Afterlands, page 33
No—I told them to believe you. Then Sam on the houseboat began to pull dead tuahmec out of the river. But we’re out of water now, by tomorrow we’ll be desperate. Some believe we should start to use the water again now, but there’s no telling when they’ll poison it again.
Yes. Or if it stays awhile, this poison, on the bottom and the banks.
You can put these on. She hands him the neatly folded field pyjamas of a Sina man, loose trousers and a yellow tunic with an emerald sash. There’s a small hole ringed with blood on the right side just under the collar.
We think the Padre will attack the wall tonight, and we’re short of defenders. She sweeps her open hand around her, as if suddenly impatient with the dying and the dead. Can you stand? Can you aim a rifle?
He blinks slowly, nods.
One of the miners was badly hurt this morning. Better his weapon go to somebody who can use it.
She’s hollow-eyed, her breath stinks of hunger, but when he urges her to rest for a while she frowns at him, clucking her tongue. Venga … apúrese.
They emerge into the dusty heat of twilight. The western sky is coral over the snow peaks of the sierra, fires are burning low in the many ruins. He carries the Springfield rifle of a dying silver miner—one of several who rafted downriver last week, she says, to help the village, including the big American that he met on the houseboat. The others are Mexican. The priest, too, he stood at the wall with them, she says, when Kruger asks where he is, assuming, since the priest is invisible, that he has fled. Cut down this morning by one of the first shells, his cross brandished high.
I’d always thought of priests as siding with the authorities, Kruger says, chastened.
A faintly fetid sweetness wafts in off the plain. They join the threadbare rank of defenders at the wall. Next to them are the old man with the catfish jaw, then the American miner, a Mexican miner in a battered Stetson, and villagers variously armed or half-armed, women now as well as men. A Sina whose foot has been amputated and the stump roughly dressed leans against the wall, his face pale and tight, clutching a musket held together with rawhide thongs. Everywhere wounded men are propped up, one asleep with his bandaged head on his forearm on the wall.
Kruger says, Who’s caring for the wounded in the church, with these women all here?
The wounded are all here too. We left only the dead and the ones who will soon die. Young girls are with those ones and with the children. My daughter is there, for one.
In front of the Padre’s camp across the littered fields a long row of soldiers is forming under the flags. Above the line of the men’s sombreros, the heads of horses and the green coats and lances and guidons of the cavalry. And in the heart of that bristling mass, which pulsates dimly as the last of the day’s heat lifts out of the earth, Colonel Maclovio Luz can be distinguished by his hat.
On the wall she sets her long-dead father’s flintlock pistol and stares gape-eyed into the distance. The old man offers Kruger his pipe and though it contains only macuche he sucks on it greedily, far longer than he should, scorching his dry throat with the taste of burning cornfields.
The old man says loudly, You marched with the Padre, then, you camped with him?
Briefly, yes.
He is nothing like us! If you see him in a mirror, or his shadow on a tent wall, there are horns! And he coughs up hairballs! This I know to be so. Many have seen this.
One round’ll put a stop to him, the American mutters in English, and Kruger levers the trapdoor breech of his own weapon and checks it again. Again he sees himself waking Luz; the man’s moment of helplessness; his own humane, fatal hesitation.
Night like a dark fog salted with stars rises out of the eastern páramo as Jacinta relates her last dozen years to him in whispers. Her mother has been dead for six. The younger daughter departed just a year ago to work in Chihuahua City, in one of the new cotton mills, and the older daughter, thank God, is still here, married for three years, with a baby son. She and her family live with Jacinta in the same house by the river. The girl’s husband is the village brickmaker, a good man, though very thin, and his marriage to Maria has permitted Jacinta to retire from a calling that she is much too old for. (To Kruger she doesn’t look old.) She says only a few words of Mateo. How the boy grew restless, bitter, contrary, he had wanted to be a priest but then he hoped to go to the city, perhaps join the hated cavalry, or even to work on the railroad for which they were so taxed! Anything to leave Purificación. More and more he seemed to despise his own people’s ways, and above all his mother’s ways, her manner of life, when, to a Sina mind, there was nothing especially shameful in her profession. The flesh was simply the flesh. All this naturally was a heartbreak.
