The power and the glory (11 page)

"She couldn't do better," the Governor's cousin said, emptying his own. He said: "So you have a mother?"
"Haven't we all?"
"Ah, you're lucky. Mine's dead." His hand strayed towards the bottle, grasped it. "Sometimes I miss her. I called her 'my little friend.' " He tilted the bottle. "With your permission?"
"Of course, your Excellency," the other said hopelessly, taking a long draught of brandy. The beggar said: "I too have a mother."
"Who cares?" the Governor's cousin said sharply. He leant back and the bed creaked. He said: "I have often thought a mother is a better friend than a father. Her influence is towards peace, goodness, charity. … Always on the anniversary of her death I go to her grave-with flowers."
The man in drill caught a hiccup politely. He said: "Ah, if I could too..."
"But you said your mother was alive?"
"I thought that you were speaking of your grandmother."
"How could I? I can't remember my grandmother."
"Nor can I."
"I can," the beggar said.
The Governors cousin said: "You talk too much." "Perhaps I could send him to have this wine wrapped up.... For your Excellency's sake I mustn't be seen..."
"Wait, wait. There's no hurry. You are very welcome here. Anything in this room is at your disposal. Have a glass of wine."
"I think brandy..."
"Then with your permission..." He tilted the bottle: a little of it splashed over onto the sheets. "What were we talking about?"
"Our grandmothers."
"I don't think it can have been that. I can't even remember mine. The earliest thing I can remember..."
The door opened. The manager said: "The Chief of Police is coming up the stairs."
"Excellent. Show him in."
"Are you sure?"
"Of course. He's a good fellow." He said to the others: "But at billiards you can't trust him."
A large stout man in a singlet, white trousers, and a revolver-holster appeared in the doorway. The Governor's cousin said: "Come in. Come in. How is your toothache? We were talking about our grandmothers." He said sharply to the beggar: "Make room for the jefe."
The jefe stood in the doorway, watching them with dim embarrassment. He said: "Well, well..."
"Were having a little private party. Will you join us? It would be an honour."
The jefe's face suddenly lit up at the sight of the wine: "Of course-a little beer never comes amiss."
"That's right. Give the jefe a glass of beer." The beggar filled his own glass with wine and held it out. The jefe took his place upon the bed and drained the glass: then he took the bottle himself. He said: "It's good beer. Very good beer. Is this the only bottle?" The man in drill watched him with frigid anxiety.
"I'm afraid the only bottle."
"Salud!"
"And what," the Governor's cousin asked, "were we talking about?"
"About the first thing you could remember," the beggar said. "The first thing I can remember," the jefe began, with deliberation, "-but this gentleman is not drinking."
"I will have a little brandy."
"Salud!"
"Salud!"
"The first thing I can remember with any distinctness is my first communion. Ah, the thrill of the soul, my parents round me..."
"How many parents, then, have you got?"
"Two, of course."
"They could not have been around you-you would have needed at least four-ha, ha."
"Salud!"
"Salud!"
"No, but as I was saying-life has such irony. It was my painful duty to watch the priest who gave me that communion shot-an old man. I am not ashamed to say that I wept. The comfort is that he is probably a saint and that he prayed for us. It is not everyone who earns a saint's prayers."
"An unusual way..."
"But then life is mysterious."
"Salud!"
The man in drill said: "A glass of brandy, jefe?"
''There is so little left in this bottle that I may as well..."
"I was very anxious to take a little back for my mother."
"Oh, a drop like this. It would be an insult to take it. Just the dregs." He turned it up over his glass and chuckled: "If you can talk of beer having dregs." Then he stopped with the bottle held over the glass and said with astonishment: "Why, man, you're crying." All three watched the man in drill with their mouths a little open. He said: "It always takes me like this-brandy. Forgive me, gentlemen. I get drunk very easily and then I see..."
"See what?"
"Oh. I don't know, all the hope of the world draining away."
"Man, you're a poet."
The beggar said: "A poet is the soul of his country." Lightning filled the windows like a white sheet, and thunder crashed suddenly overhead. The one globe flickered and faded up near the ceiling. "This is bad news for my men," the jefe said, stamping on a beetle which had crawled too near.
"Why bad news?"
"The rains coming so early. You see they are on a hunt."
"The gringo...?"
