When the Owl Cries by Paul Alexander Bartlett
6
The burial was to take place before sunset.
During the afternoon, the chapel bell had tolled intermittently andalarmed pigeons had flown about. Even the livestock had becomerestless. Small boys, Caterina's friends, had yanked the bell rope,their ragged shirts and trousers flapping dismally.
Manuel and Salvador carried the casket out of the chapel, following apath through the grove. The flowers on the box caught at branches andtwigs, falling, littering the route. Bougainvillaea, cup-of-gold,roses, lilies, jacaranda blossoms that had survived the wind, rain andhail. As the men put the casket down by the grave, a hummingbird divedand clicked at the flowers; the men stared sadly; the ebony rapierpoked; the red-green-blue feathers throbbed; then a second and thirdhummingbird whisked the blossoms.
At the morning chapel service, the ceremony had been touching becauseVicente had raced from the room, sobbing. Gabriel had not said theright words: his mind had turned back to Italy and his reminiscences ofthe death of a childhood friend had indicated more than he had intendedof the transience of life, the beauty of childhood. Peasants hadcrowded the chapel: men in white, women with blue _rebozos_ over pinkand white blouses and skirts, half clad children.
Someone had heaped bougainvillaea over the altar and on top themango-shaped glass dome that protected the jeweled virgin of Petaca. Awreath of pink and white carnations had leaned against the casket.Candles had burned on the altar and at the ends of the coffin. Thevirgin's jewels, her rubies and emeralds, gleamed.
Lucienne von Humboldt had come first. From her hacienda, Palma Sola,by the ocean, she had driven to Petaca in her blue and yellow victoria,scarred and bitten by sea air. The black she wore made her seem olderthan twenty-six, and accentuated her auburn hair and the Germaniccharacter of her face. Her hazel eyes, glossy thick hair, androse-colored skin impressed everyone.
Baroness Radziwill and her big family had arrived next, a wreath ofevergreen on the carriage top. She had placed a gold platedcandleholder for Caterina and lit it herself. A beautiful woman in hersixties, with gray hair and black eyes, she had a motherly manner witheverybody.
Count de Selva had come with his fat wife and three sons. As workersgathered in the forecourt, afoot and horseback, the Count had remainedin his carriage. His servant had cleaned off the mud-spattered coat ofarms on the doors and had polished the blue running boards and fenders.An obese, asthmatic man, de Selva preferred to wait until the chapelceremony began before showing himself; he had come only out of respectfor the Medina family, scarcely remembering Caterina.
Lucienne removed a ring from her handbag and buried it among theflowers on top of the casket, Manuel and Salvador waiting in the shadeof a palm tree. She nodded to them and said:
"I put it in there. She wanted to ... I had promised it to her." Shedid not care whether they understood her.
She wondered if anyone realized the courage it had taken to come here.Was Angelina defiant? Was she terribly bitter? Her face, so forlorn,had filled her with compassion. She should never have come to Petaca... her city friends meant so much to her.
Neither man spoke; it was not for them to comment. Manuel admiredLucienne for her love of Raul and her affection for Caterina, and heappreciated the hundreds of kindnesses she had shown him through theyears. They had been friends since her girlhood. Her beauty filledhim with pleasure. Noticing her black dress, he recalled her recentreturn from Europe, the hatboxes, suitcases full of gowns andhigh-heeled shoes ... things she had forgotten for her garden. Anyonewho appreciated plants and flowers as much as she appreciated them hada place in his heart.
Raul found Lucienne by Caterina's grave, and her black clothes startledhim. They shook hands, their eyes lowered; he could not bring himselfto look at her; he had merely glimpsed her at the chapel service.
"I'm sorry you lost her, Raul," she said.
"A lovely girl," he said, as if he had memorized the words.
"Such a dear child. I loved her."
"She wants you to have Mona," he said.
"Mona, her little dog?" she asked, hoping that a few words, any words,might lessen his strain. Such a sad, dark face.
Palm fronds laddered the space behind her.
"You taught her to collect plants and butterflies."
"Did I?"
"Now God has taken her...."
"I wish I thought so, Raul."
"Don't say that," he objected.
