A Covenant with Death (28 page)

“The hell with them,” Dietrich said. “You, Oliver?”

“Good idea,” Parmelee said. “Seven-thirty?” We nodded. He smiled again. “It's on me,” he said, and they went back to their chairs.

I adjourned court, and stepped sedately to my chambers, and went straight to the bathroom, where I sat retching on an empty stomach for half an hour.

18

To have left town immediately might have seemed cowardice, or at least timidity, and I confess to curiosity too, so I strolled the city more than usual that week. “You let him off,” Geronimo said. We were lazing in front of his store and nipping an execrable soda pop.

“I didn't let him off. I gave him justice. This stuff is awful.”

“You want some whiskey?”

“No.” I lit a cigar instead.

“Where is he now?”

“Gone. For good.” This was Wednesday, and Talbot had moved along, out of our lives. He had called on me the day before, at my office, shaken hands with John and then with me, sat down, lit a cigarette, and launched a tedious speech of thanks. “You don't have to do that, you know,” I told him. “What was done was done not for you but for all of us. You were the beneficiary, and I'm happy for you; but even the District Attorney didn't want to hang you.”

“He could have tried, though,” Talbot said, owlish and reflective behind his glasses.

“Yes. But you still see the law as a weapon. I don't blame you, after that first trial, and I admit that it has a tendency to become a weapon, but I hope you'll remember that it's also a shield.”

“A shield.” He was in tan gabardine, with a white shirt and a flowery brown necktie; quite managerial, a vice-president in charge of. “Well, I'm not so sure. I can still see Willie Waite looking at me as if I didn't exist.”

“Yes. To him, you didn't. Your existence had been canceled by other people. I don't have to apologize for that A miscarriage of justice is something like a lost battle. It's hard to assign blame. I'll tell you what I am sorry for: that you had to kill. Not because of the law; just because—well, because it's not something that a man ought to be forced to live with. I hope that won't haunt you, and I think part of my decision was directed at you: for you to remember, and sleep well. Bruce Donnelley killed Willie. Remember that.”

He nodded. “I'll be all right.”

“What do you plan to do now?”

“I'm leaving tomorrow,” he said. “California. I've got a new idea for making ice.” He perked up and raised a professional finger. “Cheap manufacture of ice. Wholesale, or bags full of cubes, things like that. It—”

“I wish you luck.”

“Yes.” He saw that commercial discussions were not in order, and he rose and stood before me, the Americano, the little man, the booster and the go-getter; and then we shook hands and he thanked me once more and left, migrated, disappeared into the vast national limbo to find his level and have his picture taken for trade magazines. Exit Bryan Talbot, who had shaken the foundations. The Colonel had also spoken with him, and duly reported. “So you let him off.”

“And what would you have done?”

“I'm not a judge,” he said complacently.

“No,” I said, and checked a savage comment; why bother?

“Amazing, that one woman could make so much trouble.” He glowered.

“It was hardly her fault.”

“She was a temptress.”

After a time I said, “Colonel, I want you to do me a favor, and listen to a miserable lieutenant.”

“Your servant,” he said.

“Louise Talbot was a temptress to you. And to Bruce Donnelley. Remember: there but for the grace of God went Sebastian Oates of the Carolina Oateses.” He flushed slightly and looked fierce. “To Talbot she was a wife and all in all a good one, and the most beautiful woman in the world. To that young fellow she was a mistress and all in all a good one, and they giggled and she told him lies and he believed them. To her parents she was a daughter and all in all a good one, and a wronged woman. To my mother she was a face in the crowd, but possibly a woman who had been hurt, badly misjudged, forced to play a part she wasn't suited to. There was truth in her and falsehood, and there was truth and falsehood in every separate opinion of her. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and she was many different women, the more so because she knew it. And she had a sad time and not too many people ever went out of their way to make her happy. So judge not, that ye be not judged.”

“I'm not a judge,” he said again.

“Yes you are,” I said. “You judge every day of your life, and you judge by the rather narrow views of a retired army officer and a stuffy patrician. I said judge not, that ye be not judged, and there's only one way to avoid that trap, and that is, if you have to judge, judge yourself first. I don't believe you've ever done that.”

