The Three Sentinels (19 page)

‘I cannot help you, Rafael. I am as angry as you, but I am a servant of the Company.’

‘If I cannot find a safe place for him I must kill him.’

‘There is no safe place here.’

‘Yes. An empty silo. He cannot climb out. And I can feed him and talk to him. You need know nothing.’

‘But if he calls for help someone will hear him.’

‘There is no place where your men do not come?’

‘Of course there isn’t. Do you give me your word that in the end you will let him go?’

‘Yes, I swear. I will send him out secretly by land with food and water and a guide for the first part of the track. After that he must take his chance.’

‘Well, that’s more than he deserves. A silo won’t do, Rafael, but I have a cellar under the shed where I keep my seedlings. What sort of man is he?’

‘A kind of anarchist, but valiant and well-spoken.’

‘Not a man to break all my pots in a rage?’

‘He has destroyed so much, I think, that he would not break things meanly for fun. He will stay there calmly, planning how to escape.’

‘Then come and see my dungeon and tell me if it will do.’

It had been a cistern in the early days of the farm. Uriarte had built over it a laboratory-cum-potting-shed for his own private hobby: the introduction from more temperate zones of flowering
shrubs able to flourish under the partial shade of eucalyptus or in the patios of the town. A light, steel ladder led down from the shed to the cistern, which had a cool, even temperature and
adjustable ventilation. The walls of smooth concrete were ten feet high.

‘Pull up the ladder, and he can’t climb out of there!’ Uriarte said.

‘I’ll go and fetch him. Don’t be alarmed at his appearance, Don Manuel! It is nothing but blood and oil, and he shall be washed before we put him down.’

El Vicario, who had been ruthlessly suppressed in the bottom of the truck, seemed puzzled by the civilized comfort of the house to which he had been taken and was most deferential to the good
fellow who fussed over him with the farm’s first aid box. At the same time his eyes searched doors and windows. Rafael observed that he had slipped one hand free from its binding though still
holding them both together.

‘You told me this was the safety catch,’ he remarked, pushing it forward with a click.

Uriarte led the three into his potting shed, opened the trap door over the cistern and went down the ladder with a rubber mattress, bread, cheese, water and a bottle of wine.

‘Most kind!’ El Vicario said, looking down into his prison. ‘But permit me to remind you that I shall have no corkscrew.’

Uriarte apologised for his thoughtlessness and added more sternly:

‘I only do this to save your life. May I ask you to respect my plants?’

‘If, as I suspect, you won’t trust yourself down there alone with me and if you will lower a can with your instructions I will not only respect them but water them for
you.’

‘Enough words!’ Antón exclaimed. ‘Down, son of a whore, and may you rot there!’

Uriarte undid the prisoner’s hands and feet. Covered by his own automatic and the Mayor’s formidable revolver, El Vicario shrugged his shoulders and went down the ladder. Rafael
pulled it up behind him, slammed the trap door into place and quickly fixed a bolt to it.

‘Thank you a thousand times, Don Manuel,’ he said. ‘I shall come tomorrow. But now we must hurry to return the truck.’

The party drove back without lights, for starshine on the straight road past the communal lands was enough. Rafael told the driver to stop short of the town, intending to leave the truck there,
but Antón could never resist a chance to show contempt.

‘El Vicario told us where the truck was left for him. There is no better place and we will put it back there. We have only to pass behind the Town Hall and then down the backs of the shops
towards the port. Never a policeman there! And González himself will be watching the quay.’

‘As you wish,’ Rafael answered, weary of command. ‘I shall get out here and go home. Until tomorrow!’

He was overcome by tiredness and careless with El Vicario’s pistol. He flung it down with his clothes at the foot of the couch in the living-room which had become his bed. The bedroom
where he had slept with Catalina had been handed over to Chepe. He felt that the memories which to him were intolerable might mean to Chepe a continuing security, the next best thing to Catalina
herself.

The boy was sound asleep clutching against his cheek his very private object, small, shapeless and black with dirt. It had been an absorbent pad taken from his mother’s drawer, but was now
hardly recognisable. Chepe had tied a string round one end so that it could be imagined to have a head and body. Rafael, when he first noticed it and realised what it was, wanted to throw it away.
That was the only time he had ever reduced Chepe to hysterical resistance.

He overslept heavily. Chepe was already up, tip-toeing about. Forbidden to use the stove, he had laid out the fruit and bread for breakfast and picked up his father’s clothes as Catalina
used to do. When Rafael at last opened his eyes, Chepe had the automatic in his hands, fascinated by such sleek, smooth blackness with all sorts of little purposeful protuberances. Rafael snatched
it away from him, thankful for that not too obvious safety catch.

‘Where did you get it, papacito?’

‘From a friend whom you do not know.’

‘It is for killing people if they are no use?’

‘It is for killing people, but, man …’

‘Like Gil Delgado?’

‘No, not like Gil Delgado.’

‘Like Captain González?’ Chepe persisted.

‘It is true that he is no use. But one must remember he has children.’

‘If he didn’t have children, would you kill him?’

‘Not if he leaves us in peace.’

‘Don Mateo has no children.’

‘Don Mateo has nothing!’ Rafael replied in a sudden burst of resentment. ‘And he is nothing. Nothing but eyes!’

‘But if you killed him, he would be dead like our mother.’

