Zorro

by Isabel Allende

  “We will have to hide you, Tornado. Zorro alone will ride you,” he said, and the horse responded with a neigh and a flick of his tail. The rest of the afternoon went by in roasting some raccoons and birds they had been fortunate enough to catch, and in passing on bad news. As night fell, Isabel, exhausted, wrapped herself in a blanket and fell asleep by the fire. Toypurnia heard from her son’s lips the tragedy that had befallen Alejandro de la Vega. She confessed that she missed him; he was the only man she had ever loved, but she had not been able to stay with him as his wife. She preferred the miserable nomadic life of her tribe to the luxury of the hacienda, where she felt like a prisoner. She had spent her childhood and youth in the outdoors; she could not bear the oppression of adobe walls and a roof over her head, the arrogance of the customs, the discomfort of Spanish clothes, the weight of Christianity. With age, Alejandro had become more severe in judging his neighbor. In the end they had little in common, and after their son went to Spain and the passion of youth had cooled, there was nothing left. Nevertheless, she was moved to hear of her husband’s fate and offered her help in rescuing him from the dungeon and hiding him in some remote part of the territory. California was vast, and she knew almost all the trails. She confirmed that Padre Mendoza’s suspicions were real. “For a couple of months there has been a barge anchored near the oyster banks, and they transport prisoners there in small boats,” said Toypurnia. She explained to him that they had taken away several youths from the tribe and forced them to dive from dawn to sunset. They lowered them with a rope, with a large stone as weight and a basket to put the oysters in. When the divers tugged on the rope, they pulled them back up to the boat. The day’s harvest was emptied onto the barge, where other prisoners opened the oysters, looking for pearls, a chore that cut their hands raw. Toypurnia assumed that Alejandro was among that group, as he was too old to dive. She added that the captives slept on the beach, chained together on the sand, and went hungry because no one can live on oysters as their only nourishment.. “I do not see how you can rescue your father from that hell,” she said. It would be impossible as long as he was on the barge, but Diego knew through Padre Mendoza that a priest was going to visit the prison. Moncada and Alcazar, who had to keep the matter of the pearls a secret, had suspended operation for a few days so the prisoners would be in El Diablo when the priest came. That was his one opportunity, Diego explained. He realized that it would be impossible to hide Zorro’s identity from his mother and grandmother, and he needed their help. When he told them about Zorro, and about his plans, he was aware that his words sounded like pure lunacy, for that reason he was surprised that the two women did not change expression, as if the idea of putting on a mask and assaulting El Diablo were absolutely normal. They promised to protect his secret. And they agreed that in a few days Bernardo, along with three men of the tribe, the most athletic and brave, would be at La Cruz de Las Calaveras with horses. This was a crossroads where two bandits had been hanged; their skulls, the calaveras, bleached by rain and sun, were mounted on a wooden cross. They would not tell Bernardo’s companions the details; the fewer people who knew, the better in case they were captured. Diego imparted the broad outlines of his plan to rescue his father, and if possible the other prisoners as well. Most were native peoples; they knew the terrain very well and, given the chance, would slip away and fade into the landscape. White Owl told Diego that many Indians had helped construct El Diablo, among them her own brother, whom the whites called Arsenio, though his true name was Eyes-That-See-in-the-Dark. He was blind, and the Indians believed that those who are born without sight can see in the dark, like bats. Arsenio was a good example. He was so skillful with his hands that he could forge tools and repair any mechanism. He knew the prison like no one else; he moved through it confidently because it had been his only world for forty years. He had worked there long before Carlos Alcazar arrived, and carried in his prodigious memory the names of all the prisoners who had passed through El Diablo. Diego’s grandmother handed him some owl feathers. “Perhaps my brother can help you. If you see him, tell him you are my grandson and give him the feathers; that way he will know you are not lying,” she said. The next morning very early Diego and Isabel, after planning with Bernardo the time and place they would meet at El Diablo, started back to the mission. Bernardo stayed with the tribe to put together his part of the things they would require, using items he had taken from the mission a few days before without Padre Mendoza knowledge. “This is one of those rare cases in which the end justifies the means,” he had assured his brother as they foraged through the missionary’s cellar in search of a long rope, potassium nitrate, powdered zinc, and wicks. Before they left the Indian camp, Diego had asked his mother why she had chosen Diego for his name. “That was my father’s name, your Spanish grandfather, Diego Salazar. He was a good and brave man who understood the Indian soul. He deserted from a Spanish ship because he wanted to be free; he never accepted the blind obedience demanded on board. He respected my mother and adapted to the customs of our tribe. He taught me many things among others, the Spanish language. Why do you ask?” Toypurnia replied. “I have always been curious. Did you know that Diego means supplanter?”

