Vera stared; the pulse of her heart throbbed in her swollen temple.
“I didn’t see it,” Luz said in her dry calm voice. “I was back in the crowd with Southwind. Andre was up front with Lev and Elia, he saw it and told me. It was after Macmilan shot Lev. Before any of us knew what was happening. Macmilan’s men were just beginning to shoot at us. My father took a gun out of one of the men’s hands and used it like a club. He didn’t shoot it, Andre said. I suppose it was hard to tell, after the fighting there, and people trampling back and forth over them, but Andre said they thought the blow must have killed Macmilan. Anyway he was dead when they came back.”
“I saw it too,” Elia said, thickly. “It was—I suppose it was what—what kept some of the City men from shooting, they were confused—”
“No order was ever given,” Luz said. “So there was time for the marchers to rush in on them. Andre thinks that if my father hadn’t turned on Macmilan, there would have been no fighting at all. Just them shooting and the marchers running.”
“And no betrayal of our principles,” said Southwind, clearly and steadily. “Perhaps, if we hadn’t rushed forward, the City men wouldn’t have fired in self-defense.”
“And only Lev would have been killed?” Luz said, equally clearly. “But Macmilan would have ordered them all to fire, Southwind. He’d started it. If the marchers had run away sooner, yes, maybe fewer would have been shot. And no City men beaten to death. Your principles would be all right. But Lev would still be dead. And Macmilan would be alive.”
Elia was looking at her with an expression she had not seen before; she did not know what it meant—detestation, perhaps, or fear.
“Why,” Vera said in a pitiful dry whisper.
“I don’t know!” Luz said, and because it was such a relief to be saying these things, talking about them, instead of hiding them and saying everything was all right, she actually laughed. “Do I understand what my father does, what he thinks, what he is? Maybe he went insane. That’s what old Marquez told Andre, last week. I know if I’d been where he was, I would have killed Macmilan too. But that doesn’t explain why he did it. There is no explanation. It’s easiest to say he was insane. You see, that’s what’s wrong with your ideas, Southwind, you people. They’re all true, all right and true, violence gains nothing, killing wins nothing—only sometimes nothing is what people want. Death is what they want. And they get it.”
There was a silence.
“Councillor Falco saw the folly of Macmilan’s act,” Elia said. “He was trying to prevent—”
“No,” Luz said, “he wasn’t. He wasn’t trying to prevent more shooting, more killing, and he wasn’t on your side. Don’t you have anything in your head but reason, Senhor Elia? My father killed Macmilan for the same ‘reason’ that Lev stood up there facing the men with guns and defying them and got killed. Because he was a man, that’s what men do. The reasons come afterward.”
Elia’s hands were clenched; his face was pale, so that his blue eyes stood out unnaturally bright. He looked straight at Luz and said, gently enough, “Why do you stay here, Luz Marina?”
“Where else should I go?” she asked, almost jeering.
“To your father.”
“Yes, that’s what women do … .”
“He is in distress, in disgrace; he needs you.”
“And you don’t.”
“Yes, we do,” Vera said, with desperation. “Elia, are you insane too? Are you trying to drive her out?”
“It was because of her—If she hadn’t come here, Lev—It was her fault—” Elia was in the grip of emotion he could not master, his voice going high, his eyes wide. “It was her fault!”
“What are you saying?” Vera whispered, and Southwind, fiercely, “It was not! None of it!”
Luz said nothing.
Elia, shaking, put his hands over his face. No one said anything for a long time.
“I’m sorry,” he said, looking up. His eyes were dry and bright, his mouth worked strangely as he spoke. “Forgive me, Luz Marina. There was no meaning in what I said. You came to us, you’re welcome here among us. I get—I get very tired, trying to see what ought to be done, what’s right—it’s hard to see what’s right—”
The three women were silent.
“I compromise, yes, I compromise with Marquez, what else can I do? Then you say, Elia is betraying our ideals, selling us into permanent bondage to the City, losing all we struggled for. What do you want, then? More deaths? You want another confrontation, you want to see the People of the Peace being shot again, fighting, beating—beating men to death again —we who—who believe in peace, in nonviolence—” “Nobody is saying that of you, Elia,” Vera said.
“We have to go slowly. We must be reasonable. We can’t do it all at once, rashly, violently. It’s not easy—not easy!”
“No,” Vera said. “It’s not easy.”
“We came from all over the world,” the old man said. “From great cities and from little villages, the people came. When the March began in the City of Moskva there were four thousand, and when they reached the edge of the place called Russia already there were seven thousand. And they walked across the great place called Europe, and always hundreds and hundreds of people joined the March, families and single souls, young and old. They came from towns nearby, they came from great lands far away over the oceans, India, Africa. They all brought what they could bring of food and precious money to buy food, for so many marchers always needed food. The people of the towns stood along the side of the road to watch the marchers pass, and sometimes children ran out with presents of food or precious money. The armies of the great countries stood along the roadside too, and watched, and protected the marchers, and made sure they did no damage to the fields and trees and towns, by being so many. And the marchers sang, and sometimes the armies sang with them, and sometimes the men of the armies threw away their guns and joined the March in the darkness of the night. They walked, they walked. At night they camped and it was like a great town growing up all at once in the open fields, all the people. They walked, they walked, they walked, across the fields of France and across the fields of Germany and across the high mountains of Spain, weeks they walked and months they walked, singing the songs of peace, and so they came at last, ten thousand strong, to the end of the land and the beginning of the sea, to the City Lisboa, where the ships had been promised them. And there the ships lay in harbor.
“So that was the Long March. But it wasn’t over, the journey! They went into the ships, to sail to the Free Land, where they would be welcomed. But there were too many of them now. The ships would hold only two thousand, and their numbers had grown and grown as they marched, there were ten thousand of them now. What were they to do? They crowded, they crowded; they built more beds, they crowded ten to a room of the great ships, a room that was meant to hold two. The ships’ masters said, Stop, you can’t crowd the ships any more, there isn’t enough water for the long voyage, you can’t all come aboard the ships. So they bought boats, fishing boats, boats with sails and with engines; and people, grand rich people, with boats of their own, came and said, Use my boat, I’ll take fifty souls to the Free Land. Fishermen came from the city called England and said, Use my boat, I’ll take fifty souls. Some were afraid of the small boats, to cross so great a sea; some went back home then, and left the Long March. But always new people came to join them, so their numbers grew. And so at last they all sailed from the harbor of Lisboa, and music played and there were ribbons in the wind and all the people in the great ships and the little boats sailed out together singing.
“They couldn’t stay together on the sea. The ships were fast, the boats were slow. In eight days the big ships sailed into the harbor of Montral, in the land of Canamerica. The other boats came after, strung out all across the ocean, some days behind, some weeks behind. My parents were on one of the boats, a beautiful white boat named Anita, that a noble lady had lent to the People of the Peace so that they could come to the Free Land. There were forty on that boat. Those were good days, my mother said. The weather was good and they sat on the deck in the sun and planned how they would build the City of Peace in the land they had been promised, the land between the mountains, in the northern part of Canamerica.