“And they’ll come after you,” he said gently.
She shrugged. “They haven’t. They don’t care.”
Southwind made a little noise of warning, protest, sympathy; it really said all that needed saying, but Lev translated it—“But they do, and they will, Luz. Your father—”
“If he comes after me, I’ll run farther. I’ll go on.”
“Where?”
She turned away again and said nothing. They all thought of the same thing: of the wilderness. It was as if the wilderness came into the cabin, as if the walls fell down, leaving no shelter. Lev had been there, Andre had been there, months of the endless, voiceless solitude; it was in their souls now and they could never wholly leave it. Southwind had not been in the wilderness, but her love lay buried in it. Even Luz who had never seen or known it, the child of those who for a hundred years had built up their walls against it and denied it, knew it and feared it, knew it was foolishness to talk of leaving the Colony, alone. Lev watched her in silence. He pitied her, sharp pity, as for a hurt, stubborn child who refuses comfort, holds aloof, will not weep. But she was not a child. It was a woman he saw standing there, a woman standing alone in a place without help or shelter, a woman in the wilderness; and pity was lost in admiration and in fear. He was afraid of her. There was a strength in her that was not drawn from love or trust or community, did not rise from any source that should give strength, any source he recognized. He feared that strength, and craved it. These three days he had been with her, he had thought of her constantly, had seen everything in terms of her: as if all their struggle made sense only if she could be made to understand it, as if her choice outweighed their plans and the ideals they lived by.—She was pitiable, admirable, precious as any human soul was precious, but she must not take over his mind. She must be one of them, acting with him, supporting him, not filling and confusing his thoughts like this. Later, there would be time to think about her and understand her, when the confrontation was over, when they had won through to peace. Later, there would be all the time in the world.
“We can’t go north now,” he said patiently, a little coldly. “If a group left now, it would weaken the unity of those who must stay behind. And the City would track settlers down. We have to establish our freedom to go—here, now. Then we will go.”
“Why did you give them the maps, show them the way!” Luz said, impatiently and hotly. “That was stupid. You could have just gone.”
“We are a community,” Lev said, “the City and the Town.” And left it at that.
Andre rather spoiled his point by adding, “Anyhow, we couldn’t just sneak off. A big lot of people migrating leave a very easy trail to follow.”
“So if they did follow you all the way north there to your mountains—you’re there already, and you say, Too bad, this is ours, go find yourselves another valley, there’s plenty of room!”
“And they would use force. The principle of equality and free choice must be established first. Here.”
“But they use force here! Vera’s already a prisoner, and the others in the Jail, and the old man lost his eye, and the bullies are coming to beat you up or shoot you—all to establish a ‘principle,’ when you could have gone, got out, gone free!”
“Freedom’s won by sacrifice,” Southwind said. Lev looked at her, then quickly at Luz; he was not sure if Luz knew of Timmo’s death on the journey to the north. Probably, here alone with Southwind the last three nights, she did. In any case, the quietness of Southwind’s voice quieted her. “I know,” Luz said. “You have to take risks. But sacrifice … . I hate that idea, sacrifice!”
Lev grinned in spite of himself. “And what have you done?”
“Not sacrificed myself for any idea! I just ran away —don’t you understand? And that’s what you all ought to do!” Luz spoke in challenge, defiance, self-defense, not conviction; but Southwind’s response startled Lev. “You may be right,” she said. “So long as we stand and fight, even though we fight with our weapons, we fight their war.”
Luz Falco was an outsider, a stranger, she did not know how the People of the Peace thought and felt, but to hear Southwind say something irresponsible was shocking, an affront to their perfect unity.
“To run away and hide in the forest—that’s a choice?” Lev said. “For coneys, yes. Not for human beings. Standing upright and having two hands doesn’t make us human. Standing up and having ideas and ideals does! And holding fast to those ideals. Together. We can’t live alone. Or we die alone—like animals.”
Southwind nodded sadly, but Luz frowned straight back at him. “Death is death, does it matter whether it’s in bed in the house or outside in the forest? We are animals. That’s why we die at all.”
