Fombombo

by T. S. Stribling

Strangely, he did not think over-much of Dolores. Occasionally, when his mind made a movement toward her, he had a terrifying feeling as if some chasm were opening before him. Then, almost immediately, it seemed as if his brain closed gently shut, the chasm vanished, and with it all thought of the girl. To say that he grieved for her would be untrue. He had been numbed.

The most trifling things were sufficient to catch the drummer's unanchored attention. His eyes would follow the priests' cat across the patio, or he would watch the slow march of the cathedral's shadow over the flagstones in the calle.

He became acquainted with the priests who were domiciled in the building. These were his Grace the Bishop, Father Honario, a big, sleek, solemn man with swinging jowls that were bluish from a closely shaved beard. Father Roberto was a close-lipped man with a disapproving expression. Then there was Father Pedro, a fat, unaspiring priest, who drank enough wine at his noon meal to make him sleepy all the afternoon. There was still a fifth priest at the house who was not attached to the cathedral at all. This was Father Jaíme, a sort of itinerant guest who had come to the Canalejos cathedral from a Trappist monastery on Lake Titicaca in Peru. The bishop allowed Father Jaíme a few pittances for holding mass at the funerals of his humbler parishioners, and this was the only stipend he received. When Strawbridge knew him he was trying to save sufficient money to purchase the churchman's half-fare passage from Canalejos to Port au Spain in Trinidad, where the Benedictines had a monastery. As far as Strawbridge could gather, Father Jaíme was a sort of ecclesiastical tramp.

The man who rang the cathedral bells, an office which occurred at almost every hour of the day, was called the "Cock." His nickname came, perhaps, from a thin, beak-like nose protruding from under the dirty visor of an old cap. He had a Jewish appearance. He was the only object which aroused to wrath the lethargic children of the cathedral settlement. When the Cock appeared, the children spat at him and called him "bloodsucker" and all manner of insulting epithets. The reason for this contumely was that the Cock lent money in a small way, and the hatred poor people have for a parsimonious money-lender was reflected in their children.

The Cock lived with a very industrious Indian wife, in one of the adobes at the back of the cathedral. He seldom spoke to any one, but moved gloomily on his way to and from his bells. However, once Strawbridge did observe a visitor in the bell-ringer's hut. One day as the salesman was walking slowly along one of the paths on the terrain of the river, a gay figure stepped out from the blackness of the hut, drew off his sombrero, and bowed to the American with undeniable grace. As he bowed he exhibited a knot of hair at the back of his head.

"How goes el señor, mi General!" he called warmly. "Be assured Lubito knows your unhappiness, señor, and that you have but to lift a finger and the sword of a bull-fighter will leap from its scabbard." He went through the pantomime of drawing his sword, and his bold figure, set against the darkness of the doorway, formed a picture.

The sick man looked at him, thought of his walk with Lubito in the plaza, Esteban's attack on General Fombombo in the palace, Madruja. Such reminiscences were leading him straight to the señora, when some involuntary check in his mind softly closed that stream of thought and left the drummer staring emptily at the torero's posturing. He turned away along the path, vaguely disturbed and unhappy. The bull-fighter looked around and nodded knowingly to some one inside the hut.

"Caramba!" he praised. "What did I tell you? Deep! Why, you can't tell by his face that he even knows me, and yet ... we are as brothers! What a dictator that hombre will make!"

The cathedral itself was a kind of labyrinth through which Strawbridge sometimes wandered with a sort of dulled attention. He understood little of the ecclesiastical symbolism in the chapels and on the high altar, or the allegorical frescoes in the dome and pendentive. He did peruse the fourteen stations of the passion which spaced the interior walls of the church, and while he could not follow the details of some of the cartoons he understood their general purport. He never entered the chapel of the Last Supper. Something warned him from the place where he had stood with Dolores under Michelena's great masterpiece.