Manuel brought his wide-brimmed hat, waved it, and chased the bat
outdoors. He said nothing, but the way he moved expressed acceptance
and pleasure. He had the grace of an old cat.
After Manuel went out, Raul said: "I've been thinking about Manuel, how
he and I used to fly kites. He would take the kite on top of the
house, where the roof's flat. We'd let out balls of string. He must
have been thirty years old then. I remember his face--so full of
smiles. He was patient with me. He knew the things a boy wanted to
do. Horses. Hunting." His voice trailed off. He lit his pipe.
"He'd do anything for you," Angelina said, and rose abruptly. "Let's
blow out the candles. You and Manuel have been true to each other.
That's a fine thing." Then in a high voice, she added: "A fine thing."
He tried to disregard the inference. He puffed out a candle and
watched her bend over another atop the armoire. The ivory light flared
across her polished features. Sadness stabbed him: their marriage
should have worked. Who had made the first mistake? Gradually, like a
candlelit picture, Lucienne's face appeared, hazel eyes serious.
2
The hacienda of Petaca dated from 1619. The deed--signed in
Colima--lay in a cedar jewel box in the living room. The Jesuit paper
(some lawyer had gotten hold of ecclesiastical stationery) bore the
cross-and-crown watermark. Flowery signatures in brown ink were fading
into the foxed sheets that had frayed and chipped edges.
Petaca stretched over 1,580,000 acres: sugarcane fields, corn land,
wheat land, cattle country, hills, valleys, rivers, lava beds, half a
volcano, a lagoon, a pre-Columbian pyramid, villages with their gardens
and orchards. The main house was thirty miles from Colima, the capital
of the state. Peasants of the neighboring haciendas had dubbed Petaca
the "Hacienda of the Clarín." Their ironical name referred to Raul's
father, not the mockingbirds in the grove behind the residence. He had
made many a man "sing." The nickname, said with a ttck of the tongue,
conveyed their condemnation.
Fernando Medina, the Clarín, lay in bed, propped on pillows. His bed
faced a tall grilled window, its wooden shutters flung back. As he lay
against his pillows, one hand twitched nervously. He was seventy-nine,
white-headed, ashen and scrawny, part Coro, part Spanish. Bowled over
by a stroke, he still had a patriarchal air. His eyes could still
explode. The white eyebrows, though thin, arched imperially. Decaying
and absent teeth had crumpled his mouth; only when he was angry could
it regain its forcefulness; at all other times it mocked the man. Don
Fernando had been rebellious. As a young fellow, he had quarreled with
his father over a trivial matter and shot and killed him. This was the
venom of his life. No law had punished Fernando.
As he lay against his pillow, his hand trembling, he coughed and
moaned. He hated inactivity; he hated being alone; he hated his room;
lifting a small copper bell from the bed table, he clanged it
erratically. As his hand quivered more violently, he plunged it under
the sheet and pinned it down.
"Did you ring, Don Fernando?"
"Of course I rang. Bring me a cigarette and light it, Chavela."
"But Dr. Velasco asked me not to ... you..."
"Get a cigarette and be quick about it! Don't tell me what Dr. Velasco
said, and don't run to him with your prattles."
"Sí, Don Fernando," she said, cringing a little.
As he waited for the cigarette (she had to go to the kitchen for a
light), he eyed the grilled window. The bronze bars had a chunk of
landscape wedged between them: a strap of corn land with giant
chirimoya trees beyond. The chirimoyas had green limbs, and their mat
of branches formed an umbrella cap of foliage. Don Fernando's sight
was weak and branches did not exist for him. The umbrella seemed to
float in mid-air. The effect annoyed him. He clanged his bell.
Chavela, a fat Tarascan peasant in her twenties, hurried back, a
cigarette in one hand and a charcoal ember in the other. Pincher-wise
she gripped the glowing ember between splints of wood, tongs she had
improvised.
"Light my cigarette, you fool, before the charcoal falls on the bed!
Did you have to bring it here? Don't you ever think for yourself?"
Chavela's broad chocolate face looked troubled; her big steady hands
seemed to lift on strings as she brought the ember to the tip of her
cigarette and puffed violently, close to Fernando's bed. Smoke
corkscrewed from her nose and mouth, and she frowned and coughed, and
then grinned. Carefully, she placed the cigarette between his lips.
