Afterlands (43 page)

Sargento
Tyson! You’re hoping to switch sides yet again? Your last choice seems to have been a poor one! And your men, they missed you greatly—many of them fell tonight, along the south part of the wall.

Most of them were ridden down, by you.

Cowards, one and all, Ortiz says irritably.

What about Mateo? Is he—

He played no part in the victory. This afternoon he drank from the river, against orders. Old habits, I suppose. He may live.

Kruger absorbs this, then says—can’t stop himself from saying—Do you have any water?

So, this is about water! Yes, I’m afraid the local water is not fit for a dog. And it was a hot day, no? The Sinas fought quite well, considering. But it must be rather … awkward now in the church, I suppose?

I need to speak with Colonel Luz.

Like the cholera, I should think, Ortiz says with his double smile. And you can speak with me.

I’ve been instructed to speak with the colonel. It’s about a surrender.

You allow yourself to be “instructed” by
indios
! He snickers, and the sentries dutifully join in. This inflates him further. Why, you even dress like them now!

The Sinas are prepared to surrender.

Kruger watches the man in the firelight which, as always, illuminates features and feelings that could be missed in daylight, with its less subtle angles and tones. Clearly Ortiz would like to negotiate this surrender himself, now; he suspects he might get away with it but is worried that his superior will be angry; he is deciding that he had better consult
El Capitán
after all.

Thrusting his jaw he says, Very well, come this way.

I need water. Kruger’s voice is faint. Ortiz ignores him. Spurs jingling he roosters off, at a pace he must know will be difficult for Kruger. But it isn’t far. Luz’s command post is in one of the few undamaged houses in the village—the usual flat-roofed, one-storey adobe hut with a front awning of wood and straw, and for windows a vertical slit to either side of the door. Ortiz raps sharply, cocks his ear, then lets himself in while the sentries stand back from Kruger, aiming their bayonets at his ribs, timidly dodging his eyes. They look about twelve years old.

¿Tienen agua?
Kruger asks them.
_¡
Por favor!

The boys exchange rattled glances. Ortiz bursts importantly through the door and with a leer of ridicule he looks Kruger up and down, then nods toward the opening. He draws his long-barrelled revolver and steps aside, keeping the gun trained on Kruger as Kruger enters. Then he follows him in. The one-room house has been made to look exactly like Luz’s command tent: stools set neatly around the folding table, the lamplit map squared on the table and held open by books, a bottle with a clean rank of glasses, and, draped from the ceiling toward the back of the room, two sheets of canvas curtaining off the bedquarters. Back there a second lamp is glowing, a familiar figure looming in silhouette. No horns.

A sabre pokes through the gap between the canvas drapes and sweeps to the right, parting them wide. Luz, looking fresh and alert, glides through. From the waist up he is naked except for white suspenders, white kid gloves. His hard torso is oiled with sweat. His broad, scholarly forehead shines too, flushed against the steel-grey helmet of hair, his wire-rimmed pince-nez. At his solar plexus is a diamond-shaped scar, as from a spear. He wears his revolver. He has been exercising, clearly, but is not out of breath.

Mr George Tyson, welcome, he says in English. The lieutenant advises me that you have come to arrange a capitulation.
_¡
Teniente Ortiz—espera afuera!

Ortiz stiffens.
_¡
Si, mi coronel!
He backs out the doorway but remains there at attention, looking in.

I must have some water, Kruger says.

Do you care for a glass of port? Luz sheathes the sabre. I keep a bottle here for my officers. I myself do not drink, or eat meat.

Just water. Please.

He feels the weight of the little knife as he speaks.

Yes, says Luz, you must need some by now. All of you. He shakes his head, frowning slightly. My lieutenant took matters into his own hands today. Normally this tactic would be a last resort, so as to end a long siege and avert further loss of life. He is a very poor lieutenant.
_¡
Teniente—trae agua buena!

