Oh, he's a guest, the sergeant said. He's got to be treated right. You do as he says.
The mestizo smirked. He said: And another bottle of beer, sergeant?
Not yet, the sergeant said. You've got to look round the town first.
The priest picked up the pail and went back across the yard, leaving them arguing. He felt as if a gun were levelled at his back: he went into the excusado and emptied the paiclass="underline" then came out again into the sun-the gun was levelled at his breast. The two men stood in the cell door talking. He walked across the yard: they watched him come. The sergeant said to the mestizo: You say you're bilious and can't see properly this morning. You clean up your own vomit then. If you don't do your job ... Behind the sergeant's back the mestizo gave him a cunning and unreassuring wink. Now that the immediate fear was over, he felt only regret. God had decided. He had to go on with life, go on making decisions, acting on his own advice, making plans. …
It took him another half-hour to finish cleaning the cells, throwing a bucket of water over each floor; he watched the pious woman disappear-as if for ever-through the archway to where her sister waited with the fine: they were both tied up in black shawls like something bought in the market, something hard and dry and second-hand. Then he reported again to the sergeant, who inspected the cells and criticized his work and ordered him to throw more water down, and then suddenly got tired of the whole business and told him he could go to the jefe for permission to leave. So he waited another hour on the bench outside the jefe's door, watching the sentry move lackadaisically to and fro in the hot sun.
And when at last a policeman led him in, it wasn't the jefe who sat at the desk, but the lieutenant. The priest stood not far from his own portrait on the wall and waited. Once he glanced quickly and nervously up at the old scrumpled newspaper cutting and thought with relief: It's not very like me now. What an unbearable creature he must have been in those days-and yet in those days he had been comparatively [131] innocent. That was another mystery: it sometimes seemed to him that venial sins-impatience, an unimportant lie, pride, a neglected opportunity-cut off from grace more completely than the worst sins of all. Then, in his innocence, he had felt no love for anyone: now in his corruption he had learnt ...
Well, the lieutenant said, has he cleaned up the cells? He didn't take his eyes from his papers. He said: Tell the sergeant I want two dozen men with properly cleaned rifles-within two minutes. He looked abstractedly up at the priest and said: Well, what are you waiting for?
For permission, Excellency, to go away.
I am not an excellency. Learn to call things by their right names. He said sharply: Have you been here before?
Never.
Your name is Montez. I seem to come across too many people of that name in these days. Relations of yours? He sat watching him closely, as if memory were beginning to work.
The priest said hurriedly: My cousin was shot at Concepcion.
That was not my fault.
I only meant-we were much alike. Our fathers were twins. Not half an hour between them. I thought your Excellency seemed to think ...
As I remember him, he was quite different. A tall thin man ... narrow shoulders ...
The priest said hurriedly: Perhaps only to the family eye …
But then I only saw him once. It was almost as if the lieutenant had something on his conscience, as he sat with his dark Indian-blooded hands restless on the pages, brooding. ... He said: Where are you going?
God knows.
You are all alike, you people. You never learn the truth-that God knows nothing. Some tiny scrap of life like a grain of smut went racing across the page in front of him: he pressed his finger down on it and said: You had no money for your fine? and watched another smut edge out between the leaves, scurrying for refuge: in this heat there was no end to life.
No.
How will you live?
[132] Some work perhaps ...
You are getting too old for work. He put his hand suddenly in his pocket and pulled out a five-peso piece. There, he said. Get out of here, and don't let me see your face again. Mind that.
The priest held the coin in his fist-the price of a Mass. He said with astonishment: You're a good man.
Chapter Four
IT WAS still very early in the morning when he crossed the river, and came dripping up the other bank. He wouldn't have expected anybody to be about. The bungalow, the tin-roofed shed, the flag-staff: he had an idea that all Englishmen lowered their flags at sunset and sang God Save the King. He came carefully round the comer of the shed and the door gave to his pressure. He was inside in the dark where he had been before: how many weeks ago? He had no idea. He only remembered that then the rains were a long way off: now they were beginning to break. In another week only an aeroplane would be able to cross the mountains.
He felt around him with his foot: he was so hungry that even a few bananas would be better than nothing-he had had no food for two days-but there was none here, none at all. He must have arrived on a day when the crop had gone downriver. He stood just inside the door trying to remember what the child had told him-the Morse code, her window: across the dead-white dusty yard the mosquito wire caught the sun. He was reminded suddenly of an empty larder. He began to listen anxiously: there wasn't a sound anywhere-the day here hadn't yet begun with that first sleepy slap of a shoe on a cement floor, the claws of a dog scratching as it stretched, the knock-knock of a hand on a door. There was just nothing, nothing at all.
What was the time? How many hours of light had there [133] been? It was impossible to telclass="underline" time was elastic: it stretched to snapping-point. Suppose, after all, it was not very early-it might be six, seven. ... He realized how much he had counted on this child. She was the only person who could help him without endangering herself. Unless he got over the mountains in the next few days he was trapped-he might as well hand himself over to the police, because how could he live through the rains with nobody daring to give him food or shelter? It would have been better, quicker, if he had been recognized in the police station a week ago: so much less trouble. Then he heard a sound: it was like hope coming tentatively back: a scratching and a whining: this was what one meant by dawn-the noise of life. He waited for it-hungrily-in the doorway.
And it came: a mongrel bitch dragging herself across the yard: an ugly creature with bent ears, trailing a wounded or a broken leg, whimpering. There was something wrong with her back. She came very slowly: he could see her ribs like an exhibit in a natural history museum: it was obvious that she hadn't had food for days: she had been abandoned.
Unlike him, she retained a kind of hope. Hope was an instinct only the reasoning human mind could kill. An animal never knew despair. Watching her wounded progress he had a sense that this had happened daily-perhaps for weeks: he was watching one of the well-rehearsed effects of the new day, like bird-song in happier regions. She dragged herself up to the veranda door and began to scratch with one paw, lying oddly spread-eagled: her nose was down to a crack: she seemed to be breathing in the unused air of empty rooms: then she whined impatiently, and once her tail beat as if she heard something move inside. At last she began to howl.
The priest could bear it no longer: he knew now what it meant: he might as well let his eyes see. He came out into the yard and the animal turned awkwardly-the parody of a watchdog-and began to bark at him. It wasn't anybody she wanted: she wanted what she was used to: she wanted the old world back.
He looked in through a window-perhaps this was the child's room. Everything has been removed from it except the useless or the broken. There was a cardboard box full of torn [134] paper and a small chair which had lost a leg. There was a large nail in the whitewashed wall where a mirror perhaps had been hung-or a picture. There was a broken shoe-horn.