“You are an impertinent puppy,” he said. “I shall tell Eulalia.”

“Eulalia worships me,” I said lightly, “and will not take kindly to criticism,” which made him very grumpy.

Saturday morning I packed my white linen suit and my father's string tie, and hired a car and pointed it west. I reached Ignacio's at about four-thirty and as I stepped out of the car Rafaela appeared on the veranda. She flowed down to meet me, and we kissed formally. “Where is your mother?” she asked.

“I am alone this time,” I said. “I want to talk to Ignacio. Business.” I tucked her hand into the crook of my elbow and we strolled slowly. “Are you well?” I asked.

“Yes, very. You?”

“Very. Now.”

We approached the fishpond; stately, we were, and calm, almost courtly, and my heart beat strongly as I wondered if all things were understood. We seemed to have nothing to say; perhaps nothing needed saying. We took a turn about the pond and went to the house. She ordered refreshment and sent a child for my bag. Soon Ignacio caromed in, hawking and spluttering in pleasure, and Rafaela made as if to leave us, but I asked her to stay and said we could discuss serious things later. We chatted, and I told them about Talbot, and Ignacio was impressed; his experience of judges was less happy, and his idea of gringo justice was not flattering.

I changed for dinner and was pleased at my image in the glass: the suit and the old-fashioned tie were becoming, and in my face I thought I saw a new repose and perhaps a new power. Rafaela was gravely suspicious but obviously taken with me; I had the air of an hidalgo of thirty years before, and I escorted her gravely to the table. We ate fine mutton from the best plates and drank Ignacio's wine from splendid goblets, and the candlelight flickered; I half expected a guitarist to emerge from the shadows. It was all warm and elegant, and Ignacio was so caught up in the regal mood that he became intelligible.

When coffee and brandy had been served, and a box of cigars placed at his left, he said, “Now. What is this business?”

“I have come to ask the high honor of your daughter's hand in marriage,” I said, and he choked and turned scarlet and emitted lallations.

“What!” Rafaela said passionately. “You have not asked
me
!”

I stared intently across the candles at her and said, “I have been asking you every day since you were ten years old. But I did not understand the question until now. Does a man ask the sun to rise? I have loved you as a man loves the sun, unknowingly because the sun never fails him, and I have loved you for many years,” in a deep and slow voice, and in the finest Spanish because only that was as beautiful as she was.

She drew a long, audible breath, as if sudden pain had assailed her; her face softened and her eyes glistened; and then she favored this poor forked worm with two melting words, “How beautiful,” and a smile that may have been the one Adam saw just before he chomped down on the apple. Then I could not speak, and only sat gazing ravenously at her dark loveliness and gli occhi di venere, gli occhi di venere.

“But it is you who honor us!” Ignacio shouted. I had forgotten him. “The eminent American jurist! Bringing us such honor!” And then he remembered his manners and yelled, “Paco! Paco!” and when Paco came dashing in from the kitchen Ignacio said, “Take this horsepiss away and bring us the eighteen-twelve!” Then he gave himself over to beaming and chuckling, and got up to kiss me, and kissed Rafaela, and sat down again and bubbled.

“I'll get fat,” Rafaela said.

“Please. Oh, please get fat. But slowly.” And I was drunker then than I would ever be, and even the eighteen-twelve was like water because Rafaela was all the liquor I would ever need.

Ignacio had one worry, which he confided to me later when we were alone. “I understand,” he said fretfully, and halted. “That is. What I mean to say.”

“Yes, my father?”

“Well,” he said. “Well, then. I have heard that the gringos use two beds. One for the man and one for the woman. I ask you now, as one man to another, is that reasonable?”

“Don Ignacio,” I said, “I am no gringo,” and he exuberated.

Then Paco ran into the room and blurted that Pancho Villa had been assassinated that day, and waited like a bumpkin for Ignacio to say something. So did I. Ignacio went pale and stared into the candle flame, and finally said, “He was a man, and men die,” and then in outrage, “but how could it happen on this great day? Why today? Why?”

“Bad news,” my mother said as I stepped into the house. “Pancho Villa was assassinated.”

