When the Owl Cries Part 2

"I still wonder what made her so ill in Guadalajara. I think I did the right thing to bring her here; goodness knows she wanted to come. It takes so much care to bring a child around," she said with peculiar warmth.

"It's a month till school starts; she'll be fine by then," Raul said.

"Of course she will," Angelina agreed. It seemed to her that without their two children she would have fled years before to any city, any place where there were people, theaters, entertainment. Here, at the hacienda, children were the best of life. She had wanted more, until Lucienne had changed her mind. She tried to shake Lucienne from her thoughts--the beautiful auburn hair and smiling face.

She felt the loneliness of this garden and its volcanic shadow. A gleam of the broad lagoon--moon whitened--chilled her. Guadalajara had companions.h.i.+p to offer, relatives, friends, lights in shop windows, lights in homes, pretty parks.

"Is Chico better?" she asked, righting for a better mood.

"Yes, his leg's better. He'll be all right."

Though Chico was his favorite horse, she said, in spite of herself: "I wish he had broken his leg."

He laughed, thinking of the fine palomino he had raised with such care.

"You'll have to try him someday," he said.

"Someday he'll throw you and cripple you. There never was a crazier three-year-old."

They strolled along the farthest side of the garden, under young jacaranda trees; the wind had shaken blossoms onto the path and some of them popped as they stepped on them, making a soft, damp sound. In the moonlight, the mauve flowers on the trees were white or gray or faintly blue.

The main facade of the hacienda showed here, the house almost centering a walled enclosure that had turrets at the four corners. Walls and house were of cut stone, stuccoed white. The house was a simple rectangle with six veranda arches on the ground floor and the same number on the upper floor. The chapel--with a blue and white zigzagged tiled dome--had been built into one side of the residence, and its short spire prodded the cool sky. Moonlight softened the block-like severity of the old building. A sweep of trees set off the place, and behind the trees, dusty gray, rose a mountain range, low and rounded.

Columnar cypress plunged out of the main patio and looked about stiffly. There were twenty rooms and two patios in the hacienda, and the cypress were the stage props for the drama that had occurred there for almost three hundred years.

A breeze shook the trees and they bent and swayed about the house; panicles of fresh palm blossoms rustled. A chill nipped the walkers in the garden, as cool air swung down from the volcanic heights.

"It's getting chilly," Angelina said. "Let me go in and get my scarf."

"No. Let's go inside. How about a game of pool?" He questioned the wisdom of his own suggestion, wondering how this gesture could make up for his shortcomings. He cleared his throat, expecting a refusal.

"We haven't played for a long time. Let's. I'll get my scarf."

In the doorway of the poolroom, Raul lit his pipe while Angelina went for her scarf and Manuel Boaz brought lighted candles for their game.

Manuel was a burly fellow--almost sixty, part Negro. He had been with the Medinas since childhood. His mother had died in a remote mountain hut on the hacienda. Some said she had been insane. Manuel had the speech of a southerner because a Oaxacan had raised him. He lit candles on wall brackets and leaned in the doorway as Raul and Angelina chalked their cues. Tall, almost gray-skinned, his Negroid face took on a mask of shadows and pale half-lights as he leaned against the doorframe. He wore the customary white of the hacienda peasant and was barefooted. Unlike the Indians, he had to shave, but he had neglected his beard for several days and its stubble crinkled in the light from the candles.

"Angelina--you shoot first."

Manuel stepped away. He knew his place.

Raul grinned as Angelina's cue spun b.a.l.l.s wickedly across the felt.

She had a knack for pool. She and Caterina and Vincente played frequently. If he let himself be absent-minded, she would beat him.

The game went pleasantly enough. Manuel brought _copitas_ of brandy and set bottle and tray on the low armoire. Raul used his cue as a staff while Angelina played the nine.

