Part 12

Breaking open a crisp roll, he studied her and considered the problem. He had descended the mine's moldy ladders. He had checked the ore, had had it assayed, had estimated the output. Few mines had less to offer, for both gold and silver ran low. The copper percentage might pay, but no copper smelter existed in Guanajuato.

"I hope I can help. I'll send Señor Rul around to check for you. Maybe it's a case of mismanagement."

"I trust my man.... He can't produce ore if there isn't any ore."

"Let's not let it worry us, Lucienne."

"I hear that the peons are quitting, are in revolt," she said, when they were alone in the dining room. "My people whisper. I pick up remarks."

"What do you hear? Is it about Palma Sola?"

"Other haciendas ... threats, anger, disobedience. It's as you've said: they're turning against us. I'm afraid."

"There won't be trouble here," he said. "Father has so many enemies, we'll have trouble at Petaca, if it comes anywhere. Three-quarters of our land was Indian property years ago."

"So was mine," she said.

"If the peasants revolt, we must give in or fight. We have no choice."

"Not a pleasant prospect," she said.

"It hasn't been pleasant, sweating it out in the mines, sweating it out in the sugar-cane fields, up at dawn, down at dark, always in debt...." He reached for his pipe but did not fill it.

"I don't defend myself against father's accusation of political idealism, weakness, call it whatever you want. I'm groping. But I can see how the people suffer ... in almost every hacienda. Díaz wasn't right for us!"

"I hear of your changes at Petaca. People are amazed at what you've accomplished."

"I like to help. I feed my people. If they're sick they get care. I let them go to Colima to buy things. I've canceled debts in the tienda de raya books. I talk over problems. Many places could do that ... but we have so much to live down at Petaca. I'm glad there never were beatings and killings here."

When he returned to Petaca he found a letter from Angelina, gay and trivial. It heartened him until he reached the final paragraph: "I think Mona is really my dog, not Lucienne's. I think she won't always stay at Palma Sola but will come to me, changing so prettily, her glass bones shining...."

What did Angelina mean. "Glass bones shining?"

In his easy chair, in the living room, he reread her letter; the last paragraph continued to bewilder him. He thought of showing the letter to Gabriel, but dismissed the idea and crumpled the sheet and tossed it into the fireplace. Holding out his hands to the blaze, he leaned his elbows on his knees. He did not need a confidant but needed to be alone. Wind puffed across the house, making a wintry sound. Raul felt disappointed when Father Gabriel appeared, rolling Fernando in his wheelchair.

_Glass bones shining_, Raul thought, seeing that his father was mere bones, sunken eyes, perhaps accented by his new glasses. Fernando stretched out his bony fingers toward the fire and sighed.

"The cold spell will help the corn," he said, his voice thin.

Raul could think of nothing to say.

"Nothing like a fireplace," said Gabriel, sitting down; he was tired, still fighting off his malaria; he, too, was hunting for thoughts. "Raul, I see you've had the Swiss clock repaired. I've always liked it."

"I brought it back from the jeweler's last week," Raul said.

All three eyed the clock on the mantel, a white marble clock veined with black, thin and tall.

"Humph ... you had your clock repaired, what of it?" Fernando said.

Raul and Gabriel waited, ill at ease.

"Time is for getting; get what you can before it gets you. You don't find it on a dial." With his good hand, he pushed angrily at the arm of his chair; each man heard the tick of the marble clock.

"While you were away last week," said Fernando, "I sold the horses in Sector 9." The Clarín stared at Raul maliciously. "Señor Filar paid me sixty pesos per head. We've never done better. I stopped the corn planting in 21.... That sector must be kept for pasture." He beat the side of his chair. "Sitting right here, I can manage Petaca. My people understand me." His voice shrilled, broke.

Raul walked over to the piano. Someone had placed Caterina's picture there, and her face comforted him.

"'A house divided against itself...'" Gabriel began.

"God, don't spout at me!" cried Fernando. "Have some sense. Life is cruel."

"Life is what we make of it," said Gabriel, very gently.

Raul accepted the truism, knowing it was one thing in his father's mind, another in Gabriel's, and another in his own. He tried to remain silent.

"I don't like the bronze figure you had put on Caterina's grave," Fernando objected.

"I haven't seen it yet," said Raul.

"You're ostentatious," said Fernando.

