When the Owl Cries Part 57

20

Back in Colima, Raul and Lucienne took Vicente to his school, where his friends swarmed about him, asking him if it was really true that the revolutionists had taken pot shots at his train as he came from Guadalajara. How he enjoyed being back, gabbling! Raul and Lucienne watched him for a while from the school gate, then walked away.

The sun made a tropical wad of itself and Lucienne and Raul kept on the shady side of the street, where breadfruit and coco palms made walking comfortable. A water cart rocked slowly by, pulled by a donkey....

The slos.h.i.+ng water added to the coolness of the shade. A pleasant street, it curved in a long curve toward the center of town, little homes on both sides with a tree now and then, like a jack-in-the-box, popping out of some patio or garden.

Lucienne wore freshly starched white, loose at the waist and shoulders, and carried a pink, blue-lined parasol. She was bareheaded and he was bareheaded. His white clothes had been made by a poor hacienda tailor, and had had the freshness taken out of them, but he, too, looked comfortable, part of the tropical town.

At La Lonja they decided to have something cool to drink and went inside, through a low, arched doorway. La Lonja had been the seventeenth century home of a French merchant. In the center of the gra.s.sy patio stood an ugly statue of a sans-culotte woman, chipped and beaten, discolored by bird droppings, yet wonderfully alive, rising up valiantly out of a huddle of bougainvillaea and honeysuckle.

There were quite a number of Colimans at the tile-topped tables, in the shade of a high wall. Someone greeted Raul, as he and Lucienne walked to the back, away from everyone, and farther from the biting sun.

Raul wiped his forehead.

"Vicente has already forgotten Guadalajara," he said. "Children are lucky."

"We're lucky too, to be here," said Lucienne, settling her parasol against her chair.

The waiter brought menus and filled goblets with ice, chatting a one-sided chatter. While he fussed around the table, Lucienne thought of Raul, his fatigue, his sadness. She thought of Angelina's illness: she could see her yellow dress; she could sense some of the fear that had closed in around her.

"It seemed such a long trip, coming back," he said. The train windows had been open on cornfields, on low rolling hills, on sunny villages.

A child had cried for hours, her head in her mother's lap.

"What does she do all the time?" Lucienne asked. She did not have to use her name.

"She stays in her room most of the day. She goes into the patio sometimes. The doctors say she's afraid at night."

"Of the dog?"

"Yes."

"But what does she do?"

"She sits alone ... or talks to the Sisters. They try to favor her."

He lit his pipe but let the smoke curl up, with the bowl between his fingers.

"I wish I could help her," Lucienne said.

Yes, he thought, we'd like to help. He wanted to tell her he had bought the Sicre house, transacting the business while in Guadalajara, concluding the sale in Colima. I'll bring the furniture from Petaca, he thought, probably next week. A moment ago, I was speaking of my wife's insanity; now, now I must talk about the house I've bought in Colima. Life cheats us of time to adjust. He gazed at her with a sad, hurt expression.

"I bought the Sicre house. You know where it is, out beyond the hospital, on the right, set back in that old garden."

She smiled reminiscently. "I'm glad," she said.

They ordered chilled _cayumito_ fruit; rum, lime and ice--the waiter standing close to Lucienne, admiring her. A young man, new to Colima, he had already heard of her and her interest in plants.

"I've been told that the Sicre house needs many changes," Raul said, as they waited. "I haven't been inside it for years. Shall we go and see it in a day or two?"

"I remember the garden, as a girl. There's a fountain at the back ...

somewhere." She looked at him lovingly, fingering her water gla.s.s, recalling those days, so long ago. Her mother had taken her to parties then, and introduced her to young men, wanting her to be popular.

She bent forward and said gently:

"I remember some of the trees in the garden, an old carob, an almond.... One had a split trunk and we used to hide messages inside, love notes too. I remember seeing you there, in the garden...."

Taking her hand away from the gla.s.s, he felt the cool of her fingers.

He leaned forward and kissed her, tasting her mouth. She gripped his hand, her eyes serious. After all these years, no words were necessary.

In 1910, Mexico was in the throes of revolution. In this painful period of exchanging old values for new, the upheaval was felt everywhere. This is the story of a private revolution--a conflict between father and son whose family estate extends for more than a million acres in the western part of the country. Raul Medina, with liberal ideas he gathered at school in Europe, determines to take over control of the hacienda. His bedridden father, Don Fernando, is among the last of a governing cla.s.s for whom possession had been a law unto itself. With the support of a vicious servant, Don Fernando inflicts great cruelties on the workers. Raul is able to withstand the opposition of his father, but, from the beginning, his ideals are powerless against the realities of hunger and disease.

Woven into the large scale panorama of Mexican life and landscape is Raul's personal story: the failure of his marriage with Angelique, a delicate city woman who hates and fears hacienda life; his friends.h.i.+p with his loyal aide and servant Manuel; his love for Lucienne, the sole inhabitant of a neighboring plantation, who is strong enough to accept romance along with realities of life.

Along with his narrative skill, the author has lent this novel a great love: love of the land in all its variously colorful details; love of the people, their weaknesses and their strengths, their dreams and their disappointments. This is a novel of haunting significance, published in the year of the fiftieth anniversary of the Mexican Revolution.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PAUL BARTLETT]

Paul Bartlett is well-acquainted with the country he describes so vividly in _When the Owl Cries_. He has spent over eight years in Mexico, living in desert areas, mountain villages, tropical islands and remote haciendas.

He has had over forty short stories published in magazines such as _Accent, The Kenyon Review, The Literary Review, The Chicago Review_ and _New Story_. Nine of his stories have received honorable mention in Martha Foley's _Best American Short Stories of the Year_. He is a recipient of a Huntington Hartford Writing Fellows.h.i.+p for 1960, has taught creative writing at Georgia State College, and has conducted Writer's Conference Workshops.