When the Owl Cries Part 53

"I thought so."

"He'll get better."

They were in the old-fashioned room, Raul in seersucker trousers and plaid shirt, Lucienne in gay clothes, a turtlesh.e.l.l comb over one ear, sandals laced high up her ankles.

"I suppose you love Chico in a way. I wish we could keep all the things we love," she said, with quiet pa.s.sion.

"I wish we could too," he said.

"I hope we're lucky, you and I," she said.

"Yes ... lucky, with you, Lucienne. It hasn't been that way with Angelina. She's had her secrets. They are destroying her.... I'm not sure there can be any adjustment. She goes to her room and locks her door. She walks about, talks to herself, comes downstairs with a strangeness about her. I--I think she's out of her mind. Strange ...

how she writes. She acts as if I didn't exist, as if I were half alive...."

She was surprised by his candor, by his revelations, by his concern.

"Will the change to Guadalajara help?"

"I doubt it. I really don't know. She may go mad."

"Darling, hush, I think you're needlessly alarmed."

"No. And I can't talk about it any more ... not now.... But, Lucienne, I need you."

"You have me, Raul."

"Not by my side."

"Maybe it's better that way."

"Better?" he asked.

"For all of us. Angelina, Vicente."

He realized she was straining a point for his sake; her face, her hands, told him she was nervous. They had been seated together. He cupped his chin in his hand.

"You're wonderful," he said. "I love you because you stay the same, taking the good and the bad as it comes."

"I wish I were really like that," she said.

"You've been like that all these years."

They loaded the rusty victoria and headed for Colima, riders trailing behind, with Chico yanking angrily. A cave-shaped cloud held a fragment of a rainbow in its arms; then, in the opposite direction, to the north, the volcano rose above a forest of palms, a peculiar light on its upper slopes, a vaporish yellow. For Raul, the light was startling. It was as if he were seeing the volcano from his garden, the evening the yellow sc.u.m had covered the lagoon. He thought of mentioning the coincidence to Lucienne, but decided not to speak of it.

Later in the evening, in Colima, he would look at the peak again.

In Colima, they visited friends. Obviously, trouble was everywhere.

People tried to be cheerful, particularly those who could not see the _hacendados'_ plight. At Federicka's they had drinks behind the cool bamboo slats, and someone played an accordion. Together, they went to the cathedral. The ugly silence of death pervaded the place. Raul wanted peace but not an ominous peace. At Federicka's, late at night, when others had gone to sleep, he went up on the roof-top to study the volcano.

His pipe lit, he watched. Presently, he saw another red bowl of fire ... that dangerous aerial red, a wisp of smoke above it.

G.o.d, he thought, not another eruption! He longed to be able to strike back at the subterranean power; he wanted to dominate it, extinguish it. How dreadful to wait and wait.

An owl cried dismally.

19

The great quake struck Petaca just before dawn.

Don Fernando felt the shocks at once for he had been lying awake for several hours. He shouted for Chavela but she did not hear him.

Angry, he spouted to himself:

"I've got to get out of here. Where are my gla.s.ses? Bed's going to break. d.a.m.n that Chavela, not coming, never coming when I need her.

Who does she think she is? Bring me a cigarette! Where are my gla.s.ses? Got to light a candle."

He shouted at the quake now:

"Get me out of bed. All right ... I'll get up. Stop you--sure I'll stop you. I'll stop your rocking. You stone devil of the Indians!"

His quavering hands worked at his sheets. Shoving himself against his pillows, he began to sit up. Groaning and puffing, he reached for his matches but knocked them on the floor.

Finding it possible to swing his feet over the side of the bed, he sat up. Moonlight whitened the tiles near the big window and he detected the light. On the edge of his bed, his arms bearing part of his weight, he gained confidence.

"My wheel chair's nearby.... I'll get out of this place. Raul, Raul,"

he called, forgetting that Raul was upstairs. "Raul, there's a big quake--the floor...."

He heard shouting and rifle fire but could not, except for an instant, separate the sounds. The blurred noises, growing in intensity, disturbed him and he lifted his head and cried: "What's that? Who's making that noise?"

He tried to rise but crumpled onto the floor. His mind blurred....

Someday ride to Colima, jacket with silver b.u.t.tons ... ride to Colima ... drink beer. The snake coiled over the fallen log, and the mayordomo shouted: Watch out, I'm going to shoot it! I pulled my .45 and shot him.... There he was ... there my father was, on his white horse, outside the tienda door....

His father and the snake writhed in the old man's brain and the quake returned and red flared through the window. Fernando crawled toward the light. He was trying to find his bed now. The red blurred and faded and he turned and began to crawl in the other direction. A man in a dark blue suit, a neat blue suit, tapped him on the arm and said: "You must stop taking money from the store without my permission."

Papa spoke calmly but he was on a white horse, just outside the tienda door.... I swiveled my chair at the desk and shot him, as he rode away.

The quake grew more severe and large blocks of masonry loosened in the inside wall, on the patio side, and fell on Fernando. He died at once.

Outside, men went on shouting and shooting.... They had set fire to the mill and the flames soared high.

Raul had jumped out of bed and grabbed his trousers and shirt.

Carrying his shoes, he rushed down a tottering stairs--through the pale dawn--into the patio, where water sloshed out of the fountain, across the cobbles. Servants were screaming and shouting. Toward the mill, flames gushed up; the wall of Fernando's room crumbled: as Raul stood by the fountain, he saw blocks bulge, lean forward, crash to the floor, dust rising, as fine as flour from a smashed flour barrel.

The door to his father's room was ripped from its hinges and thrown to the ground. Rushing into the dusty room, Raul opened the outer window.

Then he found his father. Death, in the midst of this disaster, seemed natural to Raul--yet not the gaping mouth and angry eyes. Their anger and derision drove him out of the room, into the patio.

"Are you hurt?" asked Sandoval, rushing up to him, a crowbar in his hand, his hat around his neck on a cord, his shirt ripped.