When the Owl Cries

by Paul Alexander Bartlett

5

Early Sunday morning the wind began to howl. It beat off the delicate jacaranda blossoms until the garden pool wore a top of flowers. On the terrace, a strip of honeysuckle tore loose and wrapped itself around the stone Christ. The sky became a mushy gray, and later in the day the clouds oozed rain, then hail. Hailstones, the size of parrots' eyes, flicked at bougainvillaea, jacaranda, cup-of-gold, and oleander until the garden had little brilliance left. Everything was green and wet, and the wet green clambered from within, a threat, a tropic impulse.

Raul recognized the force. He felt it also in the sky as he stood at Caterina's bedroom window on the second floor. From there, the volcano seemed to knife the sky at a peculiar angle, with a peculiar pressure. As he stood by the window frame he felt a tremor. The tiled floor shifted, swayed, lowered, raised, stopped. It was a mild quake and Caterina did not awaken. Her rag elephant fell to the floor from her bed. Eyes on the volcano tip, Raul waited for a belch of smoke. It did not come. But another quake came. Remaining by the window, he lit his pipe and listened to fumbling rain and hail.

Caterina had been seriously ill for six days. Dr. Velasco and Dr. Hernández had puzzled over prescriptions. Nothing had helped the acute diarrhea, vomiting, and fever. Her temperature had shot up, then had fallen. Dr. Velasco called it "tropic fever"; Dr. Hernández said it was "black fever." New medicines had been used effectively in Guadalajara, and Dr. Velasco had gone for them, reassuring everyone. He would be back on tomorrow's train that arrived at nine P.M., if it pulled into Colima on time.

Sitting by Caterina's bed, Raul noticed her pallor, how it seemed more pronounced in her hands than in her face. The fingers felt lifeless. Cupping his hands around hers he tried to warm them. He began to rub. This morning they had gone through the motions of a card game during the storm and suddenly, about half through the game, she had said, "My fingers hurt, they're so cold. Papa, let's never finish our game."

Taken by surprise, he had had to blink back his tears.

A dozen jobs had kept him from her since then. Coming out of the wind and hail, he had found her alone. The Colima nun, her nurse, had gone downstairs to eat. Raul liked being alone with Caterina. Hearing the storm, watching it from her window, he thought of things they had shared: the moth and butterfly collection (Lucienne's idea), horseback rides, boating on the lagoon, fishing.

She had a tiny bronze cannon that had been mounted on the garden sundial pedestal. She had found it during a visit to Guadalajara and had insisted that Raul install it for her and, for a while, she had primed it faithfully. It had "boomed" each sunny noon, the sunshine igniting the powder through a magnifying glass.

Some of her dolls were ranged on the floor beside her bed, toppled bodies, Swiss, African, Chinese, Mexican. She called one "Flaco," one "Negro," another "Henry." ... He had never known all their names.

Caterina stirred. Breathing fast, she rubbed both hands roughly over her face, and her lids fluttered open.

"Papa," she said.

"Yes, dear."

"Where am I?"

"In your bed."

"I dreamed ... I was in school."

"In Guadalajara?" he asked.

"Yes.... Oh, Papa, don't send me back to school."

"Why? I thought you liked the school and the Sisters."

"I can't go, and it's too far."

"Not now," he said.

"Papa..."

"Yes?"

"Oh ... Papa..."

Tears came.

"Papa..."

"Yes."

"When shall we go on a picnic?"

"Soon," he said. "Maybe next week. Where would you like to go?"

"'Way up the mountain."

"Up the volcano on horseback?"

"Yes," she said, liking her father's bushy hair and eyebrows.

"We'll do that—all of us. Soon."

She shivered and closed her eyes. It seemed to her that all the window frames and doorways were merging. It seemed as if the floor had tilted.

"Papa ... have the nurse change me."

"Again?"

"Yes."

"I'll call her."

He went to the patio window and called, and Carmela answered immediately.

Back at Caterina's side, Raul said: "Carmela's coming right away. You know, Caterina, I think the sun will be out soon. The hail has stopped. The wind's rough but it may blow off the clouds."

She did not respond.

As he waited for Carmela, he thought about the timbre of her voice, how frail it had become, frightened, hurried.

Carmela changed her and made her comfortable.

"Thank you, Sister," Caterina said.

"You're welcome, dear."

Carmela, a whipcord woman, could have carried the Master's cross. She had a dusky mustache above Mayan lips. Her hair was sheep-thick and done in twin buns that had long pins sticking in them. Tufts of hair grew in each of her ears. She walked with a rustler's tread—years of convent living and nursing had not tamed her tread. Yet she had the essence of sanctity in her face, and people said that she never lost patience.

