Drought

by Ronald Fraser

  Uprooted, the vine toppled over the mis-struck hoe as he stared at the old man.

  ‘They’ve got money, the foreigners. Tío Bigote will be wanting to sell, he’s getting on, and with no sons to help.’

  ‘Yes?’ The blood pounded in his head. Brothers-in-law, Culebra would know.

  ‘Well, that’s what I’ve heard. The blond’s interested in it. Antonio Ríos is the middleman.’

  Miguel stood looking at him. For a moment everything fell into place – the blond, Casa Colorada, the dam – then shattered.

  Culebra stirred, his eyes betraying nothing. To make sure, he spoke again. There was no answer. That’s it, he thought, the señorita was right. Ech! The foreigners putting ideas in the people’s heads. Miguelito should have known, the señorita had been good to him. Ay! Cheating her. He flung a stone at the goats, looking at Miguel who hadn’t moved, hadn’t noticed his going, who stood transfixed among the dry plants in the afternoon sun.

  40

  Sadness and guilt

  Ana found him bent over the earth. Groping, he watched the fingers slipping on the plant’s stem as though unrelated to him, detached from any purpose but that of pretence. She mustn’t know. What a fool! To be deluded by false hopes. The lash of reproach struck beyond him somewhere, sadness protected him from guilt, nothing stirred. Through the lassitude he heard Ana’s voice saying the grass was burnt dry, he’d have to find fodder for the calf. He stayed stooped over the furrow.

  ‘Miguel, there’s hardly anything left for the calf. What’s the matter? What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he mumbled.

  ‘You’ve never been like this. You haven’t been eating, you woke me last night with your dreaming. What is it?’

  He shrugged, resenting her concern, the implication in her voice that she knew the reason, had heard the rumours. What did she want with him? She who had slaved so he could put money in the bank for this, for nothing – she could have been betrothed by now if he hadn’t kept her down here herding cattle. She knew it, he knew it, she’d said it. He didn’t want her concern.

  ‘It’s the girl, isn’t it? Ever since she went down to the coast.’ His passive, stooped back angered her. She wouldn’t allow him to suffer like this. ‘It’s her fault, Miguelito, only you won’t admit it, you’re too kind-hearted.’

  ‘Go in, woman, go in.’ What did she know? Kind-hearted. There had been whispers meant to be overheard – flaunting her new-found foreigner’s ways, when she came back for the first time two Sundays ago.

  ‘I’ll ride if I want to, Miguel. If it pleases me …’

  ‘Pleases! No! People are talking.’

  ‘People? They’re always talking, Miguel.’

  ‘I forbid you, Juana, I forbid, do you hear?’ She shrugged, turning away to laugh with someone, and rage deflated like a child’s balloon. He was right and yet she made him look a fool, ignoring him, refusing to mention his outburst, probably disobeying him at this very moment …

  ‘Go in, woman, I say,’ he cried, twisting his hand round the stem of the plant, guilt lashing out to annihilate her.

  Ana started to go, overcame the impulse to obey. ‘She’s bad for you, Miguel, she’s making you ill, I can feel it, I know. That’s the sort she is, ever since she left you’ve been …’

  ‘Leave me, leave me alone,’ he cried. She, too, why was she torturing him? The anguish in his voice frightened her. ‘Miguelito, come in out of the heat.’

  These past months there had been flashes of irritation she had never seen before. Only the other day he’d put her to shame about having her hair done – and in front of the foreigner. Picking on her, rejecting her – she felt the danger of losing him; he could never share himself out between them and Juana, she thought.

  ‘When the furrow’s finished,’ he grunted. Why do this to her, it’s not her fault … The guilt turned on itself, burnt into him. He shouldn’t have tried, it was beyond him, dangerous to reach out to make real a hope. His life had never been his to make. Without speaking, without looking at him, his father had taken the army volunteer’s paper and torn it up. Watching the pieces fall on the floor, the fissure opened, splitting him from reality: he should have known he would fail.

  ‘Son,’ his mother wailed, ‘what are you thinking of? The army! Leaving us, is that how a son acts?’