"There," she said. For a second, her eyes narrowed; she turned away,
repelled, and as she turned, the ember dropped alongside the bed.
"You could have burned me!" wailed Fernando. "Where's Angelina? ...
get her!"
"She's outdoors, playing with the children."
"Playing with the children: doesn't she do anything else? Doesn't
anybody do anything here?"
A heavy tread outside Fernando's room made Chavela glance toward the
door; a spur dragged its wheel over tiles; it was Jorge Farias, the
corn-production manager, a hungry-looking man, half Spanish, half
Tarascan. He removed his wide-brimmed straw hat as he halted in the
bedroom doorway; the rough brim scraped across his trousers.
"Farias wants to see you," said Chavela, and went out.
"May I come in?" asked Farias.
Don Fernando motioned him inside with childish gesture. As Farias
entered, the old man spat on the floor.
Farias was dressed in soiled brown trousers and a white shirt designed
like a four-pocketed jacket, he had on black riding boots spurred with
star-shaped rowels, polished from use. He stood stiffly erect. He
disliked the old man. Nearly fifty, he felt that his years of service,
doled out to the Clarín, had been largely wasted; yet he liked his job
and was proud of any help he could render his own people whenever
Fernando's vigilance slackened.
"Can't you bear to look at me?" said Fernando.
"I'm at your service," said Farias.
"Sit down ... sit down!"
The spurs dragged. The chair by the window squeaked. Farias supposed
he would be told to check the crops along the boundary line of the
Santa Cruz del Valle hacienda, where it adjoined Petaca. He dreaded
the journey through the mountains, but remembered he could take his son
along, unless the Clarín had another job for Luis. But the Clarín's
mind was slipping. Last week, he had ordered Felipe locked in the
pillory; Felipe had not been guilty of stealing; it had been Carlos
Vasconcales who had robbed the corn bins; nothing Farias could say had
altered the Clarín's decision. Farias studied a crack in the red
tiles; the crack wandered like a river toward the old man's bed.
Farias found himself staring at Don Fernando. Cigarette smoke hooded
his face--a falcon's hood of gray.
"I want you to leave here early tomorrow. Check the crops along Santa
Cruz del Valle. Go armed."
"Yes, sir."
"There's something else. Check the stone fences along our property;
take time to fix them if they're down; we can't have cattle foraging on
our corn. Understand?"
"Yes, sir. I'll check thoroughly. Anything else?"
"Expect trouble.... You may go."
Fernando attempted to see Farias walk to the door, but his eyes had
shifted out of focus; he saw a brownish blur; he shook himself and
waited. The click of spurs faded. He raised his cigarette and inhaled
deeply. Slowly, his sight cleared. The window and its barred
landscape returned. He welcomed the sight now, thinking of death with
a throb of panic: death would remove all landscapes, however blurred.
His shaky hand carried the cigarette to his mouth and then let it fall.
He slept.
He dreamed of a fracas over the impounding of a stream on the lower
slope of the volcano; that quarrel had taken place thirty or more years
ago; yet now, in the dream, the angry voices of workers rose; his
_administrador_ drew a revolver; a peasant yanked away the gun....
Waking, Fernando clattered his copper bell, and this time his son
appeared.
"Yes, Father," said Raul, near the bed.
"A drink of water."
"Yes."
Raul poured a glass of water from a bed-table water bottle; a great
green fly buzzed about the mouth of the bottle; his father reached for
the glass; the hand shook and drops spilled.
The room had been papered in egg-white paper with brown aviaries
triangled on it; from every aviary a flock of birds--all resembling
swallows--cascaded. A black wooden wardrobe that weighed half a ton
filled one wall. Its double doors, sides, and corners were ornamented
with carved eagles and brass gewgaws. Some of the eagles had
conch-shell eyes. The eyes peered into a full-length mirror, framed in
carved wood. Above a washstand hung a Swiss etching of the Matterhorn,
a sketchy rendering. Fernando's bed was four-posted and canopied with
a dingy white cloth.
Raul glimpsed himself in the mirror as he held his father's glass, and
the reflection startled him. Catching the resemblance, he set down the
glass with a jerk and began to walk out of the room.
