When the Owl Cries Part 13

"Take it, child.... You'll be all right."

"Yes ... Gran'pa."

The face trusted him. She swallowed the medicine and sank back on the pillows.

"Rest now and we'll go to the castle together and I'll tell you how I found a tiny statue of the Huastecas. You haven't heard that story....

We were riding horseback through a barranca in San Luis Potosi; men had been digging a ditch for irrigation...."

Most of his life he had lacked the power of affection, except with Caterina. He bowed his head; he could say no more; he felt beaten, dried, useless. Life would have been all right had he been able to reach outside himself. Carry me downstairs; put me to bed. The fool.

The old, ugly fool. Tired. Carry me.

When Don Fernando was taken away, Angelina began her vigil, she and the nun. She heard workers sawing the eucalyptus, observed the moon's climb, felt the nip of the night air, dozed fitfully in her easy chair.

Awake, she prayed for her girl, a faithless prayer, since she believed Caterina fatally ill; she had seen too many children pa.s.s away with fever and dysentery to have any illusions. Doll faces--looming through a bad dream--wept and pled for Caterina. Chapel music sounded ...

there was no G.o.d, not really ... only wandering....

The nun stretched on a cot and snored, her responsibility forgotten.

Toward dawn, the birds began, high-flying parrots and then the garden orioles. The caged birds in the patio answered, and a strange bird, in the grove behind the house, sc.r.a.ped tin note against tin note.

Vicente, sleepy eyed, yawning, padded in, barefooted. He stood silently by his sister's bedside. Until now, he had shunned her room unless she asked for him. Ever since Grandpa had been confined to his bed, Vicente had feared death, and, alarmed by Caterina's white face, her stillness, he had kept away. After a glance he stole downstairs, into the kitchen, hungry, cold, uneasy.

The chapel bell clanged its stiff bell for Ma.s.s and, after Ma.s.s, Gabriel went to sit beside Caterina. She brightened, finding him there, wiping his gla.s.ses, smiling.

"Were you here all night?"

"No, I just came in."

"I thought I saw you all night ... holding a candle ... for me."

"No, my angel, that was your mother who was with you."

"I don't remember her."

"You were sleeping."

"I want to get better."

"You are better. I can see you're better today," he lied.

"Has Doctor come?"

"He'll come shortly, with new medicines. Let me call Carmela. It's time for you to eat. Then I'll come back and read to you."

"I'm not hungry."

He hoped food might strengthen her; her anguish filled him with pity and love. Such a sweet child. The small face had darkness working from within--around the eyes, inside them; their own personal magic had dimmed. Her lips moved stiffly.

What was it his mother had said? When the sight darkens, the shadow of the cross is beckoning. He shook his head, sorely troubled. His fingers drummed on his knees. He wished Dr. Velasco could arrive, by some miracle, before nightfall.

Gabriel got up, determined to help. "Carmela, Carmela," he called from the window.

"Yes."

"Can you bring the child something to eat? I think she should have something."

"Right away, Padre. I'll heat something, some atole. I'll be right along."

Sitting on the foot of her bed, he began to talk to her:

"Delgado's cleaning the pool.... You should see the jacaranda blossoms scattered on the water, flowers and leaves too. Did you hear about the eucalyptus? It blew down, the giant one beside the corral. They had to saw it into sections and drag off the pieces with oxen...." He found it difficult to concentrate on what he was saying. Perplexed by the gravity of her illness, he tried to ransack his brain for some old remedy. Carmela came with a tray and he rose and said good morning to her.

By coaxing, they got Caterina to eat some thin _atole_; but then, in a little while, she vomited, and knotted under the covers, s.h.i.+vering with anguish.

By the time Dr. Velasco arrived, pounding in on a weary, sweaty horse, she had been dead several hours.

The doctor slapped his forehead and turned away, his black kit on the desk, the new medicines bulging in his coat pocket. Only the nun was there, in the darkened living room, to see his despair. For a long time they sat there together, saying little.

