Oh, no. Martyrs are not like me. They don't think all the time-if I had drunk more brandy I shouldn't be so afraid.
The lieutenant said sharply to a man in the entrance: Well, what is it? What are you hanging round for?
[187] The storm's over, lieutenant. We wondered when we were to start.
We start immediately.
He got up and put back the pistol in his holster. He said: Get a horse ready for the prisoner. And have some men dig a grave quickly for the Yankee.
The priest put the cards in his pocket and stood up. He said: You have listened very patiently ...
I am not afraid, the lieutenant said, of other people's ideas.
Outside the ground was steaming after the rain: the mist rose nearly to their knees: the horses stood ready. The priest mounted, but before they had time to move a voice made the priest turn-the same sullen whine he had heard so often. Father. It was the half-caste.
Well, well, the priest said. You again.
Oh, I know what you're thinking, the half-caste said. There's not much charity in you, father. You thought all along I was going to betray you.
Go, the lieutenant said sharply. You've done your job. May I have one word, lieutenant? the priest asked. You're a good man, father, the mestizo cut quickly in, but you think the worst of people. I just want your blessing, that's all.
What is the good? You can't sell a blessing, the priest said. It's just because we won't see each other again. And I didn't want you to go off there thinking ill things ... You are so superstitious, the priest said. You think my blessing will be like a blinker over God's eyes. I can't stop Him knowing all about it. Much better go home and pray. Then if He gives you grace to feel sorry, give away the money. …
What money, father? The half-caste shook his stirrup angrily. What money? There you go again ...
The priest sighed. He felt empty with the ordeal. Fear can be more tiring than a long monotonous ride. He said: I'll pray for you, and beat his horse into position beside the lieutenant's.
And I'll pray for you, father, the half-caste announced complacently. Once the priest looked back as his horse poised for the steep descent between the rocks. The half-caste stood [188] alone among the huts, his mouth a little open, showing the two long fangs. He might have been snapped in the act of shouting some complaint or some claim-that he was a good Catholic perhaps: one hand scratched under the armpit. The priest waved his hand: he bore no grudge because he expected nothing else of anything human and he had one cause at least of satisfaction-that yellow and unreliable face would be absent at the death.
You're a man of education, the lieutenant said. He lay across the entrance of the hut with his head on his rolled cape and his revolver by his side. It was night, but neither man could sleep. The priest, when he shifted, groaned a little with stiffness and cramp: the lieutenant was in a hurry to get home, and they had ridden till midnight. They were down off the hills and in the marshy plain. Soon the whole state would be subdivided by swamp. The rains had really begun.
I'm not that. My father was a storekeeper.
I mean, you've been abroad. You can talk like a Yankee. You've had schooling.
Yes.'
I've had to think things out for myself. But there are some things which you don't have to learn in a school. That there are rich and poor. He said in a low voice: I've shot three hostages because of you. Poor men. It made me hate your guts.
Yes, the priest admitted, and tried to stand to ease the cramp in his right thigh. The lieutenant sat quickly up, gun in band. What are you doing?
Nothing. Just cramp. That's all. He lay down again with a groan.
The lieutenant said: Those men I shot. They were my own people. I wanted to give them the whole world.
Well, who knows? Perhaps that's what you did.
The lieutenant spat suddenly, viciously, as if something unclean had got upon his tongue. He said: You always have answers, which mean nothing.
I was never any good at books, the priest said. I haven't any memory. But there was one thing always puzzled me about men like yourself. You hate the rich and love the poor. Isn't that right?
[189] Yes.
Well, if I hated you, I wouldn't want to bring up my child to be like you. It's not sense.
That's just twisting ...
Perhaps it is. I've never got your ideas straight. We've always said the poor are blessed and the rich are going to find it hard to get into heaven. Why should we make it hard for the poor man too? Oh, I know we are told to give to the poor, to see they are not hungry-hunger can make a man do evil just as much as money can. But why should we give the poor power? It's better to let him die in dirt and wake in heaven-so long as we don't push his face in the dirt.
I hate your reasons, the lieutenant said. I don't want reasons. If you see somebody in pain, people like you reason and reason. You say-perhaps pain's a good thing, perhaps he'll be better for it one day. I want to let my heart speak.
At the end of a gun.
Yes. At the end of a gun.
Oh, well, perhaps when you're my age you'll know the heart's an untrustworthy beast. The mind is too, but it doesn't talk about love. Love. And a girl puts her head under water or a child's strangled, and the heart all the time says love, love.
They lay quiet for a while in the hut. The priest thought the lieutenant was asleep until he spoke again. You never talk straight. You say one thing to me-but to another man, or a woman, you say: 'God is love.' But you think that stuff won't go down with me, so you say different things. Things you think I'll agree with.
Oh, the priest said, that's another thing altogether-God is love. I don't say the heart doesn't feel a taste of it, but what a taste. The smallest glass of love mixed with a pint pot of ditch-water. We wouldn't recognize that love. It might even look like hate. It would be enough to scare us-God's love. It set fire to a bush in the desert, didn't it, and smashed open graves and set the dead walking in the dark? Oh, a man like me would run a mile to get away if he felt that love around.
You don't trust Him much, do you? He doesn't seem a grateful kind of God. If a man served me as well as you've served Him, well, I'd recommend him for promotion, see he [190] got a good pension ... if he was in pain, with cancer, I'd put a bullet through his head.
Listen, the priest said earnestly, leaning forward in the dark, pressing on a cramped foot, I'm not as dishonest as you think I am. Why do you think I tell people out of the pulpit that they're in danger of damnation if death catches them unawares? I'm not telling them fairy-stories I don't believe myself. I don't know a thing about the mercy of God: I don't know how awful the human heart looks to Him. But I do know this-that if there's ever been a single man in this state damned, then I'll be damned too. He said slowly: I wouldn't want it to be any different. I just want justice, that's all.
We'll be in before dark, the lieutenant said. Six men rode in front and six behind: sometimes, in the belts of forest between the arms of the river, they had to ride in single file. The lieutenant didn't speak much, and once when two of his men struck up a song about a fat shopkeeper and his woman, he told them savagely to be silent. It wasn't a very triumphal procession: the priest rode with a weak grin fixed on his face. It was like a mask he had stuck on, so that he could think quickly without anyone's noticing. What he thought about mostly was pain.
I suppose, the lieutenant said, scowling ahead, you're hoping for a miracle.
Excuse me. What did you say?
I said I suppose you're hoping for a miracle.
No.
You believe in them, don't you?
Yes. But not for me. I'm no more good to anyone, so why should God keep me alive?
I cant think how a man like you can believe in those things. The Indians, yes. Why, the first time they see an electric light they think it's a miracle.