"It was done out of love," said Raul, moving close to the front windows where he could see the forecourt.

With a jolt, Fernando remembered his love for Caterina, remembered the child reading to him, feeding him, remembered his old, old longings for affection. His fear of death came again; he floundered, hoping he might touch something kind before the end.

"Yes ... yes, I'm sure ... it was love," he admitted.

"What did you say?" Raul asked.

"It was love ... not ostentation. But I would have put something else on her grave ... not a statue of a girl."

"What would that have been?" asked Gabriel, curious at this about-face.

"An animal, a frog, a bird ... I think I would have put a bird there."

"I thought of putting her sundial there, her noonday cannon," said Raul.

"Get me a cigarette," said Fernando, to Gabriel.

"I'll light one for you," said Gabriel.

The ticking of the clock came into being again.

Fernando's thoughts faded backward into time: he heard his father speak. His head throbbed. Everything had grown indistinct. What was the purpose of death? Was death talking to someone who never listened? Was death shoving something inside something already black?

"I want to go to bed," Fernando said. "Push me. Help me to bed, Gabriel."

Raul tried to say good night but could not utter a word and neither could Fernando. A rubber tire on the wheel chair squeaked; the wind and the clock continued. His feet toward the fire, he thought of Lucienne and their mountain trip; then he got up and got his jacket and went outside, the wind whipping his hair. So the little figurine had been placed beside the grave.

He found the statue just as he had hoped it would be, the right size, the right pose. True to the artist's sketches, a young girl carried a bouquet of roses and contemplated them lovingly. The bronze had many lights and shadows. A gust of wind blew Raul's jacket, as he stood there, looking.

Manuel, carrying a large box of sea shells, found him testing the statue's base, for balance and security.

"I like it very much," Raul said.

"It's beautiful," Manuel said, setting down the box. "I had them place it for you. Is it all right?"

"It's just the way I wanted it."

Manuel began laying down shells, one by one, in a design around the base of the figure, white shells, most of them identical in size, about as big as the hand.

Raul found a spade and began leveling behind the statue, where Manuel had not placed his shells.

"Shall I lay them in rows, here?"

"I like them that way, Manuel."

Blackbirds shot past on the wind; a large white butterfly wobbled by, as if injured; on a mound of sand an iguana scratched its way over a vine, its head cocked toward the men.

Spade in hand, Raul stepped to a crooked marker that read Alberto Saenz, in jagged lettering. The musician had died during Raul's Guadalajara trip. Raul missed him now. So there would be no more cedar harp at the fiestas.

Manuel said that his box of shells was empty and that he was going for more.

"I'll go with you," Raul said.

They walked together, and Raul asked, "Was Alberto born at Petaca?"

"Yes. His father was born here too."

"Who'll play the harp for us now?"

"Cipriano."

"Cipriano's only a boy."

"He plays well."

"Do you know who taught him?"

"Alberto," said Manuel.

"How time passes," said Raul.

He and Manuel found cowboys struggling with a bull, outside the main corral, the bull flat in the mud near a watering trough, three lariats on him. While mounted cowboys kept the lariats tight, a veterinarian stuck a hypodermic needle in the animal. The bull bellowed. At a signal, the lariats went limp and the bull struggled to his feet and made off.

The veterinarian, a small man wearing a five-gallon hat, explained the bull's serious condition to Raul, emptying his hypodermic as he talked.

He had been trained in northern France and had ideas and methods of treatment frowned upon by most _hacendados_. Raul welcomed his care, for under his supervision Petaca cattle losses had decreased 20 per cent.

In the dying light the volcano had a greenish mist over it and, with no smoke coming out of the crater, expressed indolence: it said men will dawdle in hammocks and rest on _petates_, that fruit will have time to ripen, that birds will be able to build their nests wherever they want to, that animals will find cool hideouts to escape the summer heat ... nothing will change, only the clouds, the flying things, maybe a fish, nothing more.

Raul understood the lie, and grinned back at the old king.

15

Roberto sat on the veranda at Petaca and sipped a _ron fuerte_, his feet on the railing, a handkerchief in one hand. He felt happy though tired, happy to be showing off his new dark green riding suit and tired because he had already performed his stock of equestrian tricks. It was almost mid-morning and growing hot and humid, a clear, cloudless day.

