‘Why do you want to know?’
‘And you never had a vocation?’
‘They wouldn’t believe it,’ she said bitterly.
He thought: poor woman, she’s had nothing, nothing at all. If only one could find the right word . . . He leant hopelessly back, moving carefully so as not to waken the old man. But the right words never came to him. He was more out of touch with her kind than he had ever been; he would have known what to say to her in the old days, feeling no pity at all, speaking with half a mind a platitude or two. Now he felt useless. He was a criminal and ought only to talk to criminals; he had done wrong again, trying to break down her complacency. He might just as well have let her go on thinking him a martyr.
His eyes closed and immediately he began to dream. He was being pursued; he stood outside a door banging on it, begging for admission, but nobody answered – there was a word, a password, which would save him, but he had forgotten it. He tried desperately at random – cheese and child, California, excellency, milk, Vera Cruz. His feet had gone to sleep and he knelt outside the door. Then he knew why he wanted to get in: he wasn’t being pursued after all: that was a mistake. His child lay beside him bleeding to death and this was a doctor’s house. He banged on the door and shouted, ‘Even if I can’t think of the right word, haven’t you a heart?’ The child was dying and looked up at him with middle-aged complacent wisdom. She said, ‘You animal,’ and he woke again crying. He couldn’t have slept for more than a few seconds because the woman was still talking about the vocation the nuns had refused to recognize. He said, ‘That made you suffer, didn’t it? To suffer like that – perhaps it was better than being a nun and happy,’ and immediately after he had spoken he thought: a silly remark, what does it mean? Why can’t I find something to say to her which she could remember?
He didn’t sleep again: he was striking yet another bargain with God. This time, if he escaped from the prison, he would escape altogether. He would go north, over the border. His escape was so improbable that, if it happened, it couldn’t be anything else but a sign – an indication that he was doing more harm by his example than good by his occasional confessions. The old man moved against his shoulder and the night just stayed around them. The darkness was always the same and there were no clocks – there was nothing to indicate time passing. The only punctuation of the night was the sound of urination.
Suddenly, he realized that he could see a face, and then another; he had begun to forget that it would ever be another day, just as one forgets that one will ever die. It comes suddenly on one in a screeching brake or a whistle in the air, the knowledge that time moves and comes to an end. All the voices slowly became faces – there were no surprises. The confessional teaches you to recognize the shape of a voice – the loose lip of the weak chin and the false candour of the too straightforward eyes. He saw the pious woman a few feet away, uneasily dreaming with her prim mouth open, showing strong teeth like tombs: the old man: the boaster in the corner, and his woman asleep untidily across his knees. Now that the day was at last here, he was the only one awake, except for a small Indian boy who sat cross-legged near the door with an expression of interested happiness, as if he had never known such friendly company. Over the courtyard the whitewash became visible upon the opposite wall. He began formally to pay his farewell to the world: he couldn’t put any heart in it. His corruption was less evident to his senses than his death. One bullet, he thought, is almost certain to go directly through the heart – a squad must contain one accurate marksman. Life would go out in a ‘fraction of a second’ (that was the phrase), but all night he had been realizing that time depends on clocks and the passage of light. There were no clocks and the light wouldn’t change. Nobody really knew how long a second of pain could be. It might last a whole purgatory – or for ever. For some reason he thought of a man he had once shrived who was on the point of death with cancer – his relatives had had to bandage their faces, the smell of the rotting interior was so appalling. He wasn’t a saint. Nothing in life was as ugly as death.
A voice in the yard called ‘Montez.’ He sat on upon his dead feet; he thought automatically: This suit isn’t good for much more. It was smeared and fouled by the cell floor and his fellow prisoners. He had obtained it at great risk in a store down by the river, pretending to be a small farmer with ideas above his station. Then he remembered he wouldn’t need it much longer – it came with an odd shock, like locking the door of one’s house for the last time. The voice repeated impatiently, ‘Montez.’
