Mr. Tench bent over the enamel basin washing his hands with pink soap. He said in his bad Spanish: You don't need to be afraid. You can tell me directly it hurts.
The jefe's room had been fixed up as a kind of temporary dentist's office-at considerable expense, for it had entailed transporting not only Mr. Tench himself, but Mr. Tench's cabinet, chair, and all sorts of mysterious packing-cases which seemed to contain little but straw and which were unlikely to return empty.
I've had it for months, the jefe said. You can't imagine the pain ...
It was foolish of you not to call me in sooner. Your mouth's in a very bad state. You are lucky to have escaped-pyorrhoea. He finished washing and suddenly stood, towel in hand, thinking of something. What's the matter? the jefe said. Mr. Tench woke with a jump, and coming forward to his cabinet, began to lay out the drill needles in a little metallic row of pain. The jefe watched with apprehension. He said: Your hand is very jumpy. Are you quite sure you are well enough this morning?
It's indigestion, Mr. Tench said. Sometimes I have so many spots in front of my eyes I might be wearing a veil. He fitted a needle into the drill and bent the arm round. Now open your mouth very wide. He began to stuff the jefe's mouth with plugs of cotton. He said: I've never seen a mouth as bad as yours-except once.
[207] The jefe struggled to speak. Only a dentist could have interpreted the muffled and uneasy question.
He wasn't a patient. I expect someone cured him. You cure a lot of people in this country, don't you, with bullets?
As he picked and picked at the tooth, he tried to keep up a running fire of conversation: that was how one did things at Southend. He said: An odd thing happened to me just before I came up the river. I got a letter from my wife. Hadn't so much as heard from her for-oh, twenty years. Then out of the blue she ... He leant closer and levered furiously with his pick: the jefe beat the air and grunted. Wash out your mouth, Mr. Tench said, and began grimly to fix his drill. He said: What was I talking about? Oh, the wife, wasn't it? Seems she had got religion of some kind. Some sort of a group-Oxford. What would she be doing in Oxford? Wrote to say that she had forgiven me and wanted to make things legal. Divorce, I mean. Forgiven me, Mr. Tench said, looking round the little hideous room, lost in thought, with his hand on the drill. He belched and put his other hand against his stomach, pressing, pressing, seeking an obscure pain which was nearly always there. The jefe leant back exhausted with his mouth wide open.
It comes and goes, Mr. Tench said, losing the thread of his thought completely. Of course, it's nothing. just indigestion. But it gets me locked. He stared moodily into the jefe's mouth as if a crystal were concealed between the carious teeth. Then, as if he were exerting an awful effort of will, he leant forward, brought the arm of the drill round, and began to pedal. Buzz and grate. Buzz and grate. The jefe stiffened all over and clutched the arms of the chair, and Mr. Tench's foot went up and down, up and down. The jefe made odd sounds and waved his hands. Hold hard, Mr. Tench said, hold hard. There's just one tiny corner. Nearly finished. There she comes. There. He stopped and said: Good God, what's that?
He left the jefe altogether and went to the window. In the yard below a squad of police had just grounded their arms. With his hand on his stomach he protested: Not another revolution?
The jefe levered himself upright and spat out a gag. Of course not, he said. A man's being shot.
[208] What for?
Treason.
I thought you generally did it, Mr. Tench said, up by the cemetery? A horrid fascination kept him by the window: this was something he had never seen. He and the buzzards looked down together on the little whitewashed courtyard.
It was better not to this time. There might have been a demonstration. People are so ignorant.
A small man came out of a side door: he was held up by two policemen, but you could tell that he was doing his best-it was only that his legs were not fully under his control. They paddled him across to the opposite walclass="underline" an officer tied a handkerchief round his eyes. Mr. Tench thought: But I know him. Good God, one ought to do something. This was like seeing a neighbour shot.
The jefe said: What are you waiting for? The air gets into this tooth.
Of course there was nothing to do. Everything went very quickly like a routine. The officer stepped aside, the rifles went up, and the little man suddenly made jerky movements with his arms. He was trying to say something: what was the phrase they were always supposed to use? That was routine too, but perhaps his mouth was too dry, because nothing came out except a word that sounded more like Excuse. The crash of the rifles shook Mr. Tench: they seemed to vibrate inside his own guts; he felt rather sick and shut his eyes. Then there was a single shot, and opening his eyes again he saw the officer stuffing his gun back into his holster, and the little man was a routine heap beside the wall-something unimportant which had to be cleared away. Two knock-kneed men approached quickly. This was an arena, and there was the bull dead, and there was nothing more to wait for any longer.
Oh, the jefe moaned from the chair, the pain, the pain. He implored Mr. Tench: Hurry, but Mr. Tench was lost in thought beside the window, one hand automatically seeking in his stomach for the hidden uneasiness. He remembered the little man rising bitterly and hopelessly from his chair that blinding afternoon to follow the child out of town; he remembered a green watering-can, the photo of the children, that case he was making out of sand for a split palate.
[209] The stopping, the jefe pleaded, and Mr. Tench's eyes went to the little mound of gold on the glass dish. Currency-he would insist on foreign currency: this time he was going to clear out, clear out for good. In the yard everything had been tidied away: a man was throwing sand out of a spade, as if he were filling a grave. But there was no grave: there was nobody there: an appalling sense of loneliness came over Mr. Tench, doubling him with indigestion. The little fellow had spoken English and knew about his children. He felt deserted.
'And now,' the woman's voice swelled triumphantly, and the two little girls with beady eyes held their breath, 'the great testing day had come.' Even the boy showed interest, standing by the window, looking out into the dark curfew-emptied street-this was the last chapter, and in the last chapter things always happened violently. Perhaps all life was like that-dull and then a heroic flurry at the end.
'When the Chief of Police came to Juan's cell he found him on his knees, praying. He had not slept at all, but had spent his last night preparing for martyrdom. He was quite calm and happy, and smiling at the Chief of Police, he asked him if he had come to lead him to the banquet. Even that evil man, who had persecuted so many innocent people, was visibly moved.'
If only it would get on towards the shooting, the boy thought: the shooting never failed to excite him, and he always waited anxiously for the coup de grace.
'They led him out into the prison yard. No need to bind those hands now busy with his beads. In that short walk to the wall of execution, did young Juan look back on those few, those happy years he had so bravely spent? Did he remember days in the seminary, the kindly rebukes of his elders, the moulding discipline: days, too, of frivolity when he acted Nero before the old bishop? Nero was here beside him, and this the Roman amphitheatre.'
The mother's voice was getting a little hoarse: she fingered the remaining pages rapidly: it wasn't worth while stopping now, and she raced more and more rapidly on.
'Reaching the wall, Juan turned and began to pray-not for himself, but for his enemies, for the squad of poor [210] innocent Indian soldiers who faced him and even for the Chief of Police himself. He raised the crucifix at the end of his beads and prayed that God would forgive them, would enlighten their ignorance, and bring them at last-as Saul the persecutor was brought-into his eternal kingdom.'