When the Owl Cries

by Paul Alexander Bartlett

10

Alberto Saenz, the Christ-faced musician, balanced empty birdcages on top of his head, as he trudged along the shore of the lagoon. Soon he would reach Petaca and could rest. A string of smoke hung out of the volcano, but the air was clear. No doubt the worst was over. Scooping water from the lagoon, he drank from his palms, and the sedgy flavor pleased him. Rising, he stroked his beard and resumed his walk, along the pebbly shore. Herons let him come close, wading no deeper, beaking their feed calmly: what harm could a fellow do with cages on his head?

At Petaca, he sat for a while on the veranda, watching, drowsing. Workers were busy at the far end, where the quake had demolished roof and arches. Stonecutters pecked with hammers and chisels, fast, light strokes; a mason sloshed mortar in a box, adding sand to his mixture. All were bare-headed, barefooted and all wore white. Alberto wore white—his trousers slashed on the outside, above the ankles, his buttonless shirt open on his white-haired chest. Head against a veranda arch, he dreamed of other visits, Raul's kindly mother, the runaway carriage from La Calera, the fiesta of the Virgin of Petaca when they had burned four castillos.

Before taking his cages to Raul, he prayed in the chapel. Kneeling, he let the whiteness of the room take him: he had been a lover of Mary ever since he could remember: without a doubt She had saved his mother during the black plague. Strains of music he had played through the years came to him, as he knelt. Stepping toward the altar, he touched the glass dome covering the Virgin: her rubies, emeralds and diamonds never changed. Some night, as the dawn arrived and birds began their day, She would speak and Jesus would gently remove him from this life. Friends would wash him and borrow the hacienda grave box.

Back on the veranda, he picked up his cages, knocked, and asked for Raul.

A new servant from Ameca said harshly:

"You wait on the veranda. No, go round to the kitchen. Get along, wait in the kitchen."

"I'll wait right here," said Alberto, and turned away, to sit on the steps.

Raul overheard, came outside, and accepted the cages. Together they hung them in the patio. Alberto had ideas as to what kinds of birds should be put inside. Raul understood how much the old man prized his gift. He led him into the kitchen for something to eat. His bearded face, through the closing door, brought to mind the man decorating the hill cross and his own resolve to assume the hacienda responsibilities.

On the veranda, Raul talked with the stonecutters. In a short time the house would be repaired. This afternoon, he had to ride to the pond in Sector 17; the quake had cracked the dam and released most of the water. A group of workers was already there, but the job had to be pushed before the dry season.

Oxcarts creaked across the court, each loaded with stone for the veranda. One cart was new, made by Salvador, and pulled by his garbanza-colored oxen. Salvador drove his cart and young Esteban rode another, his goad over his shoulder, spear-like, his team black and white. Pigeons fluttered about the carts, as if they hoped for grain.

Salvador greeted Raul with a friendly grin.

"It's hot this morning."

"It's hot to haul stone," Raul said.

"These loads will give us enough to finish the veranda."

"Who supervised the cutting?"

"Alejandro."

"He's doing a good job," said Raul, and started into the house, pleased with the progress.

"Ah, before you go ... I'd like to say that Isidro found sixty pesos in the stable. They must be yours. I have the bills." He dug into his back pocket and drew out his red bandanna, the pesos knotted inside.

"As far as I know, I haven't lost any money," said Raul.

Salvador held out the cash to Raul, and mopped his face with the bandana, puffing loudly.

"I'll see. I'm pretty sure it's not my money," Raul said.

"Keep it in the tienda, till you know. None of us lost it," said Salvador, and laughed his silent, rocking laugh, his eyes dancing. "Where would we get so much money?"

"Salvador, where did you say Isidro found it?"

"In a stall, by a feedbox."

"Queer," said Raul and took the money and went inside the house.

In the bedroom, Angelina sat beside the patio window, barefooted, in her white dressing gown, a cat in her lap. She was embroidering a pillowcase.

"I had a letter from María," she said, without glancing up.

"Yes," he said, hoping she would not read it, since her sister's letters were garrulous and about people he scarcely knew.

