Zorro

  “What pearls are you talking about?” Carlos Alcazar interjected. He was extremely uneasy; until that moment no one had mentioned them, and he had no idea how much the priest knew about their trickery. Padre Mendoza admitted that Zorro had given him the bag with the charge of taking it to the authorities in Mexico City. Rafael Moncada tried to hide a sigh of relief; it would be easier to recover his treasure than he had imagined. This ridiculous old man would be no problem, he could erase him from the map with one breath; terrible accidents happened all the time. With a preoccupied expression, he thanked Padre Mendoza for his cleverness in getting the pearls and his zeal in caring for them. Then he demanded that the priest hand them over; he would assume responsibility. If Carlos Alcazar, as administrator of the prison, had committed irregularities, he would take the necessary measures. There was no reason to bother anyone in Mexico City. The priest had no choice but to obey. He did not dare accuse Moncada of complicity with Alcazar because one false step would have cost him the most important thing in this world: his mission. He brought the bag and laid it on the table. “This belongs to Spain. I have sent a letter to my superiors, and there will be an investigation of the matter,” he said. “A letter? But the ship hasn’t come,” Alcazar protested. “I have other means, quicker and more secure than the ship.”

  “Are all the pearls here?” Moncada asked with annoyance. “How can I know that? I was not present when they were taken, and I do not know how many there were originally. Only Carlos can answer that question,” the missionary replied. Those words added to suspicions Moncada already had of his partner. He took the missionary by one arm and dragged him to a crucifix hanging above a ledge on the wall. “Swear before the cross of Our Lord that you have not seen other pearls. If you lie, your soul will be condemned to hell,” he ordered. An ominous silence fell over the room; everyone held his breath, and even the air grew still. Furious, Padre Mendoza jerked away from the hand that was paralyzing him. “How dare you!” he muttered. “Swear!” Moncada repeated. Diego and Isabel stepped forward to intervene, but Padre Mendoza, stopping them with a gesture, put one knee on the floor, his right hand on his chest, and his eyes on the Christ an Indian had carved from wood. He was trembling with shock and rage at the violence to which he had been subjected, but he had no fear of going to hell, at least not for that reason. “I swear before the Cross that I have seen no other pearls. May my soul be condemned if I am lying,” he said in a firm voice. For a long moment no one spoke; the only sound was Carlos Alcazar’s sigh of relief. His life would not be worth a centavo if Rafael Moncada learned that he had been keeping back the greater part of the treasure. He assumed that the small chamois pouch was in the hands of the masked man, but he did not understand why he had given the other pearls to the priest when he could have kept them all. Diego followed the course of his thoughts and smiled, defiant. Moncada had to accept Padre Mendoza’s oath, but he reminded everyone that he would not consider the matter finished until the guilty party was swinging from the gallows. “Garcia! Arrest de la Vega!” Moncada repeated. The fat sergeant dried his forehead with the sleeve of his uniform and reluctantly prepared to carry out his orders. “I’m sorry,” he blubbered, motioning to two soldiers to lead Diego away. Isabel ran to stand before Moncada, arguing that there was no proof against her friend, but he pushed her aside. Diego de la Vega spent the night in one of the former servants’ quarters of the hacienda in which he had been born. He even remembered whose room it had been when he was living there with his parents: a Mexican Indian woman named Roberta, whose face had been badly burned in an accident involving boiling chocolate. What had become of her? He had not remembered, on the other hand, that the rooms were so wretched: windowless cubicles with dirt floors and unpainted adobe walls, furnished with a straw mat, one chair, and a wooden chest. He lay there thinking, This is how Bernardo spent his childhood, while a short distance away he, Diego, slept in a brass bed with a tulle net to protect him from spiders, in a room crammed with toys. Why hadn’t he noticed it then? The house was divided by an invisible line that separated the family quarters from the complex universe of the servants. The former, generous and luxurious, decorated in ornate colonial style, was a marvel of order, calm, and cleanliness; it smelled of bouquets of flowers and his father’s tobacco. Life seethed in the servants’ area: incessant chatter, domestic animals, quarrels, work. That part of the house smelled of ground chili, baked bread, clothes soaking in lye, garbage. The family’s terraces, with their ornamental tiles, bougainvillea, and fountains, were a paradise of coolness, while the patios of the servants were dusty in summer and muddy in winter. Diego spent countless hours on the straw mat, sweating in the heat of May, with no natural light. He was gasping for air, and his chest burned. He had no way to measure time, but he felt that he had been there several days. His mouth was dry, and he feared that Moncada’s plan was to wear him down with thirst and hunger. At times he closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but he was too uncomfortable. There was no room to take more than a couple of steps, and his muscles were cramping. He examined the room minutely, searching for a way to get out, but found nothing. The door was bolted from outside; not even Galileo Tempesta could have opened it. Diego tried to loosen the boards of the ceiling, but they were reinforced: it was obvious that the place was used as a cell. Much later the door of his tomb opened, and the ruddy face of Sergeant Garcia appeared in the threshold. Despite his weakness, Diego speculated that he could stun the good sergeant with a minimum of violence by pressing the place on the neck that Maestro Escalante had taught him when he was being trained in the combat skills of La Justicia. He did not want to get his old friend in trouble with Mon-cada. He might get out of his cell, but he could not escape from the hacienda; it would be better to wait. The rotund sergeant placed a jug of water and a bowl of beans and rice on the ground. “What time is it, my friend?” Diego asked, simulating a cheerful manner he was far from feeling. Garcia twisted up his face and counted on his fingers. “Nine o’clock Tuesday morning, you say? That means I have been here two nights and a day. How well I’ve slept! Do you know what Moncada intends to do?” Garcia shook his head. “What is the matter? Do you have orders not to talk to me? Very well, but no one told you not to listen, isn’t that right?”