  ‘There’s nothing to stay here for,’ he shouted, guilt bursting into anger. Obeying, always obeying. For months thereafter apathy kept him shut in himself, he seemed not to exist outside the effort of going each night to look for a job to carry him through the next day, outside the flashes of self-reproach for his lack of will. A heaviness overcame him, sadness invaded him, there was nothing left.

  The taste of those days returned. He looked at Ana walking towards the cottage. Betraying her and his mother to make a bond with another, betraying those who needed him, who had no one else. But no! Juana was to be part of them, not he part of her … Ech! They didn’t want her, she didn’t want them, there wasn’t enough to satisfy them all. Pepe or Antonio would know how to impose his will on a woman the way a man should, but … No, there was nothing to bring her back. Not now.

  Sadness flowed slowly through him, the strength of his arms became a weariness. The illusion evaporated, draining in whorls like the heat from the land. Casa Colorada would never be his. It was a dream guilty of having been dreamt, a dream of sufficiency, of outgrowing dependency. A dream giving the strength to dominate discord, unite mother, sister and wife in the proof of his worth. It was to have been his and there, by those red walls, they, too, were to have been his.

  He stared over the terraces. The heat-cracked land was impermeable to thought that would attach it to him. The line that had oriented the land in a perspective of aims, like a furrow determining the water’s flow, had been cut, and there was no future in which to see himself. The world had narrowed to him alone.

  41

  Sadness and anger

  The sound of sliding shale made him stoop over the wheat, the sickle glinting between the thin stalks. The dogs started to bark, churning dust as they rushed across the terrace. No, he wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing his defeat. How stupid he’d been! Of course a foreigner didn’t walk for the love of it, didn’t ask questions as though just to chat, didn’t talk about water unless he had an interest in land. The blond had fooled him. Only a few weeks ago, standing there looking surprised, he’d pretended he didn’t know Tío Bigote or the farm. He’d deceived him deliberately, more dishonest for all his apparent concern than the señorita who said nothing, gave nothing and with whom he knew where he stood … Ech! It was all over, the mistake was to think there’d ever been a chance; the tomatoes could ripen or die, it made no difference. Foreigners had money and with money a man could do as he liked.

  He tried to feel himself reaping, tried to let the hand control the cut, but as always there was a void now through which he looked: the hand grasped the stalks, the left leg moved, the sickle swung – the movements were made but he was outside them. A wave of sadness suffused him, as purposeless as the movements he watched himself make. When the waves came he let the sickle fall and stood blindly while the sadness absorbed him. Towards the end, his father had stood staring like that, leaning on the hoe, his eyes empty of hope, and Miguel had imagined the effects of age, the tiredness that did not vanish with a night’s sleep when he tossed and moaned as though, in place of the words he never spoke, his body were protesting at the weight of the plough, the heaviness of the earth. A father who stared accusingly, mutely at him in his dreams from which he awoke in a sweat. Why not be content with things as they were, one year after another, like him? Why the wanting, the reaching beyond himself, the thinking he could better his lot? For what? For nothing. Dreams that the foreigner had smashed.

  ‘Hola!’ A nerve of defence was all that remained. The foreigner stopped a few steps away. He never came right up to you, never, always kept his distance: watchful and calculating – the
inexplicable hesitancy that used to be good for a smile now explained. A flash of hatred struck out at him and was repressed before attaining its object: behind the dark glasses the red, sweat-streaked face showed nothing, as usual. A viscous presence that had deceitfully congealed. What did he want? He waited for the blond who moved, not closer but into the shade of the carob, to speak. They were punishing him for aiming too high.

  As though from a distance he heard the accented voice: the blond had just come from the dam, the retaining wall was almost half built. The note of congratulatory excitement was there as usual, as though the blond expected him to share in an extraordinary gift. The deception brought another surge of hatred which he disguised in sullenness. ‘Ah, they’re still working then?’

  ‘Of course! Bob has already got two miners working on the new borehole. With a bit of luck the dam will still fill this summer. You and all the other farmers round here will have plenty of water. One hundred million litres, Miguel!’

  He thought, the blond, that only a foreigner could imagine a reservoir. Only a foreigner would be that clever! Ech! ‘My brother had that idea. During the war: a reservoir for the collective. But there wasn’t time …’ He bent down and picked up a stone, which he sent whirling across the terrace to fall with a crash in the corn. Would the blond understand? No! Because he answered that this dam was real.