"Raul," said his father.
"What is it, Father?" said Raul, compelling himself to speak politely.
"I sent Farias to check the corn fences."
"He'll check them carefully," said Raul.
"Will Velasco come this afternoon?"
"He'll come unless he has a sick person to take care of."
"I feel bad. I feel as if ... Raul, it's bad."
"But you've felt that way before."
"Yes, I have. Still, I feel...." He said no more.
"Velasco usually comes about seven."
"Very well," said Fernando.
Raul waited, and as he waited, standing in the door, his father dozed.
He called Chavela and instructed her to check from time to time.
Stepping into the patio, he paused to take in the warm sun; he felt
more like himself as he assimilated the light and air, heard laughter
in the kitchen, and listened to the twittering and jabbering of
parrots, thrushes and doves in their wall cages, cages that decorated
all sides of the patio. A stone fountain centered the patio. Many
years ago, the pink stones had been brought by oxcart from a
prehistoric pyramid in Sector 9. Carved snakes wound from stone block
to stone block, to vanish, with reptilian grace, over the rim. Raul
sat on the curb, under the cypress. A dragonfly rode a lily pad.
Where bougainvillaea climbed the wall a white butterfly, as big as a
woman's cupped hands, descended: it seemed to be coming down an aerial
stairway a step at a time. Raul shut his eyes, wanting to forget his
problems, the ugly face of his father, the threat of dissolving
traditions.
Presently, he went to the stable where Chico stood, brushed and
saddled, tail switching. Manuel was polishing the cantle, chatting
with other men; hens and roosters scratched in the floor straw; the air
boomed with flies.
"The sacks are on," said Manuel, punching a corn sack behind Chico's
saddle.
"Let's go, then," said Raul. "Are you ready?"
"I'm all set," said Manuel.
The palomino's beauty was obvious in many ways: bone structure, slant
of ears, line of hocks, texture of mane and tail. Chico swung his head
to watch Raul mount; his teeth ground his bit slightly. Lagoon and
volcano came alive as the men rode side by side, Manuel on an Arabian
bay. Each rider had a western saddle ornamented with silver, tasseled
with red. They left the hacienda by the main road, lined on both sides
with eucalyptus trees, four and five feet in diameter and fifty to
sixty feet tall. The fragrant foliage sweetened the air; birds sang;
dust puffs fitted like leggings around the horse's hoofs. Manuel's
Arabian carried the heaviest sack of corn, but did not seem to mind.
Raul packed a revolver in a new holster. Manuel had two pistols slung
on a full cartridge belt. Both were dressed in white and wore straw
hats with quail feathers under the bands.
Again volcano and lagoon swung with the riders; at a curve in the road,
with the shore line close, ducks swam across the volcano's reflection.
The double line of eucalyptus rambled on, but at the end of the lane,
where a road intersected, they spread into a grove. Close to the
grove, a white wooden cross pegged a hill. A tall man was looping
dried marigold strands on an arm of the cross, his back toward Raul and
Manuel. When he heard the horses, he faced about, his face luxuriously
bearded with curly white hair. Picking up his hat out of the weeds, he
walked toward the road.
"It's Alberto, the musician," said Raul, pleased.
"Ah, so it is. I hear he's been very sick," said Manuel.
"Good morning," said Alberto, smiling, bowing a little, big hat
dangling in front of his stomach, gripped by both hands. His
immaculate whites must have been ironed that morning.
"Good morning, Alberto," said Raul. "Sorry to hear you've been sick.
I didn't know. How are you feeling?"
"Ai, patrón, I feel better, thank God. My legs troubled me. I'm old
... it is nothing. It will pass."
"When are you coming again to play for us?"
"Soon--God willing."
"Here's something for you."
Alberto limped close to Chico and patted his mane. The horse shied and
blew through his nose, clicking his bit.
"Steady now, Chico," Raul said, and handed a few coins to Alberto. The
old man accepted the money graciously, jingling it before pocketing it.
