They sat in silence, the clock ticked. After a while she looked up at him.
So. This was the community of which he spoke. This beautiful boy. Who had given everything.
What happened to Francisco?
He and Pino Suarez were driven out behind the penitentiary and shot. It was no test of the cynicism of their murderers to claim that they were shot in attempting to escape. Francisco's mother had sent a telegram to President Taft asking him to intercede to save her son's life. Sara delivered it herself to the ambassador at the American Embassy. Most probably it was never sent. The family went into exile. They went to Cuba. To the United States. To France. There had always been a rumor that they were of Jewish extraction. Possibly it's true. They were all very intelligent. Certainly theirs seemed to me at least to be a Jewish destiny. A latterday diaspora. Martyrdom. Persecution. Exile. Sara today lives at Colonia Roma. She has her grandchildren. We see one another seldom yet we share an unspoken sisterhood. That night in the garden here at my father's house Gustavo said to me that those who have suffered great pain of injury or loss are joined to one another with bonds of a special authority and so it has proved to be. The closest bonds we will ever know are bonds of grief. The deepest community one of sorrow. I did not return from Europe until my father died. I regret now that I did not know him better. I think in many ways he also was ill suited to the life he chose. Or which chose him. Perhaps we all were. He used to read books on horticulture. In this desert. He'd already begun the cultivation of cotton here and he would have been pleased to see the success it has made. In later years I came to see how alike were he and Gustavo. Who was never meant to be a soldier. I think they did not understand Mexico. Like my father he hated bloodshed and violence. But perhaps he did not hate it enough. Francisco was the most deluded of all. He was never suited to be president of Mexico. He was hardly even suited to be Mexican. In the end we all come to be cured of our sentiments. Those whom life does not cure death will. The world is quite ruthless in selecting between the dream and the reality, even where we will not. Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting. I've thought a great deal about my life and about my country. I think there is little that can be truly known. My family has been fortunate. Others were less so. As they are often quick to point out.
When I was in school I studied biology. I learned that in making their experiments scientists will take some group--bacteria, mice, people--and subject that group to certain conditions. They compare the results with a second group which has not been disturbed. This second group is called the control group. It is the control group which enables the scientist to gauge the effect of his experiment. To judge the significance of what has occurred. In history there are no control groups. There is no one to tell us what might have been. We weep over the might have been, but there is no might have been. There never was. It is supposed to be true that those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it. I dont believe knowing can save us. What is constant in history is greed and foolishness and a love of blood and this is a thing that even God--who knows all that can be known--seems powerless to change.
My father is buried less than two hundred meters from where we now sit. I walk out there often and I talk to him. I talk to him as I could never do in life. He made me an exile in my own country. It was not his intention to do so. When I was born in this house it was already filled with books in five languages and since I knew that as a woman the world would be largely denied me I seized upon this other world. I was reading by the time I was five and no one ever took a book from my hands. Ever. Then my father sent me to two of the best schools in Europe. For all his strictness and authority he proved to be a libertine of the most dangerous sort. You spoke of my disappointments. If such they are they have only made me reckless. My grandniece is the only future I contemplate and where she is concerned I can only put all my chips forward. It may be that the life I desire for her no longer even exists, yet I know what she does not. That there is nothing to lose. In January I will be seventy-three years old. I have known a great many people in that time and few of them led lives that were satisfactory to them. I would like my grandniece to have the opportunity to make a very different marriage from the one which her society is bent upon demanding of her. I wont accept a conventional marriage for her. Again, I know what she cannot. That there is nothing to lose. I dont know what sort of world she will live in and I have no fixed opinions concerning how she should live in it. I only know that if she does not come to value what is true above what is useful it will make little difference whether she lives at all. And by true I do not mean what is righteous but merely what is so. You think I have rejected your suit because you are young or without education or from another country but that is not the case. I was never remiss in poisoning Alejandra's mind against the conceits of the sorts of suitors available to her and we have both long been willing to entertain the notion of rescue arriving in whatever garb it chose. But I also spoke to you of a certain extravagance in the female blood of this family. Something willful. Improvident. Knowing this in her I should have been more wary where you were concerned. I should have seen you more clearly. Now I do.
You wont let me make my case.
I know your case. Your case is that certain things happened over which you had no control.
It's true.
I'm sure it is. But it's no case. I've no sympathy with people to whom things happen. It may be that their luck is bad, but is that to count in their favor?
I intend to see her.
Am I supposed to be surprised? I'll even give you my permission. Although that seems to be a thing you have never required. She will not break her word to me. You will see.
Yes mam. We will.
She rose and swept her skirt behind her to let it fall and she held out her hand. He rose and took it in his, very briefly, so fineboned and cool.
I'm sorry I shant see you again. I've been at some pains to tell you about myself because among other reasons I think we should know who our enemies are. I've known people to spend their lives nursing a hatred of phantoms and they were not happy people.
I dont hate you.