Ortiz blinks, then pivots on his rowelled heel and strides into the dark. A few seconds later, long seconds, one of the child sentries shuffles in quickly with a sloshing bucket in one hand, a tin cup in the other. Luz nods. The boy sets the wooden bucket in front of Kruger’s toes and then, trembling, saluting Luz with averted eyes, he backs away fast, out the door. Kruger crumples to his knees; he scoops up water and thrusts it to his open lips, slurping with violence, spilling half the cupful, and for this long moment he cares about nothing, nobody else, all he’s aware of is the rapture of that precious, tepid fluid flooding down the
arroyo
of his seared throat, trickling down through his beard. He glances up at Luz, who is closing the door in Ortiz’s staring face.
Don’t take it away
, he thinks,
please!
He scoops again, again soaking his beard, but this time he drinks more carefully, getting more down. He drinks a third and a fourth and a fifth cup.

Don’t drink any more, Luz commands softly. Not yet. You would be ill, and we have some matters to discuss. You say those in the church are willing to emerge without further resistance?

Yes, Señor.

He must get closer to Luz. He wipes his mouth and nose and stands up—then sneezes. The little knife tumbles out of his wet beard and plunks into the bucket.

Luz’s lean jaw seems to flex. His eyes peer with deep irony from behind the pince-nez.

Well, apparently you did not come here merely to negotiate a surrender.

Somewhere a rooster crows prematurely and goes on doing it. Luz studies him.

In fact, however—and contrary to what you may believe—you did not come here to kill me, either. In fact, you have come here simply to save your own life.

This is unnecessary, Kruger says.

Probably you are not even aware of it yourself. And this has fascinated me—how men, even intelligent men, can persuade themselves that they are acting with principle in mind, when in fact they are merely indulging their animal natures. I took notice that you drank this water with exceptional, what is the word, relish. This water and the survival it entails, this in fact is what you came for. Lieutenant Ortiz furnishes a clearer example. He declares to me, and doubtless to himself, that he serves with me in order to clear this region of its primitive insurgents, and allow our nation to have its future among other modern nations. He declares that he serves the valid causes of progress and prosperity. In fact, he is merely a vain dandy, a, what is the English word, a cock, coax …

Coxcomb.

A coxcomb—thank you—hankering after a brilliant uniform, a commission, some decorations. A touch of glory, as aphrodisiac. Poorly armed adversaries and facile conquests. Tonight was a shock to him. We encountered real resistance. In the plaza his mount was shot out from under him, whereupon a Sina housewife very nearly impaled him with a hayfork while he lay helpless. She herself was shot only at the last moment.

With his gloved hand Luz unholsters his revolver. His eyes swing down to it for a moment, the rest of him unmoving. Then his eyes light again on Kruger’s face.

I know that you are a man of some thought, Mr Tyson. A part of you must have known that you could hardly kill me with this little knife. Last night you could not even achieve it with a sword.

Kruger says, If thoughtful men fool themselves, how can you be sure you aren’t just like Ortiz?

Luz’s chin lifts very slightly.

And why should I think, Kruger says, that you believe any of those things either? Progress, prosperity, wealth. I’ve read the Presidente’s broadsides too—nailed to the door of every cantina in La Paz. You know as well as I do, Diaz cares only for his power. And whether you know it or not, you, like him, are working for the railroad firm.

No.

How flattering to be seen as the Lamp of the Future—a father to those boys!

Luz’s eyes gleam. He bares that array of tended teeth. You think that they want anything else?

Given a chance to live till adulthood, who knows.

People do not grow up, Luz says firmly. There are no adults. Very few adults.

What about you?

The only adults are those who can turn to advantage the natural childishness of the mob. They thus become the parent of the mob. A parent who provides, who protects, who
improves
, who thus in turn begins the long work of elevating it to adulthood. I do in fact believe in these things we speak of, Mr Tyson. Like you, I am by nature an idealist—though by necessity a soldier. I care little for wealth or railroad money. I am not even much of a patriot. Fundamentally I despise the disorder I perceive here, the ignorance and barbarous suffering that ensue from it.

The Sinas are hardly barbarians. You must know that.

Luz regards him with that fixed smile.

I find I rather enjoy this, Mr Tyson. Here I have nobody to speak to. To speak to in this way, I mean.

Kruger says nothing.