"You know how I feel, you know what I believe. I can't lie, even atthis time." The gentleness of her speech took away its offense. "Iwish I could believe in immortality. It would be my comfort too, youknow. I need that comfort."
Raul fingered his pipe in his pocket. It was not often he resentedLucienne's Teutonic independence, her foreignness, her atheism.Glancing beyond her, he felt the sorrow of his friend Manuel, expressedin his face, stooped shoulders, and bowed head. He looked at the rawburial place, the palms with their tattered greens and browns, frondsover the headstones and markers in this family plot. A mound of vineshid his grandfather's stone, and the same vines in exuberance scrambledtoward the newly upturned earth that would cover Caterina. Rauldetermined to have the cemetery cleaned and properly tended: by the endof the week the graves should be cleared and reornamented with shells.
Men were approaching, carrying Don Fernando, who had refused to attendchapel service but who had demanded to be brought to the grave. Themen stumbled over roots; Fernando cried out; lizards fled under vines;birds soared away.
The Radziwills and de Selvas walked together and Father Gabriel andAngelina followed; then the peasants, like white ants, sifted throughthe grove. Vicente, ashamed of himself, had hidden in the stable.
They were a courageous-looking lot. The sunburned _hacendados_ had thebodies of people who live outdoors, for even the asthmatic Count hadbeen a stockman. The powdered women stood out among the peasants whoneeded only a feather or two to put them back a thousand years. Finefaces, buck faces, pretty girls, hags with tortilla cheeks, all gazedwith sympathy at the grave of the child.
A bright cloud hung over the group, its shadow twisting toward theslope of the volcano. Shadows flecked the grove, the bent heads, thecasket and its wilting flowers; other shadows fled across fields whereoxen grazed. Gabriel said a few words and prayed and Angelina wept,clinging to Raul's arm, hating his black, hating Lucienne. She longedto return to her room and hide her grief, to be away from Lucienne'sauburn hair, her placid face. Had she never known tragedy? Why hadshe come? Not out of respect! No, no ... to see Raul, to bribe himaway, to laugh at her sorrow ... let me go, Raul. I'll go back alone!
Slowly, everyone began to leave the grove.
Raul thought himself the only one left, and then he saw his father inhis chair among the trees. A great iguana peered at him from a palmimmediately behind: its iridescent greenish head and dark eyes facedthe ground, the tongue licked out. Click, click, ssh, ssh, said theblackbirds.
"Shall I call the men to carry you?" asked Raul.
"No," growled Fernando. "I told them to leave me here."
A flock of parrots fanned through the wood, loros, with red on theirshoulders, yellow daubs on their beaks.
"My wife's gravestone is the parrots' roosting place," said Fernando."She gave up her fight too soon. They'll not dump their excrement onmy grave any sooner than I can help it."
Raul kicked at a scrap of palm and admired his courage.
"Death is for fools," the old man spluttered.
"Then we're all due to be fools," Raul said.
"Light a cigarette for me."
Raul's wax taper flared and dropped among the fronds and and grass.
"Caterina was no fool," Fernando retracted. "But you shouldn't haveburied her in her scarlet dress."
"What would you have liked?"
"That doesn't matter."
"Your men have come to carry you."
"Let them wait. I came to sit and think. I'm old enough to sit andthink. Over t
"I'll have this place cleaned next week."
Fernando guffawed.
"You'll have it cleaned. What for? Can you keep back the jungle? Areyou thinking of Caterina? The jungle has her already. This palmerastretches all the way to the Pacific. You can't stop it, boy....Neither can you change the hacienda."
"I can try."
"I'll stop you whenever I can. I've decided to have a special chairconstructed. In my chair I can look after the hacienda."
"No, Father. Your day is past. It's my job!"
Fernando spat. "You and your radical ways. God, you can't run thisplace!"
"Why not?"
"Everyone will laugh at you."
In the tree behind Fernando, the iguana decided to climb higher, itshead waggling, tongue forking.
"That's the least of my worries. I'm thinking about the people andtheir chance to live as men ought to live."
"They're not men," said Fernando, coughing over his cigarette.
"They've been called animals, many things. I think they're men."