"He doesn't really matter, but the Governor's found there's still a priest, and you know what he feels about that. If it was me, I'd let the poor devil alone. He'd starve or die of fever or give up. He can't be doing any good-or any harm. Why, nobody even noticed he was about till a few months ago."
"You'll have to hurry."
"Oh, he hasn't any real chance. Unless he gets over the border. We've got a man who knows him. Spoke to him, spent a night with him. Let's talk of something else. Who wants to be a policeman?"
"Where do you think he is?"
"You'd be surprised."
"Why?"
"He's here-in this town, I mean. That's deduction. You see, since we started taking hostages from the villages, there's really nowhere else.... They turn him away, they won't have him. So we've set this man I told you about loose like a dog-he'll run into him one day or another-and then …"
The man in drill said: "Have you had to shoot many hostages?"
"Not yet. Three or four perhaps. Well, here goes the last of the beer. Salud!" He put the glass regretfully down. "Perhaps now I could have just a drop of your-sidral, shall we call it?"
"Yes. Of course."
"Have I met you before? Your face somehow …"
"I don't think I've had the honour."
"That's another mystery," the jefe said, stretching out a long fat limb and gently pushing the beggar towards the bed-knobs, "how you think you've seen people-and places-before. Was it in a dream or in a past life? I once heard a doctor say it was something to do with the focusing of the eyes. But he was a Yankee. A materialist."
"I remember once..." the Governor's cousin said. The lightning shot down over the harbour and the thunder beat on the roof: this was the atmosphere of a whole state-the storm outside and the talk just going on-words like "mystery" and "soul" and "the source of life" came in over and over again, as they sat on the bed talking, with nothing to do and nothing to believe and nowhere better to go.
The man in drill said: "I think perhaps I had better be moving on."
"Where to?"
"Oh... friends," he said vaguely, sketching widely with his hands a whole world of fictitious friendships.
"You'd better take your drink with you," the Governor's s cousin said. He admitted: "After all you paid for it."
"Thank you, Excellency." He picked up the brandy bottle. Perhaps there were three fingers left. The bottle of wine, of course, was quite empty.
"Hide it, man, hide it," the Governor's cousin said sharply.
"Oh, of course, Excellency, I will be careful."
"You don't have to call him Excellency," the jefe said. He gave a bellow of laughter and thrust the beggar right off the bed onto the floor.
"No, no, that is..." He sidled cautiously out, with a smudge of tears, under his red sore eyes and from the hall heard the conversation begin again-"mystery," "soul"-going interminably on to no end.
The beetles had disappeared: the rain had apparently washed them away: it came perpendicularly down, with a sort of measured intensity, as if it were driving nails into a coffin lid. But the air was no clearer: sweat and rain hung together on the clothes. The priest stood for a few seconds in the doorway of the hotel, the dynamo thudding behind him, then he darted a few yards into another doorway and hesitated, staring over past the bust of the general to the tethered sailing-boats and one old barge with a tin funnel. He had nowhere to go: rain hadn't entered into his calculations: he had believed that it would be possible just to hang on somehow, sleeping on benches or by the river.
A couple of soldiers arguing furiously came down the street towards the quay-they just let the rain fall on them, as if it didn't matter, as if things were so bad anyway you couldn't notice.... The priest pushed the wooden door against which he stood-a cantina door coming down only to the knees-and went in out of the rain: stacks of gaseosa bottles and a single billiard table with the score strung on rings, three or four men-somebody had laid his holster on the bar. The priest moved too quickly and jolted the elbow of a man who was making a shot. He turned furiously: "Mother of God!": he was a Red Shirt. Was there no safety anywhere, even for a moment?
The priest apologized humbly, edging back towards the door, but again he was too quick-his pocket caught against the wall and the brandy bottle chinked. Three or four faces looked at him with malicious amusement: he was a stranger and they were going to have fun. "What's that you've got in your pocket?" the Red Shirt asked. He was a youth not out of his teens, with gold teeth and a jesting conceited mouth.
"Lemonade," the priest said.
"What do you want to carry lemonade with you for?"
"I take it at night-with my quinine."
The Red Shirt swaggered up and poked the pocket with the butt of his cue. "Lemonade, eh?"
"Yes, lemonade."
"Let's have a look at the lemonade." He turned proudly to the others and said: "I can scent a smuggler at ten paces." He thrust his hand into the priest's pocket and hauled at the brandy bottle: "There," he said. "Didn't I tell you-" The priest flung himself against the swing door and burst out into the rain. A voice shouted: "Catch him." They were having the time of their lives.