Torches are being lit and propped at intervals along the wall. Kruger says only a few things, all he cares to say, or can, about his vanished world in La Paz. His own lost children. He’s grateful when the bell’s tolling cuts him short. They’re moving on us, the American says. At first it’s not apparent—there’s no sound, no outward motion—but in the dark, that solid white line of men, like a wall of surf breaking on a far reef, is thickening. It’s not long before small distinct forms can be made out, seeming to tread the night air. Somewhere a bugle sounds. The forms begin to move faster, up and down, jogging toward the wall, the massed slap of sandals getting louder. Then a high-pitched savage yipping. Somebody calls out in Sina and Jacinta frowns and grabs her crude pistol and, imitating the old man next to her, thumbs back the hammer. Kruger guesses she has never used the thing. He cocks his rifle. The fieldpieces open fire, the shells screech in at the village and one lands in the hulk of a flattened house nearby and Kruger feels his stomach has been butted, his ears boxed. The flash of the explosion shows white figures closing in. He squints out at them, trying to see. A voice screams another Sina command and the defenders open fire—an unimpressive, disordered volley, the old man’s derringer misfiring, Kruger and Jacinta not firing at all.
Fire! she tells him, why are you not firing?
For the same reason you aren’t. I need to see the faces first.
Fire now! she orders, and turns away scowling and thrusts the flintlock straight out with both hands tight on the handle but still she doesn’t fire. The white forms with their long, levelled bayonets are nearly on them. Another round of shells flashes in. The Mexican and the American miner with their toy-sized Winchesters are shooting down soldier after soldier while the Sina defenders fumble to reload their muskets, the old man tinkering with his flashpan, trying the pistol again and then hurling it down at his feet and turning to Kruger and screaming at him in Sina. And Kruger does fire now, though the soldiers’ sombrero-brims keep the torchlight off their faces as they bunch themselves low and small, anonymous. Jacinta is still paralyzed beside him. The peon-soldiers are too close to miss. Kruger levers the breech and reloads and again he doesn’t miss. He seems to be praying. He aims at their legs—the spindly legs of men or boys crowded on from behind. The fire of the Winchesters and the Springfield is too much for them at this part of the wall and the charge falters a few paces short, wavers, then melts back, while the sergeants holler and shoot their pistols into the air, trying to drive the men on.
From down the wall, where a shell has punctured another breach, comes the bestial uproar of hand-to-hand fighting. They start toward it but then a Sina woman with a field hoe points and cries out. An obscure, heavy mass is pounding, surging out of the darkness: the lanceros at full gallop, their lances cocked down and streamers fluttering from the blades. The quaking of hooves comes through the shuddering ground. The Padre leads, standing the stirrups and crouched over the neck of his grinning mare, his right arm thrust out, sabre pointed. Somehow he glides through the mass of his fleeing soldiers without running them down, or scolding or exhorting, yet some of them now stop and turn as if under a spell and follow him back toward the wall, while the lanceros trailing Luz make no effort to avoid the clots of retreating or turning men. They simply ride over them. The miners are wrestling their own guns, trying to force in fresh rounds. Kruger gets off a shot and Jacinta finally fires her pistol, but the Padre is on top of them. They tuck down against the wall as the bellies of the leaping horses, sorrel, black, white, dappled, flash overhead. That suddenly the Padre is inside the village. The Sinas and the miners, Jacinta and Kruger abandon the wall and run for the church.
Purity is the mother of evil, the Sinas would say during their mid-spring fiesta, the Fiesta de Caos, and tomorrow would be the day, Jacinta whispers. She feels sorry for the children, she says. It is their favourite fiesta, their favourite day of the year.