  “No. What is that?”

  “Someone who takes another’s place,” Diego answered. Diego told his friends at the mission goodbye, saying he was going to Monterey. He would insist that the governor do the just thing in his father’s case. He did not want anyone to come with him. He could make the journey easily, he said, stopping at missions along the Camino Real. Padre Mendoza watched him ride away on a palomino, with another horse behind, carrying his gear. He was sure that it was a futile trip, a waste of time that might cost Don Alejandro his life every day the old man awoke in El Diablo could be his last. His arguments had no effect on Diego. As soon as Diego was out of sight of the mission, he left the road and, making a half turn, headed toward the open country to the south. He was confident that Bernardo had done his part and would be waiting for him at La Cruz de las Calaveras. Hours later, when he was near the meeting place, he stopped to change his clothing. He put on the mended priest’s habit “borrowed” from the good Padre Mendoza, glued on a beard he had improvised from strands of White Owl’s hair, and completed the disguise with Nuria’s glasses the chaperone would be looking for them everywhere. Reaching the place where the skulls of the bandits were nailed to the arms of the cross, he did not have to wait long. Soon Bernardo and three young Indians appeared out of nowhere, dressed only in breech clouts armed with bows and arrows, and wearing war paint. Bernardo did not reveal the traveler’s identity to his companions; neither did he offer them an explanation when he handed the priest the sacks containing bombs and rope. The brothers exchanged a wink: everything was ready. Diego noticed that Tornado was among the six horses the Indians had brought with them, and he could not resist the temptation to go over and pat his neck before he said goodbye. Diego started off down the road to the prison on foot; it seemed to him that that way he would look inoffensive, a pathetic blot in the shimmering white sunlight. One of the horses was loaded with his gear, and another with the things Bernardo had put together, including a large wooden cross about waist high. As he reached the crest of a small hill, he could see the ocean in the distance and identify the outlines of the somber prison of El Diablo rising from the rocks. He was thirsty, and his habit was wet with sweat, but he stepped up his pace because he was eager to see his father and set his scheme in motion. He had walked about twenty minutes when he heard the sound of hoof beats and turned to see the dust of a carriage. He could not hold back a curse; this was going to complicate things. No one traveled this road unless they were going to El Diablo. He lowered his head, adjusted his hood, and made sure his beard was in place. His sweat might have loosened it, even though he had used a heavy glue made from the best resin. The coach stopped beside him, and to his immense surprise he saw a very attractive young woman at the small window. “You must be the priest who is coming to the prison, yes
? We were expecting you, Padre,” she greeted him. The girl’s smile was enchanting, and Diego’s capricious heart gave a leap. He was beginning to recover from his dejection over Juliana and was able to admire other women, especially one as charming as this. He had to make an effort to remember his new role. “That is true, daughter. I am Padre Aguilar,” Diego replied in the quavery voice of an old man. “Climb up here in my coach, Padre; that way you can rest a little,” she offered. “I too am going to El Diablo, to see my cousin.”

