made beating his tin cup when he stopped his goats in the street...
...Manuela had been so pleased with the blue frames that she had made white curtains with a border of bright circles from an old dress of Dona Santiago's...
...What a beautiful clock...
...Maybe she will like this one...
...The pobres of Baredo said she was proud and sometimes they nodded their heads and wrinkled their noses at each other when she passed by, as if they had been talking about her...
...Back and forth...
...But when Lope unyoked his oxen that night, Lisena had hobbled out and told him...
...She knew clocks...
...A clock worthy of you, pretty one...
...Three years had gone...
...The next day he had returned with a clock, but it had no angels...
...One day when she had become a senorita and the mesquite 315 and pepper trees were fragrant, Manuela had sat in old Lisena's doorstep and told her, shyly, of the great wish as one does any secret too great to keep...
...Manuela and Ramon had two rooms, and a yard swept as bare and clean as the dirt floors inside...
...Suddenly she thought of herself...
...Then, because he was silent, she looked at him...
...Back and forth...
...Then a relojero came to Baredo...
...He says we may pay for it in a new way...
...She washed the big stone amolador in which she crushed the halfdried corn for their tortillas and left it outside the adobe by the clay oven for the sun to dry...
...And Manuela had gone away frightened at having disclosed so impossible a dream...
...Lisena had nodded in proud satisfaction and the guests had admired it...
...It should be silk...
...And all the time the angel clock will be ours...
...He sat down and looked at Manuela...
...But she only smiled, for were they not always glad to come up the pebble walk and see the blue windows and bright curtains and stand long before the clock...
Vol. 10 • July 1929 • No. 12