"I got it this morning. Father Gabriel just came back from Colima, and brought it to me." She attempted to sound sprightly.

"How is she?" Raul asked, getting his boots for the ride to the pond.

The cat jumped down and Angelina turned toward Raul, her legs showing under the robe. A boy's legs, he thought, annoyed. A girl's body, with boy's legs. She's never grown up. She loves children but hates the sex act. What is it that fills her with fear? I used to try so hard to please her ... and she tried to please me.

He struggled with his left boot.

What are the bubbles of fear behind her eyes? As if the pigment had broken loose and was swimming to the surface. The smile smiles and the eyes hide something.

We've lived too many years together to disentangle our emotions. The boot hurts, at the heel ... it used to fit fine. I don't want to wear my new ones.

María wants her to come to Guadalajara, but she doesn't need an excuse to go to Guadalajara, or anywhere. Fifteen years ago she wouldn't have left me for anything in the world—or I her.

Blinking at his right boot, he began to yank it on....

"María wants me to come to Guadalajara soon. She's worried about me, after the quakes."

"I think you should visit her," he said. "Has she finished remodeling her house?"

"The remodeling's done.... I need some mourning clothes," she said.

"Have them made in Guadalajara."

"But you know how long that takes? That takes forever." The way she hit the last word piqued him, but he said nothing.

"I'll be glad to get away from that new cook. She puts oil in all our food. Look how she prepared the chayotes last week! Did you ever taste the like!"

She turned back to her embroidery, but thought:

He's putting on boots to go somewhere, he's always going somewhere. Maybe I did say I wouldn't leave. Maybe I did say that Caterina needed me. He never speaks of her ... he doesn't miss her.

Suddenly, she asked: "Why didn't you come here when you were wounded?"

"I was closer to Palma Sola."

"I think you're always closer," she said.

Astonished, he stopped dressing, stopped buttoning his shirt. With a great effort, he made himself continue, his fingers working uncertainly.

"Give her up, Raul. Get her out of our lives. You owe it to me and Vicente."

Somehow he managed the last button and thought: I've got to think clearly. He crossed the room to her and placed his hand on her shoulder.

"Would it help us now, Angelina? There's Estelle, you know...."

She lowered her eyes.

"Estelle," she said, wanting to keep the word to herself.

He felt her tremble.

Tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, I'll see Estelle. You and your stinking boots. What can you know about delicacy? Keep your von Humboldt. I'll keep my friend. Once you would have accompanied me to Guadalajara, but now you send me with a servant.

Silent, he went out, pitying her small face, pitying himself, Caterina, Vicente—everyone.

When he had clumped out, she closed the door, locked it, removed her robe, went naked to the wardrobe and unboxed her fox fur, a reddish-gold pelt. With it on, she appraised her body: quite, quite pretty, she told herself. Parading in front of her mirror, she swayed from side to side, dancing the length of the room and then back again to face the mirror. Quite, quite pretty. All of a sudden, her ecstasy faded and she tossed her fur on the bed and flopped beside it. Hunger pervaded her. Closing her lids, flat on her back, she saw the Degollado Theater in Guadalajara, saw María and Estelle, Estelle in pale green moire, her blond hair glistening....

On the stage, the dancers performed jotas; the flamenco, dressed in black, a red sash bleeding round his waist, put her into a trance. Estelle whispered to her ... then....

So many barren days went into life at Petaca. No Vicente to love, no Caterina, no woman her age or kind. Children, yes, but anonymous. No plays, no musicals, no burlesques. In the convent of Ursula, on Calle López Cotilla, she had had a girl friend (it seemed yesterday and not years ago) who had slept with her. They had lain together, without clothes, night after night. Nobody had ever found out. Where was she? Where was Renée? What had happened to her? Would anyone in Guadalajara ever have news of her?

Dear María, I'll come ... I wasn't going to come but now I'll come ... I'll stay with you, then stay with Estelle. I'll have fresh pineapple and oranges ... we'll have dulces ... we'll have nieves ... only a few children will miss me here and maybe the chapel organ. Yes, yes, I heard the organ say, one night, as the candle burnt low, she's nice, she's really quite nice. Am I quite nice? I'm quite pretty. Estelle says I am.

