The Power and the Glory

GRAHAM GREENE

Born in England in 1904, Graham Greene was educated at Oxford. His first published work was a volume of verse in 1925 and his first novel was The Man Within. Since then he has published more than a dozen novels from The Quiet American, The End of the Affair and The Heart of the Matter to The Comedians. In addition, he has written a number of books which he refers to as entertainments, such as The Third Man, Brighton Rock and Our Man in Havana.

Several of Greene's novels and short stories have been made into successful motion pictures and two of his plays were produced on Broadway. His novels have won him an international reputation for subtle characterizations and accomplished craftsmanship. In 1952, Graham Greene was given the Catholic Literary Award for The End of the Affair.

Bantam Books by Graham Greene

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BRIGHTON ROCK

A BURNT-OUT CASE

THE COMEDIANS

THE HEART OF THE MATTER

THE MAN WITHIN

MAY WE BORROW YOUR HUSBAND?

THE MINISTRY OF FEAR

ORIENT EXPRESS

THE POWER AND THE GLORY

THE QUIET AMERICAN

TRAVELS WITH MY AUNT

TWENTY-ONE STORIES

TO VIVIEN

WITH DEAREST LOVE

THE POWER AND THE GLORY

PART I

Chapter One

MR. TENCH went out to look for his ether cylinder: out into the blazing Mexican sun and the bleaching dust. A few buzzards looked down from the roof with shabby indifference: he wasn't carrion yet. A faint feeling of rebellion stirred in Mr. Tench's heart, and he wrenched up a piece of the road with splintering finger-nails and tossed it feebly up at them. One of them rose and flapped across the town: over the tiny plaza, over the bust of an ex-president, ex-general, ex-human being, over the two stalls which sold mineral water, towards the river and the sea. It wouldn't find anything there: the sharks looked after the carrion on that side. Mr. Tench went on across the plaza.

He said Buenos días to a man with a gun who sat in a small patch of shade against a wall. But it wasn't like England: the man said nothing at all, just stared malevolently up at Mr. Tench, as if he had never had any dealings with the foreigner, as if Mr. Tench were not responsible for his two gold bicuspid teeth. Mr. Tench went sweating by, past the Treasury which had once been a church, towards the quay. Half-way across he suddenly forgot what he had come out for-a glass of mineral water? That was all there was to drink in this prohibition state-except beer, but that was a government monopoly and too expensive except on special occasions. An awful feeling of nausea gripped Mr. Tench in the stomach-it couldn't have been mineral water he wanted. Of course, his ether cylinder ... the boat was in. He had heard its exultant piping when he lay on his bed after lunch. He passed the barbers' and two dentists' and came out between a warehouse and the customs onto the river bank.

The river went heavily by towards the sea between the banana plantations: the General Obregon was tied up to the bank, and beer was being unloaded-a hundred cases were already stacked upon the quay. Mr. Tench stood in the shade of [4] the customs house and thought: What am I here for? Memory drained out of him in the heat. He gathered his bile together and spat forlornly into the sun. Then he sat down on a case and waited. Nothing to do. Nobody would come to see him before five.

The General Obregon was about thirty yards long. A few feet of damaged rail, one lifeboat, a bell hanging on a rotten cord, an oil-lamp in the bow, she looked as if she might weather two or three more Atlantic years-if she didn't strike a norther in the gulf. That, of course, would be the end of her. It didn't really matter: everybody was insured when he bought a ticket automatically. Half a dozen passengers leant on the rail, among the hobbled turkeys, and stared at the port: the warehouse, the empty baked street with the dentists' and the barbers'.

Mr. Tench heard a revolver-holster creak just behind him and turned his head. A customs officer was watching him angrily. He said something which Mr. Tench could not catch. Pardon me, Mr. Tench said.

My teeth, the customs man said indistinctly.

Oh, Mr. Tench said, yes, your teeth. The man had none: that was why he couldn't talk clearly: Mr. Tench had removed them all. He was shaken with nausea-something was wrong-worms, dysentery ... He said: The set is nearly finished. Tonight, he promised wildly. It was, of course, quite impossible; but that was how one lived, putting off everything. The man was satisfied: he might forget, and in any case what could he do? He had paid in advance. That was the whole world to Mr. Tench: the heat and the forgetting, the putting off till tomorrow, if possible cash down-for what? He stared out over the slow river: the fin of a shark moved like a periscope at the mouth. In the course of years several ships had stranded and they now helped to prop up the riverside, the smoke-stacks leaning over like guns pointing at some distant objective across the banana-trees and the swamps.

Mr. Tench thought: Ether cylinder: I nearly forgot. His mouth fell open and he began moodily to count the bottles of Cerveza Moctezuma. A hundred and forty cases. Twelve times a hundred and forty: the heavy phlegm gathered in his mouth: twelve fours are forty-eight. He said aloud in English: My [5] God, a pretty one : twelve hundred, sixteen hundred and eighty: he spat, staring with vague interest at a girl in the bows of the General Obregon-a fine thin figure, they were generally so thick, brown eyes, of course, and the inevitable gleam of the gold tooth, but something fresh and young ... Sixteen hundred and eighty bottles at a peso a bottle.

Somebody asked in English: What did you say?

Mr. Tench swivelled round. You English? he said in astonishment, but at the sight of the round and hollow face charred with a three days' beard, he altered his question: You speak English?

Yes, the man said, he spoke English. He stood stiffly in the shade, a small man dressed in a shabby dark city suit, carrying a small attaché case. He had a novel under his arm: bits of an amorous scene stuck out, crudely coloured. He said: Excuse me. I thought just now you were talking to me. He had protuberant eyes: he gave an impression of unstable hilarity, as if perhaps he had been celebrating a birthday ... alone.

Mr. Tench cleared his mouth of phlegm. What did I say? He couldn't remember a thing.

You said: 'My God, a pretty one.'

Now what could I have meant by that? He stared up at the merciless sky. A buzzard stood there like an observer. What? Oh, just the girl, I suppose. You don't often see a pretty piece round here. Just one or two a year worth looking at.

She is very young.

Oh, I don't have intentions, Mr. Tench said wearily. A man may look. I've lived alone for fifteen years.

Here?

Hereabouts.

They fell silent and time passed, the shadow of the customs house shifted a few inches farther towards the river: the buzzard moved a little, like the black hand of a dock.

You came in her? Mr. Tench said.

No.

Going in her?

The little man seemed to evade the question, but then as if some explanation were required, I was just looking, he said. I suppose she'll be sailing quite soon?

To Vera Cruz, Mr. Tench said. In a few hours.

[6] Without calling anywhere?

Where could she call? He asked: How did you get here?

The stranger said vaguely: A canoe.

Got a plantation, eh?

No.

It's good hearing English spoken, Mr. Tench said. Now you learnt yours in the States?

The man agreed. He wasn't very garrulous.

Ah, what wouldn't I give, Mr. Tench said, to be there now. He said in a low anxious voice: You don't happen, do you, to have a drink in that case of yours? Some of you people back there-I've known one or two-a little for medical purposes.

Only medicine, the man said.

You a doctor?

The bloodshot eyes looked slyly out of their corners at Mr. Tench. You would call me perhaps a-quack?

Patent medicines? Live and let live, Mr. Tench said.

Are you sailing?

No, I came down here for-for ... oh, well, it doesn't matter anyway. He put his hand on his stomach and said: You haven't got any medicine, have you, for-oh, hell. I don't know what. It's just this bloody land. You can't cure me of that. No one can.

You want to go home?

Home, Mr. Tench said; my home's here. Did you see what the peso stands at in Mexico City? Four to the dollar. Four. Oh, God. Ora pro nobis.

Are you a Catholic?

No, no. Just an expression. I don't believe in anything like that. He said irrelevantly: It's too hot anyway.

I think I must find somewhere to sit.

Come up to my place, Mr. Tench said. I've got a spare hammock. The boat won't leave for hours-if you want to watch it go.

The stranger said: I was expecting to see someone. The name was Lopez.

Oh, they shot him weeks ago, Mr. Tench said.

Dead?

[7] You know how it is round here. Friend of yours?

No, no, the man protested hurriedly. Just a friend of a friend.

Well, that's how it is, Mr. Tench said. He brought up his bile again and shot it out into the hard sunlight. They say he used to help ... oh, undesirables ... well, to get out. His girl's living with the Chief of Police now.

His girl? Do you mean his daughter?

He wasn't married. I mean the girl he lived with. Mr. Tench was momentarily surprised by an expression on the stranger's face. He said again: You know how it is. He looked across at the General Obregon. She's a pretty bit. Of course, in two years she'll be like all the rest. Fat and stupid. Oh, God, I'd like a drink. Ora pro nobis.

I have a little brandy, the stranger said. Mr. Tench regarded him sharply. Where?

The hollow man put his hand to his hip-he might have been indicating the source of his odd nervous hilarity. Mr. Tench seized his wrist. Careful, he said. Not here. He looked down the carpet of shadow: a sentry sat on an empty crate asleep beside his rifle. Come to my place, Mr. Tench said.

I meant, the little man said reluctantly, just to see her go.

Oh, it will be hours yet, Mr. Tench assured him again.

Hours? Are you certain? It's very hot in the sun.

You'd better come home.

Home: it was a phrase one used to mean four walls behind which one slept. There had never been a home. They moved across the little burnt plaza where the dead general grew green in the damp and the gaseosa stalls stood under the palms. It lay like a picture postcard on a pile of other postcards: shuffle the pack and you had Nottingham, a Metroland birthplace, an interlude in Southend. Mr. Tench's father had been a dentist too-his first memory was finding a discarded cast in a waste-paper basket-the rough toothless gaping mouth of clay, like something dug up in Dorset-Neanderthal or Pithecanthropus. It had been his favourite toy: they tried to tempt him with Meccano: but fate had struck. There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in. The hot wet [8] riverport and the vultures lay in the waste-paper basket, and he picked them out. We should be thankful we cannot see the horrors and degradations lying around our childhood, in cupboards and bookshelves, everywhere.

There was no paving: during the rains the village (it was really no more) slipped into the mud. Now the ground was hard under the feet like stone. The two men walked in silence past barbers' shops and dentists': the buzzards on the roofs looked contented, like domestic fowls: they searched under wide crude dusty wings for parasites. Mr. Tench said: Excuse me, stopping at a little wooden hut, one story high, with a veranda where a hammock swung. The hut was a little larger than the others in the narrow street, which petered out two hundred yards away in swamp. He said, nervously: Would you like to take a look around? I don't want to boast, but I'm the best dentist here. It's not a bad place. As places go. Pride wavered in his voice like a plant with shallow roots.

He led the way inside, locking the door behind him, through a dining-room where two rocking-chairs stood on either side of a bare table: an oil-lamp, some copies of old American papers, a cupboard. He said: I'll get the glasses out, but first I'd like to show you-you're an educated man ... The dentist's operating-room looked out on a yard where a few turkeys moved with shabby nervous pomp: a drill which worked with a pedal, a dentist's chair gaudy in bright red plush, a glass cupboard in which instruments were dustily jumbled. A forceps stood in a cup, a broken spirit-lamp was pushed into a corner, and gags of cotton-wool lay on all the shelves.

Very fine, the stranger said.

It's not so bad, is it, Mr. Tench said, for this town? You can't imagine the difficulties. That drill, he said bitterly, is made in Japan. I've only had it a month and it's wearing out already. But I can't afford American drills.

The window, the stranger said, is very beautiful.

One pane of stained glass had been let in: a Madonna gazed out through the mosquito wire at the turkeys in the yard. I got it, Mr. Tench said, when they sacked the church. It didn't feel right-a dentist's room without some stained glass. Not civilized. At home-I mean in England-it was [9] generally the laughing Cavalier-I don't know why-or else a Tudor rose. But one can't pick and choose.

He opened another door and said: My workroom. The first thing you saw was a bed under a mosquito tent. Mr. Tench said: You understand-I'm pressed for room. A ewer and basin stood at one end of a carpenter's bench, and a soap-dish: at the other a blow-pipe, a tray of sand, pliers, a little furnace. I cast in sand, Mr. Tench said. What else can I do in this place? He picked up the cast of a lower jaw. You can't always get them accurate, he said. Of course, they complain. He laid it down again, and nodded at another object on the bench-something stringy and intestinal in appearance, with two little bladders of rubber. Congenital fissure, he said. It's the first time I've tried. The Kingsley case. I doubt if I can do it. But a man must try to keep abreast of things. His mouth fell open: the look of vacancy returned: the heat in the small room was overpowering. He stood there like a man lost in a cavern among the fossils and instruments of an age of which he knows very little. The stranger said: If we could sit down ...

Mr. Tench stared at him-blankly. We could open the brandy.

Oh, yes, the brandy.

Mr. Tench got two glasses out of a cupboard under the bench, and wiped off traces of sand. Then they went and sat in rocking-chairs in the front room. Mr. Tench poured out.

Water? the stranger said.

You can't trust the water, Mr. Tench said. It's got me here. He put his hand on his stomach and took a long draught You don't look too well yourself, he said. He took a longer look. Your teeth. One canine had gone, and the front teeth were yellow with tartar and carious. He said: You want to pay attention to them.

What is the good? the stranger said. He held a small spot of brandy in his glass warily-as if it were an animal to which he gave shelter, but not trust. He had the air in his hollowness and neglect of somebody of no account who had been beaten up incidentally, by ill-health or restlessness. He sat on the very edge of the rocking-chair, with his small attaché [10] case balanced on his knee and the brandy staved off with guilty affection.

Drink up, Mr. Tench encouraged him (it wasn't his brandy) ; it will do you good. The man's dark suit and sloping shoulders reminded him uncomfortably of a coffin: and death was in his carious mouth already. Mr. Tench poured himself out another glass. He said: It gets lonely here. It's good to talk English, even to a foreigner. I wonder if you'd like to see a picture of my kids. He drew a yellow snapshot out of his notecase and handed it over. Two small children struggled over the handle of a watering-can in a back garden. Of course, he said, that was sixteen years ago.

They are young men now.

One died.

Oh, well, the other said gently, in a Christian country. He took a gulp of his brandy and smiled at Mr. Tench rather foolishly.

Yes, I suppose so, Mr. Tench said with surprise. He got rid of his phlegm and said: It doesn't seem to me, of course, to matter much. He fell silent, his thoughts ambling away; his mouth fell open, he looked grey and vacant, until he was recalled by a pain in the stomach and helped himself to some more brandy. Let me see. What was it we were talking about? The kids ... oh, yes, the kids. It's funny what a man remembers. You know, I can remember that watering-can better than I can remember the kids. It cost three and elevenpence three farthings, green; I could lead you to the shop where I bought it. But as for the kids -he brooded over his glass into the past-I can't remember much else but them crying.

Do you get news?

Oh, I gave up writing before I came here. What was the use? I couldn't send any money. It wouldn't surprise me if the wife had married again. Her mother would like it-the old sour bitch: she never cared for me.

The stranger said in a low voice: It is awful.

Mr. Tench examined his companion again with surprise. He sat there like a black question mark, ready to go, ready to stay, poised on his chair. He looked disreputable in his grey three days' beard, and weak: somebody you could command to do anything. He said: I mean the world. The way things happen.

[11] You drink up your brandy.

He sipped at it. It was like an indulgence. He said: You remember this place before-before the Red Shirts came?

I suppose I do.

How happy it was then.

Was it? I didn't notice.

They had at any rate-God.

There's no difference in the teeth, Mr. Tench said. He gave himself some more of the stranger's brandy. It was always an awful place. Lonely. My God. People at home would have said romance. I thought: five years here, and then I'll go. There was plenty of work. Gold teeth. But then the peso dropped. And now I can't get out. One day I will. He said: I'll retire. Go home. Live as a gentleman ought to live. This he gestured at the bare base room- I'll forget all this. Oh, it won't be long now. I'm an optimist, Mr. Tench said.

The stranger said suddenly: How long will she take to Vera Cruz?

Who?

The boat.

Mr. Tench said gloomily: Forty hours from now and we'd be there. The Diligencia. A good hotel. Dance places too. A gay town.

It makes it seem close, the stranger said. And a ticket, how much would that be?

You'd have to ask Lopez, Mr. Tench said. He's the agent.

But Lopez ...

Oh, yes, I forgot. They shot him.

Somebody knocked on the door. The stranger slipped the attaché case under his chair, and Mr. Tench went cautiously up towards the window. Can't be too careful, he said. Any dentist who's worth the name has enemies.

A faint voice implored them: A friend, and Mr. Tench opened up. Immediately the sun came in like a white-hot bar.

A child stood in the doorway asking for a doctor. He wore a big hat and had stupid brown eyes. Beyond him two mules stamped and whistled on the hot beaten road. Mr. Tench said he was not a doctor: he was a dentist. Looking round he saw the stranger crouched in the rocking-chair, gazing with an effect of prayer, entreaty. ... The child said there was a new doctor [12] in town: the old one had fever and wouldn't stir. It was his mother who was sick.

A vague memory stirred in Mr. Tench's brain. He said with an air of discovery: Why, you're a doctor, aren't you?

No, no. I've got to catch that boat.

I thought you said ...

I've changed my mind.

Oh, well, it won't leave for hours yet, Mr. Tench said. They're never on time. He asked the child how far. The child said it was six leagues away.

Too far, Mr. Tench said. Go away. Find someone else. He said to the stranger: How things get around. Everyone must know you are in town.

I could do no good, the stranger said anxiously: he seemed to be asking Mr. Tench's opinion, humbly.

Go away, Mr. Tench said. The child did not stir. He stood in the hard sunlight looking in with infinite patience. He said his mother was dying. The brown eyes expressed no emotion: it was a fact. You were born, your parents died, you grew old, you died yourself.

If she's dying, Mr. Tench said, there's no point in a doctor seeing her.

But the stranger had got up: unwillingly he had been summoned to an occasion he couldn't pass by. He said sadly: It always seems to happen. Like this.

You'll have a job not to miss the boat.

I shall miss it, he said. I am meant to miss it. He was shaken by a tiny rage. Give me my brandy. He took a long pull at it, with his eyes on the impassive child, the baked street, the buzzards moving in the sky like indigestion spots.

But if she's dying ... Mr. Tench said.

I know these people. She will be no more dying than I am.

You can do no good.

The child watched them as if he didn't care. The argument in a foreign language going on in there was something abstract: he wasn't concerned. He would just wait here till the doctor came.

You know nothing, the stranger said fiercely. That is what everyone all the time says-you do no good. The brandy [13] had affected him. He said with monstrous bitterness: I can hear them saying it all over the world.

Anyway, Mr. Tench said, there'll be another boat. In a fortnight. Or three weeks. You are lucky. You can get out. You haven't got your capital here. He thought of his capital: the Japanese drill, the dentist's chair, the spirit-lamp and the pliers and the little oven for the gold fillings: a stake in the country.

Vamos, the man said to the child. He turned back to Mr. Tench and told him that he was grateful for the rest out of the sun. He had the kind of dwarfed dignity Mr. Tench was accustomed to-the dignity of people afraid of a little pain and yet sitting down with some firmness in his chair. Perhaps he didn't care for mule travel. He said with an effect of old-fashioned ways: I will pray for you.

You were welcome, Mr. Tench said. The man got up onto the mule, and the child led the way, very slowly under the bright glare, towards the swamp, the interior. It was from there the man had emerged this morning to take a look at the General Obregon: now he was going back. He swayed very slightly in his saddle from the effect of the brandy. He became a minute disappointed figure at the end of the street.

It had been good to talk to a stranger, Mr. Tench thought, going back into his room, locking the door behind him (one never knew). Loneliness faced him there, vacancy. But he was as accustomed to both as to his own face in the glass. He sat down in the rocking-chair and moved up and down, creating a faint breeze in the heavy air. A narrow column of ants moved across the room to the little patch on the floor where the stranger had spilt some brandy: they milled in it, then moved on in an orderly line to the opposite wall and disappeared. Down in the river the General Obregon whistled twice, he didn't know why.

The stranger had left his book behind. It lay under his rocking-chair: a woman in Edwardian dress crouched sobbing upon a rug embracing a man's brown polished pointed shoes. He stood above her disdainfully with a little waxed moustache. The book was called La Eterna Martyr. After a time Mr. Tench picked it up. When he opened it he was taken aback-what was printed inside didn't seem to belong; it was Latin. Mr. [14] Tench grew thoughtful: he picked the book up and carried it into his workroom. You couldn't burn a book, but it might be as well to hide it if you were not sure--sure, that is, of what it was all about. He put it inside the little oven for gold alloy. Then he stood by the carpenter's bench, his mouth hanging open: he had remembered what had taken him to the quay-the ether cylinder which should have come down-river in the General Obregon. Again the whistle blew from the river, and Mr. Tench ran without his hat into the sun. He had said the boat would not go before morning, but you could never trust those people not to keep to time-table, and sure enough, when he came out onto the bank between the customs and the warehouse, the General Obregon was already ten feet off in the sluggish river, making for the sea. He bellowed after it, but it wasn't any good: there was no sign of a cylinder anywhere on the quay. He shouted once again, and then didn't trouble any more. It didn't matter so much after all: a little additional pain was hardly noticeable in the huge abandonment.

On the General Obregon a faint breeze began to blow: banana plantations on either side, a few wireless aerials on a point, the port slipped behind. When you looked back you could not have told that it had ever existed at all. The wide Atlantic opened up: the great grey cylindrical waves lifted the bows, and the hobbled turkeys shifted on the deck. The captain stood in the tiny deck-house with a toothpick in his hair. The land went backward at a slow even roll, and the dark came quite suddenly, with a sky of low and brilliant stars. One oil-lamp was lit in the bows, and the girl whom Mr. Tench had spotted from the bank began to sing gently-a melancholy, sentimental, and contented song about a rose which had been stained with true love's blood. There was an enormous sense of freedom and air upon the gulf, with the low tropical shore-line buried in darkness as deeply as any mummy in a tomb. I am happy, the young girl said to herself without considering why, I am happy.

Far back inside the darkness the mules plodded on. The effect of the brandy had long ago worn off, and the man bore in his brain along the marshy tract-which, when the rains came, would be quite impassable-the sound of the General Obregon's siren. He knew what it meant: the ship had kept [15] to time-table: he was abandoned. He felt an unwilling hatred of the child ahead of him and the sick woman-he was unworthy of what he carried. A smell of damp came up all round him; it was as if this part of the world had never been dried in the flame when the world was sent spinning off into space: it had absorbed only the mist and cloud of those awful spaces. He began to pray, bouncing up and down to the lurching, slithering mules stride, with his brandied tongue: Let me be caught soon ... Let me be caught. He had tried to escape, but he was like the King of a West African tribe, the slave of his people, who may not even lie down in case the winds should fail.

Chapter Two

THE SQUAD of police made their way back to the station: they walked raggedly with rifles slung anyhow: ends of cotton where buttons should have been: a puttee slipping down over the ankle: small men with black secret Indian eyes. The small plaza on the hill-top was lighted with globes strung together in threes and joined by trailing overhead wires. The Treasury, the Presidencia, a dentist's, the prison-a low white colonnaded building which dated back three hundred years, and then the steep street down-the back wall of a ruined church: whichever way you went you came ultimately to water and to river. Pink classical façades peeled off and showed the mud beneath, and the mud slowly reverted to mud. Round the plaza the evening parade went on: women in one direction, men in the other: young men in red shirts milled boisterously round the gaseosa stalls.

The lieutenant walked in front of his men with an air of bitter distaste. He might have been chained to them unwillingly: perhaps the scar on his jaw was the relic of an escape. His gaiters were polished, and his pistol-holster: his buttons were all sewn on. He had a sharp crooked nose jutting out of a lean dancer's face: his neatness gave an effect of inordinate ambition in the shabby city. A sour smell came up to the plaza from the [16] river and the vultures were bedded on the roofs, under the tent of their rough black wings. Sometimes a little moron head peered out and down and a claw shifted. At nine-thirty exactly, all the lights in the plaza went out.

A policeman clumsily presented arms and the squad marched into barracks; they waited for no order, hanging up their rifles by the officers' room, lurching on into the courtyard, to their hammocks, or the excusado. Some of them kicked off their boots and lay down. Plaster was peeling off the mud walls: a generation of policemen had scrawled messages on the whitewash. A few peasants waited on a bench, hands between their knees. Nobody paid them any attention. Two men were fighting in the lavatory.

Where is the jefe? the lieutenant asked. No one knew: they thought he was playing billiards somewhere in the town. The lieutenant sat down with dapper irritation at the chief's table: behind his head two hearts were entwined in pencil on the whitewash. All right, he said, what are you waiting for? Bring me the prisoners. They came in bowing, hat in hand, one behind the other. So-and-so. Drunk and disorderly. Fined five pesos. But I can't pay, your Excellency. Let him clean out the lavatory and the cells then. So-and-so. Defaced an election poster. Fined five pesos. So-and-so. Found wearing a holy medal under his shirt. Fined five pesos. The duty drew to a close: there was nothing of importance. Through the open door the mosquitoes came whirring in.

Outside, the sentry could be heard presenting arms: it was the Chief of Police. He came breezily in, a stout man with a pink fat face, dressed in white flannels with a wide-awake hat and a cartridge-belt and a big pistol dapping his thigh. He held a handkerchief to his mouth: he was in distress. Toothache again, he said, toothache.

Nothing to report, the lieutenant said with contempt.

The Governor was at me again today, the chief complained.

Liquor?

No, a priest.

The last was shot weeks ago.

He doesn't think so.

The devil of it is, the lieutenant said, we haven't [17] photographs. He glanced along the wall to the picture of James Calver, wanted in the United States for bank robbery and homicide: a tough uneven face taken at two angles: description circulated to every station in Central America: the low forehead and the fanatic bent-on-one-thing eyes. He looked at it with regret: there was so little chance that he would ever get south: he would be picked up in some dive at the border-in Juarez or Piedras Negras or Nogales.

He says we have, the chief complained. My tooth, oh, my tooth! He tried to find something in his hip-pocket, but the holster got in the way. The lieutenant tapped his polished boot impatiently. There, the chief said. A large number of people sat round a table: young girls in white muslin: older women with untidy hair and harassed expressions: a few men peered shyly and solicitously out of the background. All the faces were made up of small dots: it was a newspaper photograph of a first communion party taken years ago: a youngish man in a Roman collar sat among the women. You could imagine him petted with small delicacies, preserved for their use in the stifling atmosphere of intimacy and respect. He sat there, plump, with protuberant eyes, bubbling with harmless feminine jokes. It was taken years ago.

He looks like all the rest, the lieutenant said. It was obscure, but you could read into the smudgy photograph a well-shaved, well-powdered jowl much too developed for his age. The good things of life had come to him too early-the respect of his contemporaries, a safe livelihood. The trite religious word upon the tongue, the joke to ease the way, the ready acceptance of other peoples homage ... a happy man. A natural hatred as between dog and dog stirred in the lieutenant's bowels. We've shot him half a dozen times, he said.

The Governor has had a report ... he tried to get away last week to Vera Cruz.

What are the Red Shirts doing that he comes to us?

Oh, they missed him, of course. It was just luck that he didn't catch the boat.

What happened to him?

They found his mule. The Governor says he must have him this month. Before the rains come.

[18] Where was his parish?

Concepcion and the villages round. But he left there years ago.

Is anything known?

He can pass as a gringo. He spent six years at some American seminary. I don't know what else. He was born in Carmen-the son of a storekeeper. Not that that helps.

They all look alike to me, the lieutenant said. Something you could almost have called horror moved him when he looked at the white muslin dresses-he remembered the smell of incense in the churches of his boyhood, the candles and the laciness and the self-esteem, the immense demands made from the altar steps by men who didn't know the meaning of sacrifice. The old peasants knelt there before the holy images with their arms held out in the attitude of the cross: tired by the long day's labour in the plantations, they squeezed out a further mortification. And the priest came round with the collecting-bag taking their centavos, abusing them for their small comforting sins, and sacrificing nothing at all in return-except a little sexual indulgence. And that was easy, the lieutenant thought. He himself felt no need of women. He said: We will catch him. It is only a question of time.

My tooth, the chief wailed again. He said: It poisons the whole of life. Today my biggest break was twenty-five.

You will have to change your dentist.

They are all the same.

The lieutenant took the photograph and pinned it on the wall. James Calver, bank robber and homicide, stared in harsh profile towards the first communion party. He is a man at any rate, the lieutenant said, with approval.

Who?

The gringo.

The chief said: You heard what he did in Houston. Got away with ten thousand dollars. Two C-men were shot.

G-men.

It's an honour-in a way-to deal with such people. He slapped furiously out at a mosquito.

A man like that, the lieutenant said, does no real harm. A few men dead. We all have to die. The money-somebody has to spend it. We do more good when we catch one of [19] these. He had the dignity of an idea, standing in the little whitewashed room in his polished boots and his venom. There was something disinterested in his ambition: a kind of virtue in his desire to catch the sleek respected guest of the first communion party.

The chief said mournfully: He must be devilishly cunning if he's been going on for years.

Anybody could do it, the lieutenant said. We haven't really troubled about them-unless they put themselves in our hands. Why, I could guarantee to fetch this man in, inside a month if …

If what?

If I had the power.

It's easy to talk, the chief said. What would you do?

This is a small state. Mountains on the north, the sea on the south. I'd beat it as you beat a street, house by house.

Oh, it sounds easy, the chief wailed indistinctly with his handkerchief against his mouth.

The lieutenant said suddenly: I will tell you what I'd do. I would take a man from every village in the state as a hostage. If the villagers didn't report the man when he came, the hostages would be shot-and then we'd take more.

A lot of them would die, of course.

Wouldn't it be worth it? the lieutenant said with a kind of exultation. To be rid of those people for ever.

You know, the chief said, you've got something there.

The lieutenant walked home through the shuttered town. All his life had lain here: the Syndicate of Workers and Peasants had once been a school. He had helped to wipe out that unhappy memory. The whole town was changed: the cement playground up the hill near the cemetery where iron swings stood like gallows in the moony darkness was the site of the cathedral. The new children would have new memories: nothing would ever be as it was. There was something of a priest in his intent observant walk- a theologian going back over the errors of the past to destroy them again.

He reached his own lodging. The houses were all one-storied, whitewashed, built round small patios, with a well and a few flowers. The windows on the street were barred. Inside [20] the lieutenant's room there was a bed made of old packing-cases with a straw mat laid on top, a cushion and a sheet. There was a picture of the President on the wall, a calendar, and on the tiled floor a table and a rocking-chair. In the light of a candle it looked as comfortless as a prison or a monastic cell.

The lieutenant sat down upon his bed and began to take off his boots. It was the hour of prayer. Black beetles exploded against the walls like crackers. More than a dozen crawled over the tiles with injured wings. It infuriated him to think that there were still people in the state who believed in a loving and merciful God. There are mystics who are said to have experienced God directly. He was a mystic, too, and what he had experienced was vacancy-a complete certainty in the existence of a dying, cooling world, of human beings who had evolved from animals for no purpose at all. He knew.

He lay down in his shirt and breeches on the bed and blew out the candle. Heat stood in the room like an enemy. But he believed against the evidence of his senses in the cold empty ether spaces. A radio was playing somewhere: music from Mexico City, or perhaps even from London or New York, filtered into this obscure neglected state. It seemed to him like a weakness: this was his own land, and he would have walled it in with steel if he could, until he had eradicated from it everything which reminded him of how it had once appeared to a miserable child. He wanted to destroy everything: to be alone without any memories at all. Life began five years ago.

The lieutenant lay on his back with his eyes open while the beetles detonated on the ceiling. He remembered the priest the Red Shirts had shot against the wall of the cemetery up the hill, another little fat man with popping eyes. He was a monsignor, and he thought that would protect him: he had a sort of contempt for the lower clergy, and right up to the last he was explaining his rank. Only at the very end had he remembered his prayers. He knelt down and they had given him time for a short act of contrition. The lieutenant had watched: he wasn't t directly concerned. Altogether they had shot about five priests -two or three had escaped, the bishop was safely in Mexico City, and one man had conformed to the Governor's law that all priests must marry. He lived now near the river with his house-keeper. That, of course, was the best solution of all, to [21] leave the living witness to the weakness of their faith. It showed the deception they had practised all these years. For if they really believed in heaven or hell, they wouldn't mind a little pain now, in return for what immensities. … The lieutenant, lying on his hard bed, in the damp hot dark, felt no sympathy at all with the weakness of the flesh.

In the back room of the Academia Comercial a woman was reading to her family. Two small girls of six and ten sat on the edge of their bed, and a boy of fourteen leant against the wall with an expression of intense weariness.

'Young Juan,' the mother read, 'from his earliest years was noted for his humility and piety. Other boys might be rough and revengeful; young Juan followed the precept of Our Lord and turned the other cheek. One day his father thought that he had told a lie and beat him: later he learnt that his son had told the truth, and he apologized to Juan. But Juan said to him: Dear father, just as Our Father in heaven has the right to chastise when he pleases ... '

The boy rubbed his face impatiently against the whitewash and the mild voice droned on. The two little girls sat with beady intense eyes, drinking in the sweet piety.

'We must not think that young Juan did not laugh and play like other children, though there were times when he would creep away with a holy picture-book to his father's cow-house from the circle of his merry play-mates.'

The boy squashed a beetle with his bare foot and thought gloomily that after all everything had an end-some day they would reach the last chapter and young Juan would die against a wall, shouting: Viva el Cristo Rey. But then, he supposed, there would be another book: they were smuggled in every month from Mexico City: if only the customs men had known where to look.

'No, young Juan was a true young Mexican boy, and if he was more thoughtful than his fellows, he was also always the first when any play-acting was afoot. One year his class acted a little play before the bishop, based on the persecution of the Early Christians, and no one was more amused than Juan when he was chosen to play the part of Nero. And what comic spirit he put into his acting-this child, whose young manhood was [22] to be cut short by a ruler far worse than Nero. His class-mate, who later became Father Miguel Cerra, S.J., writes: None of us who were there will ever forget that day ... '

One of the little girls licked her lips secretively. This was life.

'The curtain rose on Juan wearing his mother's best bathrobe, a charcoal moustache, and a crown made from a tin biscuit-box. Even the good old bishop smiled when Juan strode to the front of the little home-made stage and began to declaim ...'

The boy strangled a yawn against the whitewashed wall. He said wearily: Is he really a saint?

He will be one day soon, when the Holy Father pleases.

And are they all like that?

Who?

The martyrs.

Yes. All.

Even Padre José?

Don't mention him, the mother said. How dare you? That despicable man. A traitor to God.

He told me he was more of a martyr than the rest.

I've told you many times not to speak to him. My dear child, oh, my dear child ...

And the other one-the one who came to see us?

No, he is not-exactly-like Juan.

Is he despicable?

No, no. Not despicable.

The smallest girl said suddenly: He smelt funny.

The mother went on reading: 'Did any premonition touch young Juan that night that he, too, in a few short years, would be numbered among the martyrs? We cannot say, but Father Miguel Cerra tells how that evening Juan spent longer than usual upon his knees, and when his class-mates teased him a little, as boys will ...

The voice went on and on, mild and deliberate, inflexibly gentle: the small girls listened intently, framing in their minds little pious sentences with which to surprise their parents, and the boy yawned against the whitewash. Everything has an end.

Presently the mother went in to her husband. She said: I am so worried about the boy.

Why not about the girls? There is worry everywhere.

[23] They are two little saints already. But the boy-he asks such questions-about that whisky priest. I wish we had never had him in the house.

They would have caught him if we hadn't, and then he would have been one of your martyrs. They would write a book about him and you would read it to the children.

That man-never.

Well, after all, her husband said, he carries on. I don't believe all that they write in these books. We are all human. You know what I heard today? About a poor woman who took him her son to be baptized. She wanted him called Pedro-but he was so drunk that he took no notice at all and baptized the boy Carlota. Carlota.

Well, it's a good saint's name.

There are times, the mother said, when I lose all patience with you. And now the boy has been talking to Padre José.

This is a small town, her husband said. And there is no use pretending. We have been abandoned here. We must get along as best we can. As for the Church-the Church is Padre José and the whisky priest-I don't know of any other. If we don't like the Church, well, we must leave it.

He watched her with patience. He had more education than his wife: he could use a typewriter and knew the elements of book-keeping: once he had been to Mexico City: he could read a map. He knew the extent of their abandonment--the ten hours down-river to the port, the forty-two hours in the Gulf of Vera Cruz-that was one way out. To the north the swamps and rivers petering out against the mountains which divided them from the next state. And on the other side no roads-only mule-tracks and an occasional unreliable plane: Indian villages and the huts of herds: two hundred miles away the Pacific.

She said: I would rather die.

Oh, he said, of course. That goes without saying. But we have to go on living.

The old man sat on a packing-case in the little dry patio. He was very fat and short of breath: he panted a little as if after great exertion in the heat. Once he had been something of an astronomer and now he tried to pick out the [24] constellations, staring up into the night sky. He wore only a shirt and trousers: his feet were bare, but there remained something unmistakably clerical in his manner. Forty years of the priesthood had branded him. There was complete silence over the town: everybody was asleep.

The glittering worlds lay there in space like a promise-the world was not the universe. Somewhere Christ might not have died. He could not believe that to a watcher there this world could shine with such brilliance: it would roll heavily in space under its fog like a burning and abandoned ship. The whole globe was blanketed with his own sin.

A woman called from the only room he possessed: José, José. He crouched like a galley-slave at the sound: his eyes left the sky, and the constellations fled upwards: the beetles crawled over the patio. José, José. He thought with envy of the men who had died: it was over so soon. They were taken up there to the cemetery and shot against the wall: in two minutes life was extinct. And they called that martyrdom. Here life went on and on: he was only sixty-two. He might live to ninety. Twenty-eight years-that immeasurable period between his birth and his first parish: all childhood and youth and the seminary lay there.

José. Come to bed. He shivered: he knew that he was a buffoon. An old man who married was grotesque enough, but an old priest ... He stood outside himself and wondered whether he was even fit for hell. He was just a fat old impotent man mocked and taunted between the sheets. But then he remembered the gift he had been given which nobody could take away. That was what made him worthy of damnation-the power he still had of turning the wafer into the flesh and blood of God. He was a sacrilege. Wherever he went, whatever he did, he defiled God. Some mad renegade Catholic, puffed up with the Governors politics, had once broken into a church (in the days when there were still churches) and seized the Host. He had spat on it, trampled it, and then the people had got him and hanged him as they did the stuffed Judas on Holy Thursday from the belfry. He wasn't so bad a man, Padre José thought-he would be forgiven, he was just a politician, but he himself, he was worse than that-he was [25] like an obscene picture hung here every day to corrupt children with.

He belched on his packing-case shaken by wind. José, what are you doing? You come to bed. There was never anything to do at all-no daily Office, no Masses, no confessions, and it was no good praying any longer at all: a prayer demanded an act and he had no intention of acting. He had lived for two years now in a continuous state of mortal sin with no one to hear his confession: nothing to do at all but sit and eat-eat far too much: she fed him and fattened him and preserved him like a prize boar. José. He began to hiccup with nerves at the thought of facing for the seven hundred and thirty-eighth time his harsh house-keeper-his wife. There she would be, lying in the big shameless bed that filled up half the room, a bony shadow within the mosquito tent, a lanky jaw and a short grey pigtail and an absurd bonnet. She thought she had a position to keep up: a government pensioner: the wife of the only married priest. She was proud of it. José. I'm-hic-coming, my love, he said, and lifted himself from the crate. Somebody somewhere laughed.

He lifted little pink eyes like those of a pig conscious of the slaughter-room. A high child's voice said: José. He stared in a bewildered way around the patio. At a barred window opposite, three children watched him with deep gravity. He turned his back and took a step or two towards his door, moving very slowly because of his bulk. José, somebody squeaked again, José. He looked back over his shoulder and caught the faces out in expressions of wild glee: his little pink eyes showed no anger-he had no right to be angry: he moved his mouth into a ragged and baffled, disintegrated smile, and as if that sign of weakness gave them all the license they needed, they squealed back at him without disguise: José, José. Come to bed, José. Their little shameless voices filled the patio, and he smiled humbly and sketched small gestures for silence, and there was no respect anywhere left for him in his home, in the town, in the whole abandoned star.

Chapter Three

CAPTAIN FELLOWS sang loudly to himself, while the little motor chugged in the bows of the canoe. His big sunburned face was like the map of a mountain region-patches of varying brown with two small lakes that were his eyes. He composed his songs as he went, and his voice was quite tuneless. Going home, going home, the food will be good for m-e-e. I don't like the food in the bloody citee. He turned out of the main stream into a tributary: a few alligators lay on the sandy margin. I don't like your snouts, O trouts. I don't like your snouts, O trouts. He was a happy man.

The banana plantations came down on either bank: his voice boomed under the hard sun: that and the churr of the motor were the only sounds anywhere-he was completely alone. He was borne up on a big tide of boyish joy-doing a mans job, the heart of the wild: he felt no responsibility for anyone. In only one other country had he felt more happy, and that was in war-time France, in the ravaged landscape of trenches. The tributary corkscrewed farther into the marshy overgrown state, and a buzzard lay spread out in the sky. Captain Fellows opened a tin box and ate a sandwich-food never tasted so good as out of doors. A monkey made a sudden chatter at him as he went by, and Captain Fellows felt happily at one with nature-a wide shallow kinship with all the world moved with the bloodstream through the veins: he was at home anywhere. The artful little devil, he thought, the artful little devil. He began to sing again-somebody else's words a little jumbled in his friendly unretentive memory. Give to me the life I love, bread I dip in the river, under the wide and starry sky, the hunter's home from the sea. The plantations petered out, and far behind the mountains came into view, heavy black lines drawn low-down across the sky. A few bungalows rose out of the mud. He was home. A very slight cloud marred his happiness.

He thought: After all, a man likes to be welcomed.

He walked up to his bungalow: it was distinguished from [27] the others which lay along the bank by a tiled roof, a flagpost without a flag, a plate on the door with the title, Central American Banana Company. Two hammocks were strung up on the veranda, but there was nobody about. Captain Fellows knew where to find his wife-it was not she he had expected. He burst boisterously through a door and shouted: 'Daddy's home. A scared thin face peeked at him through a mosquito net; his boots ground peace into the floor; Mrs. Fellows flinched away into the white muslin tent. He said: Pleased to see me, Trix? and she drew rapidly on her face the outline of her frightened welcome. It was like a trick you do with a blackboard. Draw a dog in one line without lifting the chalk-and the answer, of course, is a sausage.

I'm glad to be home, Captain Fellows said, and he believed it. It was his one firm conviction-that he really felt the correct emotions of love and joy and grief and hate. He had always been a good man at zero hour.

All well at the office?

Fine, Fellows said, fine.

I had a bit of fever yesterday.

Ah, you need looking after. You'll be all right now, he said vaguely, that I'm home. He shied merrily away from the subject of fever-clapping his hands, a big laugh, while she trembled in her tent. Where's Coral?

She's with the policeman, Mrs. Fellows said.

I hoped she'd meet me, he said, roaming aimlessly about the little, inferior room, full of boot-trees, while his brain caught up with her. Policeman? What policeman?

He came last night and Coral let him sleep on the veranda. He's looking for somebody, she says.

What an extraordinary thing! Here?

He's not an ordinary policeman. He's an officer. He left his men in the village-Coral says.

I do think you ought to be up, he said. I mean-these fellows, you can't trust them. He felt no conviction when he added: She's just a kid.

I tell you I had fever, Mrs. Fellows wailed. I felt so terribly ill.

You'll be all right. just a touch of the sun. You'll see-now I'm home.

[28] I had such a headache. I couldn't read or sew. And then this man ...

Terror was always just behind her shoulder: she was wasted by the effort of not turning round. She dressed up her fear, so that she could look at it-in the form of fever, rats, unemployment. The real thing was taboo-death coming nearer every year in the strange place: everybody packing up and leaving, while she stayed in a cemetery no one visited, in a big aboveground tomb.

He said: I suppose I ought to go and see the man.

He sat down on the bed and put his hand upon her arm. They had something in common-a kind of diffidence. He said absent-mindedly: That dago secretary of the boss has gone.

Where?

West. He could feel her arm go stiff: she strained away from him towards the wall. He had touched the taboo-he shared it, the bond was broken, he couldn't tell why. Headache, darling?

Hadn't you better see the man?

Oh, yes, yes. I'll be off. But he didn't stir: it was the child who came to him

She stood in the doorway watching them with a look of immense responsibility. Before her serious gaze they became a boy you couldn't trust and a ghost you could almost puff away: a piece of frightened air. She was very young-about thirteen-and at that age you are not afraid of many things, age and death, all the things which may turn up, snake-bite and fever and rats and a bad smell. Life hadn't got at her yet: she had a false air of impregnability. But she had been reduced already, as it were, to the smallest terms-everything was there but on the thinnest lines. That was what the sun did to a child, reduced it to a framework. The gold bangle on the bony wrist was like a padlock on a canvas door a fist could break. She said: I told the policeman you were home.

Oh, yes, yes, Captain Fellows said. Got a kiss for your old father?

She came solemnly across the room and kissed him formally upon the forehead-he could feel the lack of meaning. She had other things to think about. She said: I told cook that mother would not be getting up for dinner.

[29] I think you ought to make the effort, dear, Captain Fellows said.

Why? Coral said.

Oh well ...

Coral said: I want to talk to you alone. Mrs. Fellows shifted inside her tent-just so she could be certain Coral would arrange the final evacuation. Common sense was a horrifying quality she had never possessed: it was common sense which said: The dead can't hear or She can't know now or Tin flowers are more practical.

I don't understand, Captain Fellows said uneasily, why your mother shouldn't hear.

She wouldn't want to go. It would only scare her.

Coral-he was accustomed to it by now-had an answer to everything. She never spoke without deliberation: she was prepared-but sometimes the answers she had prepared seemed to him of a wildness. ... They were based on the only life she could remember-this. The swamp and vultures and no children anywhere, except a few in the village, with bellies swollen by worms, who ate dirt from the bank, inhumanly. A child is said to draw parents together, and certainly he felt an immense unwillingness to entrust himself to this child. Her answers might carry him anywhere. He felt through the net for his wife's hand-secretively: they were adults together. This was the stranger in their house. He said boisterously: You're frightening us.

I don't think, the child said, with care, that you'll be frightened.

He said weakly, pressing his wife's hand: Well, my dear, our daughter seems to have decided ...

First you must see the policeman. I want him to go. I don't like him.

Then he must go, of course, Captain Fellows said, with a hollow unconfident laugh.

I told him that. I said we couldn't refuse him a hammock for the night, when he arrived so late. But now he must go.

And he disobeyed you?

He said he wanted to speak to you.

He little knew, Captain Fellows said, he little knew. Irony was his only defence, but it was not understood: nothing [30] was understood which was not clear-like an alphabet or a simple sum or a date in history. He relinquished his wife's hand and allowed himself to be led unwillingly into the afternoon sun. The police officer stood in front of the veranda: a motionless olive figure: he wouldn't stir a foot to meet Captain Fellows.

Well, lieutenant? Captain Fellows said breezily. It occurred to him that Coral had more in common with the policeman than with himself.

I am looking for a man, the lieutenant said: He has been reported in this district.

He can't be here.

Your daughter tells me the same.

She knows.

He is wanted on a very serious charge.

Murder?

No. Treason.

Oh, treason, Captain Fellows said, all his interest dropping: there was so much treason everywhere-it was like petty larceny in a barracks.

He is a priest. I trust you will report at once if he is seen. The lieutenant paused. You are a foreigner living under the protection of our laws. We expect you to make a proper return for our hospitality. You are not a Catholic?

No.

Then I can trust you to report? the lieutenant said.

I suppose so.

The lieutenant stood there like a little dark menacing question mark in the sun: his attitude seemed to indicate that he wouldn't even accept the benefit of shade from a foreigner. But he had used a hammock: that, Captain Fellows supposed, he must have regarded as a requisition. Have a glass of gaseosa?

No. No, thank you.

Well, Captain Fellows said, I can't offer you anything else, can I? It's treason to drink spirits.

The lieutenant suddenly turned on his heel as if he could no longer bear the sight of them and strode away along the path which led to the village: his gaiters and his pistol-holster winked in the sunlight. When he had gone some way they could see him pause and spit: he had not been discourteous, he had waited till he supposed that they no longer watched him before [31] he got rid of his hatred and contempt for a different way of life, for ease, safety, toleration, and complacency.

I wouldn't want to be up against him, Captain Fellows said.

Of course he doesn't trust us.

They don't trust anyone.

I think, Coral said. he smelt a rat.

They smell them everywhere.

You see, I wouldn't let him search the place.

Why ever not? Captain Fellows said-and then his vague mind went off at a tangent. How did you stop him?

I said I'd loose the dogs on him-and complain to the Minister. He hadn't any right ...

Oh, right, Captain Fellows said. They carry their right on their hips. It wouldn't have done any harm to let him look.

I gave him my word. She was as inflexible as the lieutenant: small and black and out of place among the banana groves. Her candour made allowances for nobody: the future, full of compromises, anxieties, and shame, lay outside: the gate was dosed which would one day let it in. But at any moment now a word, a gesture, the most trivial act might be her sesame-to what? Captain Fellows was touched with fear: he was aware of an inordinate love: it robbed him of authority. You cannot control what you love-you watch it driving recklessly towards the broken bridge, the torn-up track, the horror of seventy years ahead. He dosed his eyes-he was a happy man--and hummed a tune.

Coral said: I shouldn't have liked a man like that to catch me out-lying, I mean.

Lying? Good God, Captain Fellows said, you don't mean he's here?

Of course he's here, Coral said.

Where?

In the big barn, she explained gently.

We couldn't let them catch him.

Does your mother know about this?

She said with devastating honesty: Oh, no. I couldn't trust her. She was independent of both of them: they belonged together in the past. In forty years' time they would be dead as last year's dog. He said: You'd better show me.

He walked slowly: happiness drained out of him more [32] quickly and completely than out of an unhappy man: an unhappy man is always prepared. As she walked in front of him, her two meagre tails of hair bleaching in the sunlight, it occurred to him for the first time that she was of an age when Mexican girls were ready for their first man. What was to happen? He flinched away from problems which he had never dared to confront. As they passed the window of his bedroom he caught sight of a thin shape lying bunched and bony and alone in a mosquito tent. He remembered with self-pity and nostalgia his happiness on the river, doing a man's job without thinking of other people. If I had never married. ... He wailed like a child at the merciless immature back: We've no business interfering in their politics.

This isn't politics, she said gently. I know about politics. Mother and I are doing the Reform Bill. She took a key out of her pocket and unlocked the big barn in which they stored bananas before sending them down the river to the port. It was very dark inside after the glare: there was a scuffle in a corner. Captain Fellows picked up an electric torch and shone it on somebody in a torn, dark suit-a small man who blinked and needed a shave.

Que es usted? Captain Fellows said.

I speak English. He clutched a small attaché case to his side, as if he were waiting to catch a train he must on no account miss.

You've no business here.

No, the man said, no.

It's nothing to do with us, Captain Fellows said. We are foreigners.

The man said: Of course. I will go. He stood with his head a little bent like a man in an orderly-room listening to an officer's decision. Captain Fellows relented a little. He said: You'd better wait till dark. You don't want to be caught.

No.

Hungry?

A little. It does not matter. He said with a rather repulsive humility: If you would do me a favour ...

What?

A little brandy.

I'm breaking the law enough for you as it is, Captain [33] Fellows said. He strode out of the barn, feeling twice the size, leaving the small bowed figure in the darkness among the bananas. Coral locked the door and followed him. What a religion! Captain Fellows said. Begging for brandy. Shameless.

But you drink it sometimes.

My dear, Captain Fellows said, when you are older you'll understand the difference between drinking a little brandy after dinner and-well, needing it.

Can I take him some beer?

You won't take him anything.

The servants wouldn't be safe.

He was powerless and furious; he said: You see what a hole you've put us in. He stumped back into the house and into his bedroom, roaming restlessly among the boot-trees. Mrs. Fellows slept uneasily, dreaming of weddings. Once she said aloud: My train. Be careful of my train.

What's that? he said petulantly. What's that?

Dark fell like a curtain: one moment the sun was there, the next it had gone. Mrs. Fellows woke to another night. Did you speak, dear?

It was you who spoke, he said. Something about trains.

I must have been dreaming.

It will be a long time before they have trains here, he said, with gloomy satisfaction. He came and sat on the bed, keeping away from the window: out of sight, out of mind. The crickets were beginning to chatter and beyond the mosquito wire fireflies moved like globes. He put his heavy, cheery, needing-to-be-reassured hand on the shape under the sheet and said: It's not such a bad life, Trixy. Is it now? Not a bad life? But he could feel her stiffen: the word life was taboo: it reminded you of death. She turned her face away from him towards the wall and then hopelessly back again-the phrase turn to the wall was taboo too. She lay panic-stricken, while the boundaries of her fear widened and widened to include every relationship and the whole world of inanimate things: it was like an infection. You could look at nothing for long without becoming aware that it, too, carried the germ ... the word sheet even. She threw the sheet off her and said: It's so hot, it's so hot. The usually happy and the always unhappy one watched the night [34] thicken from the bed with distrust. They were companions cut off from all the world: there was no meaning anywhere outside their own hearts: they were carried like children in a coach through the huge spaces without any knowledge of their destination. He began to hum with desperate cheerfulness a song of the war years: he wouldn't listen to the footfall in the yard outside, going in the direction of the barn.

Coral put down the chicken legs and tortillas on the ground and unlocked the door. She carried a bottle of Cerveza Moctezuma under her arm. There was the same scuffle in the dark: the noise of a frightened man. She said: It's me, to quieten him, but she didn't turn on the torch. She said: There's a bottle of beer here, and some food.

Thank you. Thank you.

The police have gone from the village-south. You had better go north.

He said nothing.

She asked, with the cold curiosity of a child: What would they do to you if they found you?

Shoot me.

You must be very frightened, she said with interest.

He felt his way across the barn towards the door and the pale starlight. He said: I am frightened, and stumbled on a bunch of bananas.

Can't you escape from here?

I tried. A month ago. The boat was leaving and then-I was summoned.

Somebody needed you?

She didn't need me, he said bitterly. Coral could just see his face now, as the world swung among the stars: what her father would call an untrustworthy face. He said: You see how unworthy I am. Talking like this.

Unworthy of what?

He clasped his little attaché case closely and said: Could you tell me what month it is? Is it still February?

No. It's the seventh of March.

I don't often meet people who know. That means another month-six weeks-before the rains. He went on: When the rains come I am nearly safe. You see, the police can't get about.

[35] The rains are best for you? she asked: she had a keen desire to learn. The Reform Bill and Senlac and a little French Jay like treasure-trove in her brain. She expected answers to every question, and she absorbed them hungrily.

Oh, no, no. They mean another six months living like this. He tore at a chicken leg. She could smell his breath: it was disagreeable, like something which has lain about too long in the heat. He said: I'd rather be caught.

But can't you, she said logically, just give yourself up?

He had answers as plain and understandable as her questions. He said: There's the pain. To choose pain like that-it's not possible. And it's my duty not to be caught. You see, my bishop is no longer here. Curious pedantries moved him. This is my parish. He found a tortilla and began to eat ravenously.

She said solemnly: It's a problem. She could hear a gurgle as he drank out of the bottle. He said: I try to remember how happy I was once. A firefly lit his face like a torch and then went out-a tramp's face: what could ever have made it happy? He said: In Mexico City now they are saying Benediction. The bishop's there ... Do you imagine he ever thinks …? They don't even know I'm alive.

She said: Of course you could-renounce.

I don't understand.

Renounce your faith, she said, using the words of her European History.

He said: It's impossible. There's no way. I'm a priest. It's out of my power.

The child listened intently. She said: Like a birthmark She could hear him sucking desperately at the bottle. She said: I think I could find my father's brandy.

Oh, no, you mustn't steal. He drained the beer: a long whistle in the darkness: the last drop must have gone. He said: I must go. At once.

You can always come back here.

Your father would not like it.

He needn't know, she said. I could look after you. My room is just opposite this door. You would just tap at my window. Perhaps, she went seriously on, it would be better to have a code. You see, somebody else might tap.

[36] He said in a horrified voice: Not a man?

Yes. You never know. Another fugitive from justice.

Surely, he asked in bewilderment, that is not likely?

She said airily: These things do happen.

Before today?

No, but I expect they will again. I want to be prepared. You must tap three times. Two long taps and a short one. He giggled suddenly like a child. How do you tap a long tap?

Like this.

Oh, you mean a loud one?

I call them long taps-because of Morse. He was hopelessly out of his depth. He said: You are very good. Will you pray for me?

Oh, she said, I don't believe in that.

Not in praying?

You see, I don't believe in God. I lost my faith when I was ten.

Dear, dear, he said. Then I will pray for you.

You can, she said patronizingly, if you like. If you come again I shall teach you the Morse code. It would be useful to you.

How?

If you were hiding in the plantation I could flash to you with my mirror news of the enemy's movements.

He listened seriously. But wouldn't they see you?

Oh, she said, I would invent an explanation. She moved logically forward a step at a time, eliminating all objections. Good-bye, my child, he said.

He lingered by the door. Perhaps-you do not care for prayers. Perhaps you would like ... I know a good conjuring trick.

I like tricks.

You do it with cards. Have you any cards?

No.

He sighed. Then that's no good, and giggled-she could smell the beer on his breath- I shall just have to pray for you.

She said: You don't sound afraid.

A little drink, he said, will work wonders in a cowardly [37] man. With a little brandy, why, I'd defy-the devil. He stumbled in the doorway.

Good-bye, she said. I hope you'll escape. A faint sigh came out of the darkness: she said gently: If they kill you I shan't forgive them-ever. She was ready to accept any responsibility, even that of vengeance, without a second thought. It was her life.

Half a dozen huts of mud and wattle stood in a clearing; two were in ruins. A few pigs rooted round, and an old woman carried a burning ember from hut to hut, lighting a little fire on the centre of each floor to fill the hut with smoke and keep mosquitoes away. Women lived in two of the huts, the pigs in another, in the last unruined hut, where maize was stored, an old man and a boy and a tribe of rats. The old man stood in the clearing watching the fire being carried round: it flickered through the darkness like a ritual repeated at the same hour for a lifetime. White hair, a white stubbly beard, and hands brown and fragile as last year's leaves, he gave an effect of immense permanence. Nothing much could ever change him, living on the edge of subsistence. He had been old for years.

The stranger came into the clearing. He wore what used to be town shoes, black and pointed: only the uppers were left, so that he walked to all intents barefoot. The shoes were symbolic, like the cobwebbed flags in churches. He wore a shirt and a pair of black torn trousers and he carried his attaché case-as if he were a season-ticket holder. He had nearly reached the state of permanency too, but he carried about with him still the scars of time-the damaged shoes implied a different past, the lines on his face suggested hopes and fears of the future. The old woman with the ember stopped between two huts and watched him. He came on into the clearing with his eyes on the ground and his shoulders hunched, as if he felt exposed. The old man advanced to meet him: he took the stranger's hand and kissed it.

Can you let me have a hammock for the night?

Ah, father, for a hammock you must go to a town. Here you must take only the luck of the road.

Never mind. Anywhere to lie down. Can you give me-a little spirit?

[38] Coffee, father. We have nothing else.

Some food.

We have no food.

Never mind.

The boy came out of the hut and watched them: everybody watched: it was like a bull-fight: the animal was tired and they awaited the next move. They were not hard-hearted: they were watching the rare spectacle of something worse off than themselves. He limped on towards the hut. Inside it was dark from the knees upwards: there was no flame on the floor, just a slow burning away. The place was half-filled by a stack of maize: rats rustled among the dry outer leaves. There was a bed made of earth with a straw mat on it, and two packing-cases made a table. The stranger lay down, and the old man closed the door on them both.

Is it safe?

The boy will watch. He knows.

Were you expecting me?

No, father. But it is five years since we have seen a priest … it was bound to happen one day.

The priest fell uneasily asleep, and the old man crouched on the floor, fanning the fire with his breath. Somebody tapped on the door and the priest jerked upright. It is all right, the old man said. Just your coffee, father. He brought it to him-grey maize coffee smoking in a tin mug, but the priest was too tired to drink. He lay on his side perfectly still: a rat watched him from the maize.

The soldiers were here yesterday, the old man said. He blew on the fire: smoke poured up and filled the hut. The priest began to cough, and the rat moved quickly like the shadow of a hand into the stack.

The boy, father, has not been baptized. The last priest who was here wanted two pesos. I had only one peso. Now I have only fifty centavos.

Tomorrow, the priest said wearily. Will you say Mass, father, in the morning?

Yes, yes.

And Confession, father, will you hear our confessions?

Yes, but let me sleep first. He turned on his back and closed his eyes to keep out the smoke.

[39] We have no money, father, to give you. The other priest, Padre José ...

Give me some clothes instead, he said impatiently.

But we have only what we wear.

Take mine in exchange.

The old man hummed dubiously to himself, glancing sideways at what the fire showed of the black torn cloth. If I must, father, he said. He blew quietly at the fire for a few minutes. The priest's eyes closed again.

After five years there is so much to confess.

The priest sat up quickly. What was that? he said.

You were dreaming, father. The boy will warn us if the soldiers come. I was only saying-

Can't you let me sleep for five minutes? He lay down again: somewhere, in one of the women's huts, someone was singing- I went down to my field and there I found a rose.

The old man said softly: It would be a pity if the soldiers came before we had time ... such a burden on poor souls, father … The priest shouldered himself upright against the wall and said furiously: Very well. Begin. I will hear your confession. The rats scuffled in the maize. Go on then, he said. Don't waste time. Hurry. When did you last ... The old man knelt beside the fire, and across the clearing the woman sang: I went down to my field and the rose was withered.

Five years ago. He paused and blew at the fire. It's hard to remember, father.

Have you sinned against purity?

The priest leant against the wall with his legs drawn up beneath him, and the rats accustomed to the voices moved again in the maize. The old man picked out his sins with difficulty, blowing at the fire. Make a good act of contrition, the priest said, and say-say-have you a rosary?-then say the Joyful Mysteries. His eyes closed, his lips and tongue stumbled over the Absolution, failed to finish ... he sprang awake again.

Can I bring the women? the old man was saying. It is five years ...

Oh, let them come. Let them all come! the priest cried angrily. I am your servant. He put his hand over his eyes and began to weep. The old man opened the door: it was [40] not completely dark outside under the enormous arc of starry ill-lit sky. He went across to the women's huts and knocked. Come, he said. You must say your confessions. It is only polite to the father. They wailed at him that they were tired ... the morning would do. Would you insult him? he said. What do you think he has come here for? He is a very holy father. There he is in my hut now weeping for our sins. He hustled them out: one by one they picked their way across the clearing towards the hut: and the old man set off down the path towards the river to take the place of the boy who watched the ford for soldiers.

Chapter Four

IT WAS years since Mr. Tench had written a letter. He sat before the work-table sucking at a steel nib-an old impulse had come to him to project this stray letter towards the last address he had-in Southend. Who knew who was alive still? He tried to begin: it was like breaking the ice at a party where you knew nobody. He began to write the envelope-Mrs. Henry Tench, care of Mrs. Marsdyke, 3, The Avenue, Westcliffe. It was her mother's house: the dominating, interfering creature who had induced him to set up his plate in Southend for a fatal while. Please forward, he wrote. She wouldn't do it if she knew, but she had probably forgotten-by this time-his handwriting.

He sucked the inky nib-how to go on? It would have been easier if there had been some purpose behind it other than the vague desire to put on record-to somebody-that he was still alive. It might prove awkward, if she had married again, but in that case she wouldn't t hesitate to tear the letter up. He wrote: Dear Sylvia, in a big clear immature script, listening to the furnace purring on the bench. He was making a gold alloy-there were no depots here where he could buy his material ready-made. Besides, the depots didn't favour 14-carat gold for dental work, and he couldn't afford finer material.

[41] The trouble was-nothing ever happened here. His life was as sober, respectable, regular as even Mrs. Marsdyke could require.

He took a look at the crucible: the gold was on the point of fusion with the alloy, so he flung in a spoonful of vegetable charcoal to protect the mixture from the air, took up his pen again and sat mooning over the paper. He couldn't remember his wife clearly-only the hats she wore. How surprised she would be at hearing from him after this long while: there had been one letter written by each of them since the little boy died. The years really meant nothing to him-they drifted fairly rapidly by without changing a habit. He had meant to leave six years ago, but the peso dropped with a revolution, and so he had come south. Now he had more money saved, but a month ago the peso had dropped again-another revolution somewhere. There was nothing to do but wait ... the nib went back between his teeth and memory melted in the little hot room. Why write at all? He couldn't remember now what had given him the odd idea. Somebody knocked on the outer door and he left the letter on the bench- Dear Sylvia, staring up, big and bold and hopeless. A boat's bell, rang by the riverside: it was the General Obregon back from Vera Cruz. A memory stirred: it was as if something alive and in pain moved in the little front room among the rocking-chairs- an interesting afternoon: what happened to him, I wonder, when -then died, or got away: Mr. Tench was used to pain, it was his profession. He waited cautiously till a hand beat on the door again and a voice said: Con amistad -there was no trust anywhere-before he drew the bolts and opened up, to admit a patient.

Padre José went in, under the big classical gateway marked in black letters Silencio, to what people used to call the Garden of God. It was like a building estate where nobody had paid attention to the architecture of the next house. The big stone tombs of above-ground burial were any height and any shape: sometimes an angel stood on the roof with lichenous wings: sometimes through a glass window you could see some rusting metal flowers upon a shelf-it was like looking into the kitchen of a house whose owners have moved on, [42] forgetting to clean out the vases. There was a sense of intimacy-you could go anywhere and see anything. Life here had withdrawn altogether.

He walked very slowly among the tombs because of his bulk: he could be alone here, there were no children about, and he could waken a faint sense of homesickness which was better than no feeling at all. He had buried some of these people. His small inflamed eyes turned here and there. Coming round the huge grey bulk of the Lopez tomb-a merchant family which fifty years ago had owned the only hotel in the capital-he found he was not alone. A grave was being dug at the edge of the cemetery next the wall: two men were working rapidly: a woman stood by and an old man. A child's coffin lay at their feet-it took no time at all in the spongy soil to get down far enough: a little water collected; that was why those who could afford it lay above ground.

They all paused a moment and looked at Padre José, and he sidled back towards the Lopez tomb as if he were an intruder. There was no sign of grief anywhere in the bright hot day: a buzzard sat on a roof outside the cemetery. Somebody said: Father.

Padre José put up his hand deprecatingly as if he were trying to indicate that he was not there, that he was gone, away, out of sight.

The old man said: Padre José. They all watched him hungrily: they had been quite resigned until he had appeared, but now they were anxious, eager. ... He ducked and dodged away from them. Padre José, the old man repeated. A prayer? They smiled at him, waiting. They were quite accustomed to people dying, but an unforeseen hope of happiness had bobbed up among the tombs: they could boast after this that one at least of their family had gone into the ground with an official prayer.

It's impossible, Padre José said.

Yesterday was her saint's day, the woman said, as if that made a difference. She was five. She was one of those garrulous women who show to strangers the photographs of their children: but all she had to show was a coffin.

I am sorry.

The old man pushed the coffin aside with his foot the better [43] to approach Padre José: it was small and light and might have contained nothing but bones. Not a whole service, you understand-just a prayer. She was-innocent, he said. The word sounded odd and archaic and local in the little stony town, outdated like the Lopez tomb, belonging only here.

It is against the law.

Her name, the woman went on, was Anita. I was sick when I had her, she explained, as if to excuse the child's delicacy which had led to all this inconvenience.

The law ...

The old man put his finger to his nose. You can trust us. It is just the case of a short prayer. I am her grandfather. This is her mother, her father, her uncle. You can trust us.

But that was the trouble-he could trust no one. As soon as they got back home one or other of them would certainly begin to boast. He walked backwards all the time, weaving his plump fingers, shaking his head, nearly bumping into the Lopez tomb. He was scared, and yet a curious pride bubbled in his throat, because he was being treated as a priest again, with respect. If I could, he said, my children ...

Suddenly and unexpectedly there was agony in the cemetery. They had been used to losing children, but they hadn't been used to what the rest of the world knows best of all-the hope which peters out. The woman began to cry-dryly, without tears, the trapped noise of something wanting to be released; the old man fell on his knees with his hands held out. Padre José, he said, there is no one else ... He looked as if he were asking for a miracle. An enormous temptation came to Padre José to take the risk and say a prayer over the grave: he felt the wild attraction of doing one's duty and stretched a sign of the cross in the air; then fear came back, like a drug. Contempt and safety waited for him down by the quay: he wanted to get away. He sank hopelessly down on his knees and entreated them: Leave me alone. He said: I am unworthy. Can't you see? I am a coward. The two old men faced each other on their knees among the tombs, the small coffin shoved aside like a pretext an absurd spectacle. He knew it was absurd: a lifetime of self-analysis enabled him to see himself as he was, fat and ugly and old and humiliated. It was as if a whole seducing choir of angels had silently [44] with-drawn and left the voices of the children in the patio- Come to bed, José, come to bed, sharp and shrill and worse than they had ever been. He knew he was in the grip of the unforgivable sin, despair.

'At last the blessed day arrived,' the mother read aloud, 'when the days of Juan's novitiate were over. Oh, what a joyful day was that for his mother and sister! And a little sad too, for the flesh cannot always be strong and how could they help mourning awhile in their hearts for the loss of a small son and an elder brother? Ah, if they had known that they were gaining that day a saint in heaven to pray for them.'

The younger girl on the bed said: Have we got a saint?

Of course.

Why did they want another saint?

The mother went on reading: 'Next day the whole family received communion from the hands of a son and brother. Then they said a fond good-bye-they little knew that it was the last-to the new soldier of Christ and returned to their home in Morelos. Already clouds were darkening the heavens, and President Calles was discussing the anti-Catholic laws in the Palace at Chapultepec. The devil was ready to assail poor Mexico.'

Is the shooting going to begin soon? the boy asked, moving restlessly against the wall. His mother went relentlessly on: 'Juan, unknown to all but his Confessor, was preparing himself for the evil days ahead with the most rigorous mortifications. His companions suspected nothing, for he was always the heart and soul of every merry conversation, and on the feast-day of the founder of the Order it was he ...'

I know, I know, the boy said. He acted a play. The little girls opened astounded eyes.

And why not, Luis? the mother said, pausing with her finger on the prohibited book. He stared sullenly back at her. And why not, Luis? she repeated. She waited awhile, and then read on: the little girls watched their brother with horror and admiration. 'It was he,' she said, 'who obtained permission to perform a little one-act play founded on ...'

I know, I know, the boy said. The catacombs.

The mother, compressing her lips, continued: '... the [45] persecution of the Early Christians. Perhaps he remembered that occasion in his boyhood when he acted Nero before the good old Bishop, but this time he insisted on taking the comic part of a Roman fishmonger ...'

I don't believe a word of it, the boy said, with sullen fury, not a word of it.

How dare you!

Nobody could be such a fool.

The little girls sat motionless, their eyes large and brown and pious, enjoying themselves like Hell.

Go to your father.

Anything to get away from this-this- the boy said.

Tell him what you've told me.

This...

Leave the room.

He slammed the door behind him: his father stood at the barred window of the sala, looking out: the beetles detonated against the oil-lamp and crawled with broken wings across the stone floor. The boy said: My mother told me to tell you that I told her that I didn't believe that the book she's reading ...

What book?

The Holy Book

He said sadly: Oh, that. Nobody passed in the street, nothing happened: it was after nine-thirty and all the lights were out. He said: You must make allowances. For us, you know, everything seems over. That book-it is like our own childhood.

It sounds so silly.

You don't remember the time when the Church was here. I was a bad Catholic, but it meant well, music, lights, a place where you could sit out of this heat-and for your mother, well, there was always something for her to do. If we had a theatre, anything at all instead, we shouldn't feel so-left.

But this Juan, the boy said. He sounds so silly.

He was killed, wasn't he?

Oh, so were Villa, Obregon, Madero ...

Who tells you about them?

We all of us play them. Yesterday I was Madero. They shot me in the plaza-the law of flight. Somewhere in the heavy night a drum beat: the sour river smell filled the room: it was [46] familiar, like the taste of soot in cities. We tossed up. I was Madero: Pedro had to be Huerta. He fled to Vera Cruz down by the river. Manuel chased him-he was Carranza. His father struck a beetle off his shirt, staring into the street: the sound of marching feet came nearer. He said: I suppose your mother's angry.

You aren't, the boy said.

What's the good? It's not your fault. We have been deserted.

The soldiers went by, returning to barracks, up the hill near what had once been the cathedral: they marched out of step in spite of the drum beat, they looked undernourished, they hadn't yet made much of war. They passed lethargically by in the dark street and the boy watched them out of sight with excited and hopeful eyes.

Mrs. Fellows rocked backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards. 'And so Lord Palmerston said if the Greek Government didn't do right to Don Pacifico ...' She said: My darling, I've got such a headache I think we must stop today.

Of course. I have a little one too.

I expect yours will be better soon. Would you mind putting the books away? The little shabby books had come by post from a firm in Paternoster Row called Private Tutorials, Ltd.-a whole education which began with Reading without Tears and went methodically on to the Reform Bill and Lord Palmerston and the poems of Victor Hugo. Once every six months an examination paper was delivered, and Mrs. Fellows laboriously worked through the answers and awarded marks. These she sent back to Paternoster Row, and there, weeks later, they were filed: once she had forgotten her duty when there was shooting in Zapata, and had received a printed slip beginning: Dear Parent, I regret to see ... The trouble was, they were years ahead of schedule by now-there were so few other books to read-and so the examination papers were years behind. Sometimes the firm sent embossed certificates for framing, announcing that Miss Coral Fellows had passed third with honours into the second grade, signed with a rubber stamp Henry Beckley, B.A., Director of Private Tutorials, Ltd., and sometimes there would be little personal letters typewritten, with the same blue [47] smudgy signature, saying: Dear Pupil, I think you should pay more attention this week to … The letters were always six weeks out of date.

My darling, Mrs. Fellows said, will you see the cook and order lunch? Just yourself. I can't eat a thing, and your father's out on the plantation.

Mother, the child said, do you believe there's a God? The question scared Mrs. Fellows. She rocked furiously up and down and said: Of course.

I mean the Virgin Birth-and everything.

My dear, what a thing to ask. Whom have you been talking to?

Oh, she said, I've been thinking, that's all. She didn't wait for any further answer: she knew quite well there would be none-it was always her job to make decisions. Henry Beckley, B.A., had put it all into an early lesson-it hadn't been any more difficult to accept then than the giant at the top of the beanstalk, and at the age of ten she had discarded both relentlessly. By that time she was starting algebra.

Surely your father hasn't ...

Oh, no.

She put on her sun-helmet and went out into the blazing ten o'clock heat to find the cook-she looked more fragile than ever and more indomitable. When she had given her orders she went to the warehouse to inspect the alligator skins tacked out on a wall, then to the stables to see that the mules were in good shape. She carried her responsibilities carefully like crockery across the hot yard: there was no question she wasn't prepared to answer: the vultures rose languidly at her approach.

She returned to the house and her mother. She said: It's Thursday.

Is it, dear?

Hasn't father got the bananas down to the quay?

I'm sure I don't know, dear.

She went briskly back into the yard and rang a bell: an Indian came; no, the bananas were still in the store; no orders had been given. Get them down, she said, at once, quickly. The boat will be here soon. She fetched her father's ledger and counted the bunches as they were carried out-a hundred bananas or more to a bunch, which was worth a few pence: it took more [48] than two hours to empty the store: somebody had got to do the work, and once before her father had forgotten the day. After half an hour she began to feel tired-she wasn't used to weariness so early in the day: she leant against the wall and it scorched her shoulder-blades. She felt no resentment at all at being there, looking after things: the word play had no meaning there at all the whole of life was adult. In one of Henry Beckley's early reading-books there had been a picture of a doll's tea-party: it was incomprehensible, like a ceremony she hadn't learned: she couldn't see the point of pretending. Four hundred and fifty-six. Four hundred and fifty-seven. The sweat poured down the peons' bodies steadily like a shower-bath. An awful pain took her suddenly in the stomach-she missed a load and tried to catch up in her calculations: the sense of responsibility for the first time felt like a load borne for too many years. Five hundred and twenty-five. It was a new pain (not worms this time), but it didn't scare her: it was as if her body had expected it, had grown up to it, as the mind grows up to the loss of tenderness. You couldn't call it childhood draining out of her: childhood was something she had never really been conscious of.

Is that the last? she said.

Yes, Señorita.

Are you sure?

Yes, Señorita.

But she had to see for herself. Never before had it occurred to her to do a job unwillingly-if she didn't do a thing, nobody would-but today she wanted to lie down, to sleep: if all the bananas didn't get away it was her father's fault. She wondered whether she had fever: her feet felt so cold on the hot ground. Oh, well, she thought, and went patiently into the barn, found the torch, and switched it on. Yes, the place seemed empty enough, but she never left a job half done. She advanced towards the back wall, holding the torch in front of her. An empty bottle, rolled away-she dropped the light on it: Cerveza Moctezuma. Then the torch lit the back wall: low down near the ground somebody had scrawled in chalk-she came closer-a lot of little crosses lay in the circle of light. He must have lain down among the bananas and tried-mechanically-to [49] relieve his fear by writing something, and this was all he could think of. The child stood in pain and looked at them: a horrible novelty enclosed her whole morning: it was as if today everything was memorable.

The Chief of Police was in the cantina playing billiards when the lieutenant found him. The jefe had a handkerchief tied all round his face with some idea that it relieved the toothache. He was chalking his cue for a difficult shot when the lieutenant pushed through the swing door. On the shelves behind were nothing but gaseosa bottles and a yellow liquid called sidral-warranted non-alcoholic. The lieutenant stood protestingly in the doorway: the situation was ignoble; he wanted to eliminate anything in the state at which a foreigner might have cause to sneer. He said: Can I speak to you? The jefe winced at a sudden jab of pain and came with unusual alacrity towards the door: the lieutenant glanced at the score, marked in rings strung on a cord across the room-the jefe was losing. Back-moment, the jefe said, and explained to the lieutenant: Don't want open mouth. As they pushed the door somebody raised a cue and surreptitiously pushed back one of the jefe's rings.

They walked up the street side by side: the fat one and the lean. It was a Sunday and all the shops closed at noon-that was the only relic of the old time. No bells rang anywhere. The lieutenant said: Have you seen the Governor?

You can do anything, the jefe said, anything.

He leaves it to us?

On conditions, he winced.

What are they?

He'll hold you-responsible-if-not caught before-rains.

As long as I'm not responsible for anything else ... the lieutenant said moodily.

You asked for it. You got it.

I'm glad. It seemed to the lieutenant that all the world he cared about now lay at his feet. They passed the new hall built for the Syndicate of Workers and Peasants: through the window they could see the big, bold, clever murals-of one priest caressing a woman in the confessional, another tippling on the [50] sacramental wine. The lieutenant said: We will soon make these unnecessary. He looked at the pictures with the eye of a foreigner: they seemed to him barbarous.

Why? They are-fun.

One day they'll forget there ever was a Church here. The jefe said nothing. The lieutenant knew he was thinking: What a fuss about nothing. He said sharply: Well, what are my orders?

Orders?

You are my chief.

The jefe was silent: he studied the lieutenant unobtrusively with little astute eyes. Then he said: You know I trust you. Do what you think best.

Will you put that in writing?

Oh-not necessary. We know each other.

All the way up the road they fenced warily for positions. Didn't the Governor give you anything in writing? the lieutenant asked.

No. He said we knew each other.

It was the lieutenant who gave way because it was he who really cared. He was indifferent to his personal future. He said: I shall take hostages from every village.

Then he won't stay in the villages.

Do you imagine, the lieutenant said bitterly, that they don't know where he is? He has to keep some touch-or what good is he?

Just as you like, the jefe said.

And I shall shoot as often as it's necessary.

The jefe said with factitious brightness: A little blood never hurt anyone. Where will you start?

His parish, I think, Concepcion, and then-perhaps-his home.

Why there?

He may think he's safe there. He brooded past the shuttered shops. It's worth a few deaths, but will he, do you think, support me if they make a fuss in Mexico?

It isn't likely, is it? the jefe said. But it's what- He was stopped by a stab of pain.

It's what I wanted, the lieutenant said for him.

He made his way on alone towards the police station: and the [51] chief went back to billiards. There were few people about; it was too hot. If only, he thought, we had a proper photograph-he wanted to know the features of his enemy. A swarm of children had the plaza to themselves. They were playing some obscure and intricate game from bench to bench: an empty gaseosa bottle sailed through the air and smashed at the lieutenant's feet. His hand went to his holster and he turned: he caught a look of consternation on a boy's face.

Did you throw that bottle?

The heavy brown eyes stared sullenly back at him.

What were you doing?

It was a bomb.

Were you throwing it at me?

No.

What then?

A gringo.

The lieutenant smiled-an awkward movement of the lips: That's right, but you must aim better. He kicked the broken bottle into the road and tried to think of words which would show these children that they were on the same side. He said: I suppose the gringo was one of those rich Yankees who think ... and surprised an expression of devotion in the boy's face; it called for something in return, and the lieutenant became aware in his own heart of a sad and unsatisfiable love. He said: Come here. The child approached, while his companions stood in a scared semi-circle and watched from a safe distance. What is your name?

Luis.

Well, the lieutenant said, at a loss for words, you must learn to aim properly.

The boy said passionately: I wish I could. He had his eye on the holster.

Would you like to see my gun? the lieutenant said. He drew his heavy automatic from the holster and held it out: the children drew cautiously in. He said: This is the safety-catch. Lift it. So. Now it's ready to fire.

Is it loaded? Luis asked.

It's always loaded.

The tip of the boy's tongue appeared: he swallowed. Saliva came from the glands as if he smelt blood. They all stood close [52] in now. A daring child put out his hand and touched the holster. They ringed the lieutenant round: he was surrounded by an insecure happiness as he fitted the gun back on his hip.

What is it called? Luis asked.

A Colt No. 5.

How many bullets?

Six.

Have you killed somebody with it?

Not yet, the lieutenant said.

They were breathless with interest. He stood with his hand on his holster and watched the brown intent patient eyes: it was for these he was fighting. He would eliminate from their childhood everything which had made him miserable, all that was poor, superstitious, and corrupt. They deserved nothing less than the truth-a vacant universe and a cooling world, the right to be happy in any way they chose. He was quite prepared to make a massacre for their sakes-first the Church and then the foreigner and then the politician-even his own chief would one day have to go. He wanted to begin the world again with them, in a desert.

Oh, Luis said, I wish ... I wish ... as if his ambition were too vast for definition. The lieutenant put out his hand in a gesture of affection-a touch, he didn't know what to do with it. He pinched the boy's ear and saw him flinch away with the pain: they scattered from him like birds and he went on alone across the plaza to the police station, a little dapper figure of hate carrying his secret of love. On the wall of the office the gangster still stared stubbornly in profile towards the first communion party: somebody had inked the priest's head round to detach him from the girls' and the women's faces: the unbearable grin peeked out of a halo. The lieutenant called furiously out into the patio: Is there nobody here? Then he sat down at the desk while the gun-butts scraped the floor.

PART II

Chapter One

THE mule suddenly sat down under the priest: it was not an unnatural thing to do, for they had been travelling through the forest for nearly twelve hours. They had been going west, but news of soldiers met them there and they had turned east: the Red Shirts were active in that direction, so they had tacked north, wading through the swamps, diving into the mahogany darkness. Now they were both tired out and the mule simply sat down. The priest scrambled off and began to laugh. He was feeling happy. It is one of the strange discoveries a man makes that life, however you lead it, contains moments of exhilaration: there are always comparisons which can be made with worse times: even in danger and misery the pendulum swings.

He came cautiously out of the belt of trees into a marshy clearing: the whole state was like that, river and swamp and forest: he knelt down in the late sunlight and bathed his face in a brown pool which reflected back at him like a piece of glazed pottery the round, stubbly, and hollow features; they were so unexpected that he grinned at them-with the shy evasive untrustworthy smile of a man caught out. In the old days he often practised a gesture a long while in front of a glass so that he had come to know his own face as well as an actor does. It was a form of humility-his own natural face hadn't seemed the right one. It was a buffoon's face, good enough for mild jokes to women, but unsuitable at the altar rail. He had tried to change it-and indeed, he thought, indeed I have succeeded, they'll never recognize me now, and the cause of his happiness came back to him like the taste of brandy, promising temporary relief from fear, loneliness, a lot of things. He was being driven by the presence of the soldiers to the very place where he most wanted to be. He had avoided it for six years, but now it wasn't his fault-it was his duty to go there-it couldn't count as sin. He went back to his mule and kicked it gently: Up, mule, up -a small gaunt man in torn peasant's clothes going for the first time in many years, like any ordinary man, to his home.

[56] In any case, even if he could have gone south and avoided the village, it was only one more surrender: the years behind him were littered with similar surrenders-feast-days and fast-days and days of abstinence had been the first to go: then he had ceased to trouble more than occasionally about his breviary-and finally he had left it behind altogether at the port in one of his periodic attempts at escape. Then the altar stone went-too dangerous to carry with him. He had no business to say Mass without it: he was probably liable to suspension, but penalties of the ecclesiastical kind began to seem unreal in a state where the only penalty was the civil one of death. The routine of his life like a dam was cracked and forgetfulness came dribbling in, wiping out this and that. Five years ago he had given way to despair-the unforgivable sin-and he was going back now to the scene of his despair with a curious lightening of the heart. For he had got over despair too. He was a bad priest, he knew it: they had a word for his kind-a whisky priest-but every failure dropped out of sight and out of mind: somewhere they accumulated in secret-the rubble of his failures. One day they would choke up, he supposed, altogether the source of grace. Until then he carried on, with spells of fear, weariness, with a shamefaced lightness of heart.

The mule splashed across the clearing and they entered the forest again. Now that he no longer despaired it didn't mean, of course, that he wasn't damned-it was simply that after a time the mystery became too great, a damned man putting God into the mouths of men: an odd sort of servant, that, for the devil. His mind was full of a simplified mythology: Michael dressed in armour slew a dragon, and the angels fell through space like comets with beautiful streaming hair because they were jealous, so one of the fathers had said, of what God intended for men-the enormous privilege of life-this life.

There were signs of cultivation: stumps of trees and the ashes of fires where the ground was being cleared for a crop. He stopped beating the mule on: he felt a curious shyness. ... A woman came out of a hut and watched him lagging up the path on the tired mule. The tiny village, not more than two dozen huts round a dusty plaza, was made to pattern: but it was a pattern which lay close to his heart; he felt secure-he was confident of a welcome-that in this place there would be at least [57] one person he could trust not to betray him to the police. When he was quite close the mule sat down again-this time he had to roll on the ground to escape. He picked himself up and the woman watched him as if he were an enemy. Ah, Maria, he said, and how are you?

Well, she exclaimed, it is you, father?

He didn't look directly at her: his eyes were sly and cautious. He said: You didn't recognize me?

You've changed. She looked him up and down with a kind of contempt. She said: When did you get those clothes, father?

A week ago.

What did you do with yours?

I gave them in exchange.

Why? They were good clothes.

They were very ragged-and conspicuous.

I'd have mended them and hidden them away. It's a waste. You look like a common man.

He smiled, looking at the ground, while she chided him like a house-keeper: it was just as in the old days when there was a presbytery and meetings of the Children of Mary and all the guilds and gossip of a parish, except of course that ... He said gently, not looking at her, with the same embarrassed smile: How's Brigida? His heart jumped at the name: a sin may have enormous consequences: it was six years since he had been -home.

She's as well as the rest of us. What did you expect?

He had his satisfaction: it was connected with his crime: he had no business to feel pleasure at anything attached to that past. He said mechanically: That's good, while his heart beat with its secret and appalling love. He said: I'm very tired. The police were about near Zapata ...

Why didn't you make for Montecristo?

He looked quickly up with anxiety. It wasn't the welcome that he had expected: a small knot of people had gathered between the huts and watched him from a safe distance-there was a little decaying bandstand and a single stall for gaseosas-people had brought their chairs out for the evening. Nobody came forward to kiss his hand and ask his blessing. It was as if he had descended by means of his sin into the human struggle [58] to learn other things besides despair and love, that a man can be unwelcome even in his own home. He said: The Red Shirts were there.

Well, father, the woman said, we can't turn you away. You'd better come along. He followed her meekly, tripping once in the long peon trousers, with the happiness wiped off his face and the smile somehow left behind like the survivor of a wreck. There were seven or eight men, two women, half a dozen children: he came among them like a beggar. He couldn't help remembering the last time ... the excitement, the gourds of spirit brought out of holes in the ground ... his guilt had still been fresh, yet how he had been welcomed. It was as if he had returned to them in their vicious prison as one of themselves-an émigré who comes back to his native place enriched.

This is the father, the woman said. Perhaps it was only that they hadn't recognized him, he thought, and waited for their greetings. They came forward one by one and kissed his hand and then stood back and watched him. He said: I am glad to see you ... He was going to say my children, but then it seemed to him that only the childless man has the right to call strangers his children. The real children were coming up now to kiss his hand, one by one, under the pressure of their parents. They were too young to remember the old days when the priests dressed in black and wore Roman collars and had soft superior patronizing hands: he could see they were mystified at the show of respect to a peasant like their parents. He didn't look at them directly, but he was watching them closely all the same. Two were girls: a thin washed-out child-of five, six, seven? he couldn't tell-and one who had been sharpened by hunger into an appearance of devilry and malice beyond her age. A young woman stared out of the child's eyes. He watched them disperse again, saying nothing: they were strangers.

One of the men said: Will you be here long, father?

He said: I thought, perhaps …I could rest ... a few days. One of the other men said: Couldn't you go a bit farther north, father, to Pueblita?

We've been travelling for twelve hours, the mule and I The woman suddenly spoke for him, angrily: Of course he'll stay here tonight. It's the least we can do.

He said: I'll say Mass for you in the morning, as if he were [59] offering them a bribe, but it might almost have been stolen money from their expressions of shyness and unwillingness. Somebody said: If you don't mind, father, very early ... in the night perhaps ...

What is the matter with you all? he said. Why should you be afraid?

Haven't you heard ...?

Heard?

They are taking hostages now-from all the villages where they think you've been. And if people don't tell ... somebody is shot ... and then they take another hostage. It happened in Concepcion.

Conception? One of his lids began to twitch, up and down, up and down: in such trivial ways the body expresses anxiety, horror, or despair. He said: Who? They looked at him stupidly. He said furiously: Whom did they murder?

Pedro Montez.

He gave a little yapping cry like a dog's-the absurd shorthand of grief. The old-young child laughed. He said: Why don't they catch me? The fools. Why don't they catch me? The little girl laughed again: he stared at her sightlessly, as if he could hear the sound, but couldn't see the face. Happiness was dead again before it had had time to breathe; he was like a woman with a stillborn child-bury it quickly and forget and begin again. Perhaps the next would live.

You see, father, one of the men said, why ...

He felt as a guilty man does before his judges. He said: 'Would you rather that I was like ... like Padre José in the capital ... you have heard of him ...?

They said unconvincingly: Of course not, father.

He said: What am I saying now? It's not what you want or what I want. He said sharply, with authority: I will sleep now ... You can wake me an hour before dawn ... half an hour to hear your confessions ... then Mass, and I will be gone.

But where? There wouldn't be a village in the state to which he wouldn't be an unwelcome danger now.

The woman said: This way, father.

He followed her into a small room where all the furniture had been made out of packing-cases-a chair, a bed of boards tacked together and covered with a straw mat, a crate on which [60] a cloth had been laid, and on the cloth an oil-lamp. He said: I don't want to turn anybody out of here.

It's mine.

He looked at her doubtfully: Where will you sleep? He was afraid of claims. He watched her covertly: was this all there was in marriage, this evasion and suspicion and lack of ease? When people confessed to him in terms of passion, was this all they meant-the hard bed and the busy woman and the not talking about the past ...?

When you are gone.

The light flattened out behind the forest and the long shadows of the trees pointed towards the door. He lay down upon the bed, and the woman busied herself somewhere out of sight: he could hear her scratching at the earth floor. He couldn't sleep. Had it become his duty then to run away? He had tried to escape several times, but he had always been prevented ... now they wanted him to go. Nobody would stop him, saying a woman was ill or a man dying. He was a sickness now.

Maria, he said. Maria, what are you doing?

I have saved a little brandy for you.

He thought: If I go, I shall meet other priests: I shall go to confession: I shall feel contrition and be forgiven: eternal life will begin for me all over again. The Church taught that it was every man's first duty to save his own soul. The simple ideas of hell and heaven moved in his brain: life without books, without contact with educated men, had peeled away from his memory everything but the simplest outline of the mystery.

There, the woman said. She carried a small medicine bottle filled with spirit.

If he left them, they would be safe: and they would be free from his example: he was the only priest the children could remember. It was from him they would take their ideas of the faith. But it was from him too they took God-in their mouths. When he was gone it would be as if God in all this space between the sea and the mountains ceased to exist. Wasn't it his duty to stay, even if they despised him, even if they were murdered for his sake, even if they were corrupted by his example? He was shaken with the enormity of the problem: he lay with his hands over his eyes: nowhere, in all the wide flat marshy [61] land, was there a single person he could consult. He raised the brandy bottle to his mouth.

He said shyly: And Brigida ... is she ... well?

You saw her just now.

No. He couldn't believe that he hadn't recognized her. It was making light of his mortal sin: you couldn't do a thing like that and then not even recognize ...

Yes, she was there. Maria went to the door and called: Brigida, Brigida, and the priest turned on his side and watched her come in out of the outside landscape of terror and lust-that small malicious child who had laughed at him.

Go and speak to the father, Maria said. Go on.

He made an attempt to hide the brandy bottle, but there was nowhere ... he tried to minimize it in his hands, watching her, feeling the shock of human love.

She knows her catechism, Maria said, but she won't say it. ...

The child stood there, watching him with acuteness and contempt. They had spent no love in her conception: just fear and despair and half a bottle of brandy and the sense of loneliness had driven him to an act which horrified him-and this scared shamefaced overpowering love was the result. He said: Why not? Why won't you say it? taking quick secret glances, never meeting her gaze, feeling his heart pound in his breast unevenly, like an old donkey engine, with the balked desire to save her from-everything.

Why should I?

God wishes it.

How do you know?

He was aware of an immense load of responsibility: it was indistinguishable from love. This, he thought, must be what all parents feel: ordinary men go through life like this crossing their fingers, praying against pain, afraid. ... This is what we escape at no cost at all, sacrificing an unimportant motion of the body. For years, of course, he had been responsible for souls, but that was different ... a lighter thing. You could trust God to make allowances, but you couldn't trust smallpox, starvation, men. … He said: My dear, tightening his grip upon the brandy bottle ... he had baptized her at his last visit: she had [62] been like a rag doll with a wrinkled, aged face-it seemed unlikely that she would live long. ... He had felt nothing but a regret; it was difficult even to feel shame where no one blamed him. He was the only priest most of them had ever known-they took their standard of the priesthood from him. Even the women.

Are you the gringo?

What gringo?

The woman said: The silly little creature. It's because the police have been looking for a man. It seemed odd to hear of any other man they wanted but himself.

What has he done?

He's a Yankee. He murdered some people in the north.

Why should he be here?

They think he's making for Quintana Roo-the chicle plantations. It was where many criminals in Mexico ended up; you could work on a plantation and earn good money and nobody interfered.

Are you the gringo? the child repeated.

Do I look like a murderer?

I don't know.

If he left the state, he would be leaving her too, abandoned. He said humbly to the woman: Couldn't I stay a few days here?

It's too dangerous, father.

He caught a look in the child's eyes which frightened him-it was again as if a grown woman was there before her time, making her plans, aware of far too much. It was like seeing his own mortal sin look back at him, without contrition. He tried to find some contact with the child and not the woman; he said: My dear, tell me what games you play. … The child sniggered. He turned his face quickly away and stared up at the roof, where a spider moved. He remembered a proverb-it came out of the recesses of his own childhood: his father had used it- The best smell is bread, the best savour salt, the best love that of children. It had been a happy childhood, except that he had been afraid of too many things, and had hated poverty, like a crime: he had believed that when he was a priest he would be rich and proud-that was called having a vocation. He thought of the immeasurable distance a man travels-from [63] the first whipping-top to this bed, on which he lay clasping the brandy. And to God it was only a moment. The child's snigger and the first mortal sin lay together more closely than two blinks of the eye. He put out his hand as if he could drag her back by force from-something; but he was powerless; the man or the woman waiting to complete her corruption might not yet have been born: how could he guard her against the nonexistent?

She started out of his reach and put her tongue out at him. The woman said: You little devil, you, and raised her hand. No, the priest said. No. He scrambled into a sitting position. Don't you dare ...

I'm her mother.

We haven't any right. He said to the child: If only I had some cards I could show you a trick or two. You could teach your friends ... He had never known how to talk to children except from the pulpit. She stared back at him with insolence. He said: Do you know how to send messages with taps-long, short, long? ...

What on earth, father! the woman exclaimed.

It's a game children play. I know. He said to the child: Have you any friends?

The child suddenly laughed again knowingly. The seven-year-old body was like a dwarf's: it disguised an ugly maturity.

Get out of here, the woman said. Get out before I teach you ...

She made a last impudent and malicious gesture and was gone-perhaps for ever as far as he was concerned. To those you love you do not always say good-bye beside a deathbed, in an atmosphere of leisure and incense. He said: I wonder what we can teach ... He thought of his own death and her life going on: it might be his hell to watch her rejoining him gradually through the debasing years, sharing his weakness like tuberculosis. ... He lay back on the bed and turned his head away from the draining light: he appeared to be sleeping, but he was wide awake. The woman busied herself with small jobs, and as the sun went down the mosquitoes came out, flashing through the air to their mark unerringly, like sailors' knives. Shall I put up a net, father?

No. It doesn't matter. He had had more fevers in the last [64] ten years than he could count: he had ceased to bother: they came and went and made no difference-they were part of his environment.

Presently she left the hut and he could hear her voice gossiping outside. He was astonished and a bit relieved by her resilience: once for five minutes seven years ago they had been lovers-if you could give that name to a relationship in which she had never used his baptismal name: to her it was just an incident, a scratch which heals completely in the healthy flesh: she was even proud of having been the priest's woman. He alone carried a wound, as if a whole world had ended.

It was dark outside: no sign yet of the dawn. Perhaps two dozen people sat on the earth floor of the largest hut while he preached to them. He couldn't see them with any distinctness: the candles on the packing-case smoked steadily upwards-the door was shut and there was no current of air. He was talking about heaven, standing between them and the candles in the ragged peon trousers and the torn shirt. They grunted and moved restlessly: he knew they were longing for the Mass to be over: they had awakened him very early, because there were rumours of police. …

He said: One of the fathers has told us that joy always depends on pain. Pain is part of joy. We are hungry and then think how we enjoy our food at last. We are thirsty ... He stopped suddenly, with his eyes glancing away into the shadows, expecting the cruel laugh that never came. He said: We deny ourselves so that we can enjoy. You have heard of rich men in the north who eat salted foods, so that they can be thirsty-for what they call the cocktail. Before the marriage, too, there is the long betrothal. … Again he stopped. He felt his own unworthiness like a weight at the back of the tongue. There was a smell of hot wax from where a candle drooped in the immense nocturnal heat: people shifted on the hard floor in the shadows. The smell of unwashed human beings warred with the wax. He cried out stubbornly in a voice of authority: That is why I tell you that heaven is here: this is a part of heaven just as pain is a part of pleasure. He said: Pray that you will suffer more and more and more. Never get tired of [65] suffering. The police watching you, the soldiers gathering taxes, the beating you always get from the jefe because you are too poor to pay, smallpox and fever, hunger ... that is all part of heaven-the preparation. Perhaps without them-who can tell?-you wouldn't enjoy heaven so much. Heaven would not be complete. And heaven. What is heaven? Literary phrases from what seemed now to be another life altogether-the strict quiet life of the seminary-became confused on his tongue: the names of precious stones: Jerusalem the golden. But these people had never seen gold.

He went rather stumblingly on: Heaven is where there is no jefe, no unjust laws, no taxes, no soldiers, and no hunger. Your children do not die in heaven. The door of the hut opened and a man slipped in. There was whispering out of range of the candlelight You will never be afraid there-or unsafe. There are no Red Shirts. Nobody grows old. The crops never fail. Oh, it is easy to say all the things that there will not be in heaven: what is there is God. That is more difficult. Our words are made to describe what we know with our senses. We say 'light,' but we are thinking only of the sun, 'love' ... It was not easy to concentrate: the police were not far away. That man had probably brought news. That means perhaps a child ... The door opened again: he could see another day drawn across like a grey slate outside. A voice whispered urgently to him: Father.

Yes?

The police are on the way: they are only a mile off, coming through the forest.

This was what he was used to: the words not striking home, the hurried close, the expectation of pain coming between him and his faith. He said stubbornly: Above all remember this-heaven is here. Were they on horseback or on foot? If they were on foot, he had twenty minutes left to finish Mass and hide. Here now, at this minute, your fear and my fear are part of heaven, where there will be no fear any more for ever. He turned his back on them and began very quickly to recite the Credo. There was a time when he had approached the Canon of the Mass with actual physical dread-the first time he had consumed the body and blood of God in a state of mortal sin: but [66] then life bred its excuses-it hadn't after a while seemed to matter very much, whether he was damned or not, so long as these others ...

He kissed the top of the packing-case and turned to bless ... in the inadequate light he could just see two men kneeling with their arms stretched out in the shape of a cross-they would keep that position until the consecration was over, one more mortification squeezed out of their harsh and painful lives. He felt humbled by the pain ordinary men bore voluntarily; his pain was forced on him. O Lord, I have loved the beauty of Thy house ... The candles smoked and the people shifted on their knees-an absurd happiness bobbed up in him again before anxiety returned: it was as if he had been permitted to look in from the outside at the population of heaven. Heaven must contain just such scared and dutiful and hunger-lined faces. For a matter of seconds he felt an immense satisfaction that he could talk of suffering to them now without hypocrisy-it is hard for the sleek and well-fed priest to praise poverty. He began the prayer for the living: the long list of the Apostles and Martyrs fell like footsteps-Comelii, Cypriani, Laurentii, Chrysologi-soon the police would reach the clearing where his mule had sat down under him and he had washed in the pool. The Latin words ran into each other on his hasty tongue: he could feel impatience all round him. He began the Consecration of the Host (he had finished the wafers long ago-it was a piece of bread from Maria 's oven); impatience abruptly died away: everything in time became a routine but this- Who the day before He suffered took Bread into His holy and venerable hands ... Whoever moved outside on the forest path, there was no movement here- Hoc est enfim Corpus Meum. He could hear the sigh of breaths released: God was here in the body for the first time in six years. When he raised the Host he could imagine the faces lifted like famished dogs'. He began the Consecration of the Wine-in a chipped cup. That was one more surrender-for two years he had carried a chalice round with him: once it would have cost him his life-if the police officer who opened his case had not been a Catholic. It may very well have cost the officer his life, if anybody had discovered the evasion-he didn't know: you went round making God knew [67] what martyrs-in Concepcion or elsewhere-when you yourself were without grace enough to die.

The Consecration was in silence: no bell rang. He knelt by the packing-case exhausted, without a prayer. Somebody opened the door: a voice whispered urgently: They're here. They couldn't have come on foot then, he thought vaguely. Somewhere in the absolute stillness of the dawn-it couldn't have been more than a quarter of a mile away-a horse whinnied.

He got on his feet-Maria stood at his elbow; she said: The cloth, father, give me the cloth. He put the Host hurriedly into his mouth and drank the wine: one had to avoid profanation: the cloth was whipped away from the packing-case. She nipped the candles, so that the wick should not leave a smell ... the room was already cleared, only the owner hung by the entrance waiting to kiss his hand: through the door the world was faintly visible, and a cock in the village crowed.

Maria said: Come to the hut quickly.

I'd better go. He was without a plan. Not be found here.

They are all round the village.

Was this the end at last? he wondered. Somewhere fear waited to spring at him, he knew, but he wasn't afraid yet. He followed the woman, scurrying across the village to her hut, repeating an act of contrition mechanically as he went. He wondered when the fear would start: he had been afraid when the policeman opened his case-but that was years ago. He had been afraid hiding in the shed among the bananas, hearing the child argue with the police officer-that was only a few weeks away. Fear would undoubtedly begin again soon. There was no sign of the police-only the grey morning, and the chickens and turkeys stirring, flopping down from the trees in which they had roosted during the night. Again the cock crew. If they were so careful, they must know beyond the shadow of doubt that he was here. It was the end.

Maria plucked at him. Get in. Quick. Onto the bed. Presumably she had an idea-women were appallingly practical: they built new plans at once out of the ruins of the old. But what was the good? She said: Let me smell your breath. Oh, God, anyone can tell ... wine ... what would we be doing with [68] wine? She was gone again, inside, making a lot of bother in the peace and quiet of the dawn. Suddenly, out of the forest, a hundred yards away, an officer rode. In the absolute stillness you could hear the creaking of his revolver-holster as he turned and waved.

All round the little clearing the police appeared-they must have marched very quickly, for only the officer had a horse. Rifles at the trail, they approached the small group of huts-an exaggerated and rather absurd show of force. One man had a puttee trailing behind him-it had probably caught on something in the forest. He tripped on it and fell with a great clatter of cartridge-belt on gunstock: the lieutenant on the horse looked round and then turned his bitter and angry face upon the silent huts.

The woman was pulling at him from inside the hut. She said: Bite this. Quick. There's no time ... He turned his back on the advancing police and came into the dusk of the room. She had a small raw onion in her hand. Bite it, she said. He bit it and began to weep. Is that better? she said. He could hear the pad, pad of the cautious horse hoofs advancing between the huts.

It's horrible, he said with a giggle.

Give it to me. She made it disappear somewhere into her clothes: it was a trick all women seemed to know. He said: Where's my case?

Never mind your case. Get onto the bed.

But before he could move, a horse blocked the doorway: they could see a leg in riding-boots piped with scarlet: brass fittings gleamed: a hand in a glove rested on the high pommel. Maria put a hand upon his arm-it was as near as she had ever come to a movement of affection: affection was taboo between them. A voice cried: Come on out, all of you. The horse stamped and a little pillar of dust went up. Come on out, I said. -somewhere a shot was fired. The priest left the hut.

The dawn had really broken: light feathers of colour were blown up the sky: a man still held his gun pointed upwards: a little balloon of grey smoke hung at the muzzle. Was this how the agony was to start?

Out of all the huts the villagers were reluctantly emerging-the children first: they were curious and not frightened. The [69] men and women had the air already of people condemned by authority-authority was never wrong. None of them looked at the priest. They stared at the ground and waited: only the children watched the horse as if it was the most important thing there.

The lieutenant said: Search the huts. Time passed very slowly: even the smoke of the shot seemed to remain in the air for an unnatural period. Some pigs came grunting out of a hut, and a turkey-cock paced with evil dignity into the centre of the circle, puffing out its dusty feathers and tossing the long pink membrane from its beak. A soldier came up to the lieutenant and saluted sketchily. He said: They're all here.

You've found nothing suspicious?

No.

Then look again.

Once more time stopped like a broken dock. The lieutenant drew out a cigarette-case, hesitated and put it back again. Again the policeman approached and reported: Nothing.

The lieutenant barked out: Attention. All of you. Listen to me. The outer ring of police closed in, pushing the villagers together into a small group in front of the lieutenant: only the children were left free. The priest saw his own child standing close to the lieutenant's horse: she could just reach above his boot: she put up her hand and touched the leather. The lieutenant said: I am looking for two men-one is a gringo, a Yankee, a murderer. I can see very well he is not here. There is a reward of five hundred pesos for his capture. Keep your eyes open. He paused and ran his eye over them: the priest felt his gaze come to rest; he looked down like the others at the ground.

The other, the lieutenant said, is a priest. He raised his voice: you know what this means-traitor to the republic. Anyone who shelters him is a traitor too. Their immobility seemed to anger him. He said: You're fools if you still believe what the priests tell you. All they want is your money. What has God ever done for you? Have you got enough to eat? Have your children got enough to eat? Instead of food they talk to you about heaven. Oh, everything will be fine after you are dead, they say. I tell you-everything will be fine when they are dead, and you must help. The child had her hand on his boot. He looked down at her with dark affection. He said with [70] conviction: This child is worth more than the Pope in Rome. The police leant on their guns: one of them yawned-the turkey-cock went hissing back towards the huts. The lieutenant said: If you've seen this priest, speak up. There's a reward of seven hundred pesos. …

Nobody spoke.

The lieutenant yanked his horse's head round towards them; he said: We know he's in this district. Perhaps you don't know what happened to a man in Conception. One of the women began to weep. He said: Come up-one after the other-and let me have your names. No, not the women, the men.

They filed sullenly up and he questioned them: What's your name? What do you do? Married? Which is your wife? Have you heard of this priest? Only one man now stood between the priest and the horse's head. He recited an act of contrition silently with only half a mind- ... my sins, because they have crucified my loving Saviour ... but above all because they have offended ... He was alone in front of the lieutenant I hereby resolve never more to offend Thee ... It was a formal act, because a man had to be prepared: it was like making your will-and might be as valueless.

Your name?

The name of the man in Conception came back to him. He said: Montez.

Have you ever seen the priest?

No.

What do you do?

I have a little land.

Are you married?

Yes.

Which is your wife?

Maria suddenly broke out: It's me. Why do you want to ask so many questions. Do you think he looks like a priest? The lieutenant was examining something on the pommel of his saddle: it seemed to be an old photograph. Let me see your hands, he said.

The priest held them up: they were as hard as a labourer's. Suddenly the lieutenant leant down from the saddle and sniffed at his breath There was complete silence among the villagers-a dangerous silence, because it seemed to convey to the [71] lieutenant a fear. ... He stared back at the hollow stubbled face, looked back at the photograph. All right, he said, next, and then as the priest stepped aside: Wait. He put his hand down to Brigida's head and gently tugged at her black stiff hair. He said: Look up. You know everyone in this village, don't you?

Yes, she said.

Who is that man, then? What's his name?

I don't know, the child said. The lieutenant caught his breath. You don't know his name? he said. Is he a stranger? Maria cried: Why, the child doesn't know her own name! Ask her who her father is.

Who's your father?

The child stared up at the lieutenant and then turned her knowing eyes upon the priest. … Sorry and beg pardon for all my sins, he was repeating to himself with his fingers crossed for luck. The child said: That's him. There.

All right, the lieutenant said. Next. The interrogations went on-name? work? married?-while the sun came up above the forest. The priest stood with his hands clasped in front of him: again death had been postponed: he felt an enormous temptation to throw himself in front of the lieutenant and declare himself- I am the one you want. Would they shoot him out of hand? A delusive promise of peace tempted him. Far up in the sky a buzzard watched: they must appear from that height as two groups of carnivorous animals who might at any time break into conflict, and it waited there, a tiny black spot, for carrion. Death was not the end of pain-to believe in peace was a kind of heresy.

The last man gave his evidence.

The lieutenant said: Is no one willing to help?

They stood silent beside the decayed bandstand. He said: You heard what happened at Conception. I took a hostage there ... and when I found that this priest had been in the neighbourhood I put the man against the nearest tree. I found out because there's always someone who changes his mind-perhaps because somebody at Conception loved the man's wife and wanted him out of the way. It's not my business to look into reasons. I only know we found wine later in Conception. ... Perhaps there's somebody in this village who wants your piece [72] of land-or your cow. It's much safer to speak now. Because I'm going to take a hostage from here too. He paused. Then he said: There's no need even to speak, if he's here among you. Just look at him. No one will know then that it was you who gave him away. He won't know himself if you're afraid of his curses. Now ... this is your last chance.

The priest looked at the ground-he wasn't going to make it difficult for the man who gave him away.

Right, the lieutenant said, then I shall choose my man. You've brought it on yourselves.

He sat on his horse watching them-one of the policemen had leant his gun against the bandstand and was doing up a puttee. The villagers still stared at the ground: everyone was afraid to catch his eye. He broke out suddenly: Why won't you trust me? I don't want any of you to die. In my eyes-can't you understand?-you are worth far more than he is. I want to give you -he made a gesture with his hands which was valueless, because no one saw him- everything. He said in a dull voice: You. You there. I'll take you.

A woman screamed: That's my boy. That's Miguel. You can't take my boy.

He said dully: Every man here is somebody's husband or somebody's son. I know that.

The priest stood silently with his hands clasped: his knuckles whitened as he gripped ... he could feel all round him the beginning of hate. Because he was no one's husband or son. He said: Lieutenant ...

What do you want?

I'm getting too old to be much good in the fields. Take me. A rout of pigs came rushing round the corner of a hut, taking no notice of anybody. The soldier finished his puttee and stood up. The sunlight coming up above the forest winked on the bottles of the gaseosa stall.

The lieutenant said: I'm choosing a hostage, not offering free board and lodging to the lazy. If you are no good in the fields, you are no good as a hostage. He gave an order. Tie the man's hands and bring him along.

It took no time at all for the police to be gone-they took with them two or three chickens, a turkey, and the man called [73] Miguel. The priest said aloud: I did my best. He went on: It's your job-to give me up. What do you expect me to do? It's my job not to be caught.

One of the men said: That's all right, father. Only will you be careful ... to see that you don't leave any wine behind ... like you did at Conception?

Another said: It's no good staying, father. They'll get you in the end. They won't forget your face again. Better go north, to the mountains. Over the border.

It's a fine state over the border, a woman said. They've still got churches there. Nobody can go in them, of course-but they are there. Why, I've heard that there are priests too in the towns. A cousin of mine went over the mountains to Las Casas once and heard Mass-in a house, with a proper altar, and the priest all dressed up like in the old days. You'd be happy there, father.

The priest followed Maria to the hut. The bottle of brandy lay on the table: he touched it with his fingers-there wasn't much left. He said: My case, Maria? Where's my case?

It's too dangerous to carry that around any more, Maria said.

How else can I take the wine? There isn't any wine.

What do you mean?

She said: I'm not going to bring trouble on you and everyone else. I've broken the bottle. Even if it brings a curse ... He said gently and sadly: You mustn't be superstitious. That was simply-wine. There's nothing sacred in wine. Only it's hard to get hold of here. That's why I kept a store of it in Concepcion. But they've found that.

Now perhaps you'll go-go away altogether. You're no good any more to anyone, she said fiercely. Don't you understand, father? We don't want you any more.

Oh, yes, he said. I understand. But it's not what you want-or I want ...

She said savagely: I know about things. I went to school. I'm not like these others-ignorant. I know you're a bad priest. That time we were together-I bet that wasn't all you've done. I've heard things, I can tell you. Do you think God wants you [74] to stay and die-a whisky priest like you? He stood patiently in front of her, as he had stood in front of the lieutenant, listening. He hadn't known she was capable of all this thought. She said: Suppose you die. You'll be a martyr, won't you? What kind of a martyr do you think you'll make? It's enough to make people mock.

That had never occurred to him-that anybody would consider him a martyr. He said: It's difficult. Very difficult. I'll think about it. I wouldn't want the Church to be mocked. …

Think about it over the border then ...

Well ...

She said: When you-know-what happened, I was proud. I thought the good days would come back. It's not everyone who's a priest's woman. And the child ... I thought you could do a lot for her. But you might as well be a thief for all the good ...

He said vaguely: There've been a lot of good thieves.

For God's sake take this brandy and go.

There was one thing, he said. In my case ... there was something …

Go and find it yourself on the rubbish-tip then. I won't touch it again.

And the child, he said, you're a good woman, Maria. I mean-you'll try and bring her up well ... as a Christian.

She'll never be good for anything, you can see that.

She can't be very bad-at her age, he implored her.

She'll go on the way she's begun.

He said: The next Mass I say will be for her.

She wasn't even listening. She said: She's bad through and through. He was aware of faith dying out between the bed and the door-the Mass would soon mean no more to anyone than a black cat crossing the path. He was risking all their lives for the sake of spilt salt, or a crossed finger. He began: My mule ...

They are giving it maize now.

She added: You'd better go north. There's no chance to the south any more.

I thought perhaps Carmen ...

They'll be watching there.

[75] Oh, well ... He said sadly: Perhaps one day ... when things are better ... He sketched a cross and blessed her, but she stood impatiently before him, willing him to be gone for ever.

Well, good-bye, Maria.

Good-bye.

He walked across the plaza with his shoulders hunched: he felt that there wasn't a soul in the place who wasn't watching him with satisfaction-the trouble-maker whom for obscure and superstitious reasons they preferred not to betray to the police; he felt envious of the unknown gringo whom they wouldn't hesitate to trap-he at any rate had no burden of gratitude to carry round with him.

Down a slope churned up with the hoofs of mules and ragged with tree-roots there was the river-not more than two feet deep, littered with empty cans and broken bottles. Under a notice which hung on a tree reading: It is forbidden to deposit rubbish ... all the refuse of the village was collected and slid gradually down into the river. When the rains came it would be washed away. He put his foot among the old tins and rotting vegetables and reached for his case. He sighed: it had been quite a good case: one more relic of the quiet past.... Soon it would be difficult to remember that life had ever been any different. The lock had been torn off: he felt inside the silk lining. …

The papers were there: reluctantly he let the case fall-a whole important and respected youth dropped among the cans-he had been given it by his parishioners in Concepcion on the fifth anniversary of his ordination. ... Somebody moved behind a tree. He lifted his feet out of the rubbish-flies buzzed around his ankles. With the papers hidden in his fist he came round the trunk to see who was spying. ... The child sat on a root, kicking her heels against the bark. Her eyes were shut tight fast. He said: My dear, what is the matter with you ...? They came quickly open-red-rimmed and angry, with an expression of absurd pride. She said:

You ... you ...

Me?

You are the matter.

[76] He moved towards her with infinite caution, as if she were an animal who distrusted him. He felt weak with longing. He said: My dear, why me ... ?

She said furiously: They laugh at me.''

Because of me?

She said: Everyone else has a father ... who works.

I work too.

You're a priest, aren't you?

Yes.

Pedro says you aren't a man. You aren't any good for women. She said: I don't know what he means.

I don't suppose he knows himself.

Oh, yes, he does, she said. He's ten. And I want to know. You're going away, aren't you?

Yes.

He was appalled again by her maturity, as she whipped up a smile from a large and varied stock. She said: Tell me- enticingly. She sat there on the trunk of the tree by the rubbish-tip with an effect of abandonment. The world was in her heart already, like the small spot of decay in a fruit. She was without protection-she had no grace, no charm to plead for her; his heart was shaken by the conviction of loss. He said: My dear, be careful ...

What of? Why are you going away?

He came a little nearer: he thought-a man may kiss his own daughter; but she started away from him. Don't you touch me, she screeched at him in her ancient voice, and giggled. Every child was born with some kind of knowledge of love, he thought; they took it with the milk at the breast: but on parents and friends depended the kind of love they knew-the saving or the damning kind. Lust too was a kind of love. He saw her fixed in her life like a fly in amber-Maria's hand raised to strike: Pedro talking prematurely in the dusk; and the police beating the forest-violence everywhere. He prayed silently: O God, give me any kind of death-without contrition, in a state of sin-only save this child.

He was a man who was supposed to save souls: it had seemed quite simple once, preaching at Benediction, organizing the guilds, having coffee with elderly ladies behind barred windows, blessing new houses with a little incense, wearing [77] black gloves ... it was as easy as saving money: now it was a mystery. He was aware of his own desperate inadequacy.

He went down on his knees and pulled her to him, while she giggled and struggled to be free. He said: I love you. I am your father and I love you. Try to understand that. He held her tightly by the wrist and suddenly she stayed still, looking up at him. He said: I would give my life, that's nothing, my soul ... my dear, my dear, try to understand that you are-so important. That was the difference, he had always known, between his faith and theirs, the political leaders of the people who cared only for things like the state, the republic: this child was more important than a whole continent. He said: You must take care of yourself because you are so-necessary. The President up in the capital goes guarded by men with guns-but, my child, you have all the angels of heaven- She stared back at him out of dark and unconscious eyes: he had a sense that he had come too late. He said: Good-bye, my dear, and clumsily kissed her-a silly infatuated ageing man, who as soon as he released her and started padding back to the plaza could feel behind his hunched shoulders the whole vile world coming round the child to ruin her. His mule was there, saddled, by the gaseosa stall. A man said: Better go north, father, and stood waving his hand. One mustn't have human affections-or rather one must love every soul as if it were one's own child. The passion to protect must extend itself over a world-but he felt it tethered and aching like a hobbled animal to the tree trunk. He turned his mule south.

He was travelling in the actual track of the police: so long as he went slowly and didn't overtake any stragglers it seemed a fairly safe route. What he needed now was wine-and it had to be made with grapes: without it he was useless; he might as well escape north into the mountains and the safe state beyond, where the worst that could happen to him was a fine and a few days in prison because he couldn't pay. But he wasn't ready yet for the final surrender-every small surrender had to be paid for in a further endurance, and now he felt the need of somehow ransoming his child. He could stay another month, another year ... jogging up and down on the mule he tried to bribe God with promises of firmness. ... The mule suddenly [78] dug in its hoofs and stopped dead: a tiny green snake raised itself like an affronted woman on the path and then hissed away into the grass like a match-flame. The mule went on.

When he came near a village he would stop the mule and advance as close as he could on foot-the police might have stopped there-then he would ride quickly through, speaking to nobody beyond a buenos días, and again on the forest path he would pick up the track of the lieutenant's horse. He had no dear idea now about anything: he only wanted to put as great a distance as possible between him and the village where he had spent the night. In one hand he still carried the scrumpled ball of paper. Somebody had tied a bunch of about fifty bananas to his saddle beside the machete and the small bag which contained his store of candles, and every now and then he ate one-ripe, brown, and sodden, tasting of soap. It left a smear like a moustache over his mouth.

After six hours' travelling he came to La Candelaria, which lay, a long mean tin-roofed village, beside one of the tributaries of the Grijalva River. He came cautiously out into the dusty street it was early afternoon: the buzzards sat on the roofs with their small heads hidden from the sun, and a few men lay in hammocks in the narrow shade the houses cast. The mule plodded forward very slowly through the heavy day. The priest leant forward on his pommel.

The mule came to a stop of its own accord beside a hammock: a man lay in it, bunched diagonally, with one leg trailing to keep the hammock moving, up and down, up and down, making a tiny current of air. He said: Buenas tardes. The man opened his eyes and watched him.

How far is it to Carmen?

Three leagues.

Can I get a canoe across the river?

Yes.

Where?

The man waved a languid hand-as much as to say anywhere but here. He had only two teeth left-canines which stuck yellowly out at either end of his mouth like the teeth of long-extinct animals which you find enclosed in clay.

What were the police doing here? the priest asked, and a cloud of flies came down, settling on the mules neck: he poked [79] at them with a stick and they rose heavily, leaving a small trickle of blood, and dropped again on the tough grey skin. The mule seemed to feel nothing, standing in the sun with its head drooping.

Looking for someone, the man said.

I've heard, the priest said, that there's a reward out-for a gringo.

The man swung his hammock back and forth. He said: It's better to be alive and poor than rich and dead.

Can I overtake them if I go towards Carmen?

They aren't going to Carmen.

No?

They are making for the city.

The priest rode on: twenty yards farther he stopped again beside a gaseosa stall and asked the boy in charge: Can I get a boat across the river?

There isn't a boat.

No boat?

Somebody stole it.

Give me a sidral. He drank down the yellow, bubbly chemical liquid: it left him thirstier than before. He said: How do I get across?

Why do you want to get across?

I'm making for Carmen. How did the police get over?

They swam.

Mula. Mula, the priest said, urging the mule on, past the inevitable bandstand and a statue in florid taste of a woman in a toga waving a wreath: part of the pedestal had been broken off and lay in the middle of the road-the mule went round it. The priest looked back: far down the street the mestizo was sitting upright in the hammock watching him. The mule turned off down a steep path to the river, and again the priest looked back-the half-caste was still in the hammock, but he had both feet upon the ground. An habitual uneasiness made the priest beat at the mule- Mula. Mula -but the mule took its time, sliding down the bank towards the river.

By the riverside it refused to enter the water: the priest split the end of his stick with his teeth and jabbed a sharp point into the mule's flank. It waded reluctantly in, and the water rose-to the stirrups and then to the knees: the mule began to swim, [80] splayed out flat with only the eyes and nostrils visible, like an alligator. Somebody shouted from the bank.

The priest looked round: at the river's edge the mestizo stood and called, not very loudly: his voice didn't carry. It was as if he had a secret purpose which nobody but the priest must hear. He waved his arm, summoning the priest back, but the mule lurched out of the water and up the bank beyond and the priest paid no attention-uneasiness was lodged in his brain. He urged the mule forward through the green half-light of a banana grove, not looking behind. All these years there had been two places to which he could always return and rest safely in hiding-one had been Conception, his old parish, and that was closed to him now: the other was Carmen, where he had been born and where his parents were buried. He had imagined there might be a third, but he would never go back now. ... He turned the mule's head toward Carmen, and the forest took them again. At this rate they would arrive in the dark, which was what he wanted. The mule, unbeaten, went with extreme languor, head drooping, smelling a little of blood. The priest, leaning forward on the high pommel, fell asleep. He dreamed that a small girl in stiff white muslin was reciting her Catechism-somewhere in the background there was a bishop and a group of Children of Mary, elderly women with grey hard pious faces wearing pale blue ribbons. The bishop said: Excellent ... excellent, and clapped his hands, plop, plop. A man in a morning coat said: There's a deficit of five hundred pesos on the new organ. We propose to hold a special musical performance, when it is hoped ... He remembered with appalling suddenness that he oughtn't to be there at all ... he was in the wrong parish ... he should be holding a retreat at Conception. The man Montez appeared behind the child in white muslin, gesticulating, reminding him. ... Something had happened to Montez, he had a dry wound on his forehead. He felt with dreadful certainty a threat to the child. He said: My dear, my dear, and woke to the slow rolling stride of the mule and the sound of footsteps.

He turned: it was the mestizo, padding behind him, dripping water: he must have swum the river. His two teeth stuck out over his lower lip, and he grinned ingratiatingly.

What do you want? the priest said sharply.

[81] You didn't tell me you were going to Carmen.

Why should I?

You see, I want to go to Carmen, too. It's better to travel in company. He was wearing a shirt, a pair of white trousers, and gym shoes through which one big toe showed-plump and yellow like something which lives underground. He scratched himself under the armpits and came chummily up to the priest's stirrup. He said: You are not offended, Señor?

Why do you call me Señor?

Anyone can tell you're a man of education.

The forest is free to all, the priest said.

Do you know Carmen well? the man said.

Not well. I have a few friends.

You're going on business, I suppose?

The priest said nothing. He could feel the man's hand on his foot, a light and deprecating touch. The man said: There's a finca off the road two leagues from here. It would be as well to stay the night.

I am in a hurry, the priest said.

But what good would it be reaching Carmen at one, two in the morning? We could sleep at the finca and be there before the sun was high.

I do what suits me.

Of course, Señor, of course. The man was silent for a little while, and then said: It isn't wise travelling at night if the Señor hasn't got a gun. It's different for a man like me ...

I am a poor man, the priest said. You can see for yourself. I am not worth robbing.

And then there's the gringo-they say he's a wild kind of a man, a real pistolero. He comes up to you and says in his own language-Stop: what is the way to-well, some place, and you do not understand what he is saying and perhaps you make a movement and he shoots you dead. But perhaps you know Americano, Señor?

Of course I don't. How should I ? I am a poor man. But I don't listen to every fairy-tale.

Do you come from far?

The priest thought a moment: Conception. He could do no more harm there.

The man for the time being seemed satisfied. He walked [82] along by the mule, a hand on the stirrup: every now and then he spat: when the priest looked down he could see the big toe moving like a grab along the ground-he was probably harmless. It was the general condition of life that made for suspicion. The dusk fell and then almost at once the dark. The mule moved yet more slowly. Noise broke out all round them: it was like a theatre when the curtain falls and behind in the wings and passages hubbub begins. Things you couldn't put a name to-jaguars perhaps-cried in the undergrowth, monkeys moved in the upper boughs, and the mosquitoes hummed all round like sewing machines. It's thirsty walking, the man said. Have you by any chance, Señor, got a little drink ...?

No.

If you want to reach Carmen before three, you will have to beat the mule. Shall I take the stick ...?

No, no, let the poor brute take its time. It doesn't matter to me ... he said drowsily.

You talk like a priest.

He came quickly awake, but under the tall dark trees he could see nothing. He said: What nonsense you talk

I am a very good Christian, the man said, stroking the priest's foot.

I dare say. I wish I were.

Ah, you ought to be able to tell the people you can trust. He spat in a comradely way.

I have nothing to trust anyone with, the priest said. Except these trousers-they are very torn. And this mule-it isn't a good mule; you can see for yourself.

There was silence for a while, and then as if he had been considering the last statement the half-caste went on: It wouldn't be a bad mule if you treated it right. Nobody can teach me anything about mules. I can see for myself it's tired out.

The priest looked down at the grey swinging stupid head. Do you think so?

How far did you travel yesterday? Perhaps twelve leagues.

Even a mule needs rest.

The priest took his bare feet out of the deep leather stirrups and scrambled to the ground. The mule for less than a minute [83] took a longer stride and then dropped to a yet slower pace. The twigs and roots of the forest path cut the priest's feet-after five minutes he was bleeding. He tried in vain not to limp. The half-caste exclaimed: How delicate your feet are! You should wear shoes.

Stubbornly he reasserted: I am a poor man.

You will never get to Carmen at this rate. Be sensible, man. If you don't want to go as far off the road as the finca, I know a little but less than half a league from here. We can sleep a few hours and still reach Carmen at daybreak. There was a rustle in the grass beside the path-the priest thought of snakes and his unprotected feet. The mosquitoes jabbed at his wrists: they were like little surgical syringes filled with poison and aimed at the bloodstream. Sometimes a firefly held its lighted globe dose to the half-caste's face, turning it on and off like a torch. He said accusingly: You don't trust me. just because I am a man who likes to do a good turn to strangers, because I try to be a Christian, you don't trust me. He seemed to be working himself into a little artificial rage. He said: If I had wanted to rob you, couldn't I have done it already? You're an old man.

Not so very old, the priest said mildly. His conscience began automatically to work: it was like a slot machine into which any coin could be fitted, even a cheater's blank disk. The words proud, lustful, envious, cowardly, ungrateful-they all worked the right springs-he was all these things. The half-caste said: Here I have spent many long hours guiding you to Carmen-I don't want any reward because I am a good Christian: I have probably lost money by it at home-never mind that ...

I thought you said you had business in Carmen? the priest said gently.

When did I say that? It was true-he couldn't remember … perhaps he was unjust too. ... Why should I say a thing which isn't true? No, I give up a whole day to helping you, and you pay no attention when your guide is tired. …

I didn't need a guide, he protested mildly.

You say that when the road is plain, but if it wasn't for me, you'd have taken the wrong path a long time ago. You said yourself you didn't know Carmen well. That was why I came.

[84] But of course, the priest said, if you are tired, we will rest. He felt guilty at his own lack of trust, but all the same, it remained like a growth only a knife could rid him of.

After half an hour they came to the hut: made of mud and twigs it had been set up in a minute clearing by a small farmer the forest must have driven out, edging in on him, an unstayable natural force which he couldn't defeat with his machete and his small fires. There were still signs in the blackened ground of an attempt to clear the brushwood for some meagre, limited, and inadequate crop. The man said: I will see to the mule. You go in and lie down and rest.

But it is you who are tired.

Me tired? the half-caste said. What makes you say that? I am never tired.

With a heavy heart the priest took off his saddle-bag, pushed at the door and went in-to complete darkness: he struck a light-there was no furniture: only a raised dais of hard earth and a straw mat too torn to have been worth removing. He lit a candle and stuck it in its own wax on the dais: then sat down and waited: the man was a long time. In one fist he still carried the ball of paper salvaged from his case-a man must retain some sentimental relics if he is to live at all. The argument of danger applies only to those who live in safety. He wondered whether the mestizo had stolen his mule, and reproached himself for the necessary suspicion. Then the door opened and the man came in-the two yellow canine teeth, the finger-nails scratching in the armpit. He sat down on the earth, with his back against the door, and said: Go to sleep. You are tired. I'll wake you when we need to start.

I'm not very sleepy.

Blow out the candle. You'll sleep better.

I don't like darkness, the priest said. He was afraid. Won't you say a prayer, father, before we sleep?

Why do you call me that? he said sharply, peering across the shadowy floor to where the half-caste sat against the door. Oh, I guessed, of course. But you needn't be afraid of me. I'm a good Christian.

You're wrong.

I could easily find out, couldn't I? the half-caste said. I'd [85] just have to say-father, hear my confession. You couldn't refuse a man in mortal sin.

The priest said nothing, waiting for the demand to come: the hand which held the papers trembled. Oh, you needn't fear me, the mestizo went carefully on. I wouldn't betray you. I'm a Christian. I just thought a prayer ... would be good ...

You don't need to be a priest to know a prayer. He began: Pater noster qui es in coelis ... while the mosquitoes came droning towards the candle-flame. He was determined not to sleep-the man had some plan: even his conscience ceased to accuse him of uncharity. He knew. He was in the presence of Judas.

He leant his head back against the wall and half closed his eyes-he remembered Holy Week in the old days when a stuffed Judas was hanged from the belfry and boys made a clatter with tins and rattles as he swung out over the door. Old staid members of the congregation had sometimes raised objections: it was blasphemous; they said, to make this guy out of Our Lord's betrayer; but he had said nothing and let the practice continue-it seemed to him a good thing that the world's traitor should be made a figure of fun. It was too easy otherwise to idealize him as a man who fought with God-a Prometheus, a noble victim in a hopeless war.

Are you awake? a voice whispered from the door. The priest suddenly giggled-as if this man, too, were absurd with stuffed straw legs and a painted face and an old straw hat who would presently be burnt in the plaza while people made political speeches and the fireworks went off.

Can't you sleep?

I was dreaming, the priest whispered. He opened his eyes and saw the man by the door was shivering-the two sharp teeth jumped up and down on the lower lip. Are you ill?

A little fever, the man said. Have you any medicine?

No.

The door creaked as the man's back shook. He said: It was getting wet in the river ... He slid farther down upon the floor and closed his eyes-mosquitoes with singed wings crawled over the earth bed. The priest thought: I mustn't sleep, it's dangerous, I must watch him. He opened his fist and [86] smoothed out the paper. There were faint pencil lines visible-single words, the beginnings and ends of sentences, figures. Now that his case was gone, it was the only evidence left that life had ever been different: he carried it with him as a charm-because if life had been like that once, it might be so again. The candle-flame in the hot marshy lowland air burned to a smoky point, vibrating. ... The priest held the paper close to it and read the words Altar Society, Guild of the Blessed Sacrament, Children of Mary, and then looked up again and across the dark hut, saw the yellow malarial eyes of the mestizo watching him. Christ would not have found Judas sleeping in the garden: Judas could watch more than one hour.

What's the paper ... father? he said enticingly, shivering against the door.

Don't call me father. It is a list of seeds I have to buy in Carmen.

Can you write?

I can read.

He looked at the paper again and a little mild impious joke stared up at him in faded pencil-something about of one substance. He had been referring to his corpulency and the good dinner he had just eaten: the parishioners had not much relished his humour.

It had been a dinner given at Conception in honour of the tenth anniversary of his ordination. He sat in the middle of the table with-who was it on his right hand? There were twelve dishes-he had said something about the Apostles, too, which was not thought to be in the best of taste. He was quite young and he had been moved by a gentle devilry, surrounded by all the pious and middle-aged and respectable people of Concepcion, wearing their guild ribbons and badges. He had drunk just a little too much: in those days he wasn't used to liquor. It came back to him now suddenly who was on his right hand-it was Montez, the father of the man they had shot.

Montez had talked at some length. He had reported the progress of the Altar Society in the last year-they had a balance in hand of twenty-two pesos. He had noted it down for comment-there it was, A.S. 22. Montez had been very anxious to start a branch of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul-and some [87] woman had complained that bad books were being sold in Concepcion, fetched from the capital by mule: her child had got hold of one called A Husband for a Night. In his speech he said he would write to the Governor on the subject.

The moment he had said that the local photographer had set off his flare, and so he could remember himself at that instant, just as if he had been a stranger looking in from the outside-attracted by the noise-on some happy and festal and strange occasion: noticing with envy, and perhaps a little amusement, the fat youngish priest who stood with one plump hand splayed authoritatively out while the tongue played pleasantly with the word Governor. Mouths were open all round-fishily, and the faces glowed magnesium-white, with all the lines and individuality wiped out.

That moment of authority had jerked him back to seriousness-he had ceased to unbend and everybody was happier. He said: The balance of twenty-two pesos in the accounts of the Altar Society-though quite revolutionary for Concepcion-is not the only cause for congratulation in the last year The Children of Mary have increased their membership by nine-and the Guild of the Blessed Sacrament last autumn made our annual retreat more than usually successful But we mustn't rest on our laurels-and I confess I have got plans you may find a little startling. You already think me a man, I know, of inordinate ambitions-well, I want Concepcion to have a better school-and that means a better presbytery too, of course. We are a big parish and the priest has a position to keep up. I'm not thinking of myself but of the Church. And we shall not stop there-though it will take a good many years, I'm afraid, even in a place the size of Concepcion, to raise the money for that. As he talked a whole serene life lay ahead-he had ambition: he saw no reason why one day he might not find himself in the state capital, attached to the cathedral, leaving another man to pay off the debts in Concepcion. An energetic priest was always known by his debts. He went on, waving a plump and eloquent hand: Of course, many dangers here in Mexico threaten our dear Church. In this state we are unusually lucky-men have lost their lives in the north and we must be prepared -he refreshed his dry mouth with a draught of wine- for the worst. Watch and pray, he went vaguely on, [88] watch and pray. The devil like a raging lion- The Children of Mary stared up at him with their mouths a little open, the pale blue ribbons slanting across their dark best blouses.

He talked for a long while, enjoying the sound of his own voice: he had discouraged Montez on the subject of the St. Vincent de Paul Society-because you had to be careful not to encourage a layman too far, and he had told a charming story about a child's deathbed-she was dying of consumption, very firm in her faith at the age of eleven. She asked who it was standing at the end of her bed, and they had said: That's Father So-and-so, and she had said: No, no. I know Father So-and-so. I mean the one with the golden crown. One of the Guild of the Blessed Sacrament had wept. Everybody was very happy. It was a true story too, though he couldn't quite remember where he had heard it. Perhaps he had read it in a book once. Somebody refilled his glass. He took a long breath and said: My children ...

… and as the mestizo stirred and grunted by the door he opened his eyes and the old life peeled away like a label: he was lying in torn peon trousers in a dark unventilated but with a price upon his head. The whole world had changed-no Church anywhere: no brother priest, except Padre José, the outcast, in the capital. He lay listening to the heavy breathing of the half-caste and wondered why he had not gone the same road as Padre José and conformed to the laws. I was too ambitious, he thought, that was it. Perhaps Padre José was the better man-he was so humble that he was ready to accept any amount of mockery: at the best of times he had never considered himself worthy of the priesthood. There had been a conference once of the parochial clergy in the capital-in the happy days of the old Governor, and he could remember Padre José slinking in at the tail of every meeting, curled up half out of sight in a back row, never opening his mouth. It was not, like some more intellectual priests, that he was over-scrupulous: he had been simply filled with an overwhelming sense of God. At the Elevation of the Host you could see his hands trembling-he was not like St. Thomas, who needed to put his hands into the wounds in order to believe: the wounds bled anew for him over every altar. Once Padre José had said to him in a burst [89] of confidence: Every time ... I have such fear. His father had been a peon.

But it was different in his case-he had ambition. He was no more an intellectual than Padre José, but his father was a storekeeper, and he knew the value of a balance of twenty-two pesos and how to manage mortgages. He wasn't content to remain all his life the priest of a not very large parish. His ambitions came back to him now as something faintly comic, and he gave a little gulp of astonished laughter in the candlelight. The half-caste opened his eyes and said: Are you still not asleep?

Sleep yourself, the priest said, wiping a little sweat off his face with his sleeve.

I am so cold.

Just a fever. Would you like this shirt? It isn't much, but it might help.

No, no. I don't want anything of yours. You don't trust me.

No, if he had been humble like Padre José, he might be living in the capital now with Maria on a pension. This was pride, devilish pride, lying here offering his shirt to the man who wanted to betray him. Even his attempts at escape had been half-hearted because of his pride-the sin by which the angels fell. When he was the only priest left in the state his pride had been all the greater; he thought himself the devil of a fellow carrying God around at the risk of his life; one day there would be a reward. ... He prayed in the half-light: O God, forgive me-I am a proud, lustful, greedy man. I have loved authority too much. These people are martyrs-protecting me with their own lives. They deserve a martyr to care for them-not a fool like me, who loves all the wrong things. Perhaps I had better escape-if I tell people how it is over here, perhaps they will send a good man with a fire of love ... As usual his self-confession dwindled away into the practical problem-what am I to do?

Over by the door the mestizo was uneasily asleep.

How little his pride had to feed on-he had celebrated only four Masses this year, and he had heard perhaps a hundred confessions. It seemed to him that the dunce of any seminary could have done as well ... or better. He raised himself very carefully and began to move on his naked toes across the floor. He [90] must get to Carmen and away again quickly before this man … the mouth was open, showing the pale hard toothless gums: in his sleep he was grunting and struggling; then he collapsed upon the floor and lay still.

There was a sense of abandonment, as if he had given up every struggle from now on and lay there a victim of some power. ... The priest had only to step over his legs and push the door-it opened outwards.

He put one leg over the body and a hand gripped his ankle. The mestizo stared up at him, Where are you going?

I want to relieve myself, the priest said.

The hand still held his ankle. Why cant you do it here? the man whined at him. What's preventing you, father? You are a father, aren't you?

I have a child, the priest said, if that's what you mean.

You know what I mean. You understand about God, don't you? The hot hand clung. Perhaps you've got him there-in a pocket. You carry him around, don't you, in case there's anybody sick. … Well, I'm sick. Why don't you give him to me? Or do you think he wouldn't have anything to do with me ... if he knew?

You're feverish.

But the man wouldn't stop. The priest was reminded of an oil-gusher which some prospectors had once struck near Concepcion-it wasn't a good enough field apparently to justify further operations, but there it had stood for forty-eight hours against the sky, a black fountain spouting out of the marshy useless soil and flowing away to waste-fifty thousand gallons an hour. It was like the religious sense in man, cracking suddenly upwards, a black pillar of fumes and impurity, running to waste. Shall I tell you what I've done-it's your business to listen. I've taken money from women to do you know what, and I've given money to boys ...

I don't want to hear.

It's your business.

You're mistaken.

Oh, no, I'm not. You cant take me in. Listen. I've given money to boys-you know what I mean. And I've eaten meat on Fridays. The awful jumble of the gross, the trivial, and the grotesque shot up between the two yellow fangs, and the hand [91] on the priest's ankle shook and shook with the fever. I've told lies, I haven't fasted in Lent for I don't know how many years. Once I had two women-I'll tell you what I did ... He had an immense self-importance: he was unable to picture a world of which he was only a typical part-a world of treachery, violence, and lust in which his shame was altogether insignificant. How often the priest had heard the same confession-Man was so limited: he hadn't even the ingenuity to invent a new vice: the animals knew as much. It was for this world that Christ had died: the more evil you saw and heard about you, the greater glory lay around the death; it was too easy to die for what was good or beautiful, for home or children or a civilization-it needed a God to die for the half-hearted and the corrupt. He said: Why do you tell me all this?

The man lay exhausted, saying nothing: he was beginning to sweat, his hand loosed its hold on the priest's ankle. He pushed the door open and went outside-the darkness was complete. How to find the mule? He stood listening-something howled not very far away. He was frightened. Back in the hut the candle burned-there was an odd bubbling sound: the man was weeping. Again he was reminded of oil land, the little black pools and the bubbles blowing slowly up and breaking and beginning again.

The priest struck a match and walked straight forward-one, two, three paces into a tree. A match in that immense darkness was of no more value than a firefly. He whispered: Mula, mula, afraid to call out in case the half-caste heard him; besides, it was unlikely that the stupid beast would make any reply. He hated it-the lurching mandarin head, the munching greedy mouth, the smell of blood and ordure. He struck another match and set off again, and again after a few paces he met a tree. Inside the hut the gaseous sound of grief went on. He had got to get to Carmen and away before that man found a means of communicating with the police. He began again, quartering the clearing-one, two, three, four-and then a tree. Something moved under his foot, and he thought of scorpions. One, two, three-and suddenly the grotesque cry of the mule came out of the dark; it was hungry, or perhaps it smelt some animal.

It was tethered a few yards behind the hut-the candle-flame [92] swerved out of sight. His matches were running low, but after two more attempts he found the mule. The half-caste had stripped it and hidden the saddle: he couldn't waste time looking any more. He mounted, and only then realized how impossible it was to make it move without even a piece of rope round the neck-he tried twisting at its ears, but they had no more sensitivity than door-handles: it stood planted there like an equestrian status. He struck a match and held the flame against its side-it struck up suddenly with its back hoofs and he dropped the match: then it was still again, with drooping sullen head and great antediluvian haunches. A voice said accusingly: You are leaving me here-to die.

Nonsense, the priest said. I am in a hurry. You will be all right in the morning, but I can't wait.

There was a scuffle in the darkness and then a hand gripped his naked foot. Don't leave me alone, the voice said. I appeal to you-as a Christian.

You won't come to any harm here.

How do you know, with the gringo somewhere about?

I don't know anything about the gringo. I've met nobody who has seen him. Besides, he's only a man-like one of us.

I won't be left alone. I have an instinct ...

Very well, the priest said wearily, find the saddle. When they had saddled the mule they set off again, the mestizo holding the stirrup. They were silent-sometimes the half-caste stumbled, and the grey false dawn began; a small coal of cruel satisfaction glowed at the back of the priest's mind-this was Judas sick and unsteady and scared in the dark. He had only to beat the mule on to leave him stranded in the forest-once he dug in the point of his stick and forced it forward at a weary trot and he could feel the pull, pull of the half-caste's arm on the stirrup, holding him back. There was a groan-it sounded like Mother of God, and he let the mule slacken its pace. He prayed silently: God forgive me : Christ had died for this man too: how could he pretend with his pride and lust and cowardice to be any more worthy of that death than this half-caste? This man intended to betray him for money which he needed, and he had betrayed God not even for real lust. He said: Are you sick? and there was no reply. He dismounted and said: Get up. I'll walk for a while.

[93] I'm all right, the man said in a tone of hatred.

Better get up.

You think you're very fine, the man said. Helping your enemies. That's Christian, isn't it?

Are you my enemy?

That's what you think. You think I want seven hundred pesos-that's the reward. You think a poor man like me can't afford not to tell the police. …

You're feverish.

The man said in a sick voice of cunning: You're right, of course.

Better mount. The man nearly fell: he had to shoulder him up. He leant hopelessly down from the mule with his mouth almost on a level with the priest's, breathing bad air into the other's face. He said: A poor man has no choice, father. Now if I was a rich man-only a little rich-I should be good.

The priest suddenly-for no reason-thought of the Children of Mary eating pastries. He giggled and said: I doubt it- If that were goodness ...

What was that you said, father? You don't trust me, he went rambling on, because I'm poor, and because you don't trust me- He collapsed over the pommel of the saddle, breathing heavily and shivering. The priest held him on with one hand and they proceeded slowly towards Carmen. It was no good: he couldn't stay there now: it would be unwise even to enter the village; for if it became known, somebody would lose his life-they would take a hostage. Somewhere a long way off a cock crew: the mist came up knee-high out of the spongy ground, and he thought of the flashlight going off in the bare church among the trestle tables. What hour did the cocks crow? One of the oddest things about the world these days was that there were no clocks-you could go a year without hearing one strike. They went with the churches, and you were left with the grey slow dawns and the precipitate nights as the only measurements of time.

Slowly, slumped over the pommel, the half-caste became visible, the yellow canines jutting out of the open mouth; really, the priest thought, he deserved his reward-seven hundred pesos wasn't so much, but he could probably live on it in that [94] dusty hopeless village-for a whole year. He giggled again: he could never take the complications of destiny quite seriously; and it was quite possible, he thought, that a year without anxiety might save this man's soul. You only had to turn up the underside of any situation and out came scuttling these small absurd contradictory situations. He had given way to despair-and out of that had emerged a human soul and love-not the best love, but love all the same. The mestizo said suddenly: It's fate. I was told once by a fortune-teller ... a reward ...

He held the half-caste firmly in the saddle and walked on-his feet were bleeding, but they would soon harden. An odd stillness dropped over the forest, and welled up in mist from the ground. The night had been noisy, but now all was quiet. It was like an armistice with the guns silent on either side: you could imagine the whole world listening to what they had never heard before-peace.

A voice said: You are the priest, aren't you?

Yes. It was as if they had climbed out of their opposing trenches and met in No Man's Land among the wire to fraternize. He remembered stories of the European war how during the last years men had sometimes met-on an impulse-between the lines. Are you a German? they might have said, with incredulity at the similar face, or: Are you English?

Yes, he said again, and the mule plodded on. Sometimes, instructing children in the old days, he had been asked by some black lozenge-eyed Indian child: What is God like? and he would answer facilely with references to the father and the mother, or perhaps more ambitiously he would include brother and sister and try to give some idea of all loves and relationships combined in an immense and yet personal passion. ... But at the centre of his own faith there always stood the convincing mystery-that we were made in God's image-God was the parent, but He was also the policeman, the criminal, the priest, the maniac, and the judge. Something resembling God dangled from the gibbet or went into odd attitudes before the bullets in a prison yard or contorted itself like a camel in the attitude of sex. He would sit in the confessional and hear the complicated dirty ingenuities which God's image had thought out: and God's image shook now, up and down on the mule's back, with the yellow teeth sticking out over the lower lip; and [95] God's image did its despairing act of rebellion with Maria in the hut among the rats. It must sometimes be a comfort to a soldier that the atrocities on either side were equal: nobody was ever alone. He said: Do you feel better now? Not so cold, eh? Or so hot? and pressed his hand with a kind of driven tenderness upon the shoulders of God's image.

The man didn't answer, as the mule's backbone slid him first to one side, then the other.

It isn't more than two leagues now, the priest said encouragingly-he had to make up his mind. He carried around with him a dearer picture of Carmen than of any other village or town in the state; the long slope of grass which led up from the river to the cemetery on a tiny hill of perhaps twenty feet where his parents were buried. The wall of the burial-ground had fallen in: one or two crosses had been smashed by enthusiasts: an angel had lost one of its stone wings, and what gravestones were left undamaged leant at an acute angle in the long marshy grass. One image of the Mother of God had lost ears and arms and stood like a pagan Venus over the grave of some rich, forgotten timber merchant. It was odd-this fury to deface, because, of course, you could never deface enough. If God had been like a toad, you could have rid the globe of toads, but when God was like yourself, it was no good being content with stone figures-you had to kill yourself among the graves.

He said: Are you strong enough to hold on? He took away his hand. The path divided-one way led to Carmen, the other west. He pushed the mule on, down the Carmen path, flogging at its haunches. He said: You'll be there in two hours, and stood watching the mule go on towards his home with the informer humped over the pommel.

The half-caste tried to sit upright. Where are you going?

You'll be my witness, the priest said. I haven't been in Carmen. But if you mention me-they'll give you food.

Why ... why ...? The half-caste tried to wrench round the mules head, but he hadn't enough strength: it just went on. The priest called out: Remember. I haven't been in Carmen. But where else now could he go? The conviction came to him that there was only one place in the whole state where there was no danger of an innocent man's being taken as a hostage-but he couldn't go there in these clothes. … The half-caste [96] held hard onto the pommel and swivelled his yellow eyes beseechingly: You wouldn't leave me here-alone. But it was more than the half-caste he was leaving behind on the forest track: the mule stood sideways like a barrier, nodding a stupid head, between him and the place where he had been born. He felt like a man without a passport who is turned away from every harbour.

The half-caste was calling after him: Call yourself a Christian. He had somehow managed to get himself upright. He began to shout abuse-a meaningless series of indecent words which petered out in the forest like the weak blows of a hammer. He whispered: If I see you again, you can't blame me. … Of course, he had every reason to be angry: he had lost seven hundred pesos. He shrieked hopelessly: I don't forget a face.

Chapter Two

THE YOUNG men and women walked round and round the plaza in the hot electric night: the men one way, the girls another, never speaking to each other. In the northern sky the lightning flapped. It was like a religious ceremony which had lost all meaning, but at which they still wore their best clothes. Sometimes a group of older women would join in the procession-with a little more excitement and laughter, as if they retained some memory of how things used to go before all the books were lost. A man with a gun on his hip watched from the Treasury steps, and a small withered soldier sat by the prison door with a gun between his knees, and the shadows of the palms pointed at him like a zariba of sabres. Lights were burning in a dentist's window, shining on the swivel chair and the red plush cushions and the glass for rinsing on its little stand and the child's chest-of-drawers full of fittings. Behind the wire-netted windows of the private houses grandmothers swung back and forth in rocking-chairs, among the family [97] photographs-nothing to do, nothing to say, with too many clothes on, sweating a little. This was the capital city of a state.

The man in the shabby drill suit watched it all from a bench. A squad of armed police went by to their quarters, walking out of step, carrying their rifles anyhow. The plaza was lit at each corner by dusters of three globes joined by ugly trailing overhead wires, and a beggar worked his way from seat to seat without success.

He sat down next the man in drill and started a long explanation. There was something confidential, and at the same time threatening in his manner. On every side the streets ran down towards the river and the port and the marshy plain. He said that he had a wife and so many children and that during the last few weeks they had eaten so little-he broke off and fingered the cloth of the other's drill suit. And how much, he said, did this cost?

You'd be surprised how little.

Suddenly as a clock struck nine-thirty all the lights went out. The beggar said: It's enough to make a man desperate. He looked this way and that as the parade drifted away down-hill. The man in drill got up, and the other got up too, tagging after him towards the edge of the plaza: his flat bare feet went slap, slap on the pavement. He said: A few pesos wouldn't make any difference to you. ...