"You'll ruin Petaca ... I could summon a lawyer and preserve mycontrol. I suppose you could declare me physically or mentallyincompetent. It would be touch and go, maybe one bribe againstanother. I'm not that kind of fool. We'd lose Petaca. I'm not thatfar gone."
"The courts are no place for us," said Raul, knowing how easy it wouldbe to expose the Medina crime; he began to walk away, thinking ofCaterina, disliking the conversation, the grizzled face of his father.
"I hadn't finished speaking," said Fernando.
"I don't want to listen."
"I've talked to Pedro."
"I told him he had to go."
"He'll stay," the old man croaked.
"Let's keep sane," said Raul, curbing his emotions, shutting down onhis voice. "You must accept my way; hostility will finish Petaca. Wehave to settle things between us. It's time I had the administration.You've had your day. There never has been any mutual planning, so nowI have to work out the problems alone."
"I tell you, you'll ruin Petaca!" Fernando exclaimed; his cigarette haddied out, but he still held the stub between his fingers.
Parrots jabbered and a few of them roosted in the iguana tree.
"Get me out of here, before the parrots use me for a headstone!"
"I wish we could work together."
"That's sentiment--not sense. I've never wanted to work with you oranyone. In Europe, you picked up ideas. Hell, I know what men are. Iknow what life is!" He shouted for the men who had been lugging him;his voice broke and became that of an old woman. "Get me out of here,"he quavered.
Raul followed a palmera path that wandered toward the ocean. Hethought: I won't forget that place with the old man's talk squirmingamong the graves. Tomorrow I'll go back and see whether her grave hasbeen taken care of ... maybe I'd better go back later tonight....
From a hill, the hacienda resembled a small fort, disguised amonggarden and trees. The volcano blocked the horizon, dragging an uglypurple scar above the green valley and dark green lagoon. Where bananatrees fanned into a screen, Raul sat down, overcome with grief. Thebanana leaves, shaking in the wind, chopped his thoughts to fragments:he saw the open grave, Caterina in her red dress, the chapel, andVicente running away, Angelina crying: it would have been better tohave put Caterina in a buggy and taken her to Colima, as sick as shewas. How stupid to have become dependent on Velasco and Hernandez.
What is wrong with people? he thought. He felt more and more confused.The shaking leaves irritated him; he felt shut in, dominated by thegrove. Shortly, he rose and walked through the palmera, to find thespade sticking where the workmen had left it. It was dusk now andfireflies blinked yellow and green. One of the bugs flickered abouthim, as he began to shovel the dirt onto her coffin. Stars werebrilliant ... fronds motionless now. The spade rasped. The boxsounded hollow. Raul brushed away sweat. The smell of the fresh earthchoked him and he leaned on the handle, remembering that she had dashedafter fireflies, shouting, bottling them, sharing them with Vicente.
Salvador found Raul leaning on the spade and, without a word, took itand went on filling the grave.
"Let me have a cigarette paper, Don Raul," he said, as Raul started off.
"Of course," said Raul, and gave him paper and tobacco.
As Raul passed the corral, Chico neighed. Head over brick wall, hecalled and Raul thought of a night ride and then dismissed the idea.While he stroked the horse's head, Manuel joined him and they litcigarettes: as the match flared, they studied one another, read oneanother's minds, a communication without words.
Raul inhaled deeply, and said:
"I know a sculptor in Guadalajara and I'll have him make a bronzefigure for Caterina's grave. The next time I go to Guadalajara, I'llvisit his studio. I want the figure of a young girl carrying flowers.Our family burial plot is as cheap and ugly as the fields. It doesn'thave to be."
"Caterina deserves something good," Manuel said.
Raul patted Chico's nose and distended lip, and the horse bobbed hishead, snuffling.
"I must go and be with Angelina now," Raul said. "I don't know whereshe is: is she in her room?"
"Father Gabriel's with her. In the living room."
"I'm glad of that. I'll join them."
He felt tempted to mention the owl's cry in the night: no, that wouldbe unwise: peering at the sky, he imagined broad, dark wings headed forthe lagoon: the bird would glide low, searching for a frog in thesedges, a snake, a toad ... a child.