Sighing, she rose and sat at her dressing table and began plucking her brows. Each hair, as she pulled it, made her wince. She rubbed herself with cream, dressed and descended to the living room, pretending, as she walked, that this home was the home of a Guadalajara family and that she was a guest.

It irked her to find Caterina's smiling photo, in its velvet-gold frame, on the desk. Momentarily bewildered, she dusted it and laid it face down. Taking stationery out of the drawer, she wrote María, writing fast, in a nervous spidery scrawl.

"Dear María,

"I am glad I can come to you. Raul says I can join you in a few days. I'll try to be real discreet so you can keep me a long time. You must phone Isabel and arrange fittings for me; I have to have so many dresses in black.

"I'm glad the remodeling is done. I know it is pretty...."

A tropical cloud had gathered as she dressed and now, as she wrote, the rain lashed, hitting the lagoon side of the house. She was glad Raul had had men fix the living room roof; he was riding in the rain, she realized. She did not care. Probably Manuel was holding an umbrella over him. Raul had learned to look after himself long ago, he and his Negro. Putting down her pen, she went to the veranda windows, her elegant black swishing. But she was barefooted. More peasant than many peasants, she liked the tongue of tiles licking her soles, the hairiness of oriental rugs, the feel of the mountain lion before the fireplace.

Her old-fashioned dress was low cut, with sleeves three-quarter; in the V of her throat, above her boy breasts, dangled a diamond cross of her mother's. She had braided her hair into a coronet, glossy, perfumed, perfect.

Returning to her desk, hearing the rain, feeling the nakedness of her feet, the nakedness of herself under the dress, she swayed on her chair. As thunder rumbled, she recalled fragments of a poem by Felipe Clavo, a passionate outcry: he had expressed what it was to be manacled by tropical isolation where "white butterflies made love to protruding lianas." Clavo's lines had the sway of a hammock.

Clavo had said: "Love between women is superior to love between men and women—it asks so little." At the Degollado, Clavo had read his poetry but she could not remember him or what he had read; she had been too young.

The woman's poet, some called him.

That didn't matter.

Only loneliness, only love mattered.

"Caterina, do you mind the storm?" she asked, the huskiness of her voice softer than usual. "I guess you don't mind the rain. I guess none of us mind the rain when our day comes. No thunder reaches us...."

Taking her pen, she completed her letter to María and then wrote Estelle Milan. A streak of lightning blazed. In Guadalajara, when it rained, a carriage whisked them to the theater; they laughed as they bumped over cobbles; after the theater, they had supper at the Copa de Leche: Cota, Lorenzo, Cordero, Gouz, Aguirre, Milan. In spite of the storm, she had rejoined her friends: a shiver ran through her because they were so real, so close.

Chavela lit candles on the desk, on the mantelpiece and in wall brackets.

"It's gotten dark so fast," she complained. "What a rain! Do you want me to light the kerosene lamp?"

"Later," Angelina said. "Bring me my cup of coffee."

"I'll bring it right away."

Angelina poured at the desk, mixing her particular concoction of strong coffee and hot milk, pouring the milk from a diminutive Turkish pot of brass. As she drank, she heard Gabriel coming in. She liked Storni and rose to welcome him.

Slipping off his poncho, spreading it over the back of a chair, he kissed her hand and brought a chair close to the desk. Because of the damp, he limped heavily. His robe smelled of dried straw; noticing the smell, she held up her handkerchief and said:

"The coffee's just right. I'll ring for a cup."

"Hot coffee—on an evening like this! Where's Raul?" He was naïvely captivated by her perfume and her old-fashioned dress.

"Raul's gone to see about a dam that cracked in the quake."

"We'll need all the water we can save, before our dry season ends," he said.

She hid her feet under her skirt and played with the diamond cross at her throat.

"I'm leaving for Guadalajara ... María's house is done. Gabriel, it'll be so good to get away. I'll have Vicente come when school is out in Colima."

