Part 1
When the Owl Cries
by PAUL BARTLETT
New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1960
© PAUL BARTLETT 1960
First Printing
The Macmillan Company, New York
Brett-Macmillan Ltd., Galt, Ontario
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress catalog card number: 60-9265
Project Gutenberg edition 2012
_When the Owl Cries_ was originally published by Macmillan in 1960. This work has been out-of-print for many years, with reprint rights that reverted to the author and are now held by his Estate. The author’s literary executor, rather than seek to publish a new commercial edition of the book, decided to make the novel available as an open access publication, freely available to readers through Project Gutenberg under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license, which allows anyone to distribute this work without changes to its content, provided that both the author and the original URL from which this work was obtained are mentioned, that the contents of this work are not used for commercial purposes or profit, and that this work will not be used without the copyright holder’s written permission in derivative works (i.e., you may not alter, transform, or build upon this work without such permission). The full legal statement of this license may be found at
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_Para mi esposa, aficionada de México, con todo mi cariño_
When the owl cries, an Indian dies.
_Cuando el tecolote llora, se muere el Indio._
--Old Mexican saying
Author's Note
This novel commemorates the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Mexican Revolution. I have written the book because I am fond of Mexico, where I have lived for many years. My story of an hacienda family, though not historical, represents the end of hacienda life, the passing of the landed aristocracy and the beginning of a democratic way. Only through volcanic eruption and earthquake could I symbolize the great social changes that began to take place about 1910.
_When the Owl Cries _
by
Paul Alexander Bartlett
INTRODUCTION
by
Steven James Bartlett
The book's title, _When the Owl Cries_, comes from the ancient Mexican-Indian superstition, "_Cuando el tecolote llora, se muere el indio_"--"When the owl cries, an Indian dies."
ABOUT THE BOOK AND ITS AUTHOR
_When the Owl Cries_ has been described by reviewers as "The _Gone with the Wind_ of Mexico." It is a gripping, vivid story that takes place on a huge estate, an hacienda, at the beginning of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. The novel centers about the life of Don Raul Medina, soon to take over the management of the hacienda from his father, Fernando, who is now dying. Fernando has been a cruel _hacendado_, ruling with an iron hand, whip, and gun. Raul is caught in a complex web: his estrangement from his emotionally frail and disturbed wife, his love for the young blonde Lucienne, _hacendada_ of a neighboring estate, and the turmoil and hardships they are plunged into during the Revolution. The colorful, descriptive panorama of the novel leads the reader into a first-hand experience as hacienda life came to an end as a result of the Revolution.
_When the Owl Cries_ was originally published in 1960 to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Mexican Revolution and was an immediate success. The book was listed by the _New York Times Book Review_ in its Best-seller/Recommended column for 13 continuous weeks after its release. The novel received rave reviews across the country. Excerpts of a few of these reviews appear later in this introduction.
Readers may be interested in some personal background about the author and where _When the Owl Cries_ was written. Paul Alexander Bartlett (1909-1990) was a fine artist and the author of numerous short stories, novels, and non-fiction works. He came to Mexico during WWII and developed a life-long interest in visiting haciendas throughout the country in order to make the first large-scale artistic and photographic record of these ancient, fascinating, but rapidly vanishing places. His interest was inspired by the realization that most of these old estates were rapidly crumbling and disappearing after the ravages of the Mexican Revolution had left them in ruins, and from the neglect that followed the Revolution as Mexican peasants dismantled many of the hacienda buildings for use as building materials.
From the mid-1940s until late in the 1980s, Bartlett visited more than 350 haciendas throughout Mexico. Many were remote and difficult to find and then to visit. He, and often with me as his young _compañero_, traveled by horseback, by car, boat, motorcycle, or on foot to visit these old estates. Some were completely abandoned, the roofs of the buildings having caved in, with gaping holes in their walls and trees growing up through their unsheltered floors. Some, in ramshackle condition, were still being lived in by poor Mexican families. Very rarely a select few were occupied or maintained in absentia by the descendants of their original owners, while a small number of the estimated original 8,000 haciendas have been converted into tourist hotels, schools, and government buildings.