  “God will repay you, daughter.” So this was the beautiful Lolita Pulido! The same skinny little girl who used to send him love notes when he was fifteen. What a stroke of luck. When Lolita’s coach arrived at the prison with the false priest and his two horses tied behind, Diego did not have to give explanations. As soon as the coachman announced the girl and Padre Aguilar, the guards were happy to open the gates and let them through. Lolita was known here; the soldiers greeted her by name, and even a couple of prisoners in the stocks smiled at her. “Give those poor men water, they’re cooking in the sun,” she said to a guard, who flew to do her bidding. In the meantime Diego was looking the building over and quietly counting the uniformed men. He would be able to slide down the wall with his rope, but he had no idea how he would get his father out; the prison looked escape-proof, and there were far too many guards. The visitors were immediately shown to the office of Carlos Alcazar, a room furnished only with a table, chairs, and the shelves holding the prison files. Everything was entered in those large, worn books, from feed for the horses to the deaths of prisoners everything except the pearls, which traveled from the oyster directly into the coffers of Moncada and Alcazar, leaving no visible trail. In one corner stood a painted plaster statue of the Virgin Mary crushing the devil with one foot. “Welcome, Father,” said Carlos, after kissing his cousin, whom he still loved as he had in his childhood, on both cheeks. “We were not expecting you until tomorrow.” Diego, head bowed, eyes lowered, voice servile, answered by reciting the first thing that came to his mind in Latin and topped it off with an emphatic sursum corda, which had no bearing on anything but sounded impressive. It went right over Alcazar’s head; he had never been a good student of dead tongues. Though he was young he couldn’t have been more than twenty-three or twenty-four years old his cynical expression made him look much older. He had cruel lips and the eyes of a rat. Diego wondered how Lolita could be from the same family; that girl deserved better than to be Carlos’s cousin. The impostor accepted a glass of water and announced that he would say mass the next day; he would confess and give communion to any who asked for the sacraments. He was weary, he added, but that same afternoon he wanted to see the sick prisoners and those being punished, including the pair in the stocks. Lolita volunteered to help; among other things, she had brought a box of medicines, which she put at Padre Aguilar’s disposal. “My cousin has a very soft heart, Padre. I have told her that El Diablo is not a suitable place for senoritas, but she pays no attention. She does not understand that most of those men are beasts with no morals or feelings, likely to bite the hand that feeds them.”

  “No one has bitten me yet, Carlos,” Lolita replied. “We will dine shortly, Padre. Do not expect a feast, we live very modestly here,” said Alcazar. “Do not worry, my son, I eat very little, and this week I am fasting.

  Bread and water will be sufficient. I would be grateful to have that in my room, because after I visit the sick I must pray.“

  “Arsenio!” Alcazar called. An Indian stepped out of the shadows. He had been in the corner all the time, so silent and motionless that Diego had not been aware of his presence. He recognized him by White Owl’s description. A white film covered his pupils, but he moved with precision. “Take the padre to his room so he can pray. Do whatever he requests, do you hear me?” Alcazar ordered, bi, senor. “Then you may take him to see the sick.”

  “Sebastian, too, senor?”

  “No, not him, that miserable ”

  “Why not?” Diego intervened. “He isn’t sick. We had to give him a little lashing, nothing much, nothing to be concerned about, Padre.” Lolita broke into tears; her cousin had promised her that there would be no further punishments of that nature. Diego left them arguing and followed Arsenio to the room he had been assigned, where his bundles were waiting, including the large cross. “You are not a man of the church,” Arsenio said when they reached the locked door of the room for guests. Diego flinched, frightened; if a blind man could divine that he was disguised, he had no chance to deceive people who could see. “You don’t smell like a priest,” added Arsenio, by way of explanation. “No? What do I smell like?” Diego asked, amazed, because he was wearing Padre Mendoza’s habit. “Like Indian hair and glue to bind wood,” Arsenio replied. The young man touched his false beard and could not help but laugh. He decided to seize the moment, for surely he would not have another, and confessed to Arsenio that he had come on a specific mission and needed his help. He placed his grandmother’s feathers in Arsenio’s hand. The blind man stroked them with his all-seeing fingers, and his face revealed his emotion when he recognized they came from his sister. Diego clarified that he was White Owl’s grandson, and with that knowledge Arsenio was eager to talk. He had had no news of his sister for many years, he said. He confirmed that El Diablo had been a fortress before it was a prison, and that he had helped build it. He had stayed on to serve the soldiers, and now the jailers. Life had always been hard within those walls, but since Carlos Alcazar took charge it had been a hell; the man’s greed and cruelty were beyond description. He imposed forced labor and brutal punishments upon the prisoners, he held back money intended for food, and he fed the prisoners what was left from the soldiers’ mess. At that moment, one man was dying, others had high fevers from being stung by poisonous jellyfish, and several had collapsed lungs and were bleeding from the nose and ears. “And Alejandro de la Vega?” Diego asked with his heart in his mouth. “He won’t last long; he has lost his will to live, he scarcely moves.