Bodies cover the floor of the dimly lit church, the dead and the wounded and the living, all promiscuously strewn. Now and then a child will squeal or one of the wounded will cry out and these sounds along with the drone of snoring transform themselves high in the dome, where they circulate and return, fused to a ghostly communion of sound. The thick-necked American miner snores loudest. No sounds reach them from the outside; the heavy doors are piled and barricaded with benches and charred beams from the outer ruins. Jacinta sleeps under the north wall by her daughter, Quamhac Maria, and her grandson. Her son-in-law is posted at the church’s only other opening, a small door for the priest, off the vestry.
Kruger lies on Jacinta’s other side, though with space between them. A wounded man in the middle of the nave is prone, licking at the cool clay of the floor. It looks worth a try.
Kruger’s thoughts keep returning to that vestry door.
Are you awake, Kruger?
Too much so.
I see him too, she whispers, presumably meaning the man licking the floor. The babies will die first of us, she says. My daughter has no more milk.
We may have to give ourselves up tomorrow, he says.
No! We heard he slaughtered a Pehues village like that.
I think he cares too much for order and rules to let his men kill prisoners.
You don’t understand, most of us are indios. There are different rules for us.
He says nothing. She may be right. In the silence their conversation is prolonged by whispering echoes in the dome.
I had a chance to kill him, Jacinta—in the camp. I’m sorry.
Many have tried, she says mildly, as if resigned to the impossibility. She adds, When Mateo is older he will not only miss having a home, he will miss having a people.
Don’t say that yet.
To whom will he speak his mother’s tongue? Not that he cares to speak it anyway! His Sina is so poor! She laughs softly, almost fondly, as if at a child’s harmless foibles. I didn’t see him there tonight, I looked … I think they must have kept him back, as a guard.
This is the fourth or fifth time she has voiced this opinion. Her swollen eyes show all the symptoms of crying, but seem too dry to make actual tears. If they did, he would drink them.
She says, The Padre, he’s much too smart to make a Sina attack his own village, no? For how could a Sina be trusted?
Jacinta—
In the first attack, it’s true, they used him, but he was one of those who retreated—he may even have led their retreat! So, in a way, he might have saved the village. They won’t want to use him again.
Returning her glazed stare, he nods firmly. Time to be a willing collaborator. Reflecting on how he hates the way men like Luz twist the confusions of youth to their advantage, he says, I joined up at your son’s age, too.
And you were wounded! she says.
I’m still here. The boy’s zeal will pass, I’m certain of it. He rests a hand on her shoulder, willing its weight to steady her trembling. His hand, unfortunately, is also trembling. He knows that the boy’s new loyalty may not pass at all.
Lie close to me, she says. Here.
After some time, during which they may have dozed together, she turns her flank to him and says in a cracked whisper, Go ahead, Kruger. You must need a woman now.
Her generosity at such a moment is touching—also shocking. Though maybe she is also seeking to comfort herself, return herself to a time long before these troubles. Or is this merely some kind of reflex? But her invitation is beside the point. She must be too dry, and that part of his life is now dead. Even her armpits’ ripe, spicy smell—the same, the same—does nothing for him. He can picture her sprawled back on the bed in the houseboat, gazing up at him, her fancy white petticoats hiked high and spread around her smooth, open legs. Her brown, almost hairless body. The way she always called him by his last name.
I don’t even wake that way in the night anymore, he says.
Then what did you return for, Kruger?
I had something to return to you. No. That’s not it. It’s as if—as if I wanted to haunt you. If I could have just looked in on you and seen that you were all right, then gone on my way, I would have. I don’t seem to want to be involved with people much now.
Sehamic! a man cries, then switching to Spanish, ¡Agua!
Men only ever returned for the fucking, she says, turning back to face him, seemingly touched. I never forgot you.
Nor I you. There were times … times when my wife would say things that reminded me of you. As you reminded me of the Esquimau woman.
For a moment she is still, then her eyes shoot darts of fire and she hisses, Naturally, yes, because we’re all dark! All brown women! All just the same!
No, forgive me, it’s not—
We don’t even like the other indios. We hate them! How can you—
Amelia was mestizo, not indio—you don’t understand. I had to leave that northern world. That morgue. The worry and the shame, the wars and the money. They pretend to be rational and civilized, when all that drives them is hatred, and fear. I came south …
His voice is drying up.
