‘It was better not to this time. There might have been a demonstration. People are so ignorant.’
A small man came out of a side door: he was held up by two policemen, but you could tell that he was doing his best – it was only that his legs were not fully under his control. They paddled him across to the opposite wall; an officer tied a handkerchief round his eyes. Mr Tench thought: But I know him. Good God, one ought to do something. This was like seeing a neighbour shot.
The jefe said, ‘What are you waiting for? The air gets into this tooth.’
Of course there was nothing to do. Everything went very quickly like a routine. The officer stepped aside, the rifles went up, and the little man suddenly made jerky movements with his arms. He was trying to say something: what was the phrase they were always supposed to use? That was routine too, but perhaps his mouth was too dry, because nothing came out except a word that sounded like ‘Excuse’. The crash of the rifles shook Mr Tench: they seemed to vibrate inside his own guts: he felt sick and shut his eyes. Then there was a single shot, and opening them again he saw the officer stuffing his gun back into his holster, and the little man was a routine heap beside the wall – something unimportant which had to be cleared away. Two knock-kneed men approached quickly. This was an arena, and the bull was dead, and there was nothing more to wait for any more.
‘Oh,’ the jefe moaned from the chair, ‘the pain, the pain.’ He implored Mr Tench, ‘Hurry,’ but Mr Tench was lost in thought beside the window, one hand automatically seeking in his stomach for the hidden uneasiness. He remembered the little man rising bitterly and hopelessly from his chair that blinding afternoon to follow the child out of town; he remembered a green watering-can, the photo of the children, that cast he was making out of sand for a split palate.
‘The filling,’ the jefe pleaded, and Mr Tench’s eyes went to the gold on the glass dish. Currency – he would insist on foreign currency: this time he was going to clear out, clear out for good. In the yard everything had been tidied away; a man was throwing sand out of a spade, as if he were filling a grave. But there was no grave: there was nobody there: an appalling sense of loneliness came over Mr Tench, doubling him with indigestion. The little fellow had spoken English and knew about his children. He felt deserted.
‘And now,’ the woman’s voice swelled triumphantly, and the two little girls with beady eyes held their breath, ‘the great testing day had come.’ Even the boy showed interest, standing by the window, looking out into the dark curfew-emptied street – this was the last chapter, and in the last chapter things always happened violently. Perhaps all life was like that – dull and then a heroic flurry at the end.
‘When the Chief of Police came to Juan’s cell he found him on his knees, praying. He had not slept at all, but had spent his last night preparing for martyrdom. He was quite calm and happy, and smiling at the Chief of Police, he asked him if he had come to lead him to the banquet. Even that evil man, who had persecuted so many innocent people, was visibly moved.’
If only it would get on towards the shooting, the boy thought: the shooting never failed to excite him, and he always waited anxiously for the coup de grâce.
‘They led him out into the prison yard. No need to bind those hands now busy with his beads. In that short walk to the wall of execution, did young Juan look back on those few, those happy years he had so bravely spent? Did he remember days in the seminary, the kindly rebukes of his elders, the moulding discipline, days, too, of frivolity when he acted Nero before the old bishop? Nero was here beside him, and this the Roman amphitheatre.’
The mother’s voice was getting a little hoarse: she fingered the remaining pages rapidly: it wasn’t worth while stopping now, and she raced more and more rapidly on.
‘Reaching the wall, Juan turned and began to pray – not for himself, but for his enemies, for the squad of poor innocent Indian soldiers who faced him and even for the Chief of Police himself. He raised the crucifix at the end of his beads and prayed that God would forgive them, would enlighten their ignorance, and bring them at last – as Saul the persecutor was brought – into his eternal kingdom.’
‘Had they loaded?’ the boy asked.
‘What do you mean – “had they loaded”?’
‘Why didn’t they fire and stop him?’
‘Because God decided otherwise.’ She coughed and went on: ‘The officer gave the command to present arms. In that moment a smile of complete adoration and happiness passed over Juan’s face. It was as if he could see the arms of God open to receive him. He had always told his mother and sisters that he had a premonition that he would be in heaven before them. He would say with a whimsical smile to his mother, the good but over-careful housewife: “I will have tidied everything up for you.” Now the moment had come, the officer gave the order to fire, and –’ She had been reading too fast because it was past the little girls’ bedtime and now she was thwarted by a fit of hiccups. ‘Fire,’ she repeated, ‘and . . .’
The two little girls sat placidly side by side – they looked nearly asleep – this was the part of the book they never cared much about; they endured it for the sake of the amateur theatricals and the first communion, and of the sister who became a nun and paid a moving farewell to her family in the third chapter.
‘Fire,’ the mother tried again, ‘and Juan, raising both arms above his head, called out in a strong brave voice to the soldiers and the levelled rifles, “Hail, Christ the King.” Next moment he fell riddled with a dozen bullets and the officer, stooping over his body, put his revolver close to Juan’s ear and pulled the trigger.’
A long sigh came from the window.