“But to live and die for—for the sake of the spirit —that’s different, that’s different from running and hiding, all separate, selfish, scratching for food, cowering, hating, each alone—” Lev stammered, he felt his face hot. He met Luz’s eyes, and stammered again, and was silent. Praise was in her look, praise such as he had never earned, never dreamed of earning, praise and rejoicing, so that he knew himself confirmed, in that same moment of anger and argument, confirmed totally, in his words, his life, his being.
This is the true center, he thought. The words went quick and clear across his mind. He did not think of them again, but nothing, on the far side of those words, was the same; nothing would ever be the same. He had come up into the mountains.
His right hand was half held out toward Luz in a gesture of urgent pleading. He saw it, she saw it, that unfinished gesture. Suddenly self-conscious, he dropped his hand; the gesture was unfinished. She moved abruptly, turning away, and said with anger and despair, “Oh, I don’t understand, it’s all so strange, I’ll never understand, you know everything and I’ve never even thought about anything … .” She looked physically smaller as she spoke, small, furious, surrendering. “I just wish—” She stopped short.
“It will come, Luz,” he said. “You don’t have to run to it. It comes, it will come—I promise—”
She did not ask what he promised. Nor could he have said.
When he left the house the rainy wind struck him in the face, taking his breath away. He gasped; tears filled his eyes, but not from the wind. He thought of that bright morning, the silver sunrise and his great happiness, only three days ago. Today it was gray, no sky, little light, a lot of rain and mud. Mud, the world’s name is Mud, he thought, and wanted to laugh, but his eyes were still full of tears. She had renamed the world. That morning on the road, he thought, that was happiness, but this is—and he had no word for it, only her name, Luz. Everything was contained in that, the silver sunrise, the great burning sunset over the City years ago, all the past, and all that was to come, even their work now, the talking and the planning, the confrontation, and their certain victory, the victory of the light. “I promise, I promise,” he whispered into the wind. “All my life, all the years of my life.”
He wanted to walk slower, to stop, to hold the moment. But the very wind that blew in his face forced him forward. There was so much to do, so little time now. Later, later! Tonight might be the night Macmilan’s gang came; there was no knowing. Evidently, guessing that Luz had betrayed their plan, they had changed it. There was nothing to do, until their own plans were complete, but wait and be ready. Readiness was all. There would be no panic. No matter whether City or Town made the first move, the People of the Peace would know what to do, how to act. He strode on, almost running, into Shantih. The taste of the rain was sweet on his lips.
He was at home, late in the dark afternoon, when the message came. His father brought it from the Meeting House. “A scar-faced fellow, a guard,” Sasha said in his soft ironic voice. “Came strolling up, asked for Shults. I think he meant you, not me.”
It was a note on the thick, coarse paper they made in the City. For a moment Lev thought Luz had written the stiff black words—
Shults: I will be at the smelting ring at sundow
n today. Bring as many as you like.
I will be alone.
Luis Burnier Falco
A trick, an obvious trick. Too obvious? There was just time to get back to Southwind’s house and show Luz the note.
“If he says he’ll be there alone, he’ll be alone,” she said.
“You heard him planning to trick us, with Macmilan,” Andre said.
She glanced past Andre with contempt. “This is his name,” she said. “He wouldn’t put his name to a lie. He’ll be there alone.”
“Why?”
She shrugged.
“I’m going,” Lev said. “Yes! With you, Andre! And as many as you think necessary. But you’ll have to round them up pretty quick. There’s only an hour or so of daylight left.”
“You know they want you as a hostage,” Andre said. “Are you going to walk right into their hands?”
Lev nodded energetically. “Like a wotsit,” he said, and laughed. “In—and out! Come on, let’s get a bunch together, Andre. Luz—do you want to come?”
She stood indecisive.
“No,” she said; she winced. “I can’t. I’m afraid.”
“You’re wise.”
“I should go. To tell him myself that you’re not keeping me here, that I chose. He doesn’t believe it.”
