He felt quite certain now that something valuable was in the hut, perhaps hidden among the maize, and he paid her no attention, going in. Now that the lightning had moved on, he couldn't see-he felt across the floor until he reached the pile of maize. Outside the padding footsteps came nearer. He began to feel all over it-perhaps food was hidden there-and the dry crackle of the leaves was added to the drip of water and the cautious footsteps, like the faint noises of people busy about their private businesses. Then he put his hand on a face.
He couldn't be frightened any more by a thing like that-it was something human he had his fingers on. They moved down the body: it was that of a child who lay completely quiet under his hand. In the doorway the moonlight showed the woman's face indistinctly: she was probably convulsed with anxiety, but you couldn't tell. He thought -I must get this into the open where I can see. …
It was a male child-perhaps three years old: a withered bullet head with a mop of black hair: unconscious-but not dead: he could feel the faintest movement in the breast. He [142] thought of disease again until he took out his hand and found that the child was wet with blood, not sweat. Horror and disgust touched him-violence everywhere: was there no end to violence? He said to the woman sharply: What happened? It was as if man in all this state had been left to man.
The woman knelt two or three feet away, watching his hands. She knew a little Spanish, because she replied: Americano. The child wore a kind of brown one-piece smock: he lifted it up to the neck: he had been shot in three places. Life was going out of him all the time: there was nothing-really-to be done, but one had to try. … He said Water to the woman, Water, but she didn't seem to understand, squatting there, watching him. It was a mistake one easily made, to think that just because the eyes expressed nothing, there was no grief. When he touched the child he could see her move on her haunches-she was ready to attack him with her teeth if the child so much as moaned.
He began to speak slowly and gently (he couldn't tell how much she understood): We must have water. To wash him. You needn't be afraid of me. I will do him no harm. He took off his shirt and began to tear it into strips-it was hopelessly insanitary, but what else was there to do? except pray, of course, but one didn't pray for life, this life. He repeated again: Water. The woman seemed to understand-she gazed hopelessly round at where the rain stood in pools-that was all there was. Well, he thought, the earth's as clean as any vessel would have been. He soaked a piece of his shirt and leant over the child: he could hear the woman slide closer along the ground-a menacing approach. He tried to reassure her again: You needn't be afraid of me. I am a priest.
The word priest she understood: she leant forward and grabbed at the hand which held the wet scrap of shirt and kissed it. At that moment, while her lips were on his hand, the child's face wrinkled, the eyes opened and glared at them, the tiny body shook with a kind of fury of pain; they watched the eyeballs roll up and suddenly become fixed, like marbles in a solitaire-board, yellow and ugly with death. The woman let go his hand and scrambled to a pool of water, cupping her fingers for it. The priest said: We don't need that any more, standing up with his hands full of wet shirt. The woman [143] opened her fingers and let the water fall. She said Father imploringly, and he wearily went down on his knees and began to pray.
He could feel no meaning any longer in prayers like these-the Host was different: to lay that between a dying man's lips was to lay God. That was a fact-something you could touch, but this was no more than a pious aspiration. Why should Anyone listen to his prayers? Sin was like a constriction which prevented their escape: he could feel his prayers like undigested food heavy in his body, unable to escape.
When he had finished he lifted up the body and carried it back into the hut like a piece of furniture-it seemed a waste of time to have taken it out, like a chair you carry out into the garden and back again because the grass is wet. The woman followed him meekly-she didn't seem to want to touch the body, just watched him put it back in the dark upon the maize. He sat down on the ground and said slowly: It will have to be buried.
She understood that, nodding.
He said: Where is your husband? Will he help you? She began to talk rapidly: it might have been Camacho she was speaking: he couldn't understand more than an occasional Spanish word here and there. The word Americano occurred again-and he remembered the wanted man whose portrait had shared the wall with his. He asked her: Did he do this? She shook her head. What had happened? he wondered. Had the man taken shelter here and had the soldiers fired into huts? It was not unlikely. He suddenly had his attention caught: she had said the name of the banana station but there had been no dying person there: no sign of violence-unless silence and desertion were signs. He had assumed the mother had been taken ilclass="underline" it might be something worse-and he imagined that stupid Captain Fellows taking down his gun, presenting himself clumsily armed to a man whose chief talent was to draw quickly or to shoot directly from the pocket. That poor child … what responsibilities she had perhaps been forced to undertake.
He shook the thought away and said: Have you a spade? She didn't understand that, and he had to go through the motions of digging. Another roll of thunder came between them: [144] a second storm was coming up, as if the enemy had discovered that the first barrage after all had left a few survivors-this would flatten them. Again he could hear the enormous breathing of the rain miles away: he realized the woman had spoken the one word church. Her Spanish consisted of isolated words. He wondered what she meant by that. Then the rain reached them-It came down like a wall between him and escape, fell altogether in a heap and built itself up around them. All the light went out except when the lightning flashed.
The roof couldn't keep out this rain: it came dripping through everywhere: the dry maize leaves where the dead child lay crackled like burning wood. He shivered with cold: he was probably on the edge of fever-he must get away before he was incapable of moving at all. The woman (he couldn't see her now) said Iglesia again imploringly. It occurred to him that she wanted her child buried near a church or perhaps only taken to an altar, so that he might be touched by the feet of a Christ. It was a fantastic notion.
He took advantage of a long quivering stroke of blue light to describe with his hands his sense of the impossibility. The soldiers, he said, and she replied immediately: Americano. That word always came up, like one with many meanings which depends on the accent whether it is to be taken as an explanation, a warning, or a threat. Perhaps she meant that the soldiers were all occupied in the chase-but even so, this rain was ruining everything. It was still twenty miles to the border, and the mountain paths after the storm were probably impassable-and a church-he hadn't the faintest idea of where there would be a church. He hadn't so much as seen such a thing for years now: it was difficult to believe that they still existed only a few days' journey off. When the lightning went on again he saw the woman watching him with stony patience.
For the last thirty hours they had had only sugar to eat large brown lumps of it the size of a baby's skulclass="underline" they had seen no one, and they had exchanged no words at all. What was the use when almost the only words they had in common were Iglesia and Americano ? The woman followed at his heels with the dead child strapped on her back: she seemed never to tire. A day and a night brought them out of the [145] marshes to the foot-hills: they slept fifty feet up above the slow green river, under a projecting piece of rock where the soil was dry-everywhere else was deep mud. The woman sat with her knees drawn up, and her head down-she showed no emotion, but she put the child's body behind her as if it needed protection from marauders like other lifeless possessions. They had travelled by the sun until the black wooded bar of mountain told them where to go. They might have been the only survivors of a world which was dying out-they carried the visible marks of the dying with them.