While the nun fussed with Caterina's hair, Raul sat in the easy chair and listened to Angelina sob, her sobbing padded by the thick stone walls of her room and heavy doors. Something in her had snapped: she said it was the end: she meant, he thought, that she would never see Caterina again: as for him, he felt he would find his child someday; and yet he asked the question: Where? Just now she would not hopscotch in the patio, squeeze his hand during Ma.s.s, fill his pipe, dash to meet him after a full day in the hacienda campo, giggle at supper. Sitting stiffly, watching Carmela arrange Caterina's hair, he tried to deny weariness. He felt as if he had ridden horseback for days. He prayed to St. Catherine, remembering how lovingly they had christened the child in her honor.

Suddenly his wife ceased sobbing; the nun left the room; a door closed; the ramrod of silence jabbed him. Death was silence. Sitting erect, he observed a cinch strap of blackbirds over the stable roof where the eucalyptus had crashed. Strange they flew silently. Blackbirds were _hacendado_ birds: he had often thought of them that way: they were the black plunderers. Rapacious, yet not so rapacious as the owl.

Without glancing at Caterina, he walked out, walked down the stairs blindly, asking himself whether he had attended to civilities, telegrams to be sent from the Colima office, a notice for the Colima paper, the casket, the grave prepared. His hand on the wrought-iron railing, he sensed his own mortality....

What was life for?

6

The burial was to take place before sunset.

During the afternoon, the chapel bell had tolled intermittently and alarmed pigeons had flown about. Even the livestock had become restless. Small boys, Caterina's friends, had yanked the bell rope, their ragged s.h.i.+rts and trousers flapping dismally.

Manuel and Salvador carried the casket out of the chapel, following a path through the grove. The flowers on the box caught at branches and twigs, falling, littering the route. Bougainvillaea, cup-of-gold, roses, lilies, jacaranda blossoms that had survived the wind, rain and hail. As the men put the casket down by the grave, a hummingbird dived and clicked at the flowers; the men stared sadly; the ebony rapier poked; the red-green-blue feathers throbbed; then a second and third hummingbird whisked the blossoms.

At the morning chapel service, the ceremony had been touching because Vicente had raced from the room, sobbing. Gabriel had not said the right words: his mind had turned back to Italy and his reminiscences of the death of a childhood friend had indicated more than he had intended of the transience of life, the beauty of childhood. Peasants had crowded the chapel: men in white, women with blue _rebozos_ over pink and white blouses and skirts, half clad children.

Someone had heaped bougainvillaea over the altar and on top the mango-shaped gla.s.s dome that protected the jeweled virgin of Petaca. A wreath of pink and white carnations had leaned against the casket.

Candles had burned on the altar and at the ends of the coffin. The virgin's jewels, her rubies and emeralds, gleamed.

Lucienne von Humboldt had come first. From her hacienda, Palma Sola, by the ocean, she had driven to Petaca in her blue and yellow victoria, scarred and bitten by sea air. The black she wore made her seem older than twenty-six, and accentuated her auburn hair and the Germanic character of her face. Her hazel eyes, glossy thick hair, and rose-colored skin impressed everyone.

Baroness Radziwill and her big family had arrived next, a wreath of evergreen on the carriage top. She had placed a gold plated candleholder for Caterina and lit it herself. A beautiful woman in her sixties, with gray hair and black eyes, she had a motherly manner with everybody.

Count de Selva had come with his fat wife and three sons. As workers gathered in the forecourt, afoot and horseback, the Count had remained in his carriage. His servant had cleaned off the mud-spattered coat of arms on the doors and had polished the blue running boards and fenders.

An obese, asthmatic man, de Selva preferred to wait until the chapel ceremony began before showing himself; he had come only out of respect for the Medina family, scarcely remembering Caterina.

Lucienne removed a ring from her handbag and buried it among the flowers on top of the casket, Manuel and Salvador waiting in the shade of a palm tree. She nodded to them and said: