She was sitting with the Captain of the Port, whom I did not like to interrupt for the sake of favours to come. However, he wasn’t a wealthy man—in spite of all the help we shippers used to give him for the sake of his dear wife and children—and he soon got the same impression as I had the previous night. Meanwhile, I was surprised to find myself a bit short with the other girls who wanted to share my whisky.
I had the sense to play up to Rosalinda’s act. So, instead of beckoning or sending the waiter for her, I went over hat in hand. She gave me a reasonably courteous little nod, and indicated that I might sit down. We got on a little better until I told her that I was English. That closed her up tight. I gathered that foreigners were right out of her experience—as terrifying as a jaguar until you are sure it isn’t hungry.
But I kept on treating her as if she had just been let out of the convent school for a day with uncle. I must have convinced her in the end that I, at any rate, wasn’t hungry. Suddenly she burst out:
‘I do not understand this place!’
‘What’s wrong with it?’ I asked. ‘It’s as good a place as there is till you get down to the Plata.’
‘It’s not this way that a girl gets married,’ she answered.
One doesn’t like to be fooled. I’ve knocked around the cabarets of two continents, and I expect you have, too. You never know what tricks those girls will be up to. I told myself firmly that I was not rich enough to be a senator, and was too old to be sentimental.
‘When did you leave the convent?’ I asked, not making the irony too obvious.
‘In May,’ she said.
It was a plain fact that she was stating.
‘And your parents?’
Then it all came out—as far as she herself was capable of understanding what had happened to her. She had never come to grips with everyday life at all, you see. The forest, her parents, her simple education—those were all her past.
She was Paraguayan. Her parents, both of them, were of mixed Spanish and Indian blood. Humble folk, but true Americans and proud of it. They had managed to make a good living—and a little cash over—out of a remote holding up the river. No near neighbours but the forest Indians. As a matter of fact, their original farm was a part of this one. And it was a lot harder for them to reach by paddling than for you in your motor launch.
When Rosalinda came home from the convent at Asunción, she found that the land was going back to scrub, that the few peons had left, and that both her parents had been dead for over a month. Her brother, Hilario, was away in the Chaco, where the post was not nearly so reliable as word of mouth passed from settlement to settlement.
So there she was. Relations, none, Money, none. Food, what there was on the place. And then some fool, wanting to get her a free passage—but as likely as not he had no money either—put her on Don Luis’s launch as a first step towards returning her to civilisation. Luis was on his way down the Paraná from Brazil, and he had some woman with him—I never found out who it was—that he passed off as his wife. Both of them, Rosalinda insisted, were angels to her. And when Luis suggested that, if she stopped off at Posadas, he would find her a husband, she believed him.
Can you imagine such simplicity? He would find her a husband, just like that. Well, after the war I gave up the sea—and me with my Chief’s ticket and a good job—because a Brazilian told me that he only needed a young partner, with lots of energy and a knowledge of machinery, to develop his diamond mine. What’s the difference?
Don Luis cannot have expected that she would tell me so much. Or perhaps he didn’t mind. Argentines never quite understand the Paraguayans, who are nearly all of mixed blood whatever class they belong to. He may have been looking at the girl the wrong way up.
Put it this way! He had picked up a destitute Indian girl with a little white blood; if he placed her well, it would be considered—by his friends and customers—a lot kinder than letting her starve in the forest.
But call her an ordinary Paraguayan girl, decently educated by poor parents who chose to live at the back of beyond, and the thing was an outrage on humanity!
I did not know what to say to her. I could not tell her on so short an acquaintance to jump on a horse and come to me if the going got really rough. She was far too lost to understand whom she could trust. And, anyway, it was a delicate subject to approach. I felt she was so blooming innocent that she might not know what she was in for. Of course she knew. Any woman would. But it had taken her a long time to put her uneasiness into definite thoughts which she could talk over with herself.
What I was really afraid of was her submissiveness. She was so used to doing what her parents told her and then what the nuns told her that she went and did what Don Luis told her. She had not grown up at all. If she stayed at the Estrella de la Banda for long, Indian resignation was going to overcome Spanish pride. That, no doubt, was what Luis reckoned.
‘Do you want to go back to the convent?’ I asked her.
‘Not much,’ she said, giving me her first smile.
‘What can you do to earn a living?’
‘Cook,’ she answered, ‘and sew and look after a house.’
Well, that was that! Like so many old-fashioned girls, she could spend the rest of her life as somebody’s servant if she hadn’t any money, or as somebody’s wife if she had.
‘Where are you living?’
‘In a little house which Don Luis has lent me. There is a woman to look after me.’
A real professional he was! The only mistake he made was to exhibit her in the Estrella. If he hadn’t, she would never have seen that there was anything wrong at all. I doubted if I could even get any help from the parish priest. He wasn’t a man of the world, and would hesitate to believe the libellous accusations of a red-hot heretic when Don Luis subscribed heavily to the Church, and had provided the little waif with chaperon and all. As for the police, they would take the same point of view for less charitable reasons.
I had no intelligent suggestion to make—except that she should stick to lemonade—so I just sat with her till the place closed down, limiting my whisky to one every half hour and playing baby games with pencil and paper. Don Luis did not object. From time to time he would give me a grin and shake his head at me across the room. There was none of his high-class custom about.
The next afternoon the steamer arrived. By the time I had collected the electric pump I was waiting for and stowed it safely on a truck and had a meal, it was late and the Estrella was full. Besides the regulars there were a young Argentine off the train—very much the moneyed señorito—and a mixed bunch of passengers from the boat.
Don Luis had already fixed up Rosalinda with the likely young Argentine. She didn’t know the conventions of the place, and she left her escort with a polite little bow and came straight over to my table. He stared murder, half rose and thought better of it. I was a much bigger man, wearing my working clothes with the flies buzzing round the sweat stains. He couldn’t quite guess what he was up against. Mark you, I’ve said the Estrella was a high-class joint, and so it was compared to the other places of so-called amusement along the Paraná; but to well-dressed young gentlemen, fresh from Buenos Aires, we probably looked a lot of customers who would stand no nonsense.
I was getting along splendidly with Rosalinda. Bless her heart, she had forgotten her troubles enough to be flirtatious! Just a matter of eyes, of course. Nothing that she wouldn’t have done in her own home with proud mother looking on benevolently. And then she suddenly jumped up and cried:
‘Hilario!’
We were sitting at a little table at the unfashionable end of the Estrella, near the angle of the bar and wall. Hilario’s eyes must have been burning into us while he first watched from the entrance, and then walked the length of the room. It was the end of a long, desperate journey to his sister, during every hour of which he had imagined himself arriving too late. He did not kiss her or throw his arms round her. He was the kind of stern brother you read abo
ut in the Old Testament. I was his first objective. He said to me:
‘Outside!’
Rosalinda evidently thought this was the proper way for a brother to behave. She made no attempt to touch him until she had loosed off some quick explanations in Guarani. They had been brought up together in the loneliness of the forest, those two, and words were hardly necessary to them at all. A half sentence, an exclamation, a tone of voice could tell far more essentials than the usual forms of speech which you and I go through. Hilario begged me to forgive him, and, if I could not see my way to forget an unjust insult, to wait for him a little while until he had obliged the gentleman responsible for his agitation.
He was only about eighteen and looked extraordinarily like his sister—the same gentle, tender face with the features a little sharper and the mouth a little thinner. He was wearing the old-fashioned hat and poncho which you might see in Posadas on a fiesta. On working days, however, we wore coats and trousers like anyone else, with a few individualities in the way of boots and belts. Hilario and his manners belonged to the Latin-America of the last century.
‘Which is this Don Luis of whom I have heard?’ he asked me.
He felt it indelicate even to mention the name to his sister.
Luis had just come in from the kitchen—about the only place where his personal influence never did anything but good—and was standing near the other end of the bar, staring at the new arrival. He must have guessed who Hilario was—the resemblance to Rosalinda was so marked—but probably reckoned that a half-Indian boy, with a face made for women and the guitar, was not likely to give him much trouble.
They met in the upper half of the dance floor, and Hilario called him exactly what he was. Luis’s knife was out before the second syllable. I don’t know whether you have ever seen our up-country fighting. Srrr! Click! Ssssh! And it’s all over. One moment Luis was as fast as a hornet’s sting, and the next moment he was lying on the floor with his works coiling out around him and the flies beginning to come in from the kitchen. He had courage. He did not complain. That sort of thing was an occupational risk, I suppose.
Hilario’s face was still soft and courteous. He might have been apologising to the company for some outrageous favour which he had felt bound to extend to Don Luis. He had cut upwards and his hand had followed the knife. The blood was running down from his fist to the blade and dripping on the floor. You could hear it. That flash of red and silver under the hard white light hypnotised everyone into silence for a second or two. Rosalinda was already behind her brother—though I don’t quite know how she had got there. It was the only safe place in the whole world for her. She knew that instinctively.
No one—except Rosalinda—had moved yet, but Hilario had not a hope of reaching the front door. He backed towards the kitchen entrance alongside the bar. Out to his right flank the barman reached for a gun. We didn’t normally use such things in Posadas. It was the bar revolver—kept under the counter for emergencies alongside the lemons and the dishwater. I don’t believe in getting mixed up in foreign rows like a drunken fireman. Still, what was I to do? Hilario was the only chap who could produce a satisfactory solution for Rosalinda.
The barman was half turned away from me, and the soda-water siphon took him over the right ear. It was far too forcible a way of expressing my sympathies with a murderer’s sister, but I had nothing else handy. Disastrous! I tell you, I knew while that siphon was still in the air that the only future for me in Argentina was a long gaol sentence.
That broke the spell. A woman screeched. The room rose at us. The customers might have shrugged their shoulders and attended to their business, such as it was, if this affair had merely been a difference of opinion between two of them about an Estrella girl. But Don Luis was a prominent citizen, and he had been so very thoroughly killed.
If I’d had half a chance I would have slipped through the kitchen door and bolted. But Hilario and Rosalinda were blocking it. I caught a glimpse of the cook—he was a Syrian and a sensible man—sailing out through the window, and then I found myself cast for the part of Horatius on the Bridge while Hilario shoved Rosalinda out at the back and told her to run.
I wasn’t alone long enough for any heroism. I remember smashing a bottle on somebody, and getting in a right hook which hurt me quite as much as the other fellow. Then a chair broke on my head. I suppose the leg was rotten. Fortunately for me, Don Luis had never succeeded in keeping termites out of the furniture. I went down and, for an instant, out. The next thing I knew was Hilario dragging me out of the kitchen into the open.
That appalling knife of his seemed a bit wetter round the point, and he had managed to slam and lock the door behind us. The pursuit—this was all a matter of seconds—had not yet had time to disengage and run round the block to the back of the Estrella. There were only some shanties and a lane between us and the river bank; as soon as we were clear of them and had collected Rosalinda I was running rather than staggering.
After paddling himself across the Paraná, Hilario had left his canoe about two miles down stream. He hadn’t stopped to think. Indeed he had not thought at all during his journey on foot and horse and rail and river right across the length of Paraguay; he was just a moving blaze of anger. Posadas police hardly entered into his calculations at all. They preferred to spend their nights in decent gentlemanly idleness—but once their attention had been drawn to any undesirable character trying to escape from Argentina to Paraguay, stopping him was a routine job. They knew the river bank so thoroughly that they could count on picking us up and returning to their bottles before wives or waiters had time to clear away.
The night was dark; but one can see by starlight in these parts and spot a moving figure at twenty-five yards so long as it does move. There was no cover at all along the flood plain of the Paraná. Worse still, there were creeks and patches of marsh so that we could never race off into the Americas at large or even get very far from the tracks. To my mind our chance of reaching Hilario’s canoe was nil.
We just bolted along the river bank until we were stopped by a creek. We had to follow it up to its head, and that lost us our lead. Once round the creek, we had a choice of three tracks westwards—one north of a marsh and one south, and a third which ran down to the sands. We heard horses already cantering out from Posadas, and there was no time at all for hesitation.
We took the middle track north of the marsh. The going was good, and Rosalinda didn’t hold us back. She was not even shocked by all this savagery. Murder didn’t count when it was right. Just another example of her extraordinary innocence. She had kicked off her shoes and was running as free as a little twelve-year-old. Her education had not lasted long enough to soften the soles of her feet.
But it was the shoes which gave us away. The police troopers spotted them, lying bang in the middle of the right track. They did not have to split up and do a bit of scouting. They came on behind us like a charge of cavalry.
There was a small patch of open plain by the side of the track, and we dropped flat on it. When the pursuit—six of them—had thundered past, I began to have hopes of getting clear. The obvious move was to return to the head of the creek and try one of the other two routes. We had just reached the junction when back came the police. They must have reached some point—a customs post, I think—beyond which we could not have passed. Three of them were riding south of the marsh, and three north—at the same time quartering the narrow strip of plain where we had lain down and covering the third track to the sands.
In the direction of Posadas were more lights, carried by such of the sporting citizenry as were attracted by the chance of a free shot at human game. No hope for us there, either—so we cut down into the angle between the creek and the Paraná where our first dash from the town had landed us.
The whole of the hunt gradually converged upon our corner. I thought this was an unfortunate accident until a launch drifted down from Posadas and began to search the water’s edge with its light to prevent us swim
ming away. The police knew exactly where we were. Long experience and elimination of all the possibilities.
‘Why do they not bring nets?’ Hilario whispered bitterly. He was hurt at being treated as something only fit for the taxidermist. After all, he knew that he was a harmless and honourable boy on all occasions when convention did not call for murder.
The advancing line, with one flank on the Paraná and the other on the creek, became shorter as it approached us. There was not a hope of breaking through. To judge by the lights, the gap between man and man was about forty yards and rapidly lessening. It was then that I began to see stars, and ascribed them to the crack I had received over the skull. It’s not what a man really feels which finishes him, but what he thinks he feels. Just because there was a sickening, patternless mess of lights in front of my eyes, I was ready to pass out. I told Rosalinda and Hilario to slip through the line if they saw the remotest chance, and leave me.
They were whispering excitedly in Guarani, and seemed unreasonably hopeful.
‘But why? Why give up now?’ Rosalinda asked me.
There was a sob of disappointment in her voice, just as if I had refused her something which she had set her heart on, when all the rest of her world agreed.
I tried to pull myself together, and noticed that some of the lights, instead of dancing in front of my eyes, were stationary in Rosalinda’s hair.
Then I understood. There had been a hatch of fireflies on the river flats. The muggy weather and the hot north wind had brought on the one day in twenty-eight that I was telling you about. They might have been ants or flies or these savage-looking fellows which you seem to have forgotten about for the moment; but they happened to be beetles—fireflies.
Beautiful? I don’t know whether it was or not. It was mad. I tell you that there wasn’t a cubic foot of air—literally—without a firefly in it. You couldn’t see. No wonder I thought I was fainting! It was like—well, I’ve often tried to describe it to myself. Imagine yourself infinitely small and suspended in a cylinder of gas! Imagine the hot molecules rushing about and cannoning into each other. No, it wasn’t beautiful.
Capricorn and Cancer Page 7