When she left the room, Raul sat on the bed at Caterina's feet.

"She's nice," Caterina said.

"Big," he laughed.

"Papa ... when will my stomach stop hurting?" She began to cry and covered her face with one arm. "Oh, Papa ... Papa ... ask God..."

"What is it?" asked Carmela, returning.

"Pain."

"Deep in your stomach?" the nun asked, pushing back her white collar.

"Yes."

"Let me give you more laudanum," said Carmela, going to the medicines on a tray at the dressing table.

"No. It makes me sleep. No. No-ooo."

"Sleep is best for you. It'll make you strong," the nun said, vigorously rattling the bottle and spoon; she yanked the cork from a blue bottle sniffed the contents and said, "Ah." Her starched clothes sounded the same as the rustle of distant hail.

"No..." Caterina said feebly.

"Please," said Carmela.

"Papa ... no!" (Frightened)

"Then later," said Raul.

"Yes, Papa."

The syrupy medicine went back into the bottle.

Gusts swirled through the garden, and the rain-heavy foliage bent low; window curtains fluttered, their red and white cotton billowing now inside, now outside.

"Papa, can I give Mona to Lucienne? I want to. Papa, will you read to me?"

He did not answer her question about the dog. Mona had been Caterina's pet for over two years. What was her insight into his relationship with Lucienne? Was she expressing approval ... did she feel she was about to die?

"Yes, yes, I'll read to you. What would you like? Your Grillo?"

The Grillo was an Italian book about the adventures of a cricket.

"Yes, Papa ... Grillo."

By the time he found the book, she had fallen asleep. The cricket, printed in orange on the cover of the novel, crept away from his hands. Sparks of lightning whisked over the blue and white pattern of floor tiling. He laid her book lovingly on the circular table, cluttered with the child's things: cutouts, a sewing kit, some dried figs, doll dishes.... It was a small corner room, with white enameled furniture. Above her bed hung a pastel portrait of her mother. The portrait, done with too obvious care, was gilt framed, and dangled from a long wire. The picture began to sway.

"Another quake," said the nun, from her chair by the window. "That's the third."

They stared at each other questioningly. Sister Carmela fingered her beads, and shivered. She hated quakes, and remembered the devastation caused by the last big shock in Colima.

The quake lasted a little longer than the others; the dolls rocked together on the floor; a dish clattered; someone shouted, "Don Raul, Don Raul!"

Stepping to the window on the patio side, Raul saw Salvador.

"A tree has blown down on the stable. Can you come?" Salvador shouted.

"I'll be down."

Raul went down the stairway. Angelina stood on the bottom steps, a cup of broth in her hands.

"Raul, there was another quake.... How is Caterina?"

"No better. Her stomach pains her a great deal. She's asleep."

"I'll go up anyway. Maybe she'll wake soon and have some broth."

They passed one another without really seeing one another.

"Your father wants to know how Caterina is," Angelina said, as she went up.

"I'll tell him."

He crossed the hail-splattered patio to his father's room, resenting the chill. Fernando had ordered his bed moved—to avoid seeing the distorted landscape. He now faced the patio and Raul paused in the doorway, sensing his father's gaze.

"How is she?" he asked.

"I'm afraid she's worse."

"You're afraid, poor boy! Why don't you do something to help?"

"Velasco has gone to Guadalajara. He'll be back with new medication tomorrow."

"You'll let her die."

"Not if we can help it."

"I'm going up to her room."

"You couldn't make it up the stairway."

"Men can carry me," he said savagely. "Or have all the men at Petaca become too weak!"

Raul turned to leave, but waited a moment.

"Raul—will Caterina want me?" The old man asked humbly, his voice normal.

"It might help her."

"Then?"

"I'll arrange for you to be carried up later."

At the stable, Salvador and others were stacking roof tiles knocked off by the fallen eucalyptus. Branches of the huge tree lashed at the men, and the air smelled of oil from the bruised leaves and bark. Someone inside the stable bawled an order; cattle shuffled; a hinge of wind opened and closed. Raul inspected the tree, recalling its shaggy beauty, and fought the gale as he climbed between branches. Someone began to chop at a branch that had gouged the roof. Salvador tapped Raul's arm.

"I'll get men with a bucksaw," he said.

"Have them saw the trunk close to the roots ... about here," said Raul, indicating a bruise on the tree. "Cut it there and then it can be yanked away from the stable wall."

