The entrance to the common prison of Havana was a sort of lofty
tunnel, finished by great, iron-rusted, wooden gates. A civil guard was
exhibiting the judge’s warrant for my committal to a white-haired man,
with a red face and blue eyes, that seemed to look through tumbled
bushes of silver eyebrows--the _alcayde_ of the prison. He bowed, and
rattled two farcically large keys. A practicable postern was ajar on the
yellow wood of the studded gates. It was as if it afforded a glimpse
of the other side of the world. The venerable turnkey, a gnome in
a steeple-crowned hat, protruded a blood-red hand backwards in the
direction of the postern.
“Señor Caballero,” he croaked, “I pray you to consider this house your
own. My servants are yours.”
Within was a gravel yard, shut in by portentous lead-white house-sides
with black window holes. Under each row of windows was a vast vaulted
tunnel, caged with iron bars, for all the world like beasts’ dens. It
being day, the beasts were out and lounging about the _patio_. They had
an effect of infinite tranquillity, as if they were ladies and gentlemen
parading in a Sunday avenue. Perhaps twenty of them, in snowy white
shirts and black velvet knee-breeches, strutted like pigeons in a knot,
some with one woman on the arm, some with two. Bundles of variegated
rags lay against the walls, as if they were sweepings. Well, they were
the sweepings of Havana jail. The men in white and black were the great
thieves... and there were children, too--the place was the city
orphanage. For the fifth part of a second my advent made no difference.
Then, at the far end, one of the men in black and white separated
himself, and came swiftly to me across the sunny _patio_. The others
followed slowly, with pea-fowl steps, their women hanging to them
and whispering. The bundles of rags rose up towards me; others slunk
furtively out of the barred dens. The man who was approaching had the
head of a Julius Cæsar of fifty, for all the world as if he had stolen a
bust and endowed it with yellow skin and stubby gray and silver hair.
He saluted me with intense gravity and an imperial glance of yellow
eyes along a hooked nose. His linen was the most spotless broidered and
embossed stuff; from the crimson scarf round his waist protruded the
shagreen and silver handle of a long dagger. He said:
“Señor, I have the honour to salute you. I am Crisostomo Garcia. I ask
the courtesy of your trousers.”
I did not answer him. I did not see what he wanted with my trousers,
which weren’t anyway as valuable as his own. The others were closing
in on me like a solid wall. I leant back against the gate; I was not
frightened, but I was mightily excited. The man like Cæsar looked
fiercely at me, swayed a long way back on his haunches, and imperiously
motioned the crowd to recede.
“Señor Inglesito,” he said, “the gift I have the honour to ask of you is
the price of my protection. Without it these, my brothers, will tear you
limb from limb, there will nothing of you remain.”
His brothers set up a stealthy, sinister growl, that went round among
the heads like the mutter of an obscene echo among the mountain-tops. I
wondered whether this, perhaps, was the man who, O’Brien said, would
put a knife in my back. I hadn’t any knife; I might knock the fellow’s
teeth down his throat, though.
The _alcayde_ thrust his immense hat, blood-red face, and long, ragged,
silver locks out of the little door. His features were convulsed with
indignation. He had been whispering with the Civil Guard.
“Are you mad, gentlemen?” he said. “Do you wish to visit hell before
your times? Do you know who the senor is? Did you ever hear of Carlos el
Demonio? This is the _Inglesito_ of Rio Medio!”
It was plain that my deeds, such as they were, reported by O’Brien
spies, by the _Lugareños_, by all sorts of credulous gossipers, had got
me the devil of a reputation in the _patio_ of the jail. Men detached
themselves from the crowd, and went running about to announce my
arrival. The _alcayde_ drew his long body into the _patio_, and turned
to lock the little door with an immense key. In the crowd all sorts
of little movements happened. Women crossed themselves, and furtively
thrust pairs of crooked, skinny, brown, black-nailed fingers in my
direction. The man like Cæsar said:
“I ask your pardon, Señor Caballero. I did not know. How could I tell?