He was off up the street towards the plaza, turned left and right again-it was lucky the streets were dark and the moon obscured. As long as he kept away from lighted windows he was almost invisible-he could hear them calling to each other. They were not giving up: it was better than billiards: somewhere a whistle blew-the police were joining in.
This was the town to which it had been his ambition to be promoted, leaving the right kind of debts behind at Concepcion: he thought of the cathedral and Montez and a canon he once knew, as he doubled this way and that. Something buried very deep, the will to escape, cast a momentary and appalling humour over the whole situation-he giggled and panted and giggled again. He could hear them hallooing and whistling in the dark, and the rain came down: it drove and jumped upon the cement floor of the useless fronton which had once been the cathedral (it was too hot to play pelota and a few iron swings stood like gallows at its edge). He worked his way down-hill again: he had an idea.
The shouts came nearer, and then up from the river a new lot of men approached: these were pursuing the hunt methodically-he could tell it by their slow pace, the police, the official hunters. He was between the two-the amateurs and the professionals. But he knew the door-he pushed it open, came quickly through into the patio, and closed it behind him.
He stood in the dark and panted, hearing the steps come nearer up the street, while the rain drove down. Then he realized that somebody was watching him from a window, a small dark withered face, like one of the preserved heads tourists buy. He came up to the grille and said: "Padre José?"
"Over there." A second face appeared behind the other's shoulder, lit uncertainly by a candle-flame, then a third: faces sprouted like vegetables. He could feel them watching him as he splashed back across the patio and banged on a door.
He didn't for a second or two recognize Padre José-in the absurd billowing nightshirt, holding a lamp. The last time he had seen him was at the conference, sitting in the back row, biting his nails, afraid to be noticed. It hadn't been necessary: none of the busy cathedral clergy even knew what he was called. It was odd to think that now he had won a kind of fame superior to theirs. He said "José" gently, winking up at him from the splashing dark.
"Who are you?"
"Don't you remember me? Of course, it's years now... don't you remember the conference at the cathedral? …"
"Oh, God," Padre José said.
"They are looking for me. I thought perhaps just for tonight you could perhaps..."
"Go away," Padre José said, "go away."
"They don't know who I am. They think I'm a smuggler-but up at the police station they'll know."
"Don't talk so loud. My wife..."
"Just show me some corner," he whispered. He was beginning to feel fear again. Perhaps the effect of the brandy was wearing off (it was impossible in this hot damp climate to stay drunk for long: alcohol came out again under the armpits: it dripped from the forehead) or perhaps it was only that the desire of life, which moves in cycles, was returning-any sort of life.
In the lamplight Padre José's face wore an expression of hatred. He said: "Why come to me? Why should you think ? I'll call the police if you don't go. You know what sort of a man I am."
He pleaded gently: "You're a good man, José. I've always known that."
"I'll shout if you don't go."
He tried to remember some cause of hatred. There were voices in the street-arguments, a knocking-were they searching the houses? He said: "If I ever offended you, José, forgive me. I was conceited, proud, overbearing-a bad priest. I always knew in my heart you were the better man."
"Go," José screeched at him, "go! I don't want martyrs here. I don't belong any more. Leave me alone. I'm all right as I am." He tried to gather up his venom into spittle and shot it feebly at the others face: it didn't even reach, fell impotently through the air. He said: "Go and die quickly. That's your job," and slammed the door to. The door of the patio came suddenly open and the police were there. He caught a glimpse of Padre José peering through a window and then an enormous shape in a white nightshirt engulfed him and drew him away-whisked him off, like a guardian spirit, from the disastrous human struggle. A voice said: "That's him." It was the young Red Shirt. He let his fist open and dropped by Padre José's wall a little ball of paper: it was like the final surrender of a whole past.
He knew it was the beginning of the end-after all these years. He began to say silently an act of contrition, while they picked the brandy bottle out of his pocket, but he couldn't give his mind to it. That was the fallacy of the deathbed repentance-penitence was the fruit of long training and discipline: fear wasn't enough. He tried to think of his child with shame, but he could only think of her with a kind of famished love-what would become of her? And the sin itself was so old that like an ancient picture the deformity had faded and left a kind of grace. The Red Shirt smashed the bottle on the stone paving and the smell of spirit rose all round them-not very strongly: there hadn't really been much left.