For Raul, there was Christ in Alberto's face, the Christ of his own
hacienda, of many haciendas. A few thorns, he thought, a few drops of
blood ... He remembered Alberto at a fiesta years before: a drunk had
struck him in the mouth. Alberto had toppled. Yet he had not
complained. The jingle of coins in the open air, the cross on the
hill, made Raul taste betrayal--he was offering the vinegar sop to his
people. He hadn't the guts to free them! He jerked Chico's bit
angrily, the horse reared, and Raul went on down the road.
Disturbed, Manuel eyed his friend doubtfully as they jogged along.
Huts lay around another bend, and they rode slowly, over badly placed
cobbles. The area was semi-arid, the soil rocky and alkaline. A few
stone huts pimpled the ground among maguey and tangles of prickly pear
and candelabra. Each hut resembled a cairn topped by a straw wig. The
unmortared walls were made of lava, rough, porous, grayish-lavender.
Big and suckling pigs slumped in front of a wooden watering trough that
had a leak at one end; chickens fed here and there; dogs yapped at the
horsemen.
Raul dismounted in front of a doorless hut, and began to pull off his
corn sack, tugging at the leather thongs and henequen cords. A deep
voice said, "Bueno," and Raul looked into the face of Salvador, the
head man of the hutment, a three-hundred-pound fellow, with a paunch, a
stevedore's shoulders, grinning jowl and swooping mustache.
"Let me take the sack, patrón."
"I heard you had no corn here," Raul said, backing away.
"No corn for three days."
"You should have come to me."
"Sometimes it's better to wait. We have our chickens and pigs. We're
not starving."
"You can't make tortillas out of chickens and pigs," said Raul.
Salvador laughed soundlessly, and the upper part of his body shook. He
untied the corn sack and shouldered its weight easily. Barefooted,
standing there, legs spread, one hand balancing the burlap, he faced
Raul, the sun streaming over his whites.
"Will you go inside and wait for me?" Salvador asked.
"I want to talk to you," said Raul.
He entered the low hut and sat on the packed earth floor and took a
cigarette paper from his pocket. Presently, Salvador came in and sat
against the wall opposite Raul, across the hut. Their feet almost
touched. A broken candle lay on a termite-riddled chest that had been
patched with a triangle of pine from which dangled a rusty padlock.
Clothes and a folded hammock hung on pegs. There were no other
furnishings. Outside, women gabbled over the corn sacks and children
dashed about crying: "We've got corn.... Come, see the corn!"
Salvador fished out paper and tobacco and paper and tobacco became a
cigarette with magical dexterity. The two smoked silently. They had
met in this hut quite a few times through the years. Last September
they had weathered a hurricane's tail behind these walls. As Raul
smoked, he kept seeing the musician's face and sensing his own
obligations.
"I want you to move to the house in a few days," Raul said. "I need
your help, Salvador. I want you to turn out several carts; that means
wheels, frames, and yokes."
"But Don Fernando doesn't want them," said Salvador, and his lip pulled
away from his cigarette with a scrap of paper clinging to it. What was
Don Raul thinking? What kind of quarrel would come of this?
"You do the job for me. I'm not waiting any longer. I've made up my
mind to take over Petaca. We can't go on waiting and waiting. My
father's day is over."
Raul felt his voice was trembling, and tried to distract himself with
the ash of his cigarette.
"There will be a lot of trouble," said Salvador, skeptical of such a
decision. "People will take sides. We'll have our hands full."
"Are you afraid?" scoffed Raul.
"Of course not, patrón."
"Our people are hungry and sick," said Raul, staring at a stone
embedded in the wall.
"I'll do my part," said Salvador humbly, picking the shred of paper
from his lip. "I know that we need new carts, that carts need
repairing.... There's a lot that needs doing."
"When you come to the house, bring Teresa. She can help us."
"I'm glad to move, but I must continue to look after these people, too.
They're my friends." A hunch of his shoulder indicated those who lived
in the surrounding huts.
"You can do both jobs," said Raul, and glanced at Salvador confidently.
As Raul smoked, tasting the cigarette, liking the cool, rocky interior,
a leghorn hen scratched, found a grub and beaked it in the sunlight.
Raul felt easier in his mind. The new responsibility was a challenge;
he had no doubt as to his administrative ability. Back against the
rocks, he smoked in silence. He was on the side of freedom.
As they headed for the hacienda house, Manuel rode in front.