"I know how you feel," Gabriel adjusted his glasses. "I'd like to get away myself, if there weren't so much to do here at Petaca."

"Why has Don Fernando taken another bad turn?" she asked.

"Money," he said.

"Whose money?"

"Hacienda money," said Gabriel. "You see, Raul canceled certain accounts. He wants to do away with the indebtedness on the tienda de raya books. A matter of hacienda funds."

"Raul goes too far," she said, putting her cup down hard.

He began to defend Raul's actions and she tried to listen politely, filling his cup, giving him sugar, handing him a napkin. She felt that the sound of the rain was all that kept her in the room—without it everything would disappear.

"Oh, Caterina's photo has fallen over," he said, and set it up.

"I laid it down."

"Why did you do that, Angelina?"

"To help me forget her."

"Forget her ... we mustn't forget her."

"Don't you understand that I miss her ... I miss her all the time ... I don't need her photograph. Can't you see that things can be so bitter ... can't you accept how I feel?" She spoke without rebuke, as though to herself.

They lapsed into silence; the rain beat across the veranda, across the tiles; somewhere a shutter thudded; somewhere children babbled.

"We should have saved her," said Gabriel, stirring his coffee.

"How could we have saved her?"

"The Indians know many ways of curing dysentery."

"Then why don't they cure their own little ones? We see them die every year. Gabriel, the haciendas are littered with their graves."

She remembered playing with Concepción, Miguelito, Trinita, Pepe—dear faces, Petaca's dead children! Her love for them choked her.

Forget Petaca! Forget Raul!

But did one forget someone once loved? Could there never be accord? Gabriel had recommended patience. The dung beetle was patient: she had seen it shoving a ball, worming it from side to side, attacking it frenziedly. She was no dung beetle. Revolving the delicate cup on its saucer, guiding it around inside the rim, her toes digging at the rungs of her chair, she smelled her own flesh, waited. It seemed to her she had waited more than half her life, waited for someone to love, waited for marriage, waited for sexual adjustment, waited for childbirth, for her babies to walk and talk. Even death had to be waited for. Her own. Her friends. Don Fernando's.

She heard her father-in-law say:

"Let's not bring that toy to the breakfast table....

"This is no place for women ... get out....

"Well wait for your wife to go to bed....

"Take the noisy children away...."

Dressed in one of his charro outfits or in badly pressed whites, whip or quirt in hand, he epitomized Petaca. Blood-shot eyes, battered mouth, scrawny neck—soon death would take them away. And she knew how he feared death; she had heard him mumble to himself. It had perplexed her that Caterina had been fond of him but she let them alone, hoping the innocence of one would offset the vices of the other. Well, it had been a brief affection. She wondered how she condescended to treat him humanely, almost with affection sometimes.

Pouring herself more coffee she tried to shake her mood and said the first thing that came to mind:

"What have you been thinking about?"

"I? Oh, I was thinking of Italy. What were you thinking about?"

"Don Fernando. Caterina. Life and death."

"I was thinking of home. Very foolish of me. I guess I'm ... well, sentimental." He patted his bald spot.

"You've been homesick as long as I can remember," she said.

"Come, come now," he said. "I haven't been that bad, have I?"

Chavela went about opening windows and candle flames wavered from the cool, damp but refreshing air. The clack-a-clack of hundreds of blackbirds resounded from their roosting place in the Indian laurels at the lagoon end of the garden.

Gabriel lit a kerosene lamp and placed it on the piano and excused himself.

"Good-night, Angelina ... I must visit Viosco ... he's sick ... thanks for the coffee...."

She hunched on a sofa, her feet under a velvet cushion, eyes on the irresolute candles. Shall I confess to Gabriel that I like to walk naked in my fur? Shall I tell him about the girl at the convent? Shall I tell him why Raul married me? Confess. Must we all confess, confess how lonely we are?

Later, in the chapel, she prayed for Vicente and herself. The place was dimly lit but the darkness and her rebozo could not shut out the Petacans, the lame, the sick, the hungry: they whimpered for clothes, medicine, alms: they fought for food, stole, got drunk, killed. They had never crowded about her before and their ghostly presence drove her to her room.