You shall.
We'll see.
Yes. We'll see what fate has in store for us, wont we?
I thought you didnt believe in fate.
She waved her hand. It's not so much that I dont believe in it. I dont subscribe to its nomination. If fate is the law then is fate also subject to that law? At some point we cannot escape naming responsibility. It's in our nature. Sometimes I think we are all like that myopic coiner at his press, taking the blind slugs one by one from the tray, all of us bent so jealously at our work, determined that not even chaos be outside of our own making.
IN THE MORNING he walked up to the bunkhouse and ate breakfast with the vaqueros and said goodbye to them. Then he walked down to the gerente's and he and Antonio went out to the barn and saddled mounts and rode up through the trap looking at the greenbroke horses. He knew the one he wanted. When it saw them it snorted and turned and went trotting. It was Rawlins' grullo and they got a rope on it and brought it down to the corral and by noon he had the animal in a half manageable condition and he walked it around and left it to cool. The horse had not been ridden in weeks and it had no cinchmarks on it and it barely knew how to eat grain. He walked down to the house and said goodbye to Maria and she gave him the lunch she had packed for him and handed him a rosecolored envelope with the La Purisima emblem embossed in the upper left corner. When he got outside he opened it and took out the money and folded it and put it into his pocket without counting it and folded the envelope and put it in his shirtpocket. Then he walked out through the pecan trees in front of the house where Antonio stood waiting with the horses and they stood for a moment in a wordless abrazo and then he mounted up into the saddle and turned the horse into the road.
He rode through La Vega without dismounting, the horse blowing and rolling its eyes at all it saw. When a truck started up in the
street and began to come toward them the animal moaned in despair and tried to turn and he sawed it down almost onto its haunches and patted it and talked constantly to it until the vehicle was past and then they went on again. Once outside the town he left the road altogether and set off across the immense and ancient lakebed of the bolson. He crossed a dry gypsum playa where the salt crust stove under the horse's hooves like trodden isinglass and he rode up through white gypsum hills grown with stunted datil and through a pale bajada crowded with flowers of gypsum like a cavefloor uncovered to the light. In the shimmering distance trees and jacales stood along the slender bights of greenland pale and serried and half fugitive in the clear morning air. The horse had a good natural gait and as he rode he talked to it and told it things about the world that were true in his experience and he told it things he thought could be true to see how they would sound if they were said. He told the horse why he liked it and why he'd chosen it to be his horse and he said that he would allow no harm to come to it.
By noon he was riding a farmland road where the acequias carried the water down along the foot-trodden selvedges of the fields and he stood the horse to water and walked it up and back in the shade of a cottonwood grove to cool it. He shared his lunch with children who came to sit beside him. Some of them had never eaten leavened bread and they looked to an older boy among them for guidance in the matter. They sat in a row along the edge of the path, five of them, and the sandwich halves of cured ham from the hacienda were passed to left and to right and they ate with great solemnity and when the sandwiches were gone he divided with his knife the freshbaked tarts of apple and guava.
Donde vive? said the oldest boy.
He mused on the question. They waited. I once lived at a great hacienda, he told them, but now I have no place to live.
The children's faces studied him with great concern. Puede vivir con nosotros, they said, and he thanked them and he told them that he had a novia who was in another town and that he was riding to her to ask her to be his wife.
Es bonita, su novia? they asked, and he told them that she was very beautiful and that she had blue eyes which they could scarcely believe but he told them also that her father was a rich hacendado while he himself was very poor and they heard this in silence and were greatly cast down at his prospects. The older of the girls said that if his novia truly loved him she would marry him no matter what but the boy was not so encouraging and he said that even in families of the rich a girl could not go against the wishes of her father. The girl said that the grandmother must be consulted because she was very important in these matters and that he must take her presents and try to win her to his side for without her help little could be expected. She said that all the world knew this to be true.
John Grady nodded at the wisdom of this but he said that he had already given offense where the grandmother was concerned and could not depend upon her assistance and at this several of the children ceased to eat and stared at the earth before them.
Es un problema, said the boy.
De acuerdo.
One of the younger girls leaned forward. Que ofensa le dio a la abuelita? she said.
Es una historia larga, he said.
Hay tiempo, they said.
He smiled and looked at them and as there was indeed time he told them all that had happened. He told them how they had come from another country, two young horsemen riding their horses, and that they had met with a third who had no money nor food to eat nor scarcely clothes to cover himself and that he had come to ride with them and share with them in all they had. This horseman was very young and he rode a wonderful horse but among his fears was the fear that God would kill him with lightning and because of this fear he lost his horse in the desert. He then told them what had happened concerning the horse and how they had taken the horse from the village of Encantada and he told how the boy had gone back to the village of Encantada and there had killed a man and that the police had come to the hacienda and arrested him and his friend and that the grandmother had paid their fine and then forbidden the novia to see him anymore.