There was no grant funding available for my father's lifelong project. It was a labor of love financed by his and my mother's meager savings, the frequent fate of creative artists. (My mother was Elizabeth Bartlett, well-known for her many published books of poetry.) During each hacienda visit, my father made sketches he later turned into finished pen-and-ink illustrations, of which he completed 350. The collection of hacienda illustrations was exhibited in more than 40 one-man shows in leading galleries, museums, and libraries in the U.S. and Mexico. In addition, he took more than a thousand photographs of the haciendas. Before his death in 1990, the University Press of Colorado published his non-fiction book, _The Haciendas of Mexico: An Artist's Record_, which contains selections of his many illustrations and photographs, accompanied by a text that describes hacienda life and the history of the haciendas.
In 1959, thanks to my parents' friendship with Cuca Cámara, of the long-established Cámara family of Mérida, Yucatán, my father was offered the opportunity live on one of the family's haciendas, located outside of Mérida between the small towns of Motul and Suma. My father and I lived at the Hacienda Kambul while he completed _When the Owl Cries_. The Hacienda Kambul provided a very spartan existence: We slept in hammocks in a large bare room of what had been the _casa principal_, the main residence of the hacienda. The 20-foot-high ceilings and the thick adobe walls helped cool the hot and dry Yucatecan weather; in the mornings, swallows would fly through the opened ten-foot-high doors into the room, chitterling and swooping above our heads.
The time there was not limited to serious writing. We went horseback riding across the fields of _henequén_, whose fiber, like that of sisal, was traditionally used for rope and twine. Sometimes, we would relax in hammocks on the wide terrace of the _casa principal_. Often, we would travel out into the _campo_ on the hacienda's narrow-gauge railway, on a flat-topped rail car pulled by a mule, called a _plataforma_.
We had no electricity, so evenings were short and mornings early. We had a _huipíl_-clad Maya maid, Bicha, who, along with a thin, old, lame Maya gentleman, Lázaro, helped us to provision ourselves on a close to starvation diet. We were sometimes very sick from the polluted water of the well, which had unwisely been dug right next to the horse corral. We boiled the water conscientiously, but Moctezuma exacted considerable revenge despite our efforts.
It was hard to leave Kambul behind despite the weight we'd lost. But my father had completed _When the Owl Cries_ in the most appropriate setting for a book that seeks to recreate hacienda life, and we shared many happy memories of our outings and leisurely hours there.
REVIEWS OF THE BOOK
As already mentioned, _When the Owl Cries_ was widely and enthusiastically reviewed throughout the country. The following are excerpts from some of these reviews:
"_When the Owl Cries_ is a novel rich in pictorially vivid reading. As you turn the pages, you ask, What next? That is the immemorial appeal of the thriller. But what gives the story stature as a work of art is that Bartlett has been at pains to populate it with believable characters who are stirred by intensely personal concerns."--Charles Poore, in the _New York Times_
"The book charms with its expert knowledge of place and people."--Paul Engle, in the _Chicago Tribune_
"Vivid, impressive, highly pictorial. What makes it a pleasure to read are its marvelous vignettes of Mexican ways of life."--Lon Tinkle, in the _Dallas News_
"Only rarely is an American writer gifted with the perception and sensitivity required to translate into English the intensity and sense of tragedy of the Latin races."--Joe Knefler, in the _L. A. Times_
"Mr. Bartlett has given us a powerful, unusual and taunting novel, filled with characters as real as the headlines in today's papers, who move toward the inevitability of defeat like figures in a Greek tragedy."--D. Evan Gwen, in the _Oxford Mail_
"A _Gone with the Wind_ of Mexico."--_Library Journal_
"The Spirit and atmosphere of Mexico breathe from every page of Paul Bartlett's poignant novel."--Clifford Gessler, in the _Oakland Tribune_