“I know,” I said. “I heard. Rafaela and I are being married on the tenth.” She stood like an idiot.

Finally she said, “Rafaela who?”

“You heard me,” I said, and she let out a whoop. She did Ignacio's work for him, the announcements and such, and was full of advice on handling Mexican women—I ignored it—and neglected no opportunity to express snobbish approval, which I rebuked. But as the day approached her high spirits drooped, and when President Harding died she wept, which was hysterical because she had not cared for him. But I knew what was wrong: she was losing her son, and with him her motherhood and many years of her life; to be at once evicted and reminded forcefully of her own mortality was not easy. I was kinder then, and took her to the movies and played euchre with her.

Rafaela and I were married in my house by Judge Hochstadter, in the presence of my mother, Ignacio, Mrs. Emily Hochstadter, John Digby, George and Fanny Chillingsworth, Sebastian Oates, Bernard Goldman, and Mr. and Mrs. Juano Menéndez. Edgar Musgrave wrote it up for his newspaper. The Governor sent a telegram and promised a party later. The ladies cried and John gave us two ceremonial silver drinking cups that had belonged to his father. Rafaela wore white lace two hundred years old and was straight out of Cervantes, or Velásquez: her face a cameo, pale, the dark eyes hot and the skin of her face glowing and silken to my fingertips, and then the slightly dizzying décolleté of the old-fashioned gown, and the tiny waist, and the petit-point slippers; John could barely speak, and Fanny kept an eye on George when he kissed the bride. So did I. Then we had a drink and everybody kissed everybody else, or almost, and Rafaela and I held hands and slipped away as soon as we could, leaving our guests to their maudlin revels. “My mother is going to Spain for a year,” I said. “In November. When she comes back she will live with us.”

Rafaela was puzzled. “And?”

“And nothing. I just wanted you to know.”

She was still puzzled. “But where else? Where else should she live?”

“We will have to make less noise at night,” I said sternly.

She smiled demurely: “Yes, my husband,” and then she said, “in the afternoons, too,” and bit my lip.

There was more celebrating in the fall, when the Governor gave a reception for us. He said it was the only way he could get Eulalia alone. We drove to the capital, where Ignacio admired the skyscrapers, all of six stories high, and that evening we arrived at the Governor's mansion in full panoply; Ignacio too, like a Sancho Panza elevated to the peerage. Rafaela wore cloth of gold, and was a princess; the women fluttered and cooed, and Rafaela, my voracious little baggage, was all charm and innocence. When the Governor was not dancing with Eulalia or fetching her punch he was arguing with Ignacio, the two of them snorting and thundering like Mutt and Jeff in a new language, a bastard Spanish-English and a triumph of the human imagination. The Governor had made the mistake of mentioning land reform, and my reactionary father-in-law boiled over. “You should know,” he warned me later, “that your Governor is an anarcho-syndicalist.” It was good of the Governor to do all this for us, and I thought I saw a more generous motive still: he was telling the state that he too had acquitted a murderer. But even there I underestimated him. Late in the evening he hustled me into his study, an oak-paneled room with a fireplace and a desk and three and a half walls of mounted heads, crossed sabers, and racked rifles. In a moment we were joined by State Senator Deming, a small, extremely old man with severe blue eyes and a drooping white mustache from the 1880s. The Governor introduced us. “How do you do,” the Senator said. “May I congratulate you. Your bride is an extremely beautiful woman and the essence of femininity. I hope you will have many daughters because women these days are going downhill. Do not let them bob their hair.”

“Thank you,” I said, and we were silent for a time, three generations. The Governor opened a cabinet and extracted three small glasses and a decanter, and poured. We held our glasses to the light while he said, “To the bride,” and I said, “To our fathers that begat us,” and Deming said, “To the three branches gathered here,” and then we drank.

Deming spoke to the Governor: “Will you tell him, or shall I?”

“You tell him,” the Governor said.

“Very well.” To me he said, “We have a wedding present for you. With the Governor's support I am about to introduce a bill making capital punishment optional with judge and jury, and not mandatory. It is a step toward civilization and I think it will pass. I shall refer to it in my speech as the Lewis Bill. I am very proud of you because this country is going to hell but you are not.”