  “Ummm,” the other nodded. Diego stretched, yawned, drank the water, and slowly ate the food, which tasted delicious, he told Garcia, all the time chatting about old times: the wonderful adventures of childhood, the courage Garcia had shown when he confronted Alcazar and trapped a live bear. It was with good reason that he was admired by the boys at school, he concluded. That was not exactly how the sergeant remembered those days, but Diego’s words fell like a healing balm on his bruised spirit. “In the name of our friendship, Garcia, you have to help me get out of here,” Diego concluded. “I would like to, but I am a soldier, and my duty comes before anything else,” Garcia replied in a whisper, looking over his shoulder to be sure no one was listening. “I would never ask you to fail in your duty or do anything illegal, Garcia, but no one could blame you if the door was not tightly bolted.

  “ There was no time to continue the conversation because a soldier came to tell the sergeant that Don Rafael Moncada wanted to see the prisoner. Garcia straightened his jacket, stuck out his chest, and clicked his heels with a martial air, but he also winked at Diego. He pulled his childhood friend up by his arms and led him to the main salon, almost carrying him until Diego could stand on legs that had fallen asleep from lack of use. Sadly, Diego noted the changes once again; his home looked like a barracks. He was put in one of the salon chairs, arms and chest roped to the chair back and ankles tied to its legs. He realized that the sergeant was only half carrying out his obligation; the bonds were not tight, and with a little manipulating Diego might get free, but there were soldiers everywhere. ”I need a sword,“ he whispered to Garcia at a moment when the other guard moved a few steps away. Garcia nearly choked with fright at such a request. Diego was asking too much; how could he gi
ve him a weapon under such circumstances? It would cost him several days in the stocks, say nothing of his military career. He patted Diego fondly on the shoulder and left the room, head lowered and feet dragging, as the guard took up his post in a corner to watch the captive. Diego sat in that chair for more than two hours, which he used to loose his hands from the rope, but he could not untie his ankles without attracting the attention of the soldier, an emotionless mestizo who looked like an Aztec statue. He tried to draw him over by pretending to choke, then later begged him for a cigar, a glass of water, a handkerchief, but nothing succeeded. The guard’s answer was to clutch his weapon tighter and observe him through eyes of stone barely visible above his prominent cheekbones. Diego concluded that if this was Moncada’s strategy to take the wind out of his sails and bend his will, it was working very well. Finally, about mid-afternoon, Rafael Moncada made his entrance, apologizing for having to inconvenience a person as refined as Diego. Nothing farther from his mind than to make him uncomfortable, he said, but given the circumstances, he’d had no choice. Did Diego know how long he had been in the servant’s room? Exactly the number of hours he had been locked in Tomas de Romeu’s secret chamber before his aunt came to get him out. A curious coincidence. Although he, Moncada, had a good sense of humor, that joke had grown a little stale. At any rate, he was grateful to Diego for having taken Juliana off his hands; to marry a woman of inferior station would have ruined his career, just as his aunt had warned him so often. But… he wasn’t there to talk about Juliana, that was a closed chapter. He supposed that Diego or should he call him Zorro? would like to know what lay in store for him. He was a criminal of the same caliber as Alejandro de la Vega: a chip off the old block. They would capture his aged father, there was no doubt about that, and he would wither away in a cell. Nothing would give him more pleasure than to hang Zorro with his own hands, but that was not his role. He would send him back to Spain in chains and under heavy guard, to be tried where he had begun his criminal career and where he had left enough evidence to be sentenced In the government of Ferdinand VII the law was applied with proper firmness, not as it was in the colonies, where authority was a travesty. In addition to the crimes committed in Spain were those in California: Zorro had attacked El Diablo prison, caused a fire, destroyed royal property, wounded a soldier, and conspired in the escape of prisoners. ”It is my understanding that an individual called Zorro is the author of those offenses,“ Diego replied. ”And I believe that he also has some of the pearls in his possession. Or would you, Excellency, prefer not to discuss that matter?“

