In the afternoon, it seemed that the loyalists were in full control. Police, at any rate, rode into the plaza, though no one was certain whether they were on the payroll of the loyalists or the revolutionaries. They were armed with pistols and carried sabers. This was because there was to be a demonstration, fomented in the local school and forbidden by the mayor, whose measure for peace and quiet was understood as a challenge to liberty.
The demonstration began on time. Boys marched into the plaza carrying placards which read, "Mothers! Your children have the right to be free!" and "Calibre.45 para los niños." Someone threw a rock at a mounted policeman. Someone else threw another. The horses were having difficulty keeping their feet on the slippery concrete.
After a ghastly lunch served by a black girl sheathed in one spotted white garment, Otto wanted coffee. He waited. The dining room was festooned with fly-blown streamers of colored crepe paper, each leaf of which had lost most of its own color and borrowed some of its neighbor's. In the middle of the room, a fruit bowl stood on a table, a luxurious economy, for the bananas were so near rotten that no one ever took one, or at best, never took another. — No coffee. She burned the milk, the girl said. Otto lit a cigarette, and went out. He had got as far as a cafe across the pla/a before the demonstration began. From there, he watched it progress. It made no sense. He started back toward the Bella Vista. The demonstration was noisy, but he looked on it with a tired eye, refusing to be taken in by such foolishness. Until a policeman rode toward him, swinging a saber; and the policeman's neck was covered with blood.
That suddenly, it was real. And as suddenly terrified, Otto looked frantically for sanctuary. The cathedral, with its protecting wall, stood waiting. He looked wildly round him but saw nothing as he started to run toward it. From behind the bandstand, a policeman rode, he and his mount looking in every direction, the man's and the horse's eyes matching in bloodshot apprehension, dodging the rocks that found them from above.
Just then a white bird came down in an arc from a branch, down falling like a stone before it ascended, and the policeman, dodging the threat, threw his weight over, his horse scrambled for a moment on the concrete and went down, and the falling flank caught Otto as he ran without seeing toward the church, spun him round and pinned him on the concrete, unconscious.
+ The vulture on the outside roof fussed for a moment, one wing extended, impatiently like a dignitary fully dressed for an appointment looking at his watch. Then the wing came back somewhat askew, as though he'd buttoned the coat up wrong, and not noticing it in his impatience stood rocking from one foot to the other.
In the street outside a little boy held up a male dog, exposed, for a female to investigate. His mother said to another and larger black woman, — Tomorrow morning, soon soon. . Other little black boys passed, wearing men's hats. The card game was back out on the veranda.
Near the only occupied cot, in the schoolroom which had been used as a hospital, was posted a stuffed fox whose snarl exposed a pink fly-blown tongue. The doctor stood beside the cot looking down at the face. Nothing moved there but a fly. It rummaged a cheek for a moment, studied the caves of the nostrils, hurried across the bandage to the cleft of the chin, from that eminence sighted the convoluted marvel across the way, and leaped silently to the ear. The eyes flickered, and closed tightly as though to recall the long night and the wonder of nonentity it had permitted: recreation not for the body, nor the soul, but opportunity for circumstances to refurbish themselves, a hope untempered by ages of experience where morning brings no change, but only renewal of conflict on the terms it left off. The lips moved, drawing up twice on, — I know it… I know it… and then tightening to know sleep only, and there animate circumstance with the good intentions which had already brought it low in present disaster; and then descending, a little lower, only to belabor those good intentions, vicarious opiates laboring in half-consciousness to fall away before the pursuit of dreams, dreams ravin in tooth and claw, while the beard grows against the pillow in darkness.
The fly returned to course the warm terrain of the eyelid, moving with the careless persistence of diabolical things, and both eyes came open.
— What happened?
— I was going to ask you the same thing. They just brought you in here in pieces, and. .
— I feel sick.
— Well you are sick, so it's a good thing you know it.
— I can hardly hear you.
— You're lucky you can hear me at all. Ever have ear trouble?
— Yes. No.
— Well, you do now. You might even have a deaf ear before you're through. Just like Julius Caesar, that would be nice, wouldn't it.
Who are you? You're very young to show up with something like this. I might even say tragic it I knew who you were.
— Wait, I… I can't move my arm.
— That's partly because it's broken. Do you remember trying to walk yesterday? Please excuse my shouting at you.
— But what is it? what is it?
— Like a drunkard. Staggering around like a drunkard. Of course I might not say that if I knew who you were. We didn't find any papers on you at all. Just money. Money. Lots of it.
— Where is it?
— Lie back now, it's safe. All that money! But you can't run around spending it now. Don't be impatient. Why, look at me, I have a right to be impatient. I was sent down here to help these nig. . natives with their drainage problems, and now look at me.'They keep promising to transfer me to Barbados, but they never do. A special health project in Barbados. . He had walked over near the window, and looked out. — I've sent for some more medicine for you. Of course I know all the time that I'll have to go get it myself eventually, this tattooed idiot who's supposed to work for me. . Then he shouted out the window, — Jesse. .! Jesse!. . There, you see? He's nowhere to be seen. Worthless, useless, tattooed idiot… of course I wouldn't call him that if I thought he could hear me. This is the third time now that I've put in for a transfer to that special health project among underdeveloped. . oops! Wait, don't throw up on the floor. Here. . here we are. Ummmp! That's better. Feel better?
— But. . what. . what is this? Who are you?
— What are either of us doing here? Who are you? Tsk tsk, excuse my shouting at you.
— But you. . you must tell me. .
— I suppose I must. The doctor should not discuss the case with the patient, but who else can I discuss it with? Well, after your little accident, something set in. Something.
— Something what?
— Don't be hasty. Something. Maybe something entirely original. Do you hear noises in your ears?