"I'll bring some oxen," said Salvador.

"Put a chain to a whippletree and drag it off."

"Some of the wall may crumble."

"Have the grain moved to a dry place. That should be done right away. You can saw the tree a second time, nearer the top; that'll free two sections." It seemed impossible, measuring the stabbing roots, wet and naked, that the tree could have toppled. "I'm going back inside, to be with Caterina. She's not doing well."

Salvador nodded sadly, the wind tearing his hair, his three hundred pounds impressive, soaked with rain.

"May God help her," he said.

Raul felt the kindness in Salvador's voice; he needed kindness and assurance. He was shaken by the storm, the quakes, and Caterina's condition. Gripping his hat brim, he entered the house through the kitchen. Inside, by the door, near the adobe oven, a boy of five or six sat at a low table, eating. He glanced shyly at Raul. Servants broke off talking. Raul pulled off his hat. A woman was cleaning garbanzas, another was grinding coffee, and others were washing clothes. They bowed. The smell of coffee surprised Raul; it seemed so unrelated to his troubled world. He patted the boy's head, and asked:

"Will someone find me two men? I want Don Fernando carried upstairs."

His hand on the child's chair, he thought of other peasant children, many of them beautiful: how many died every year of diarrhea or dysentery on the hacienda, on every hacienda? He asked himself whose boy this boy might be. Such a calm face. A little embarrassed by his own emotions, he returned to Caterina's room. He told himself that no one escaped death, that death came even to God's house.

When Caterina had had her broth, Don Fernando was carried upstairs, an easy trick with Manuel at one side and Esteban, a young fellow, a Coliman, very tall, very thin, at the other. They brought him in a chair and set him beside Caterina's bed. The wind still lashed, and Fernando shivered under his blanket. The two sick ones grinned at each other. Fernando reached out, patted Caterina, then straightened and sank back in his chair. He frowned, cleared his throat and rumbled, imitating someone:

"Get up, pretty princess, I command you." He clapped his hands softly and at once hid his shaky arm. "I, the magician of El Rey del Mundo, bid you get well. Chia, chia ... hear the magic word." Laughter transformed his miserable face. "Come, little one, we'll go to the castle with the gold door."

Raul and the nun smiled, smiles of apprehension.

"My king, I shall obey," said Caterina, her eyes aglow, holding her hands out to him. "Oh, king let us visit the castle."

"At once," said the magician.

"At once," whispered the girl.

"When I was a boy," Fernando began, his voice full of tenderness, "I got sick. The same trouble as yours. Just as bad, and I was seven or eight. I remember it very well. Papa rode to Colima for a doctor, and bandits beat him up on the way home—his mozo ran away and left him, when he saw the bandits closing in. Remember that story?"

"Tell it again."

"The men beat him and stole his horse and he began to walk home, limping along, because he had been so bruised and hurt. It was a long, long way, maybe ten miles. Dark. Cloudy. Pretty soon he heard a horseman. He hid behind a cactus bush. It was the doctor, following him, going as fast as he could to Petaca. He was astonished to find Papa, walking, all bruised and hurt. He helped him and they got on the doctor's horse and rode home...."

Sometimes Caterina had thought about the bandits; sometimes she had wondered how badly hurt Great-Grandpa had been. She wanted to question her grandfather now, but her head throbbed.

Fernando studied her face, considered its pallor, the feebleness of the eyelids, the tremble in the lips. Her throat pulse fluttered.

"Raul and I will stay here with you," he said.

"Raul," Fernando said.

"What is it?" Raul replied.

"Bring me morphine."

"She wouldn't take her dosage."

"I'll give it to her."

"She wouldn't take the laudanum," Raul said.

"Bring the morphine," said Fernando.

Raul's shoes rubbed slickly on the tiled floor.

"A spoon..."

"Here's a spoon."

"Caterina—a little dose, for Grandpa?"

"Yes."

"Raul, lift her head."

"Take it, child.... You'll be all right."

"Yes ... Gran'pa."

The face trusted him. She swallowed the medicine and sank back on the pillows.

"Rest now and we'll go to the castle together and I'll tell you how I found a tiny statue of the Huastecas. You haven't heard that story.... We were riding horseback through a barranca in San Luis Potosi; men had been digging a ditch for irrigation...."

Most of his life he had lacked the power of affection, except with Caterina. He bowed his head; he could say no more; he felt beaten, dried, useless. Life would have been all right had he been able to reach outside himself. Carry me downstairs; put me to bed. The fool. The old, ugly fool. Tired. Carry me.