"This is a book the reader can see in his mind--on a wide screen in technicolor with stereophonic sound. It doesn't need Hollywood but it's the kind of story that wouldn't do the movies any harm."--_Florida Times-Union_
"The interiors are magnificent: the feeling one gets of candles and bronze and rosemaries and Spanish furniture and nostalgia and hatred."--_London Times Literary Supplement_
"The revolution is reflected in the crumbling of the great feudal hacienda system and the beginning of democracy... a warmly human novel."--_Kansas City Times_
"A novel of exploitation and retribution."--_London Free Press_
"A capably written novel about an exciting land and an exciting era."--_Los Angeles Mirror News_
"An intense struggle heightened by personal involvement, written with understanding."--_Los Angeles Examiner_
"A beautifully atmospheric tale with a punch."--_Washington Post_
"Bartlett has pinpointed the struggle between the old order and new--between father and son."--_The Atlanta Journal_
"One of the high-ranking novels of the year."--Worchester Telegram
"A dramatic, well-written symbol of transition."--_San Jose Mercury_
"Achieves a totality of effect that reminds one of Poe."--_Wichita Falls Times_
"If you like to feel the exotic made factual, here it is."--_Saskatchewan Star-Phoenix_
"A lively and richly picturesque chronicle of a Mexico that was."--_Chicago Sun-Times_
"A book of substance and depth--beautifully, poetically written.--_Moberly Monitor-Index_
"A skillfully written novel, interwoven with color and excitement."--_New Bedford Standard Times_
"A suspenseful story."--_The Diplomat_
"A story of change, love, violence, and corruption that moves fast."--_Sacramento Bee_
"A penetrating novel, with wonderful scenes and rich understanding."--_Long Beach Press Telegram_
"Filled with impressive details of landscape and Mexican life, all presented with an artist's eye."--_Richmond News Leader_
PUBLISHED BOOKS BY PAUL ALEXANDER BARTLETT
NOVELS
_VOICES FROM THE PAST--A Quintet of Novels_, consisting of
* _Sappho's Journal_ * _Christ's Journal_ * _Leonardo da Vinci's Journal_ * _Shakespeare's Journal_ * _Lincoln's Journal_
_When the Owl Cries_
_Adiós Mi México_
_Forward, Children!_
POETRY
_Wherehill_
_Spokes for Memory_
NONFICTION
_The Haciendas of Mexico: An Artist's Record_
THE AUTHOR
Paul Alexander Bartlett was a writer and artist, born in Moberly, Missouri, and educated at Oberlin College, the University of Arizona, the Academia de San Carlos in Mexico City, and the Instituto de Bellas Artes in Guadalajara. His work can be divided into three categories: He is the author of many novels, short stories, and poems; second, as a fine artist, his drawings, illustrations, and paintings have been exhibited in more than 40 one-man shows in leading galleries, including the Los Angeles County Museum, the Atlanta Art Museum, the Bancroft Library, the Richmond Art Institute, the Brooks Museum, the Instituto-Mexicano-Norteamericano in Mexico City, and many other galleries; and, third, he devoted much of his life to the most comprehensive study of the haciendas of Mexico that has been undertaken.
350 of his pen-and-ink illustrations of the haciendas and more than 1,000 hacienda photographs make up the Paul Alexander Bartlett Collection held by the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection of the University of Texas, and form part of a second diversified collection held by the American Heritage Center of the University of Wyoming, which also includes an archive of Bartlett's literary work, fine art, and letters. A third archive consisting primarily of Bartlett's literary work is held by the Department of Special Collections at UCLA.
Paul Alexander Bartlett's fiction has been commended by many authors, among them Pearl Buck, Ford Madox Ford, John Dos Passos, James Michener, Upton Sinclair, Evelyn Eaton, and many others. He was the recipient of many grants, awards, and fellowships, from such organizations as the Leopold Schepp Foundation, the Edward MacDowell Association, the New School for Social Research, the Huntington Hartford Foundation, the Montalvo Foundation, Yaddo, and the Carnegie Foundation.