When he was done they sat in silence and finally the girl said that what he must do is bring the boy to the grandmother so that he would tell her that he was the one at fault and John Grady said that this was not possible because the boy was dead. When the children heard this they blessed themselves and kissed their fingers. The older boy said that the situation was a difficult one but that he must find an intercessor to speak on his behalf because if the grandmother could be made to see that he was not to blame then she would change her mind. The older girl said that he was forgetting about the problem that the family was rich and he was poor. The boy said that as he had a horse he could not be so very poor and they looked at John Grady for a decision on this question and he told them that in spite of appearances he was indeed very poor and that the horse had been given to him by the grandmother herself. At this some of them drew in their breath and shook their heads. The girl said that he needed to find some wise man with whom he could discuss his difficulties or perhaps a curandera and the younger girl said that he should pray to God.
It was late night and dark when he rode into Torreon. He haltered the horse and tied it in front of a hotel and went in and asked about a livery stable but the clerk knew nothing of such things. He looked out the front window at the horse and he looked at John Grady.
Puede dejarlo atras, he said.
Atras?
Si. Afuera. He gestured toward the rear.
John Grady looked toward the rear of the building.
Por donde? he said.
The clerk shrugged. He passed the flat of his hand past the desk toward the hallway. Por aqui.
There was an old man sitting in a sofa in the lobby who'd been watching out the window and he turned to John Grady and told him that it was all right and that far worse things than horses had passed through that hotel lobby and John Grady looked at the clerk and then went out and untied the horse and led it in. The clerk had preceded him down the hallway and he opened the rear doors and stood while John Grady led the horse out into the yard. He'd bought a small sack of grain in Tlahualilo and he watered the horse in a washtrough and broke open the grainsack and poured the grain out into the upturned lid of a trashcan and he unsaddled the horse and wet the empty sack and rubbed the horse down with it and then carried the saddle in and got his key and went up to bed.
When he woke it was noon. He'd slept almost twelve hours. He rose and went to the window and looked out. The window gave onto the little yard behind the hotel and the horse was patiently walking the enclosure with three children astride it and another leading it and yet another hanging on to its tail.
He stood in line most of the morning at the telephone exchange waiting for his turn at one of the four cabinets and when he finally got his call through she could not be reached. He signed up again at the counter and the girl behind the glass read his face and told him that he would have better luck in the afternoon and he did. A woman answered the phone and sent someone to get her. He waited. When she came to the phone she said that she knew it would be him.
I have to see you, he said.
I cant.
You have to. I'm coming down there.
No. You cant.
I'm leaving in the morning. I'm in Torreon.
Did you talk to my aunt?
Yes.
She was quiet. Then she said: I cant see you.
Yes you can.
I wont be here. I go to La Purisima in two days.
I'll meet you at the train.
You cant. Antonio is coming to meet me.
He closed his eyes and held the phone very tightly and he told her that he loved her and that she'd had no right to make the promise that she'd made even if they killed him and that he would not leave without seeing her even if it was the last time he would see her ever and she was quiet for a long time and then she said that she would leave a day early. That she would say her aunt was ill and she w
ould leave tomorrow morning and meet him in Zacatecas. Then she hung up.
He boarded the horse at a stable out beyond the barrios south of the railtracks and told the patron to be wary of the horse as he was at best half broke and the man nodded and called to the boy but John Grady could tell he had his own ideas about horses and would come to his own conclusions. He lugged the saddle into the saddleroom and hung it up and the boy locked the door behind him and he walked back out to the office.
He offered to pay in advance but the proprietor dismissed him with a small wave of the hand. He walked out into the sun and down the street where he caught the bus back to town.
He bought a small awol bag in a store and he bought two new shirts and a new pair of boots and he walked down to the train station and bought his ticket and went to a cafe and ate. He walked around to break in the boots and then went back to the hotel. He rolled the pistol and knife and his old clothes up in the bedroll and had the clerk put the bedroll in the storage room and he told the clerk to wake him at six in the morning and then went up to bed. It was hardly even dark.
It was cool and gray when he left the hotel in the morning and by the time he got settled into the coach there were spits of rain breaking on the glass. A young boy and his sister sat in the seat opposite and after the train pulled out the boy asked him where he was from and where he was going. They didnt seem surprised to hear he was from Texas. When the porter came through calling breakfast he invited them to eat with him but the boy looked embarrassed and would not. He was embarrassed himself. He sat in the diner and ate a big plate of huevos rancheros and drank coffee and watched the gray fields pass beyond the wet glass and in his new boots and shirt he began to feel better than he'd felt in a long time and the weight on his heart had begun to lift and he repeated what his father had once told him, that scared money cant win and a worried man cant love. The train passed through a dreadful plain grown solely with cholla and entered a vast forest of china palm. He opened the pack of cigarettes he'd bought at the station kiosk and lit one and laid the pack on the tablecloth and blew smoke at the glass and at the country passing in the rain.