"Federicka rides better every year," he said to Raul, sitting beside him, drinking, eyes on Federicka as she jumped a barrier.

Baroness Radziwill executed precise jumps on her claybank, her split skirt flapping gayly. For a stout woman she was a fine rider, and her horse carried her weight well, taking each hurdle rhythmically.

Armand Guerrero, her friend, followed on a Cuban horse, sailing over the whitewashed logs, all of them participating in an improvised arena, sodded and graveled for their annual get-together.

"Armand's mare is heavy-footed," Raul said. "Maybe a bit too old."

Count de Selva sat down beside Raul, breathing through a corner of his mouth, an unlighted cigar between his fingers. Dressed in duck, like Raul, his clothes rather creased, he brushed dust off his knees and groaned because of his asthma.

"There used to be quite a showing of us--quite a showing," he said. "I can remember when as many as fifteen of us families turned out.... Say, that Benito does well enough. If he's as good a mayor as he is a horseman, we'll get things done in Colima."

Benito Serrato had a lean black that carried him proudly, ribboned tail switching. Benito, wearing black, tilted his derby as he rode, sitting erect, quirt dangling from his wrist.

The circle in front of the house had become dusty, but a breeze carried the dust away from the veranda, toward the lagoon.

"How many families are here today?" asked the count.

"Um, several ... four or five ... I hope others will come," said Raul.

Federicka Kolb wore red. Her cousin, Eloise Martini, rode a gray which she had matched with a finely tailored outfit. The pair rode side by side, laughing as their mounts cleared the hurdles gracefully.

Roberto jiggled the ice in his glass. "It's getting too muggy to ride--or I'm getting too fat," he said, and patted his paunch. "Nothing like beautiful women on beautiful horses to rest the eyes."

Raul had a horse, known locally as a good jumper, and he put the mare over the hurdles, enjoying her leaps, thinking her so much steadier than Chico. Her great yellow mane, tied with white ribbons, flared at every jump.

Vicente tagged behind.

"How are you coming, boy?" Raul called, as his son curbed his range pony.

"Some people have come to see you, Papa. See, Captain Cerro and his horsemen ... a lot of rurales. I guess you'll have to speak to them."

Raul slipped from his saddle to shake hands with the arrivals. Cerro had brought a number of his best men. Could they ride? Perhaps it wasn't customary, but they would appreciate it very much. Dr. Velasco and Dr. Hernández had also come. Then, to his astonishment and delight, he saw Lucienne.

Bareheaded, she stood in the midst of them, proud, one glove removed. She seemed on the verge of running off and couldn't find much to say beyond civilities. When she got Raul alone she criticized herself for coming, for riding a white horse, for wearing white. She felt her hair falling about her neck and shoved it up underneath her beret.

"Lucienne, have a drink on the veranda with us," said Raul.

Roberto took her arm and hugged her.

"Lucienne ... something cool. Will you ride with us?"

Angered, she drew away, and said: "I wouldn't have come if something terrible hadn't happened yesterday. You know"--she paused to swallow--"they broke into the hacienda Refugio and killed the priest and killed Francisco Goya and his sons."

"Who?" asked Roberto.

"Armed men--I don't know."

"Who told you this?" said Raul.

"Jesús Peza. He told me. He was there, doctoring someone. He got away," said Lucienne. "He's back in Colima."

"My God!" exclaimed Roberto.

"How far is Refugio from here?" Raul asked. "What's the shortest way, Velasco?"

"Forty miles or more," said Velasco.

"Maybe fifty," said de Selva.

"What can we do to help?" asked Gabriel.

"I'm sending men immediately," said Raul. "Gabriel, look after Lucienne. I'll be back shortly."

"Hello, Lucienne, what seems to be wrong?" asked the Baroness, curious that she had come to Petaca, aware of some kind of excitement.

Lucienne explained briefly and sat down with Gabriel on the veranda, out of the sun. Removing her glove, she said: "I'd like a drink. Would someone get me a drink?"

Others had crowded round her and she had to repeat in detail the Refugio tragedy.

Father Gabriel put a drink in her hands.

"There, my dear."

"Thank you.... No, I didn't ride here alone.... No, Francisco wasn't disliked at the hacienda ... but of course...."

"Who knows what was behind the killings?" said the Baroness, in a harsh voice.