His wife, Elizabeth Bartlett, a widely published and internationally commended poet, is the author of seventeen published books of poetry, numerous poems, short stories, and essays in leading literary quarterlies and anthologies, and, as the founder of Literary Olympics, Inc., is the editor of a series of multi-language volumes of international poetry that honor the work of outstanding contemporary poets.
Their only child (me) inherited their writer's gene and has published a number of books and articles in the fields of philosophy and psychology.
. . .
See the following page for the map of the Hacienda de Petaca, where _When the Owl Cries_ takes place.
When the Owl Cries
1
A tattered mass of yellow cloud hung over the great Mexican volcano. Above the broad lagoon, between the volcano and the hacienda house, a flock of herons flew lazily, carrying their white with consummate ease. Their wings took them in a low line above the water. The surface wore a yellowish cast--like weathered lichen, wrinkled along the shores. Some of this yellowish cast spattered the upper slopes of the 14,000-foot peak, where badly eroded lava sides creased to form a cone.
Raul Medina noticed the odd colors as he sat in his garden. He stared at herons and lagoon and volcano and frowned. He was dressed in a gray suit, a short, well built man with a scrubby head of brown hair and eyebrows like twisted cigarette tobacco, his eyes dark brown spoked with gray, his mouth thin but kindly, his face a little meaty for a man in his middle thirties who had lived an outdoor life. As he gazed toward the Colima volcano he rubbed his strong, fibrous hands together. His mind went back in time: he remembered that the curious lagoon and mountain colors had appeared when he was nineteen or twenty; in those days, the cone had blasted open and thrown flames and lava and doused the area with cinders and ashes and shaken down walls.
Raul's thoughts switched to everyday problems. Yesterday a milch cow had died, the poultry had gotten out of their pen, a mule had ripped a tendon on a stone fence, a cowboy lay seriously ill. Manuel Boaz, Raul's personal servant, had come to him after supper, as he sat on the veranda with others, and whispered that the night before an owl had hooted on the roof of the house.
"We haven't heard it for a long time, Don Raul. Someone will die. Your father has been getting worse ... perhaps his time has come. It's not a good sign."
Raul had laughed at him, and waved him away--watched his cigarette disappear in the dark.
The moon was rising above the lagoon; the last streaks in the sunset sky had gone; Raul got up and leaned on top the rough adobe wall surrounding his garden. The granular adobes, still warm after the long sunny day, felt good to his arms. It seemed to Raul that Lucienne von Humboldt was beside him, that they were looking at the moonlight. He felt her kiss on his cheek. They had loved each other a long time, maybe since childhood. It had been weeks since they had seen each other; he tried to plan their next meeting. Cool fingers touched his arm, and he glanced up to see his wife.
"What are you doing here?" Angelina asked, in her husky voice.
"Just watching the moon," he said, wishing she would remove her hand.
Standing beside him, she was just a bit shorter than he, willowy, almost frail. She had what Mexican aristocrats called a "French face," though she was as Mexican as Raul. Her features were tight-skinned features, molded and balanced. Her eyes were blue. She wore her black hair braided in an elaborate bun at the back of her head.
"Whenever you come out into the garden by yourself I know you're troubled. Why, you slipped away from supper before all of us finished. What's wrong?" She was obviously displeased.
"Look at that moon," he said, his mind still on Lucienne.
"A three-quarter moon," she said. "We've seen it before ... I like the way the light trails over the water."
"The lagoon was yellow, even after the sun had set. So was the cone," he said.
"I can tell by your voice that you're worried," she said.
"I suppose I am," he admitted, thinking of the hacienda.
"What is it, then?"
"The usual problems." Then he realized how much more weighed on him, and said, speaking tersely: "It's the way things are headed. Time is bursting around us. I feel things are going badly; it's the people, our hacienda people; I detect undercurrents; it's something hard to describe. Petaca means so much to me, the lagoon, the horses, cattle, the house ... I feel undermined." His words rushed out of him.
"Nothing is so wrong we can't remedy it," she said, annoyed.