Raul had stayed in a peasant hut during the rain, a thatched room where woven fronds, carefully herringboned, shut out most of the downpour. A pig slept in a corner. Raul sat on a wooden chest; the owner and his wife squatted on a mat. Above the pig, in a sisal hammock, swung a child. Another hammock was looped over a peg, its pouch resembling a gray moth's case. The deluge shut out nearly all light. Through the open doorway mist drubbed. Nobody tried to talk. Raul dozed. When the rain stopped, he thanked the pair, accepted a chunk of sugar cane for Chico, and got on his horse and rode off.

Chico trotted briskly, whiffing the rain-washed air as they followed a trail through pastureland where knots of Herefords grazed. Belly high to the horse, a stone wall paralleled the trail, iguanas here and there.

At a bend, Chico whirled sidewise, and pain from his bullet wound shot through Raul. He thought he might topple, but somehow managed to keep his saddle, as the horse pirouetted. Shouting, commanding, he dug his spurs. The horse screamed. Then, Raul saw the snake, a good-sized rattler.

Dragging violently at the bit, he checked Chico underneath some orange trees and dismounted, thoroughly disgusted.

"You fool. Haven't you ever seen a rattler before? You ought to learn a thing or two. You crazy fool—you're no colt!"

The snake slithered away through the grass.

At the dam, the foreman told Raul that they had less than a week's work, though the cracks in the dam appeared formidable. Raul sucked his pipe, nodded his head, simply agreeing. The place oozed gnats and flies. Sandpipers paraded the shallows.

Remaining on his horse, Raul chatted with the workers, all of them in breechclouts or shorts. A number wore conical hats of a nearby mountaineer clan. The southerners had bodies like chocolate. Some spoke no Spanish. Through the years, Raul had acquired an Indian vocabulary of sorts and he tried to josh the men but none of his jokes got across. He slapped at gnats, and left as soon as he could.

On his way home, he felt a sense of freedom. The breadth of the land affected him. Uncle Roberto had said: "It does something to a man to live on a place you can't ride across in days." Though Raul had been born at Petaca, he realized there were parts he had never seen, hill country, mountain fields, lava terrain, streams. A subforeman insisted that a lake existed in Sector 25. Recently someone told of Indians camping in 31, thatched huts in a valley of willows.

As dusk brought the swallows and bats, Raul remembered Petacan outings in all kinds of weather, high volcano climbs with lightning flashing from rock to rock, river explorations, treks across pasture lands, trails to milpas, trails through steamy canyons choked with red-barked trees. They had herded cattle, roped yearlings, branded, dehorned; they had driven herds of sheep and goat; they had chased wild horses. Gathered around campfires, they had eaten from chuck wagons. Years past, they had packed burro trains into the Mountain Rancheria area in search of gold and silver. They had hunted deer in the uplands, tigres in the marsh grass of the coastal land, iguanas where the palmera whined, alligator and ibis in the lagoons, wolf and bear midway up the great peak, eagles at the summit.

At first, he had tried to share these things with Angelina but she had not cared for the rough life and so he had gone with his men, storing up the hours, making his own calendar, riding most often with Manuel, including Lucienne when he dared.

High up, in the darkening sky, a hawk drifted.

Surely, the Medinas were monarchs of a kind.

Lights burned at Petaca, in the windows and in the kerosene lamps atop the wooden posts in the courtyard. Raul saw rurales, some mounted, some afoot, their uniforms unmistakable. He had heard that they had been encountered in the remote sections of the hacienda but this was the first time he had seen them and he was glad to have an indication of their interest in apprehending Pedro. His trip to Colima had been successful.

He did not doubt that his father knew where Pedro had gone. (Would this new stroke end his life?) Some said guns were being smuggled, bought and sold. At other haciendas, men had been placed on guard duty. Count de Selva, it was rumored, had clamped men in irons for demanding the right to buy matches in Colima.

A peculiar fear washed over him, as he rode into Petaca. It seemed to be hooked up in his mind with the birthday party Lucienne was planning next week at Palma Sola. A foolish fear, no doubt.