You are free of all the _patios_ in this land.”
The tall _alcayde_ finished grinding the immense key in the lock, and
touched me on the arm.
“If the senor will follow me,” he said. “I will do the honours of this
humble mansion, and indicate a choice of rooms where he may be free from
the visits of these gentry.”
We went up steps, and through long, shadowy corridors, with here and
there a dark, lounging figure, like a stag seen in the dim aisles of a
wood. The _alcayde_ threw open a door.
The room was like a blazing oblong-box, filled with light, but without
window or chimney. Two men were fencing in the illumination of some
twenty candles stuck all round the mildewed white walls on lumps of
clay. There was a blaze of silver things, like an altar of a wealthy
church, from a black, carved table in the far corner. The two men, in
shirts and breeches, revolved round each other, their rapiers clinking,
their left arms scarved, holding buttoned daggers. The _alcayde_
proclaimed:
“Don Vincente Salazar, I have the honour to announce an English senor.”
The man with his face to me tossed his rapier impatiently into a corner.
He was a plump, dark Cuban, with a brooding truculence. The other faced
round quickly. His cheeks shone in the candle-light like polished yellow
leather, his eyes were narrow slits, his face lugubrious. He scrutinized
me intently, then drawled:
“My! You?... Hang me if I didn’t think it would be you!”
He had the air of surveying a monstrosity, and pulled the neck of his
dirty print shirt open, panting. He slouched out into the corridor, and
began whispering eagerly to the _alcayde_. The little Cuban glowered at
me; I said I had the honour to salute him.
He muttered something contemptuous between his teeth. Well, if he didn’t
want to talk to me, I didn’t want to talk to him. It had struck me that
the tall, sallow man was undoubtedly the second mate of the _Thames_.
Nicholas, the real Nikola el Escoces! The Cuban grumbled suddenly:
“You, Señor, are without doubt one of the spies of that friend of the
priests, that O’Brien. Tell him to beware--that I bid him beware. I, Don
Vincente Salazar de Valdepefias y Forli y...”
I remembered the name; he was once the suitor of Seraphina--the man
O’Brien had put out of the way. He continued with a grotesque frown of
portentous significance:
“To-morrow I leave this place. And your compatriot is very much afraid,
Señor. Let him fear! Let him fear! But a thousand spies should not save
him.”
The tall _alcayde_ came hurriedly back and stood bowing between us. He
apologized abjectly to the Cuban for intruding me upon him. But the room
was the best in the place at the disposal of the prisoners of the Juez
O’Brien. And I was a noted _caballero_. Heaven knows what I had not done
in Rio Medio. Burnt, slain, ravished.... The Señor Juez was understood
to be much incensed against me. The gloomy Cuban at once rushed upon me,
as if he would have taken me into his arms.
“The _Inglesito_ of Rio Medio!” he said. “Ha, ha! Much have I heard of
you. Much of the senor’s valiance! Many tales! That foul eater of the
carrion of the priests wishes your life! Ah, but let him beware! I shall
save you, Señor--I, Don Vincente Salazar.”
He presented me with the room--a remarkably bare place but for his
properties: silver branch candlesticks, a silver chafing-dish as large
as a basin. They might have been chased by Cellini--one used to find
things like that in Cuba in those days, and Salazar was the person
to have them. Afterwards, at the time of the first insurrection, his
eight-mule harness was sold for four thousand pounds in Paris--by reason
of the gold and pearls upon it. The atmosphere, he explained, was fetid,
but his man was coming to burn sandal-wood and beat the air with fans.
“And to-morrow!” he said, his eyes rolling. Suddenly he stopped.
“Señor,” he said, “is it true that my venerated friend, my more than
father, has been murdered--at the instigation of that fiend? Is it true
that the senorita has disappeared? These tales are told.”