"We're all in grave danger," said de Selva.

"You can rely on us to help," said Cerro, behind Lucienne. "I'll inform General Matanzas."

"Yes, yes, do that," the Baroness said.

"Díaz has gone ... that's the reason for this situation," said Roberto, his calm words peculiarly distracting.

"If he hadn't left us ... if he had chosen a successor, there would be no rebellion," said Armand Guerrero.

"No, no ... it's revolution," said de Selva.

"We must protect ourselves," said someone.

"How do you fight hate?" asked Lucienne.

"With hate," said de Selva. "I've been telling you. It's coming. It's here now. The new priest at Refugio is dead. Francisco Goya and his sons are dead. What more do you need to hear?"

Federicka Kolb and her cousin overheard de Selva, and Federicka began to sob, for she had known the Goyas for years.

"Why ... why?" she asked.

"The men who killed them cried _Down with the haciendas!_" said Lucienne.

Raul returned and said: "I have sent men to Refugio. I'll go there later myself."

Felipe Meson, an _hacendado_, in his fifties, sturdy, gray-headed, sunburned, with the face of a crippled hawk, gestured toward Raul.

"You're making a mistake at Petaca," he exclaimed. "You can't pacify the peons. You can't trust them. They'll kill you now."

"I haven't tried to pacify them," Raul explained. "I've tried to help them."

Everyone was crowded on the veranda, with servants going about, serving drinks and putting ice in glasses.

"How can one man help at such a time as this?" asked the Countess.

"I simply want to look after my people when they're sick, see to it they have enough to eat, stop floggings and killings. Could Matanzas know about Refugio?" Raul asked Captain Cerro.

"I'll see, when I ride back. We'll be leaving shortly," said Cerro.

"You'd better supply us with escorts," said de Selva.

Lucienne finished her drink, stood up, and arranged her hair and beret; pulling on a glove, she said: "Raul, you must take care of Petaca. It's walled and you can post guards."

Raul did not reply: a question began in his brain: What about Palma Sola, wholly unprotected? What about de Selva's place, the Radziwill hacienda, the Meson house?

Shortly, luncheon was served in the garden, and they tried to talk of other things. Nothing seemed to go right, however; some of the food was missing, some of the drinks. The servants were confused and whispered among themselves. De Selva talked of fleeing to Mexico City, where he owned a house. "You should have had a town house, Raul." The Baroness mistrusted almost everyone at her hacienda, yet could not make up her mind to desert her property. Roberto and Dr. Velasco drank together. Lucienne, Gabriel and Raul ate at a small table under a chinaberry tree.

One by one, the families drove away, Raul seeing them off. The Count, coughing badly, leaned from his carriage window and told Raul how to defend Petaca. Roberto rode off on a magnificent black he had borrowed from a Colima friend.

Already mounted, Lucienne called goodbye: "I'll be with some of Captain Cerro's men. Be careful when you go to Refugio."

"I'll be careful. Will you stay in Colima until I can send men to help at Palma Sola?"

"Yes--Federicka has asked me to stay with her."

"Right. Stay with her. I'll see you there."

"All right, Raul."

Lucienne's horse backed away, swung around, and she waved.

Raul sent Vicente back to his Colima school in the rurales' care.

He did not get to go to Refugio, for that night Angelina returned on the train--her carriage rolled up to the house, accompanied by a guard of rurales. Greeting her calmly, Raul discovered that she was also calm, calm in an indrawn way, as if pain sucked at her, chilled her from deep within. Something dead shadowed her face. Something dead underlined her voice. She said she was ill, but this was more than the fatigue of travel. No one had told her about Refugio; that was easy to determine. She clung to his arm and asked him to have a snack with her, and yet she could eat very little. She sipped some brandy, her gaze on window, candles, door, servants, nothing for long.

He planned to tell her about Refugio in the morning, hoping she might sleep an undisturbed sleep. He would break the news as undramatically as possible.... Had something tragic happened to her in Guadalajara? Certainly something had precipitated this long train trip--to the place she hated most.

It was not until Sunday that he learned the reason for her return. She did not confide in him. He found a partly finished letter on her desk; seeing it addressed to María, he read it, hoping for a clue to her state of mind.