This was his favorite room and its familiarity relaxed him. He took in the thick, unpainted ceiling beams, the carved cedar armoire (stained and discolored), the huge roll-top desk with a deer head and a tiger skin above it. The skin was nailed to the wall with silver horseshoe nails. Between the grilled windows of the opposite side of the room, windows that led to the garden, hung a painting of their horse, El Pobre. Who had named the horse--his father, in some fit of anger? El Pobre had been anything but poor. He had outrun and outjumped all hacienda rivals. And when old and spoiled, Uncle Roberto had given him a set of horseshoes with silver nails--a gift typical of Roberto's city humor. French prints, some fencing swords, a piece of Sevres ware, a gold crucifix, a rack of guns and cues--for Raul it was a perfect room.

He wished Lucienne had such a room at her hacienda. Palma Sola had a plainness about it, except for Lucienne's plants and flowers and the nearness of the sea.

"You're not thinking of what you're doing," Angelina said, pus.h.i.+ng back her hair. "You shouldn't have missed that shot."

"I guess I wasn't thinking," Raul said.

c"You'll get beaten," she said.

"You just watch this play," he said, and sent a ball into a pocket with skilled English.

"That was luck, just luck," she said, and her glance took him in nervously. She was a little afraid of him at times. She felt inferior, disliked, shunned. His mind could spread itself over so much. His feeling for life made her hands turn cold. She could not follow his plans. His idea of taking over Petaca--that was idiotic.

Better the old ways. What could one man do with seventeen hundred people? What if they were underfed, sick, poor! They had always been that way. He couldn't get anywhere with new-fangled ideas. Those arguments between Raul and his father were pointless. Let the old man have his say ... lying there, in his room, he was still _hacendado_ with whip and gun, unafraid to take and destroy.

Outside, in the garden, a man began to sing: Delgado, the gardener.

His watering can clinked on the edge of the stone-walled pool. He was singing a Coliman song, pitched rather high; Delgado was seventy and his old throat added a special tremolo to every word. A bird took up his song. "Ave Maria, ave Maria, mi corazon es tuya ... ave Maria."

The song floated around a corner of the house, as Delgado walked away.

Raul won the game, and they sat down by the armoire. Her pale blue scarf loose over her arm, Angelina poured them another brandy and handed him his with an absent smile. She was thinking now of their children, of the fun they had had today, at the mill.

"Salud," she said, raising her gla.s.s.

He raised his gla.s.s, but glanced away.

"I'm taking grain to the huts at Sector 15," he said. "Father has cut off the corn supply from that sector."

"It must have been necessary to punish someone," she said. There was a pause. He did not bother to correct her a.s.sumption. "Do you think we can drive to Colima this week? I'd love to buy some things--it would be nice to go to town; we haven't been to town together for several weeks."

"I'll try," he said. "I think we can go."

A bat skittered close to the ceiling and then flew round and round the room, keeping near the walls. They watched it silently. It seemed such a small brown spot, in such haste, dipping between the candles on the armoire.

"What an ugly thing!" Angelina said.

"Manuel," Raul called.

When Manuel appeared, Raul pointed to the bat and said, "Drive it out."

Manuel brought his wide-brimmed hat, waved it, and chased the bat outdoors. He said nothing, but the way he moved expressed acceptance and pleasure. He had the grace of an old cat.

After Manuel went out, Raul said: "I've been thinking about Manuel, how he and I used to fly kites. He would take the kite on top of the house, where the roof's flat. We'd let out b.a.l.l.s of string. He must have been thirty years old then. I remember his face--so full of smiles. He was patient with me. He knew the things a boy wanted to do. Horses. Hunting." His voice trailed off. He lit his pipe.

"He'd do anything for you," Angelina said, and rose abruptly. "Let's blow out the candles. You and Manuel have been true to each other.

That's a fine thing." Then in a high voice, she added: "A fine thing."

He tried to disregard the inference. He puffed out a candle and watched her bend over another atop the armoire. The ivory light flared across her polished features. Sadness stabbed him: their marriage should have worked. Who had made the first mistake? Gradually, like a candlelit picture, Lucienne's face appeared, hazel eyes serious.

2

The hacienda of Petaca dated from 1619. The deed--signed in Colima--lay in a cedar jewel box in the living room. The Jesuit paper (some lawyer had gotten hold of ecclesiastical stationery) bore the cross-and-crown watermark. Flowery signatures in brown ink were fading into the foxed sheets that had frayed and chipped edges.