  “You are Zorro, de la Vega!”

  “I wish I were, the man seems fascinating, but my delicate health does not allow me such adventures. I suffer from asthma, headaches, and heart palpitations.” Rafael Moncada thrust a document in Diego’s face for lack of a secretary written in his own hand and demanded that he sign it. The prisoner argued that it would be unwise to sign something when he did not know what it said. At the present time, he could not read it, he said; he had forgotten his glasses and he was nearsighted, unlike Zorro, who, he had heard, had deadly aim with a whip and a lightning-fast sword. No half-blind man could do such things, he added. “Enough!” Moncada exclaimed, slapping Diego. Diego was awaiting a violent reaction, but nevertheless had to exert great effort to control himself and not attack Moncada. This was not yet his opportunity. He kept his arms behind him, holding the rope, as blood from his nose and mouth dripped onto his shirt. Sergeant Garcia erupted into the room and stopped short when he saw his old friend bleeding, not knowing which side to take. Mon-cada’s voice shook him from his stupor. “I did not call you Garcia!”

  “Excellency… D-Diego de la Vega is innocent. I told you he could not be Zorro. We j-just saw the real Zorro outside,” the sergeant stammered. “What the devil are you saying!”

  “It’s true, Excellency, we all saw him.” Moncada shot out of the room, followed by the sergeant, but the guard stayed where he was, pointing his weapon at Diego. At the entrance to the garden, clearly outlined against the violet sky of evening, Moncada saw the theatrical figure of Zorro for the first time, and for a moment he was paralyzed with surprise. “Follow him, imbeciles!” he shouted, pulling out his pistol and firing without taking aim. A few of the soldiers flew to get their horses, and others fired their weapons, but the horseman had already galloped away. The sergeant, more interested than anyone in discovering Zorro’s identity, leaped on his mount with unexpected agility, dug in his spurs, and set off in pursuit, followed by half a dozen of his men. They disappeared toward the south, over hills and through woods. The masked man had a good start and knew the countryside, but even so, the distance between him and the soldiers was closing. After a half hour, when the horses were beginning to foam with sweat, the sun had disappeared, and the soldiers were close to catching up, they came to the cliffs: Zorro was trapped between them and the sea. Meanwhile, still under guard in the house, Diego thought he saw the secret door in the fireplace opening. It could only be Bernardo, who somehow had managed to get back to the hacienda. Diego did not know the details of what had happened outside, but from Moncada’s curses, the shouts, shots, and whinnying of horses, he assumed that his brother had confused the enemy. To distract the guard, he feigned another loud attack of coughing, gave a push, overturned the chair, and hit the floor. The man ran over to him and ordered him to lie still or he would blow his brains out, but Diego noted that his tone was hesitant; perhaps the Aztec statue’s instructions had not included killing him. Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of a shadow moving toward them from the fireplace. He began coughing again, struggling as if he were choking, while the guard poked him with the barrel of his weapon, not sure of what to do. Diego let loose of the rope and beat his fists hard on the guard’s legs, but he must have been made of granite; he did not budge. But at that instant the guard felt a pistol pressed to his temples and saw a masked man smiling at him wordlessly. “Surrender, my friend, before a bullet gets away from Zorro,” Diego advised from the floor, as he quickly untied the rope around his ankles. The new Zorro took the soldier’s pistol, threw it to Diego, who caught it, then quickly retreated toward the dark fireplace, winking. Diego gave the guard no opportunity to see what was happening behind him, he dropped him with a sharp blow to the nape of the neck dealt by the hard edge of his palm. The man lay unconscious for a few minutes, time Diego used to tie him up with the same rope that had been used on him; then he kicked out the window, taking care not to leave any sharp pieces around the frame he planned to return that way and disappeared through the secret door toward the caves. When Rafael Moncada returned to the room, he found that de la Vega had vanished, and