"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.