When the Owl Cries Part 32

"You can't!" Raul exclaimed.

"Raul--you can't better Petaca on one hand and undermine it on the other. Your radical ideas will ruin us."

"So we must hold our own by destroying others."

"It's a system like any other."

"That's no excuse."

"What will you do? Divide our land? The Indians owned it once. Will you give it back?" His voice crackled.

"That can be answered later," Raul said.

"When? Tomorrow? Next month? How long will you wait?"

Raul replaced his pipe in his pocket and forced himself to reply: "I haven't decided how to act."

"You'd give our land away!"

"No, Father. I won't give up Petaca."

Fernando forced a quaking hand from under the sheet and wedged a pillow behind his back. Except for a general diffusion of yellowish light, he could see nothing.

"I'm almost blind," he mumbled. "When is that optical fool coming from Colima to fit my gla.s.ses? Blind ... you know what it is to be going blind? Give me a drink."

As the old man drank, he thought of Pedro; he trembled; his fear of death returned, and he did not want Raul dead.

"Don't go, Raul. Sit down, wait."

Raul held the empty gla.s.s and remained standing.

"Did General Matanzas speak to you ... of a new president?" he asked, with difficulty. He had difficulty in swallowing.

"No. He was drunk."

"Who is to take over Mexico ... does anyone say?"

"n.o.body knows."

"What utter fools," he growled. "A s.h.i.+p without a helmsman.... And here at Petaca I must fight you." Then he said, sadly: "This is a time of rumors about revolt, about part.i.tion of land.... I don't like a time of rumors." He cleared his throat.

For the first time during their conversation, Raul considered his father carefully; he saw that he had lost weight; the gnarled face had shrunken; both hands trembled now. No one had troubled to wash his hands. No one had combed his hair.

Raul went for Chavela and brought her back with comb and brush and pan of warm water and cake of soap. As she held the basin, he washed his father's hands, remembering some old legend of men deriving power and adding to their own longevity by such an act. Chavela dried Fernando's hands and washed his face as he lay with eyes closed, silent. He fell asleep, while she combed and brushed his hair. Raul got his hat and climbed the stair to his room. At another time he would question Fernando about Pedro's gun smuggling.

In his bedroom, he smelled Angelina's perfume and, as he changed from boots to shoes, he went over their disaffection, wanting, no matter how absurd, how contradictory, a touchstone that might bring about harmony.

Downstairs, Gabriel rested, seated in a big armchair, drowned in a book, his robe pulled up from his legs, his sandals kicked off. Light from the veranda drilled holes through his spectacles as he read.

"When did you come in?" asked Raul, poking about.

"I've been at the bookcase quite a while. Last week I got lost in Josse's _Historia_ and now I'm trying Locke's essay on _Understanding_."

"I'm the one who needs understanding."

"Not as much as I need it," said Gabriel. "What is it we need at Petaca?" he wanted to know.

"Friends.h.i.+p."

"Can that be it, Raul?"

"You taught me that, Gabriel. You've looked after the cuts and bruises and listened to the bitter stories. You've found ways of expressing friends.h.i.+p in the little things, a new altar cloth, medicine for Motilinia, a straw horse for a boy's birthday."

Quiet, Gabriel thumbed the leather book; for years he had encouraged one after another; it pleased him that Raul should speak out. What he had accomplished he could not say.

One force had worked consistently against him and that was Don Fernando.... As enemies, they had stormed over every sector of the hacienda. Already Raul had re-opened the school and secured a teacher, an able young man from Manzanillo, handy with guitar and songs.

Secretly, Gabriel was a little jealous of Raul's successes. But he knew the inner man, the inner conflicts, and probed no more.

Both read in the shuttered, still living room. The bookcase occupied a corner, the top of it strewn with bric-a-brac: silver cup, barometer, Dresden doll, porcelain animals, the deed box.

Raul took down the _Journal of Las Casas_ and after reading a while at random he said, "I never find much time for reading any more."

"In Italy, I read a book a fortnight ... that was my goal."

"Perhaps life was easier in Italy."

"It's a matter of habit," said Gabriel.

"I'm sure you're right. I get more out of my smoking than I do out of my reading."

"When I first came, I read till late every night," Gabriel said.

"I remember how late your light used to burn."

"Well, my eyes aren't up to that kind of reading any more," said Gabriel, regretfully, and fingered the bow of his gla.s.ses.

In a loud voice, Salvador called Raul from the doorway of the veranda.

"Tomas is hurt," he said, as if reporting the weather.

"Which Tomas?" asked Raul, laying down his book. Petaca had two, little and big, both stable workers.

"Little Tomas."

"What happened?" asked Raul, rising.

"His leg."