He remembered that that, for the moment, was his name. He looked up from his ruined suit and saw the sergeant unlocking the cell door. ‘Here, Montez.’ He let the old man’s head fall gently back against the sweating wall and tried to stand up, but his feet crumpled like pastry. ‘Do you want to sleep all night?’ the sergeant complained testily: something had irritated him: he wasn’t as friendly as he had been the night before. He let out a kick at a sleeping man and beat on the cell door, ‘Come on. Wake up all of you. Out into the yard.’ Only the Indian boy obeyed, sliding unobtrusively out with his look of alien happiness. The sergeant complained, ‘The dirty hounds. Do they want us to wash them? You, Montez.’ Life began to return painfully to his feet. He managed to reach the door.
The yard had come sluggishly to life. A queue of men were bathing their faces at a single tap; a man in a vest and pants sat on the ground hugging a rifle. ‘Get out into the yard and wash,’ the sergeant yelled at them, but when the priest stepped out he snapped at him, ‘Not you, Montez.’
‘Not me?’
‘We’ve got other plans for you,’ the sergeant said.
The priest stood waiting while his fellow prisoners filed out into the yard. One by one they went past him; he looked at their feet and not their faces, standing like a temptation at the door. Nobody said a word: a woman’s feet went draggingly by in black worn low-heeled shoes. He was shaken by the sense of his own uselessness. He whispered without looking up, ‘Pray for me.’
‘What’s that you said, Montez?’
He couldn’t think of a lie; he felt as if ten years had exhausted his whole stock of deceit.
‘What’s that you said?’
The shoes had stopped moving. The woman’s voice said, ‘He was begging.’ She added mercilessly, ‘He ought to have more sense. I’ve nothing for him.’ Then she went on, flat-footed into the yard.
‘Did you sleep well, Montez?’ the sergeant badgered him.
‘Not very well.’
‘What do you expect?’ the sergeant said. ‘It’ll teach you to like brandy too well, won’t it?’
‘Yes.’ He wondered how much longer all these preliminaries would take.
‘Well, if you spend all your money on brandy, you’ve got to do a bit of work in return for a night’s lodging. Fetch the pails out of the cells and mind you don’t spill them – this place stinks enough as it is.’
‘Where do I take them to?’
The sergeant pointed to the door of the excusados beyond the tap. ‘Report to me when you’ve finished that,’ he said, and went bellowing orders back into the yard.
The priest bent down and took the pail. It was full and very heavy: he went bowed with the weight across the yard. Sweat got into his eyes. He wiped them free and saw one behind the other in the washing queue faces he knew – the hostages. There was Miguel, whom he had seen taken away; he remembered the mother screaming out and the lieutenant’s tired anger and the sun coming up. They saw him at the same time; he put down the heavy pail and looked at them. Not to recognize them would have been like a hint, a claim, a demand to them to go on suffering and let him escape. Miguel had been beaten up: there was a sore under his eye – flies buzzed round it as they buzz round a mule’s raw flank. Then the queue moved on; they looked on the ground and passed him; strangers took their place. He prayed silently: Oh God, send them someone more worthwhile to suffer for. It seemed to him a damnable mockery that they should sacrifice themselves for a whisky prie
st with a bastard child. The soldier sat in his pants with the gun between his knees paring his nails and biting off the loose skin. In an odd way he felt abandoned because they had shown no sign of recognition.
The excusados was a cesspool with two planks across it on which a man could stand. He emptied the pail and went back across the yard to the row of cells. There were six: one by one he took the pails: once he had to stop and retch: splash, splash, to and fro across the yard. He came to the last cell. It wasn’t empty; a man lay back against the wall; the early sun just reached his feet. Flies buzzed around a mound of vomit on the floor. The eyes opened and watched the priest stooping over the pail: two fangs protruded. . . .
The priest moved quickly and splashed the floor. The half-caste said in that too-familiar nagging tone, ‘Wait a moment. You can’t do that in here.’ He explained proudly, ‘I’m not a prisoner. I’m a guest.’ The priest made a motion of apology (he was afraid to speak) and moved again. ‘Wait a moment,’ the half-caste commanded him again. ‘Come here.’