the man entrusted with watching him occupied his place in the chair. The window was broken, and the only thing the dazed guard remembered was a dark form and the glacial cold of a pistol against his temple. “Imbeciles, hopeless imbeciles, all of you!” was Moncada’s only comment. At that moment half his men were chasing a ghost, while his prisoner had slipped away right under his nose. Despite the evidence, Moncada was still convinced that Zorro and Diego de la Vega were one and the same person. Diego did not find Bernardo in the cave, as he had expected, but his brother had left several lighted candles, his disguise, his sword, and Diego’s horse. Tornado was snorting impatiently, shaking his luxuriant mane and pawing the ground. “You will get used to this place, my friend,” Diego told him, stroking the animal’s sleek neck. He also found a wineskin, bread, cheese, and honey to help him recover from his recent bad treatment apparently his brother did not overlook even the small details. He also had to admire his skill in having tricked the soldiers and appeared magically to rescue him at just the right moment. How elegantly and silently he had performed! Bernardo was as good a Zorro as he was; together they would be invincible, he concluded. There was no hurry about the next step; he would have to wait until late at night, when the excitement at the house calmed down. After he ate, he exercised briefly to relax his stiff muscles, and lay
down a few steps away from Tornado to sleep the sleep of the just. Hours later, he awakened rested and happy. He washed and changed his clothes, donned his mask, and even had energy to paste on the mustache. “Without a mirror it isn’t easy to paste on hair from memory. It’s a fact. I will have to grow a mustache. I look good with it. This cave needs a few comforts to facilitate our adventures, don’t you think, Tornado?” He rubbed his hands, delighted at the boundless possibilities of the future; as long as he had good health and strength he would never be bored. He thought about Lolita and felt a tingle in the pit of his stomach not unlike the one he used to feel when he saw Juliana, though he did not connect them. Lolita’s attraction was as fresh as if it were the first and only love of his life. Careful! He must not forget that she was Carlos Alcazar’s cousin; for that reason alone, she could not be his bride. Bride? He laughed aloud. He would never marry foxes are solitary animals. Diego confirmed that his sword, Justine, slid easily in its sheath, put on his hat, and was ready for action. He led Tornado to the exit from the caves, which Bernardo had carefully camouflaged with rocks and brush, mounted his horse, and rode off toward the hacienda. He did not want to run the risk that someone would discover the secret passageway in the fireplace. He speculated that he had slept several hours; it must be after midnight, and possibly everyone except the guards would be asleep. He left Tornado beneath some nearby trees, reins trailing on the ground, sure that he would not move until he was called; the magnificent animal had absorbed Light-in-the-Night’s teaching very well. Although the guard had been doubled, Zorro had no difficulty approaching the house; he looked through the window of the grand salon, the only room with light. A candelabrum lighted part of the room, but the rest was in shadow. Cautiously, he put his legs through the broken-out window, eased himself down, and, using the furniture lined up against the walls as cover, moved toward the fireplace, where he crouched behind the huge logs. At the far end of the room, Rafael Moncada was pacing back and forth, smoking a cigar, and Sergeant Garcia, standing at attention and staring straight ahead, was trying to explain what happened. He had followed Zorro at full tilt toward the cliffs, he said, but just as he had him cornered, our subject had jumped into the sea rather than surrender. By then it was getting dark, and it was impossible to go too near the edge without falling on the loose rocks. Though they couldn’t see the bottom of the precipice, they had emptied their guns. In conclusion, Zorro had broken his neck on the rocks and in addition was shot full of holes. “Imbecile!” Moncada repeated for the hundredth time. “That person led you on a wild goose chase, and in the meantime de la Vega escaped.” An innocent expression of relief danced across Garcia’s ruddy face, but it disappeared instantly, wiped off by the knife-edge stare of his superior. “