When Don Fernando was taken away, Angelina began her vigil, she and the nun. She heard workers sawing the eucalyptus, observed the moon's climb, felt the nip of the night air, dozed fitfully in her easy chair. Awake, she prayed for her girl, a faithless prayer, since she believed Caterina fatally ill; she had seen too many children pass away with fever and dysentery to have any illusions. Doll faces—looming through a bad dream—wept and pled for Caterina. Chapel music sounded ... there was no God, not really ... only wandering....

The nun stretched on a cot and snored, her responsibility forgotten. Toward dawn, the birds began, high-flying parrots and then the garden orioles. The caged birds in the patio answered, and a strange bird, in the grove behind the house, scraped tin note against tin note.

Vicente, sleepy eyed, yawning, padded in, barefooted. He stood silently by his sister's bedside. Until now, he had shunned her room unless she asked for him. Ever since Grandpa had been confined to his bed, Vicente had feared death, and, alarmed by Caterina's white face, her stillness, he had kept away. After a glance he stole downstairs, into the kitchen, hungry, cold, uneasy.

The chapel bell clanged its stiff bell for Mass and, after Mass, Gabriel went to sit beside Caterina. She brightened, finding him there, wiping his glasses, smiling.

"Were you here all night?"

"No, I just came in."

"I thought I saw you all night ... holding a candle ... for me."

"No, my angel, that was your mother who was with you."

"I don't remember her."

"You were sleeping."

"I want to get better."

"You are better. I can see you're better today," he lied.

"Has Doctor come?"

"He'll come shortly, with new medicines. Let me call Carmela. It's time for you to eat. Then I'll come back and read to you."

"I'm not hungry."

He hoped food might strengthen her; her anguish filled him with pity and love. Such a sweet child. The small face had darkness working from within—around the eyes, inside them; their own personal magic had dimmed. Her lips moved stiffly.

What was it his mother had said? When the sight darkens, the shadow of the cross is beckoning. He shook his head, sorely troubled. His fingers drummed on his knees. He wished Dr. Velasco could arrive, by some miracle, before nightfall.

Gabriel got up, determined to help. "Carmela, Carmela," he called from the window.

"Yes."

"Can you bring the child something to eat? I think she should have something."

"Right away, Padre. I'll heat something, some atole. I'll be right along."

Sitting on the foot of her bed, he began to talk to her:

"Delgado's cleaning the pool.... You should see the jacaranda blossoms scattered on the water, flowers and leaves too. Did you hear about the eucalyptus? It blew down, the giant one beside the corral. They had to saw it into sections and drag off the pieces with oxen...." He found it difficult to concentrate on what he was saying. Perplexed by the gravity of her illness, he tried to ransack his brain for some old remedy. Carmela came with a tray and he rose and said good morning to her.

By coaxing, they got Caterina to eat some thin atole; but then, in a little while, she vomited, and knotted under the covers, shivering with anguish.

By the time Dr. Velasco arrived, pounding in on a weary, sweaty horse, she had been dead several hours.

The doctor slapped his forehead and turned away, his black kit on the desk, the new medicines bulging in his coat pocket. Only the nun was there, in the darkened living room, to see his despair. For a long time they sat there together, saying little.

While the nun fussed with Caterina's hair, Raul sat in the easy chair and listened to Angelina sob, her sobbing padded by the thick stone walls of her room and heavy doors. Something in her had snapped: she said it was the end: she meant, he thought, that she would never see Caterina again: as for him, he felt he would find his child someday; and yet he asked the question: Where? Just now she would not hopscotch in the patio, squeeze his hand during Mass, fill his pipe, dash to meet him after a full day in the hacienda campo, giggle at supper. Sitting stiffly, watching Carmela arrange Caterina's hair, he tried to deny weariness. He felt as if he had ridden horseback for days. He prayed to St. Catherine, remembering how lovingly they had christened the child in her honor.

Suddenly his wife ceased sobbing; the nun left the room; a door closed; the ramrod of silence jabbed him. Death was silence. Sitting erect, he observed a cinch strap of blackbirds over the stable roof where the eucalyptus had crashed. Strange they flew silently. Blackbirds were hacendado birds: he had often thought of them that way: they were the black plunderers. Rapacious, yet not so rapacious as the owl.

Without glancing at Caterina, he walked out, walked down the stairs blindly, asking himself whether he had attended to civilities, telegrams to be sent from the Colima office, a notice for the Colima paper, the casket, the grave prepared. His hand on the wrought-iron railing, he sensed his own mortality....

What was life for?