The snake boy and Little Tomás and his father faded from Raul's mind as he walked toward the burial plot in the grove. Juggling a smooth white stone, he walked past the rear of the mill; above—he did not stop to look—gulls cried. Usually gulls did not fly this far inland. A dog barked ... it might have been Mona chasing after a girl's ball.
The graves had been redecorated with shells; the jungle had been pushed back; lianas had been cut; vines had been ripped down; trees had been trimmed. For the first time in years he read his mother's name on her marker. Her marker consisted of a red cantera globe; he sat on it and listened to the gabble of parrots and still, high up, somewhere, the cry of gulls.
In a few weeks Caterina's bronze figure would be cast and, if the artist remained faithful to his sketches, it would be a graceful girl bearing a bouquet of roses in her arms, her dress swirling over bare feet. Soon it would acquire a patina and become part of the jungle. Perhaps it would tell others what a beautiful child she had been. Perhaps ... then he remembered his murdered grandfather and looked at the marker Roberto had set up, a dignified shaft of fluted marble. Time had cracked the stone and quakes had knocked it out of line ... nothing defied the years.
Nothing had helped his father forget his crime.... He, too, was buried here, the best of him, the kindness that a man normally had.
He returned slowly to the house and sat on the long veranda. Men had gathered in the court; one had a guitar and his voice had the old pleading tone. Rocking on an old hide rocker, Raul listened to the singer as the sky filled with stars. The big dipper hung above the court. Someone lit a bonfire. Suddenly, Raul realized that Manuel had been sitting near him for some time.
13
June 19, 1911
"Dear Estelle,
"As you said, it must be destiny that brings me back. Something rules me. As I rode out of Guadalajara, I felt a harshness clawing at my brain. Poor thing, she can't tell the shape of her mind or why it cries so, or what it wants. Of course it wants you, but there is this something else, dark, darker than I dare admit.