In fact, you are correct. I have some respect for the Indians, and the Sina most peculiarly. Their language I respect. They are not without culture. Their time here, however, is finished. Civilization will not realize its entire moral and intellectual possibilities until it has purged itself of all these, how shall I phrase it, these
infantile
elements which constantly revert it into the past. Dirt and superstition and primitive ritual.
Nostalgie de la boue
. Imagine, Mr Tyson, an ordered and rational civilization all of adults! A society where, for example, all men can read and write. Where people like your shipmates will not die of the cholera, because of the wretched condition of our towns. It may be possible, in a future we strive towards. For now, alas, we must pragmatically
exploit
the primitive, as with my own illiterate troops, so as to advance the futurist cause.

Luz holds up the revolver and extrudes the cylinder, examining and spinning and clicking it back into place. The muscles of his arm bulge and knot: a perfectly tooled physique.

Now, in choosing to side with the Indians, you exhibit a curious sentimentality and nostalgia. I find it difficult to understand such self-indulgings in a man who appears otherwise intelligent. Men like you, Mr Tyson—men like you have no notion of the suffering your liberal decencies inflict over time!

Numbly Kruger sees the knife in the bottom of the bucket, the water magnifying it into a more plausible weapon. Through his pince-nez Luz transfixes him with eyes as blue as Kruger’s own. The whites are very white. He has grown almost animated.

In fact there are men of thought, and there are men of initiative—of activity. Rarely, one finds men who combine these two properties—men who, upon reaching a hard conclusion by irresistible logic, will then set it into practice, dispassionately, impersonally, like the great Stoic emperor Aurelius, having to deal with the Christians. These are the Adults.

Men like you.

You, however, are a man of thought exclusively. That is why you were unable to use the sword last night. Similarly, you consider the merits of the Sina—I don’t deny that they have them—and refuse to face the cruel necessities of progress. In essence the Indians are children, subsisting in the ancient districts of imagination, not fact, not history, and they must be forced to grow up, or forcibly removed. Still, they cannot help being what they are, and in this they exhibit a certain rude integrity. You, however, have made a free choice, a foolish one. Though not necessarily fatal.

Luz cocks the revolver. Kruger remains calm, empty. He has often wondered what has caused more death and pain through history: the brutish lack of any ideas, or the ideas themselves. Luz might find this paradox intriguing, but Kruger can’t bring himself to speak, to participate.

You remain unconvinced, says Luz, pleased. He takes three steps toward Kruger, his left hand reaching to grip the barrel of the cocked revolver he holds in his right. With his left he turns the gun around and passes it, steel handle first, to Kruger. Kruger receives it and stares dumbstruck at the weapon in his hand, then at Luz, whose face at close range, shaved perfectly blue, is all irony, deep sardonic creases around the mouth.

Luz bows slightly and with arch formality takes two steps back, leaving a smell of lye and clean sweat in the air.

You came here to save yourself, Mr Tyson, and I shall permit this. I shall permit you, in fact, simply to walk away. However, you told yourself that you came here to assassinate me. And this also I permit. However, you cannot do it. Men are consistent—a matter of science. I stopped you with my will last night and as I look into your face at this time, I perceive it again—you see in me your leader. I have earned you, Mr Tyson. And this, in fact, is what men want, always. I sense that you have been deeply, how shall I phrase this now, deeply
lonely
, no doubt for a long time. How terribly men need something to adhere to, Mr Tyson! A church, a people, a land, a flag—a leader. A leader above all. As for the leader himself, if he is a true one, a true Adult, he needs only an idea to which to adhere. I think that you understand this, for you yourself, I think, are something of a leader, if undeveloped as yet. So I offer you a third and final choice: a commission in my army. A chance to become more than merely a man of thoughts. Frankly, Mr Tyson, you would be a great relief to me, Ortiz is such a … Luz grins dryly as he locates the word: a
coxcomb
. Like a young Santa Anna. To Ortiz and his ilk, conquest is merely a form of … of sadistic theatre. To me, it is moral science.

If I join you now—Kruger senses, even smells, the luscious water at his feet; maybe Luz was not totally wrong in his accusation?—would you leave the village in peace? What’s left of it?