  ‘You’ve seen it, the retaining wall they’re building. It won’t be long before it’s finished.’

  He picked up the hook and began reaping again, his back to the foreigner. The wheat had little grain. From high on the slope came the sound of cow-bells; Ana was bringing the cattle down. He hadn’t thought of his brother for a long time, and the memory brought with it a painful awareness: Antonio wouldn’t have allowed himself to be taken in by a foreigner; he’d have struck a deal with Tío Bigote long ago, got the farmers together to continue drilling the new borehole without waiting on anyone; he’d have found a way to get water down to the farmsteads … But he wasn’t Antonio, could never emulate him. From forgotten depths, a child’s rage welled up and spilled over into his nerves: encompassed his brother and the blond and turned back on himself: he wasn’t worthy of his brother, had only himself to blame …

  ‘Ah, it’s time already.’ He dropped the sickle and walked towards the house, past the terrace of tomatoes where the canes threw long shadows in the sun that was setting in a blaze of bronze. The duty to act, to decide what to do, agitated a nerve that shuddered, then fell immobilizingly slack. He must, but he couldn’t. Inertia closed in, barring awareness that the impossibility of acting was an impossibility of wanting to act. He couldn’t – no, in reality he couldn’t want: in the loss of his goal the purpose of action was lost, and all that remained was a sense of emptiness.

  Behind him he heard the blond say, ‘The tomatoes are drying up.’ Suddenly the continuing reminder of his loss penetrated the emptiness; he felt himself stopping, turning, heard his own voice:

  ‘You have to give too, you can’t only take.’ He saw the foreigner stop and his mouth drop, felt the anguish that came on his face, turned and walked on, the sense of aggression already being replaced by a feeling of guilt. The blond didn’t follow. By the low door Ana was waiting.

  ‘Miguelito, there’s hardly any fodder left. What are you going to do?’ He didn’t reply. ‘Miguelito,’ she whined, ‘you’ve got to do something. Tell the señorita …’ He remained staring at the tiles.

  ‘There’s nothing to be done,’ he said at last.

  The phrase struck through her as it was intended to. ‘But how can you say that?’ she cried. ‘Do you want to bring us to ruin?’

  Through the trees the foreigner’s white shirt was approaching. Hadn’t she understood yet? ‘It’d be better to finish once and for all.’

  ‘Miguel!’ Horror-stricken, her eyes fixed on him. Words substituting for action, the phrase ballooned outside him, empty of meaning, coming from nowhere. He watched it bewildered, seeking its source. Then she laughed. ‘Ah, brother, how you tease sometimes!’

  ‘I said: it would be better to finish once and for all.’

  She opened her mouth but nothing came out. His eyes were fixed on the tiles at his feet. The silence was unbroken, then as the foreigner turned the corner, she spoke. ‘Pepe sent a message, the novia is coming to the village on Saturday. She told Salvarito in Torre del Mar.’

  ‘Ah!’ He didn’t move. The blond’s shadow passed in front of him, stopping by the door close to Ana, the voice shrilling out anxiously, ‘The dam will mean forty or more hours of water for El Mayorazgo.’

  Saturday! Ah! Suddenly hate flared. Impregnable, unbending, Juana stood before him, her voice taunting: ‘If it pleases me to cut my hair …’

  No! He’d looked at her that Sunday and hadn’t believed his eyes. Flaunting her short hair without shame, like a foreign woman. People were talking, someone in the village had seen her in the foreigner’s garden wearing trousers like a man. He no longer pleaded, he ordered her; she wouldn’t obey. Humiliated, he lashed out, willing her destruction without wishing the means. He feared the revenge his rage would unleash.

  Ana saw his jaw muscles clench. ‘That much water!’ she cried, clutching at the straw to bring him back to them. Attracted by the sound of the foreigner’s voice, their mother appeared in the doorway. The blond went on explaining, his words barely comprehensible in his anxiety to make himself understood.

  ‘There’s barely any fodder left, the calf will have to be sold,’ Ana said.