Dated Sunday morning, it began:

"Dear María,

"I have come back to Petaca for a while because I have quarreled with Estelle, a bitter, bitter quarrel and all because she says I see a dog following me about. But I didn't, I don't see a dog. Why does she say that, María? I beg you to go and speak to her, for me. She has another friend right now, but surely she will listen to me. I want to make up with Estelle...."

Without reading any further, Raul knew what was happening to her. An icy sensation closed over his brain, a fear for her sanity, a fear he had never experienced before ... a fear tied in with a dog with bones of glass. What could he say to her? What could he do to help her? Gabriel? Velasco? María? Perhaps María could care for her in Guadalajara. He would confide in María. He must get her away from Petaca, as soon as possible. But how? With trains running irregularly.

That Sunday was the longest day in his life. He could not eat. He went about shrouded in anguish. He tried to resolve problems of defense for the house. He tried to talk normally with Manuel, Gabriel, Salvador, Velasco, and Angelina. He tried to hide in his room, tried to hide in the garden. He tried to reinterpret Angelina's letter differently, calling his deduction an error.

That night, after Raul had gone to sleep, Angelina stole downstairs and entered the chapel. Fear gripped her, the same fear that had overtaken her in Guadalajara, at Estelle's, the same night fear. Now, as she hesitated in the chapel, she saw Mona beside her, transparent.

Calling Mona, she went toward the altar: she knew that thieves were stealing the Virgin's jewels. Someone must protect her. Lighting a taper, she hurried to the front of the chapel. The Virgin was intact under her watermelon dome of glass. Her tiny olivewood face smiled serenely, and Angelina felt happy. In the wavering light, the diamonds and rubies sparkled, and Angelina knelt in prayer.

She thanked God for the Virgin's safety and then burst out:

"Oh, Virgin, help me! I have had a terrible quarrel with Estelle. We were so dear to each other. I want so to have at least one friend, someone to love me ... and--and take Mona away from me. Take her away!"

She thought she heard a sharp sound. She gathered her nightgown about her and stood up. Carrying the taper, she rushed toward the door, where she listened, her ear against the wood.

Perhaps Raul had missed her?

Frightened, she thought of going to Vicente's room, seeing his face, touching him. No, he was at school in Colima. She remembered the phantom dog, expecting to see it, and sobbed.

Stealing back into the house, she heard Don Fernando coughing. It sounded as though he were in pain, and so she lit a night lamp and took him a glass of water and held it patiently.

"Thanks. My throat ... gets dry. What time is it?"

"It's night ... sometime in the night."

"Go back to bed," he told her.

"But I can't sleep," she said softly.

He tried to see her, but without his glasses he saw only a white blur.

"I've been awake a long time," he said. "A long time."

"Are you in pain?"

"No. But I keep seeing things," he said.

"What kind of things?" she said.

"People ... faces mostly. People I've known."

"Oh," she said.

"Do you remember Lola Navarro?" he asked.

"No," she said. The darkness of the room, pierced at either end by the window and the door, seemed to tremble as a breeze came through.

"You were just married when Lola lived here with me," he said.

"I remember," she said, half-remembering. It felt good to be able to speak, to say anything at all.

"Do you remember how well she rode?" He paused, the dark room bothering him. "I miss Caterina..." he said, and his coughing started again and she held the glass, making an effort to steady her hand.

Presently, she asked, "Are you asleep?"

"No."

"I thought you'd fallen asleep."

"I wish I could."

"I've had a quarrel with Estelle."

"You shouldn't have brought her here."

"I didn't bring her."

"Women without men are no good," he said.

Back in bed, she fell into a troubled sleep until peacocks and roosters woke her. She dressed and the shrill pot-rack, pot-rack of the guinea hen annoyed her; it seemed to her the most hideous of hacienda noises. Raul got up and dressed rapidly and as he dressed he told her that he and his men must drive three hundred head of cattle to Colima. At breakfast, he still could not tell her about Refugio.

She toyed with her dish of fruit, thinking of Estelle, remembering Guadalajara people.

Such a sad face, he thought.

"Couldn't you and Gabriel do something with some of the children?" he suggested.

"Perhaps we could. I ... I'll talk to Gabriel."

He gulped his food: eggs and bread.

"Bring my coffee," he said to Chavela.

His chewing annoyed her and she wanted to leave the table.

"Why do we change so?" she asked.

"Many things are changing," he said, not following her.