Here too there’s war and hatred, she says.
Claro.
Still, maybe you should have stayed and become a Sina. I didn’t think you wanted that. I didn’t think I did. Mateo was so fond of you!
Yes, he says. And he thinks: It would be very like my life, to finally join a people on the verge of extinction.
He waits until her breathing thickens and then he gets up and, stepping over bodies, not always sure if they’re dead or alive, he picks his way toward the vestry, searching. A Sina man groans, rasping words as Kruger steps across him: Sehamic, timaquis! ¡Agua, por favor! A little folding knife is tucked in his sash. Kruger stoops and slips it out, opens it to feel the short claw-shaped blade, folds it up again and tucks it into his beard, under the chin.
In the lamplit corridor leading to the priest’s entry, more armed sleepers. In front of the heavy-looking door, built long ago for defence, two young Sinas sit on footstools facing each other. They’re slumped forward resting their heads on each other’s shoulders, blocking the door with their bodies so that any movement will wake them. Their muskets rest against the wall behind them.
Kruger taps the bony shoulder of one of these two, Jacinta’s son-in-law. Calmly he peers up at Kruger with the lugubrious long face of a Christ in a Mexican icon. He keeps one hand on his fellow sentry’s shoulder and the other hand under his forehead, so the man’s position is unchanged, his sleep unbroken.
Please let me through this door, Kruger says.
The soldiers are out there, Señor, the young man says quietly, his manner shy and respectful: Indian to much older white. You can see them through the squint.
Kruger lifts the hinged slat and peers through a judas in the door. It looks straight up an alley which opens onto the torch-lit plaza. Two sentries in white pyjamas guard the end of the alley. Beyond them in the plaza, more figures are moving.
All the same, I have to go out there. I know a way to help us.
I was told to let nobody through, Señor.
You were told to let nobody in. I’m going out.
Are you running away, Señor?
Please don’t ask if I’m a spy.
You are running away, the young man says mournfully. Well, you are not a Sina, I can’t keep you here if you want to leave. Will the miners leave as well, with their good rifles?
No, they’re brave men. Can you see anything in my beard?
After a moment the young man says gravely, No, Señor. Your beard is quite clean, Señor.
Gracias
De nada, Señor.
Wake your friend, you’ll need to close and bolt the door quickly after me.
He is fatalistic—too tired for fear—as Luz’s sentries grope him for weapons, then rush him across the plaza lit up with torches and a bonfire, as if for the Festival of Chaos. His beard feels heavy, tugging at his chin. A little mob of peons is shoving and hauling one of the fieldpieces into position in front of the church’s front doors. Others are sprawled asleep along the edges of the plaza. A lancero rides by, exaggerating his torso, glancing down with haughty half-curiosity.
Lieutenant Ortiz intercepts them, on foot. His moustache tips are waxed upward and his pate looks as if it’s been smartly buffed, but he seems preoccupied, his eyes small and mean with fatigue.
Sargento Tyson! You’re hoping to switch sides yet again? Your last choice seems to have been a poor one! And your men, they missed you greatly—many of them fell tonight, along the south part of the wall.
Most of them were ridden down, by you.
Cowards, one and all, Ortiz says irritably.
What about Mateo? Is he—
He played no part in the victory. This afternoon he drank from the river, against orders. Old habits, I suppose. He may live.
Kruger absorbs this, then says—can’t stop himself from saying—Do you have any water?
So, this is about water! Yes, I’m afraid the local water is not fit for a dog. And it was a hot day, no? The Sinas fought quite well, considering. But it must be rather … awkward now in the church, I suppose?
I need to speak with Colonel Luz.
Like the cholera, I should think, Ortiz says with his double smile. And you can speak with me.
I’ve been instructed to speak with the colonel. It’s about a surrender.
You allow yourself to be “instructed” by indios! He snickers, and the sentries dutifully join in. This inflates him further. Why, you even dress like them now!