The priest stood stubbornly, half-turned away, near the door.
‘Come here,’ the half-caste said. ‘You’re a prisoner, aren’t you? – and I’m a guest – of the Governor. Do you want me to shout for a policeman? Then do as you’re told: come here.’
It seemed as if God were deciding . . . finally. He came, pail in hand, stood beside the large flat naked foot, and the half-caste looked up at him from the shadow of the wall, asking him sharply and anxiously, ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Cleaning up.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘I was caught with a bottle of brandy,’ the priest said, trying to roughen his voice.
‘I know you,’ the half-caste said. ‘I couldn’t believe my eyes, but when you speak . . .’
‘I don’t think . . .’
‘That priest’s voice,’ the half-caste said with disgust. He was like a dog of a different breed: he couldn’t help his hackles rising. The big toe moved plumply and inimically. The priest put down the pail. He argued hopelessly, ‘You’re drunk.’
‘Beer, beer,’ the half-caste said, ‘nothing but beer. They promised me the best of everything, but you can’t trust them. Don’t I know the jefe’s got his own brandy locked away?’
‘I must empty the pail.’
‘If you move, I’ll shout. I’ve got so many things to think about,’ the half-caste complained bitterly. The priest waited: there was nothing else to do; he was at the man’s mercy – a silly phrase, for those malarial eyes had never known what mercy was. He was saved at any rate from the indignity of pleading.
‘You see,’ the mestizo carefully explained, ‘I’m comfortable here.’ His yellow toes curled luxuriously beside the vomit. ‘Good food, beer, company, and this roof doesn’t leak. You don’t have to tell me what’ll happen after – they’ll kick me out like a dog, like a dog.’ He became shrill and indignant. ‘What have they got you here for? That’s what I want to know. It looks crooked to me. It’s my job, isn’t it, to find you. Who’s going to have the reward if they’ve got you already? The jefe, I shouldn’t wonder, or that bastard sergeant.’ He brooded unhappily. ‘You can’t trust a soul these days.’
‘And there’s a Red Shirt,’ the priest said.
‘A Red Shirt?’
‘He really caught me.’
‘Mother of God,’ the mestizo said, ‘and they all have the ear of the Governor.’ He looked up beseechingly. He said, ‘You’re an educated man. Advise me.’
‘It would be murder,’ the priest said, ‘a mortal sin.’
‘I don’t mean that. I mean about the reward. You see as long as they don’t know, well, I’m comfortable here. A man deserves a few weeks’ holiday. And you can’t escape far, can you? It would be better, wouldn’t it, to catch you out of here. In the town somewhere. I mean nobody else could claim . . .’ He said furiously, ‘A poor man has so much to think about.’
‘I dare say,’ the priest said, ‘they’d give you something even here.’
‘Something,’ the mestizo said, levering himself up against the wall, ‘why shouldn’t I have it all?’
‘What’s going on in here?’ the sergeant asked. He stood in the doorway, in the sunlight, looking in.
The priest said slowly, ‘He wanted me to clear up his vomit. I said you hadn’t told me . . .’
‘Oh, he’s a guest,’ the sergeant said. ‘He’s got to be treated right. You do as he says.’
The mestizo smirked. He said, ‘And another bottle of beer, sergeant?’
‘Not yet,’ the sergeant said. ‘You’ve got to look round the town first.’
The priest picked up the pail and went back across the yard, leaving them arguing. He felt as if a gun were levelled at his back. He went into the excusados and emptied the pail, then came out again into the sun – the gun was levelled at his breast. The two men stood in the cell door talking. He walked across the yard: they watched him come. The sergeant said to the mestizo, ‘You say you’re bilious and can’t see properly this morning. You clean up your own vomit then. If you don’t do your job . . .’ Behind the sergeant’s back the mestizo gave him a cunning and unreassuring wink. Now that the immediate fear was over, he felt only regret. God had decided. He had to go on with life, go on making decisions, acting on his own advice, making plans . . .