“What you choose, and whether he believes it, doesn’t really matter,” Andre said. “You’re still a pretext: their property. Better not come, Luz. If you’re there they’ll probably use force to get you back.”
She nodded, but still hesitated. Finally she said, “I should come.” She said it with such desperate resolution that Lev broke in, “No—” but she went on: “I have to. I won’t stand aside and be talked about, fought over, handed back and forth.”
“You will not be handed back,” Lev said. “You belong to yourself. Come with us if you choose.”
She nodded.
The smelting ring was an ancient ringtree site, south of the Road halfway between Town and City, and centuries older than either; the trees had long ago fallen and decayed, leaving only the round central pond. The City’s first iron-smelting works had been set up there; it too had decayed, when richer ore was found in the South Hills forty years ago. The chimneys and machinery were gone, the old sheds, rotten-planked and crazy, overgrown with bindweed and poison rose, crouched abandoned by the flat shore of the pond.
Andre and Lev had got together a group of twenty as they came. Andre led them around by the old sheds, to make sure no party of guards was hiding in or behind them. They were empty, and there was no other place for a gang to conceal themselves within several hundred meters; it was a flat place, treeless, desolate and miserable-looking in the gloomy end of the daylight. Fine rain fell onto the round gray water that lay unsheltered, defenseless, like a blind, open eye. On the far side of the pond Falco stood waiting for them. They saw him move away from a thicket where he had taken some shelter from the rain, and come walking around the shore to them, alone.
Lev started forward from the others. Andre let him go ahead, but followed a couple of meters behind him, with Sasha, Martin, Luz, and several others. The rest of their group stayed scattered out along the gray pond’s edge and on the slope that led up to the Road, on guard.
Falco stopped, facing Lev. They stood right on the shore of the pond, where the walking was easier. Between them lay a tiny muddy inlet of the water, a bay no wider than the length of a man’s arm, with shores of fine sand, a harbor for a child’s toy boat. In the intense vividness of his perceptions Lev was as aware of that bit of water and sand, and of how a child might play there, as he was of Falco’s erect figure, his handsome face that was Luz’s face and yet wholly different, his belted coat darkened by rain on the shoulders and sleeves.
Falco certainly saw his daughter in the group behind Lev, but he did not look at her nor speak to her; he spoke to Lev, in a soft dry voice, a little hard to hear over the vast whisper of the rain.
“I’m alone, as you see, and unarmed. I speak for myself alone. Not as Councillor.”
Lev nodded. He felt a desire to call this man by his name, not Senhor or Falco, but his own name, Luis; he did not understand the impulse, and did not speak.
“I wish my daughter to come home.”
Lev indicated, with a slight open gesture, that she was there behind him. “Speak to her, Senhor Falco,” he said.
“I came to speak to you. If you speak for the rebels.”
“Rebels? Against what, senhor? I, or any of us, will speak for Shantih, if you like. But Luz Marina can speak for herself.”
“I did not come to argue,” Falco said. His manner was perfectly controlled and polite, his face rigid. The quietness, the stiffness were those of a man in pain. “Listen. There is to be an attack on the Town. You know that, now. I could not prevent it, now, if I wanted to, though I have delayed it. But I want my daughter out of it. Safe. If you’ll send her home with me, I’ll send Senhora Adelson and the other hostages, under guard, to you tonight. I’ll come with them, if you like; let her go back with me then. This is between us alone. The rest of it, the fighting—you started it by your disobedience, I cannot stop it, neither can you, now. This is all we can do. Trade our hostages, and so save them.”
“Senhor, I respect your candor—but I didn’t take Luz Marina from you, and I can’t give her back.”
As he spoke, Luz came up beside him, wrapped in her black shawl. “Father,” she said in a clear, hard voice, not softly as he and Falco had spoken, “you can stop Macmilan’s bullies if you want to.”
Falco’s face did not change; could not change, perhaps, without going to pieces. There was a long silence, full of the sound of rain. The light was heavy, bright only low and far away in the west.
“I can’t, Luz,” he said in that painful quiet voice. “Herman is—he is determined to take you back.”
