It was an English book-but from his years in an American seminary he retained enough English to read it, with a little difficulty. Even if he had been unable to understand a word, it would still have been a book. It was called Jewels Five Words Long, A Treasury of English Verse, and on the fly-leaf was pasted a printed certificate-Awarded to ... and then the name Coral Fellows filled up in ink ... for proficiency in English [138] Composition, Third Grade. There was an obscure coat-of-arms, which seemed to include a griffin and an oak leaf, a Latin motto: Virtus Laudata Crescit, and a signature from a rubber stamp, Henry Beckley, B.A., Principal of Private Tutorials, Ltd.
The priest sat down on the veranda steps. There was silence everywhere-no life around the abandoned banana station except the buzzard which hadn't yet given up hope. The Indian might never have existed at all. After a meal, the priest thought with sad amusement, a little reading, and opened the book at random. Coral-so that was the child's name; he thought of the shops in Vera Cruz full of it-the hard brittle jewellery which was thought for some reason so suitable for young girls after their first communion. He read:
I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally,
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.
It was a very obscure poem, full of words which were like Esperanto. He thought: So this is English poetry: how odd. The little poetry he knew dealt mainly with agony, remorse, and hope. These verses ended on a philosophical note- For men may come and men may go. But I go on for ever. The triteness and untruth of for ever shocked him a little: a poem like this ought not to be in a child's hands. The buzzard came picking its way across the yard, a dusty and desolate figure: every now and then it lifted sluggishly from the earth and flapped down twenty yards on. The priest read:
'Come back! Come back!' he cried in grief
Across the stormy water,
'And I'll forgive your Highland chief
My daughter, O my daughter.'
That sounded to him more impressive-though hardly, perhaps, any more than the other-stuff for children. He felt in the foreign words the ring of genuine passion and repeated to himself on his hot and lonely perch the last line- My [139] daughter, O my daughter. The words seemed to contain all that he felt himself of repentance, longing, and unhappy love.
It was the oddest thing that ever since that hot and crowded night in the cell he had passed into a region of abandonment-almost as if he had died there with the old man's head on his shoulder and now wandered in a kind of limbo, because he wasn't good or bad enough. ... Life didn't exist any more: it wasn't merely a matter of the banana station. Now as the storm broke and he scurried for shelter he knew quite well what he would find-nothing.
The huts leapt up in the lightning and stood there shaking-then disappeared again in the rumbling darkness. The rain hadn't come yet: it was sweeping up from Campeche Bay in great sheets, covering the whole state in its methodical advance. Between the thunderbreaks he could imagine that he heard it-a gigantic rustle moving across towards the mountains which were now so close to him-a matter of twenty miles.
He reached the first hut: the door was open, and as the lightning quivered he saw, as he expected, nobody at all. Just a pile of maize and the indistinct grey movement of-perhaps-a rat. He dashed for the next hut, but it was the same as ever (the maize and nothing else), just as if all human life were receding before him, as if Somebody had determined that from now on he was to be left alone-altogether alone. As he stood there the rain reached the clearing: it came out of the forest like thick white smoke and moved on. It was as if an enemy were laying a gas-cloud across a whole territory, carefully, to see that nobody escaped. The rain spread and stayed just long enough, as though the enemy had his stop-watch out and knew to a second the limit of the lungs' endurance. The roof held the rain out for a while and then let it through-the twigs bent under the weight of water and shot apart: it came through in half a dozen places, pouring down in black funnels: then the downpour stopped and the roof dripped and the rain moved on, with the lightning quivering on its flanks like a protective barrage. In a few minutes it would reach the mountains: a few more storms like this and they would be impassable.
[140] He had been walking all day and he was very tired: he found a dry spot and sat down. When the lightning struck he could see the clearing: all around was the gentle noise of the dripping water. It was nearly like peace, but not quite. For peace you needed human company-his aloneness was like a threat of things to come. Suddenly he remembered-for no apparent reason-a day of rain at the American seminary, the glass windows of the library steamed over with the central heating, the tall shelves of sedate books, and a young man-a stranger from Tucson-drawing his initials on the pane with his finger-that was peace. He looked at it from the outside: he couldn't believe that he would ever again get in. He had made his own world, and this was it-the empty broken huts, the storm going by, and fear again-fear because he was not alone after all.
Somebody was moving outside, cautiously. The footsteps would come a little way and then stop. He waited apathetically, and the roof dripped behind him. He thought of the half-caste padding around the city, seeking a really cast-iron occasion for his betrayal. A face peered round the hut door at him and quickly withdrew-an old woman's face, but you could never tell with Indians-she mightn't have been more than twenty. He got up and went outside-she scampered back from before him in her heavy sack-like skirt, her black plaits swinging heavily. Apparently his loneliness was only to be broken by these evasive faces-creatures who looked as if they had come out of the Stone Age, who withdrew again quickly.
He was stirred by a sort of sullen anger-this one should not withdraw. He pursued her across the clearing, splashing in the pools, but she had a start and no sense of shame and she got into the forest before him. It was useless looking for her there, and he returned towards the nearest hut. It wasn't the hut which he had been sheltering in before, but it was just as empty. What had happened to these people? He knew well enough that these more or less savage encampments were temporary only: the Indians would cultivate a small patch of ground and when they had exhausted the soil for the time being, they would simply move away-they knew nothing about the rotation of crops, but when they moved they would take their maize with them. This was more like flight-from [141] force or disease. He had heard of such flights in the case of sickness, and the horrible thing, of course, was that they carried the sickness with them wherever they moved: sometimes they became panicky like flies against a pane, but discreetly, letting nobody know, muting their hubbub. He turned moodily again to stare out at the clearing, and there was the Indian woman creeping back-towards the hut where he had sheltered. He called out to her sharply and again she fled, shambling, towards the forest. Her clumsy progress reminded him of a bird feigning a broken wing. … He made no movement to follow her, and before she reached the trees she stopped and watched him; he began to move slowly back towards the other hut. Once he turned: she was following him at a distance, keeping her eyes on him. Again he was reminded of something animal or bird-like, full of anxiety. He walked on, aiming directly at the hut far away beyond it the lightning stabbed down, but you could hardly hear the thunder: the sky was clearing overhead and the moon came out. Suddenly he heard an odd artificial cry, and turning he saw the woman making back towards the forest-then she stumbled, flung up her arms, and fell to the ground-like the bird offering herself.