It took him another half-hour to finish cleaning the cells, throwing a bucket of water over each floor; he watched the pious woman go off through the archway to where her sister waited with the fine; they were both tied up in black shawls like things bought in the market, things hard and dry and second-hand. Then he reported again to the sergeant, who inspected the cells and criticized his work and ordered him to throw more water down, and then suddenly got tired of the whole business and told him he could go to the jefe for permission to leave. So he waited another hour on the bench outside the jefe’s door, watching the sentry move lackadaisically to and fro in the hot sun.
And when at last a policeman led him in, it wasn’t the jefe who sat at the desk but the lieutenant. The priest stood not far from his own portrait on the wall and waited. Once he glanced quickly and nervously up at the old crumpled newspaper cutting and thought, It’s not very like me now. What an unbearable creature he must have been in those days – and yet in those days he had been comparatively innocent. That was another mystery: it sometimes seemed to him that venial sins – impatience, an unimportant lie, pride, a neglected opportunity – cut you off from grace more completely than the worst sins of all. Then, in his innocence, he had felt no love for anyone; now in his corruption he had learnt . . .
‘Well,’ the lieutenant asked, ‘has he cleaned up the cells?’ He didn’t take his eyes from his papers. He went on, ‘Tell the sergeant I want two dozen men with properly cleaned rifles – within two minutes.’ He looked abstractedly up at the priest and said, ‘Well, what are you waiting for?’
‘For permission, Excellency, to go away.’
‘I am not an excellency. Learn to call things by their right names.’ He said sharply, ‘Have you been here before?’
‘Never.’
‘Your name is Montez. I seem to come across too many people of that name in these days. Relations of yours?’ He sat watching him closely, as if memory were beginning to work.
The priest said hurriedly, ‘My cousin was shot at Concepción.’
‘That was not my fault.’
‘I only meant – we were much alike. Our fathers were twins. Not half an hour between them. I thought your Excellency seemed to think . . .’
‘As I remember him, he was quite different. A tall thin man . . . narrow shoulders . . .’
The priest said hurriedly, ‘Perhaps only to the family eye . . .’
‘But then I only saw him once.’ It was almost as if the lieutenant had something on his conscience, as he sat with his dark Indian-blooded hands restless on the pages, brooding. . . . He asked, ‘Where are you going?’
‘God kn
ows.’
‘You are all alike, you people. You never learn the truth – that God knows nothing.’ Some tiny scrap of life like a grain of smut went racing across the page in front of him; he pressed his finger down on it and said, ‘You had no money for your fine?’ and watched another smut edge out between the leaves, scurrying for refuge: in this heat there was no end to life.
‘No.’
‘How will you live?’
‘Some work perhaps . . .’
‘You are getting too old for work.’ He put his hand suddenly in his pocket and pulled out a five-peso piece. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Get out of here, and don’t let me see your face again. Mind that.’
The priest held the coin in his fist – the price of a Mass. He said with astonishment, ‘You’re a good man.’
CHAPTER 4
It was still very early in the morning when he crossed the river and came dripping up the other bank. He wouldn’t have expected anybody to be about. The bungalow, the tin-roofed shed, the flagstaff: he had an idea that all Englishmen lowered their flag at sunset and sang ‘God Save the King’. He came carefully round the corner of the shed and the door gave to his pressure. He was inside in the dark where he had been before: how many weeks ago? He had no idea. He only remembered that then the rains were a long way off: now they were beginning to break. In another week only an aeroplane would be able to cross the mountains.
He felt around him with his foot; he was so hungry that even a few bananas would be better than nothing – he had had no food for two days – but there were none here, none at all. He must have arrived on a day when the crop had gone down-river. He stood just inside the door trying to remember what the child had told him – the Morse code, her window: across the dead-white dusty yard the mosquito wire caught the sun. He was reminded suddenly of an empty larder. He began to listen anxiously. There wasn’t a sound anywhere; the day here hadn’t yet begun with that first sleepy slap of a shoe on a cement floor, the claws of a dog scratching as it stretched, the knock-knock of a hand on a door. There was just nothing, nothing at all.
The Power and the Glory Page 15
