They are young men now.
One died.
Oh, well, the other said gently, in a Christian country. He took a gulp of his brandy and smiled at Mr. Tench rather foolishly.
Yes, I suppose so, Mr. Tench said with surprise. He got rid of his phlegm and said: It doesn't seem to me, of course, to matter much. He fell silent, his thoughts ambling away; his mouth fell open, he looked grey and vacant, until he was recalled by a pain in the stomach and helped himself to some more brandy. Let me see. What was it we were talking about? The kids ... oh, yes, the kids. It's funny what a man remembers. You know, I can remember that watering-can better than I can remember the kids. It cost three and elevenpence three farthings, green; I could lead you to the shop where I bought it. But as for the kids -he brooded over his glass into the past-I can't remember much else but them crying.
Do you get news?
Oh, I gave up writing before I came here. What was the use? I couldn't send any money. It wouldn't surprise me if the wife had married again. Her mother would like it-the old sour bitch: she never cared for me.
The stranger said in a low voice: It is awful.
Mr. Tench examined his companion again with surprise. He sat there like a black question mark, ready to go, ready to stay, poised on his chair. He looked disreputable in his grey three days' beard, and weak: somebody you could command to do anything. He said: I mean the world. The way things happen.
[11] You drink up your brandy.
He sipped at it. It was like an indulgence. He said: You remember this place before-before the Red Shirts came?
I suppose I do.
How happy it was then.
Was it? I didn't notice.
They had at any rate-God.
There's no difference in the teeth, Mr. Tench said. He gave himself some more of the stranger's brandy. It was always an awful place. Lonely. My God. People at home would have said romance. I thought: five years here, and then I'll go. There was plenty of work. Gold teeth. But then the peso dropped. And now I can't get out. One day I will. He said: I'll retire. Go home. Live as a gentleman ought to live. This he gestured at the bare base room- I'll forget all this. Oh, it won't be long now. I'm an optimist, Mr. Tench said.
The stranger said suddenly: How long will she take to Vera Cruz?
Who?
The boat.
Mr. Tench said gloomily: Forty hours from now and we'd be there. The Diligencia. A good hotel. Dance places too. A gay town.
It makes it seem close, the stranger said. And a ticket, how much would that be?
You'd have to ask Lopez, Mr. Tench said. He's the agent.
But Lopez ...
Oh, yes, I forgot. They shot him.
Somebody knocked on the door. The stranger slipped the attaché case under his chair, and Mr. Tench went cautiously up towards the window. Can't be too careful, he said. Any dentist who's worth the name has enemies.
A faint voice implored them: A friend, and Mr. Tench opened up. Immediately the sun came in like a white-hot bar.
A child stood in the doorway asking for a doctor. He wore a big hat and had stupid brown eyes. Beyond him two mules stamped and whistled on the hot beaten road. Mr. Tench said he was not a doctor: he was a dentist. Looking round he saw the stranger crouched in the rocking-chair, gazing with an effect of prayer, entreaty. ... The child said there was a new doctor [12] in town: the old one had fever and wouldn't stir. It was his mother who was sick.
A vague memory stirred in Mr. Tench's brain. He said with an air of discovery: Why, you're a doctor, aren't you?
No, no. I've got to catch that boat.
I thought you said ...
I've changed my mind.
Oh, well, it won't leave for hours yet, Mr. Tench said. They're never on time. He asked the child how far. The child said it was six leagues away.
Too far, Mr. Tench said. Go away. Find someone else. He said to the stranger: How things get around. Everyone must know you are in town.
I could do no good, the stranger said anxiously: he seemed to be asking Mr. Tench's opinion, humbly.
Go away, Mr. Tench said. The child did not stir. He stood in the hard sunlight looking in with infinite patience. He said his mother was dying. The brown eyes expressed no emotion: it was a fact. You were born, your parents died, you grew old, you died yourself.
If she's dying, Mr. Tench said, there's no point in a doctor seeing her.
But the stranger had got up: unwillingly he had been summoned to an occasion he couldn't pass by. He said sadly: It always seems to happen. Like this.
You'll have a job not to miss the boat.
I shall miss it, he said. I am meant to miss it. He was shaken by a tiny rage. Give me my brandy. He took a long pull at it, with his eyes on the impassive child, the baked street, the buzzards moving in the sky like indigestion spots.
But if she's dying ... Mr. Tench said.
I know these people. She will be no more dying than I am.
You can do no good.
The child watched them as if he didn't care. The argument in a foreign language going on in there was something abstract: he wasn't concerned. He would just wait here till the doctor came.
You know nothing, the stranger said fiercely. That is what everyone all the time says-you do no good. The brandy [13] had affected him. He said with monstrous bitterness: I can hear them saying it all over the world.
Anyway, Mr. Tench said, there'll be another boat. In a fortnight. Or three weeks. You are lucky. You can get out. You haven't got your capital here. He thought of his capitaclass="underline" the Japanese drill, the dentist's chair, the spirit-lamp and the pliers and the little oven for the gold fillings: a stake in the country.
Vamos, the man said to the child. He turned back to Mr. Tench and told him that he was grateful for the rest out of the sun. He had the kind of dwarfed dignity Mr. Tench was accustomed to-the dignity of people afraid of a little pain and yet sitting down with some firmness in his chair. Perhaps he didn't care for mule travel. He said with an effect of old-fashioned ways: I will pray for you.
You were welcome, Mr. Tench said. The man got up onto the mule, and the child led the way, very slowly under the bright glare, towards the swamp, the interior. It was from there the man had emerged this morning to take a look at the General Obregon: now he was going back. He swayed very slightly in his saddle from the effect of the brandy. He became a minute disappointed figure at the end of the street.
It had been good to talk to a stranger, Mr. Tench thought, going back into his room, locking the door behind him (one never knew). Loneliness faced him there, vacancy. But he was as accustomed to both as to his own face in the glass. He sat down in the rocking-chair and moved up and down, creating a faint breeze in the heavy air. A narrow column of ants moved across the room to the little patch on the floor where the stranger had spilt some brandy: they milled in it, then moved on in an orderly line to the opposite wall and disappeared. Down in the river the General Obregon whistled twice, he didn't know why.
The stranger had left his book behind. It lay under his rocking-chair: a woman in Edwardian dress crouched sobbing upon a rug embracing a man's brown polished pointed shoes. He stood above her disdainfully with a little waxed moustache. The book was called La Eterna Martyr. After a time Mr. Tench picked it up. When he opened it he was taken aback-what was printed inside didn't seem to belong; it was Latin. Mr. [14] Tench grew thoughtfuclass="underline" he picked the book up and carried it into his workroom. You couldn't burn a book, but it might be as well to hide it if you were not sure--sure, that is, of what it was all about. He put it inside the little oven for gold alloy. Then he stood by the carpenter's bench, his mouth hanging open: he had remembered what had taken him to the quay-the ether cylinder which should have come down-river in the General Obregon. Again the whistle blew from the river, and Mr. Tench ran without his hat into the sun. He had said the boat would not go before morning, but you could never trust those people not to keep to time-table, and sure enough, when he came out onto the bank between the customs and the warehouse, the General Obregon was already ten feet off in the sluggish river, making for the sea. He bellowed after it, but it wasn't any good: there was no sign of a cylinder anywhere on the quay. He shouted once again, and then didn't trouble any more. It didn't matter so much after alclass="underline" a little additional pain was hardly noticeable in the huge abandonment.