“And if I came back with you, so that he had no pretext, would you order him not to attack Shantih?”
Falco stood still. He swallowed, hard, as if his throat were very dry. Lev clenched his hands, seeing that, seeing the man stand there in his pride that could endure no humiliation and was humiliated, his strength that must admit to impotence.
“I can’t. Things have gone too far.” Falco swallowed again, and tried again. “Come home with me, Luz Marina,” he said. “I will send the hostages back at once. I give my word.” He glanced at Lev, and his white face said for him what he could not say, that he asked Lev’s help.
“Send them!” Luz said. “You have no right to keep them prisoner.”
“And you’ll come—” It was not quite a question.
She shook her head. “You have no right to keep me prisoner.”
“Not a prisoner, Luz, you are my daughter—” He stepped forward. She stepped back.
“No!” she said. “I will not come when you bargain for me. I will never come back so long as you attack and, and p-persecute people!” She stammered and groped for words. “I’ll never marry Herman Macmilan, or look at him, I de—I detest him! I’ll come when I’m free to come and do what I choose to do and so long as he comes to Casa Falco I will never come home!”
“Macmilan?” the father said in agony. “You don’t have to marry Macmilan—” He stopped, and looked from Luz to Lev, a little wildly. “Come home,” he said. His voice shook, but he struggled for control. “I will stop the attack if I can. We—we’ll talk, with you,” he said to Lev. “We’ll talk.”
“We’ll talk now, later, whenever you want,” Lev said. “It’s all we ever asked, senhor. But you must not ask your daughter to trade her freedom for Vera’s, or for your goodwill, or for our safety. That is wrong. You can’t do it; we won’t accept it.”
Again Falco stood still, but it was a different stillness: defeat, or his final refusal of defeat? His face, white and wet with rain or sweat, was set, inexpressive.
“Then you will not let her go,” he said.
“I will not come,” Luz answered.
Falco
nodded once, turned, and walked slowly away along the curving shore of the pond. He passed the thickets that stood blurred and shapeless in the late twilight, and set off up the slight slope to the road that led back to the City. His straight, short, dark figure was quickly lost to sight.
9
One of the servant girls tapped at Vera’s door, opened it, and said in the half-impertinent, half-timid voice the maids used when “following orders,” “Senhora Vera, Don Luis will see you in the big room, please!”
“Oh dear, oh dear,” Vera sighed. “Is he still in a bad mood?”
“Terrible,” the girl, Teresa, said, at once dropping her “following orders” manner and stooping to scratch a callus on her hard, bare, plump foot. Vera was by now considered a friend, a kind of good luck aunt or elder sister, by all the house girls; even the stern middle-aged cook Silvia had come to Vera’s room the day after Luz’s disappearance, and had discussed it with her, apparently not caring in the least that she was seeking reassurance from the enemy. “Have you seen Michael’s face?” Teresa went on. “Don Luis knocked two of his teeth loose yesterday because Michael was slow taking off his boots, he was grunting and groaning, you know how he does everything, and Don Luis just went whack! with his foot with the boot still on. Now Michael’s all swelled up like a pouchbat, he does look funny. Linda says that Don Luis went to Shanty Town yesterday evening all by himself, Marquez’s Thomas saw him, he was going right up the road. What do you think happened? Was he trying to steal poor Senhorita Luz back, do you think?”
“Oh dear,” Vera sighed again. “Well, I’d better not keep him waiting.” She smoothed her hair, straightened her clothes, and said to Teresa, “What pretty earrings you have on. Come on!” And she followed the girl to the hall of Casa Falco.
Luis Falco was sitting in the deep window seat, gazing out over Songe Bay. A restless morning light lay on the sea; the clouds were big, turbulent, their crests dazzling white as the sun flashed out on them, dark when the wind flawed and higher clouds veiled the light. Falco stood up to meet Vera. His face looked hard and very weary. He did not look at her as he spoke. “Senhora, if you have any belongings here you wish to take with you, please get them.”
The Eye of the Heron Page 10