  ‘No fodder!’ screeched the old woman. ‘Ay! Ay!’

  The hatred turned on itself. Aggression brought guilt, guilt self-recognition: a hope momentarily stirred. The strength of submission, of humbled expiation, of being himself.

  ‘The calf will fetch a better price in Torre del Mar where the foreigners buy,’ exclaimed the blond.

  Worthlessness making an offering of worth, humbly, openly paying tribute, conquering by admitting defeat.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Ana agreed. Avoid the middlemen in the village, sell direct. ‘Yes, Miguel, that’s what must be done.’ Never before had she dared offer advice.

  The last hope: a present, an offering of such cost that gratitude would overwhelm her, something from him to which she could point, an unbreakable bond. On condition she returned to the village.

  ‘Miguel! That’s what must be done.’

  ‘Eh?’ In the void the ornate idea shone like a pinpoint of light. Dimly he became aware of their faces, and the light failed to hold off the reality into which their eyes plunged him. Fodder, water … A surge of sadness engulfed him. Giving, taking. ‘Ana, those apricots …’ He watched her go. Enclosed in the sadness his mother stood at a distance looking at him. Her love misplaced. He would show her now. ‘There won’t be water, they say, the señorita is against.’

  What did he mean, the blond asked. He told them. ‘Your friend shouldn’t have taken the señorita’s share of the borehole.’

  ‘Son, didn’t I tell you?’ he heard his mother cry. ‘The mistress wouldn’t give you a needle to take a thorn from your hand. Didn’t I tell you?’

  His head remained bowed to accept her blame.

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ the blond said.

  ‘Yes?’ He grimaced. Talk, foreigner, talk as much as you like, the señorita will always have the last word.

  Ana returned with the basket.

  ‘How much do I owe?’

  He looked up at the foreigner standing there with his hand in his pocket waiting to bring out the money. For a moment scorn burnt through the sadness, inflected his voice.

  ‘Hombre, what nonsense!’

  Looking flustered the blond repeated his thanks. ‘Let’s go up to the new borehole when you’ve got time. You’ll get water, I’m sure of that.’

  ‘If God wills.’ No one else, no one else and what can He care about the emptiness? And he waited head bowed for his mother to speak.

  42

  Remission

&nbs
p; Madre! Expelled from emptiness, the sigh was lost in the empty land. Madre! A longing for stillness, absolute peace. The hook fell and his hand brushed the pocket where the bracelet lay wrapped. Over him the sun pressed its molten weight, around him the land burnt in its glare, but the heat was not part of the emptiness in which the longing arose to extinguish the fragments obsessively pulsing in front of his eyes: her smile: the bracelet replaced in the paralysed hand: the hand still outstretched in a frozen grip: ‘No, Miguel, no …’ Distraught fragments, ineludible images: the hand stretched out in failure for eternity, the irrevocable words that severed the last link. It was all over, there was nothing, never had been. What a fool to have thought there could be!

  A folly which, while he’d awaited her return that Saturday, had lifted him in hope like a twig buoyed by the water’s flow that coursed once more down a furrow to the future. Which had given him the strength to go with the blond to see the new borehole, joyfully feeling in his pocket, as he walked up the track, the weight of the talismanic gold bracelet against his leg. He had kept it on him day and night since going to Torre del Mar, caressing the smooth metal in his hands, gazing at it as though in its circumference the future were inscribed. It would overwhelm her, a bracelet such as no one else owned, to be shown off without shame, Tío Bigote’s farm to wear on her wrist! Yes. All his savings! He’d spent it all to prove that her life belonged to him and the village. Let the blond buy the land.

  As they came over the hill and the dam came into view below, he stopped. Culebra’s fearful predictions returned. ‘Will it hold?’

  ‘Of course,’ the blond replied. His friend Bob was experienced in matters like this. The tone of voice was scornful, trying to make his fears seem foolish. The presentiment brought a shiver.

  ‘Ah yes, if not we’ll all end up in the sea,’ he attempted to joke.

  The blond laughed; and it was then that he knew that this same voice could more easily annihilate hope than fear. He walked on. A few paces ahead he muttered in a tone he hoped and feared the blond would hear: