The power and the glory (15 page)

The huts leapt up in the lightning and stood there shaking-then disappeared again in the rumbling darkness. The rain hadn't come yet: it was sweeping up from Campeche Bay in great sheets, covering the whole state in its methodical advance. Between the thunderbreaks he could imagine that he heard it-a gigantic rustle moving across towards the mountains which were now so close to him-a matter of twenty miles.
He reached the first hut: the door was open, and as the lightning quivered he saw, as he expected, nobody at all. Just a pile of maize and the indistinct grey movement of-perhaps-a rat. He dashed for the next hut, but it was the same as ever (the maize and nothing else), just as if all human life were receding before him, as if Somebody had determined that from now on he was to be left alone-altogether alone. As he stood there the rain reached the clearing: it came out of the forest like thick white smoke and moved on. It was as if an enemy were laying a gas-cloud across a whole territory, carefully, to see that nobody escaped. The rain spread and stayed just long enough, as though the enemy had his stop-watch out and knew to a second the limit of the lungs' endurance. The roof held the rain out for a while and then let it through-the twigs bent under the weight of water and shot apart: it came through in half a dozen places, pouring down in black funnels: then the downpour stopped and the roof dripped and the rain moved on, with the lightning quivering on its flanks like a protective barrage. In a few minutes it would reach the mountains: a few more storms like this and they would be impassable.
He had been walking all day and he was very tired: he found a dry spot and sat down. When the lightning struck he could see the clearing: all around was the gentle noise of the dripping water. It was nearly like peace, but not quite. For peace you needed human company-his aloneness was like a threat of things to come. Suddenly he remembered-for no apparent reason-a day of rain at the American seminary, the glass windows of the library steamed over with the central heating, the tall shelves of sedate books, and a young man-a stranger from Tucson-drawing his initials on the pane with his finger-that was peace. He looked at it from the outside: he couldn't believe that he would ever again get in. He had made his own world, and this was it-the empty broken huts, the storm going by, and fear again-fear because he was not alone after all.
Somebody was moving outside, cautiously. The footsteps would come a little way and then stop. He waited apathetically, and the roof dripped behind him. He thought of the half-caste padding around the city, seeking a really cast-iron occasion for his betrayal. A face peered round the hut door at him and quickly withdrew-an old woman's face, but you could never tell with Indians-she mightn't have been more than twenty. He got up and went outside-she scampered back from before him in her heavy sack-like skirt, her black plaits swinging heavily. Apparently his loneliness was only to be broken by these evasive faces-creatures who looked as if they had come out of the Stone Age, who withdrew again quickly.
He was stirred by a sort of sullen anger-this one should not withdraw. He pursued her across the clearing, splashing in the pools, but she had a start and no sense of shame and she got into the forest before him. It was useless looking for her there, and he returned towards the nearest hut. It wasn't the hut which he had been sheltering in before, but it was just as empty. What had happened to these people? He knew well enough that these more or less savage encampments were temporary only: the Indians would cultivate a small patch of ground and when they had exhausted the soil for the time being, they would simply move away-they knew nothing about the rotation of crops, but when they moved they would take their maize with them. This was more like flight-from force or disease. He had heard of such flights in the case of sickness, and the horrible thing, of course, was that they carried the sickness with them wherever they moved: sometimes they became panicky like flies against a pane, but discreetly, letting nobody know, muting their hubbub. He turned moodily again to stare out at the clearing, and there was the Indian woman creeping back-towards the hut where he had sheltered. He called out to her sharply and again she fled, shambling, towards the forest. Her clumsy progress reminded him of a bird feigning a broken wing. … He made no movement to follow her, and before she reached the trees she stopped and watched him; he began to move slowly back towards the other hut. Once he turned: she was following him at a distance, keeping her eyes on him. Again he was reminded of something animal or bird-like, full of anxiety. He walked on, aiming directly at the hut far away beyond it the lightning stabbed down, but you could hardly hear the thunder: the sky was clearing overhead and the moon came out. Suddenly he heard an odd artificial cry, and turning he saw the woman making back towards the forest-then she stumbled, flung up her arms, and fell to the ground-like the bird offering herself.
He felt quite certain now that something valuable was in the hut, perhaps hidden among the maize, and he paid her no attention, going in. Now that the lightning had moved on, he couldn't see-he felt across the floor until he reached the pile of maize. Outside the padding footsteps came nearer. He began to feel all over it-perhaps food was hidden there-and the dry crackle of the leaves was added to the drip of water and the cautious footsteps, like the faint noises of people busy about their private businesses. Then he put his hand on a face.
He couldn't be frightened any more by a thing like that-it was something human he had his fingers on. They moved down the body: it was that of a child who lay completely quiet under his hand. In the doorway the moonlight showed the woman's face indistinctly: she was probably convulsed with anxiety, but you couldn't tell. He thought -I must get this into the open where I can see. …
It was a male child-perhaps three years old: a withered bullet head with a mop of black hair: unconscious-but not dead: he could feel the faintest movement in the breast. He thought of disease again until he took out his hand and found that the child was wet with blood, not sweat. Horror and disgust touched him-violence everywhere: was there no end to violence? He said to the woman sharply: "What happened?" It was as if man in all this state had been left to man.
The woman knelt two or three feet away, watching his hands. She knew a little Spanish, because she replied: "Americano." The child wore a kind of brown one-piece smock: he lifted it up to the neck: he had been shot in three places. Life was going out of him all the time: there was nothing-really-to be done, but one had to try. … He said "Water" to the woman, "Water," but she didn't seem to understand, squatting there, watching him. It was a mistake one easily made, to think that just because the eyes expressed nothing, there was no grief. When he touched the child he could see her move on her haunches-she was ready to attack him with her teeth if the child so much as moaned.
He began to speak slowly and gently (he couldn't tell how much she understood): "We must have water. To wash him. You needn't be afraid of me. I will do him no harm." He took off his shirt and began to tear it into strips-it was hopelessly insanitary, but what else was there to do? except pray, of course, but one didn't pray for life, this life. He repeated again: "Water." The woman seemed to understand-she gazed hopelessly round at where the rain stood in pools-that was all there was. Well, he thought, the earth's as clean as any vessel would have been. He soaked a piece of his shirt and leant over the child: he could hear the woman slide closer along the ground-a menacing approach. He tried to reassure her again: "You needn't be afraid of me. I am a priest."
The word "priest" she understood: she leant forward and grabbed at the hand which held the wet scrap of shirt and kissed it. At that moment, while her lips were on his hand, the child's face wrinkled, the eyes opened and glared at them, the tiny body shook with a kind of fury of pain; they watched the eyeballs roll up and suddenly become fixed, like marbles in a solitaire-board, yellow and ugly with death. The woman let go his hand and scrambled to a pool of water, cupping her fingers for it. The priest said: "We don't need that any more," standing up with his hands full of wet shirt. The woman opened her fingers and let the water fall. She said "Father" imploringly, and he wearily went down on his knees and began to pray.
He could feel no meaning any longer in prayers like these-the Host was different: to lay that between a dying man's lips was to lay God. That was a fact-something you could touch, but this was no more than a pious aspiration. Why should Anyone listen to his prayers? Sin was like a constriction which prevented their escape: he could feel his prayers like undigested food heavy in his body, unable to escape.
When he had finished he lifted up the body and carried it back into the hut like a piece of furniture-it seemed a waste of time to have taken it out, like a chair you carry out into the garden and back again because the grass is wet. The woman followed him meekly-she didn't seem to want to touch the body, just watched him put it back in the dark upon the maize. He sat down on the ground and said slowly: "It will have to be buried."
She understood that, nodding.
He said: "Where is your husband? Will he help you?" She began to talk rapidly: it might have been Camacho she was speaking: he couldn't understand more than an occasional Spanish word here and there. The word "Americano " occurred again-and he remembered the wanted man whose portrait had shared the wall with his. He asked her: "Did he do this?" She shook her head. What had happened? he wondered. Had the man taken shelter here and had the soldiers fired into huts? It was not unlikely. He suddenly had his attention caught: she had said the name of the banana station but there had been no dying person there: no sign of violence-unless silence and desertion were signs. He had assumed the mother had been taken ill: it might be something worse-and he imagined that stupid Captain Fellows taking down his gun, presenting himself clumsily armed to a man whose chief talent was to draw quickly or to shoot directly from the pocket. That poor child … what responsibilities she had perhaps been forced to undertake.
He shook the thought away and said: "Have you a spade?" She didn't understand that, and he had to go through the motions of digging. Another roll of thunder came between them: a second storm was coming up, as if the enemy had discovered that the first barrage after all had left a few survivors-this would flatten them. Again he could hear the enormous breathing of the rain miles away: he realized the woman had spoken the one word "church." Her Spanish consisted of isolated words. He wondered what she meant by that. Then the rain reached them-It came down like a wall between him and escape, fell altogether in a heap and built itself up around them. All the light went out except when the lightning flashed.
The roof couldn't keep out this rain: it came dripping through everywhere: the dry maize leaves where the dead child lay crackled like burning wood. He shivered with cold: he was probably on the edge of fever-he must get away before he was incapable of moving at all. The woman (he couldn't see her now) said "Iglesia" again imploringly. It occurred to him that she wanted her child buried near a church or perhaps only taken to an altar, so that he might be touched by the feet of a Christ. It was a fantastic notion.
He took advantage of a long quivering stroke of blue light to describe with his hands his sense of the impossibility. "The soldiers," he said, and she replied immediately: "Americano." That word always came up, like one with many meanings which depends on the accent whether it is to be taken as an explanation, a warning, or a threat. Perhaps she meant that the soldiers were all occupied in the chase-but even so, this rain was ruining everything. It was still twenty miles to the border, and the mountain paths after the storm were probably impassable-and a church-he hadn't the faintest idea of where there would be a church. He hadn't so much as seen such a thing for years now: it was difficult to believe that they still existed only a few days' journey off. When the lightning went on again he saw the woman watching him with stony patience.
For the last thirty hours they had had only sugar to eat large brown lumps of it the size of a baby's skull: they had seen no one, and they had exchanged no words at all. What was the use when almost the only words they had in common were "Iglesia" and "Americano"? The woman followed at his heels with the dead child strapped on her back: she seemed never to tire. A day and a night brought them out of the marshes to the foot-hills: they slept fifty feet up above the slow green river, under a projecting piece of rock where the soil was dry-everywhere else was deep mud. The woman sat with her knees drawn up, and her head down-she showed no emotion, but she put the child's body behind her as if it needed protection from marauders like other lifeless possessions. They had travelled by the sun until the black wooded bar of mountain told them where to go. They might have been the only survivors of a world which was dying out-they carried the visible marks of the dying with them.
Sometimes he wondered whether he was safe, but when there are no visible boundaries between one state and another-no passport examination or customs house-danger just seems to go on, travelling with you, lifting its heavy feet in the same way as you do. There seemed to be so little progress: the path would rise steeply, perhaps five hundred feet, and fall again, dogged with mud. Once it took an enormous hairpin bend, so that after three hours they had returned to a point opposite their starting-place, less than a hundred yards away.
At sunset on the second day they came out onto a wide plateau covered with short grass: an odd grove of crosses stood up blackly against the sky, leaning at different angles-some as high as twenty feet, some not much more than eight. They were like trees that had been left to seed. The priest stopped and stared at them: they were the first Christian symbols he had seen for more than five years publicly exposed-if you could call this empty plateau in the mountains a public place. No priest could have been concerned in the strange rough group; it was the work of Indians and had nothing in common with the tidy vestments of the Mass and the elaborately worked out symbols of the liturgy. It was like a short cut to the dark and magical heart of the faith-to the night when the graves opened and the dead walked. There was a movement behind him and he turned.