‘No need to have fired another shot. The soul of the young hero had already left its earthly mansion, and the happy smile on the dead face told even those ignorant men where they would find Juan now. One of the men there that day was so moved by his bearing that he secretly soaked his handkerchief in the martyr’s blood, and that handkerchief, cut into a hundred relics, found its way into many pious homes. And now,’ the mother went rapidly on, clapping her hands, ‘to bed.’
‘And that one,’ the boy said, ‘they shot today. Was he a hero too?’
‘Yes.’
‘The one who stayed with us that time?’
‘Yes. He was one of the martyrs of the Church.’
‘He had a funny smell,’ one of the little girls said.
‘You must never say that again,’ the mother said. ‘He may be one of the saints.’
‘Shall we pray to him then?’
The mother hesitated. ‘It would do no harm. Of course, before we know he is a saint, there will have to be miracles . . .’
‘Did he call “Viva el Cristo Rey”?’ the boy asked.
‘Yes. He was one of the heroes of the faith.’
‘And a handkerchief soaked in blood?’ the boy went on. ‘Did anyone do that?’
The mother said ponderously, ‘I have reason to believe . . . Señora Jiminez told me . . . I think if your father will give me a little money, I shall be able to get a relic.’
‘Does it cost money?’
‘How else could it be managed? Everybody can’t have a piece.’
‘No.’
He squatted beside the window, staring out, and behind his back came the muffled sound of small girls going to bed. It brought it home to one – to have had a hero in the house, though it had only been for twenty-four hours. And he was the last. There were no more priests and no more heroes. He listened resentfully to the sound of booted feet coming up the pavement. Ordinary life pressed round him. He got down from the window-seat and picked up his candle – Zapata, Villa, Madero, and the rest, they were all dead, and it was people like the man out there who killed them. He felt deceived.
The lieutenant came along the pavement; there was something brisk and stubborn about his walk, as if he were saying at every step, ‘I have done what I have done.’ He looked in at the boy holding the candle with a look of indecisive recogn
ition. He said to himself, ‘I would do much more for him and them, more more; life is never going to be again for them what it was for me,’ but the dynamic love which used to move his trigger-finger felt flat and dead. Of course, he told himself, it will come back. It was like love of a woman and went in cycles: he had satisfied himself that morning, that was all. This was satiety. He smiled painfully at the child through the window and said, ‘Buenas noches.’ The boy was looking at his revolver-holster and he remembered an incident in the plaza when he had allowed a child to touch his gun – perhaps this boy. He smiled again and touched it too – to show he remembered, and the boy crinkled up his face and spat through the window bars, accurately, so that a little blob of spittle lay on the revolver-butt.
The boy went across the patio to bed. He had a little dark room with an iron bedstead that he shared with his father. He lay next to the wall and his father would lie on the outside, so that he could come to bed without waking his son. He took off his shoes and undressed glumly by candlelight. He could hear the whispering of prayers in the other room; he felt cheated and disappointed because he had missed something. Lying on his back in the heat he stared up at the ceiling, and it seemed to him that there was nothing in the world but the store, his mother reading, and silly games in the plaza.
But very soon he went to sleep. He dreamed that the priest whom they had shot that morning was back in the house dressed in the clothes his father had lent him and laid out stiffly for burial. The boy sat beside the bed and his mother read out of a very long book all about how the priest had acted in front of the bishop the part of Julius Caesar: there was a fish basket at her feet, and the fish were bleeding, wrapped in her handkerchief. He was very bored and very tired and somebody was hammering nails into a coffin in the passage. Suddenly the dead priest winked at him – an unmistakable flicker of the eyelid, just like that.
He woke and there was the crack, crack on the knocker on the outer door. His father wasn’t in bed and there was complete silence in the other room. Hours must have passed. He lay listening. He was frightened, but after a short interval the knocking began again, and nobody stirred anywhere in the house. Reluctantly, he put his feet on the ground – it might be only his father locked out; he lit the candle and wrapped a blanket round himself and stood listening again. His mother might hear it and go, but he knew very well that it was his duty. He was the only man in the house.
Slowly he made his way across the patio towards the outer door. Suppose it was the lieutenant come back to revenge himself for the spittle . . . He unlocked the heavy iron door and swung it open. A stranger stood in the street, a tall pale thin man with a rather sour mouth, who carried a small suitcase. He named the boy’s mother and asked if this were the señora’s house. Yes, the boy said, but she was asleep. He began to shut the door, but a pointed shoe got in the way.
The stranger said, ‘I have only just landed. I came up the river tonight. I thought perhaps . . . I have an introduction for the señora from a great friend of hers.’
‘She is asleep,’ the boy repeated.
‘If you would let me come in,’ the man said with an odd frightened smile, and suddenly lowering his voice he said to the boy, ‘I am a priest.’
‘You?’ the boy exclaimed.
‘Yes,’ he said gently. ‘My name is Father –’ But the boy had already swung the door open and put his lips to his hand before the other could give himself a name.
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Copyright © Graham Greene 1940
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First published by Vintage in 2001
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The Power and the Glory Page 24