"But that's not true, Angelina," he said, his voice cutting across hers. "Petaca can't go on as it has in the past. You must understand. It's more than a conflict with my father and his ideas." His tongue slowed down. "He lies in his room, arm and leg useless. He has always hated the peasants; they've never been his workers--only chattel. My idea of improving their lot is a joke to him. And now there's increasing disapproval at other haciendas; men are sick of the way they have been managed; they want to breathe ... it's freedom they're after."
"Don't be worried, Raul. Perhaps the craving for freedom is not so widespread as you think."
Raul sighed. Angelina never grasped hacienda problems; she cared little at heart about any serious matters. Something seemed to shut her off. She had never loved Petaca, never known what it was to feel the bite of wind, the power of seeds sprouting, the rasp of the mill wheel, or the breadth of sky.
Somewhere in the garden a mockingbird burst into song, evoking its Toltec past. The outburst lasted half a minute and then the lowing of cattle followed and then silence settled over the place. Raul drew away from the wall and at Angelina's suggestion they walked together, following a path to the upper terrace. Leaves glistened in the moonlight. A frog chugged into the nearby swimming pool. The path led under a rose arbor, to a sandstone figure of Christ, a seventeenth century carving, carefully, deeply chiseled, suspended on a huge granite block twisted with stone leaves. The cross marked a curve in the path where ribs of light pushed at vine shadows, and sliced the upper part of the life-sized figure, making the calm face seem awake.
Angelina crossed herself before the statue.
As they walked, Raul noticed her profile, appreciating its perfection; for a moment, it was as if he were strolling with her years before, a few days after their wedding. She had worn another simple white dress then. Those June days had been free of emotional conflict, threat of trouble, and hatred of father for son. Or so it seemed now, looking back.
"It's nice that Caterina's feeling better," Angelina said.
"Yes, it is nice," Raul said, hoping their daughter would continue to improve.
"I still wonder what made her so ill in Guadalajara. I think I did the right thing to bring her here; goodness knows she wanted to come. It takes so much care to bring a child around," she said with peculiar warmth.
"It's a month till school starts; she'll be fine by then," Raul said.
"Of course she will," Angelina agreed. It seemed to her that without their two children she would have fled years before to any city, any place where there were people, theaters, entertainment. Here, at the hacienda, children were the best of life. She had wanted more, until Lucienne had changed her mind. She tried to shake Lucienne from her thoughts--the beautiful auburn hair and smiling face.
She felt the loneliness of this garden and its volcanic shadow. A gleam of the broad lagoon--moon whitened--chilled her. Guadalajara had companionship to offer, relatives, friends, lights in shop windows, lights in homes, pretty parks.
"Is Chico better?" she asked, righting for a better mood.
"Yes, his leg's better. He'll be all right."
Though Chico was his favorite horse, she said, in spite of herself: "I wish he had broken his leg."
He laughed, thinking of the fine palomino he had raised with such care.
"You'll have to try him someday," he said.
"Someday he'll throw you and cripple you. There never was a crazier three-year-old."
They strolled along the farthest side of the garden, under young jacaranda trees; the wind had shaken blossoms onto the path and some of them popped as they stepped on them, making a soft, damp sound. In the moonlight, the mauve flowers on the trees were white or gray or faintly blue.
The main façade of the hacienda showed here, the house almost centering a walled enclosure that had turrets at the four corners. Walls and house were of cut stone, stuccoed white. The house was a simple rectangle with six veranda arches on the ground floor and the same number on the upper floor. The chapel--with a blue and white zigzagged tiled dome--had been built into one side of the residence, and its short spire prodded the cool sky. Moonlight softened the block-like severity of the old building. A sweep of trees set off the place, and behind the trees, dusty gray, rose a mountain range, low and rounded. Columnar cypress plunged out of the main patio and looked about stiffly. There were twenty rooms and two patios in the hacienda, and the cypress were the stage props for the drama that had occurred there for almost three hundred years.
A breeze shook the trees and they bent and swayed about the house; panicles of fresh palm blossoms rustled. A chill nipped the walkers in the garden, as cool air swung down from the volcanic heights.