‘Of course he’d be dead,’ Rafael answered impatiently.

Chepe was silent and got on with his breakfast. He knew very well that if you killed people they were dead; but, as it were, in theory only. His mother was dead, and the Company had killed her;
that was an article of faith. He was going to kill González when he was big enough; that was another article of faith. But then there would be no González, never any more
González. He was overcome by the shock of reality, that second birth at seven years old as startling as the first. The dream of killing revealed itself as the grim fact of death. Don Mateo
had become part of his universe. Yet to his father Don Mateo was no use, and nothing could be done about it.

Rafael plodded along the road to the Company Farm, quite unaware that Catalina’s humming bird had sufEered a change as irreversible as if the safety catch had been off, and was regarding
its fallen wings in a passion of tears inexplicable to itself. He regretted his flash of invective against the General Manager—not that Chepe, accustomed to be talked to as if he were an
equal companion, would take an early-morning mood seriously, but Don Mateo was a grave and gigantic friend.

He understood to perfection this affair going on under his nose, and was very proud that his son was irresistible. He and Catalina used to dream of the quick, honourable man he might become and
how far he would go beyond a simple carpenter in an oil field. And then the gentleness of Don Mateo, which exasperated him because he had no very clear answer to it, had a humorous geniality when
directed to his son. All his companions appreciated the irony and innocence of it though Rafael had never mentioned the incident which started it off.

He found Manuel Uriarte busy weighing piglets and disinclined for conversation. Evidently he regretted that he had been bounced into acting as an amateur gaoler and was anxious to disassociate
himself from the whole unsavoury business. At last he took Rafael on one side and gave him the key of the potting shed, telling him to lock it behind him and keep his voice low. He would come along
later, he said, and supply whatever was wanted for the prisoner’s comfort.

Rafael opened the trap door and found El Vicario entertaining himself by making a chessboard with little piles of lime and soot.

‘Breakfast will be coming. Is there anything else you need?’

‘Something to piss in, mate. I have done my best to be decent but all the flower pots have holes in the bottom. And I must remind you that I have one too.’

‘The devil! We are not experienced, and with all that excitement …’

He searched the shed and lowered a bucket and some newspaper on the end of a string.

‘Many thanks! And now, if it is not secret, tell me where I am.’

‘At the Company Farm which you wished to destroy.’

‘I? What makes you think that? For me, all of us should live on the land or at a craft.’

The man had something about him of a salesman at a fair—gallantly self-confident, but one doubted if he could be telling the truth. Rafael explained shortly and contemptuously what effect
the destruction of the Charca would have on the boycott.

‘And so this Charca is not the main water supply after all?’

‘Of course not! Our water comes from high in the mountains.’

‘Your Union said not a word of that or of farms. They told me that without its water the Company must surrender.’

‘It’s true you do not ask questions! And when they paid you to return and take away the explosives what did they say then?’

‘Nothing. I supposed the Company had made it worth their while. Those dirty little caciques will always change their minds for money. Why are they against you?’

‘They are socialists. They said the State was right. So we threw them in the harbour. Here we are in Cabo Desierto, not Russia!’

‘Are the Sentinels guarded by the police or the Company?’

‘Neither. I hold them.’

‘Then why are they still there, mate?’

‘It is impossible—even if one were to cut off the Christmas Tree with a blow torch.’

‘For a professional nothing is impossible. When your men get tired of keeping me alive, remember that!’

‘My men will do what I tell them.’

‘Sometimes before you tell them. Another inch and your friend’s knife would have been in my liver.’

‘And why not? A little lesson for your employers!’

Rafael dropped the hatch. He sat down outside the shed waiting for Uriarte and cursing this irrepressible Spaniard who forced on him a brutality which was not in his character. Besides that, it
was going to be most difficult to feed him with servants about in the kitchen and the house. For the time being Uriarte settled that problem by ordering a large breakfast for Rafael and himself
carrying it off to the potting shed. The only satisfaction in the whole awkward business was the ingenious sling which Rafael knotted for lowering the tray intact, coffee and all. Mercy was proving
too much trouble. It might possibly be repaid at the cost of letting the devil loose; but the effect of that was as incalculable as keeping him where he was.

The morning brought no news of El Vicario. He had vanished over some horizon of his own as completely as
Rosita
into the Pacific. González found some blood on
the floor of the truck—not enough, he thought, for any serious wound, but without laboratory analysis of the oily dirt it was impossible to be sure. The temperature of the field, which Mat
had tried so hard to keep under control, was—well, one couldn’t say that it was rising, but there were too many unknowns in the furnace. Birenfield, with echoes of Dave Gunner’s
ponderous whispers in his ears, was already responsible for two probable murders and the presence of a hundred and fifty kilos of gelignite which, please God, nobody had found or would find. Yet
there was no proof at all of his complicity. As for Garay, if he didn’t kill Lorenzo, it was a hundred to one that he knew who did and why. He might already be feeling the cornered animal
against which Luis Solano had given his warning.

At Mat strolled back to his house for lunch he was aware of Chepe dodging in and out of the palms and shrubs behind him. He could not be sure whether the boy wanted to talk or whether he was
merely observing his hero at a distance. He decided to walk on and leave it to the boy to do fearlessly whatever he had come up the hill to do.

On the bare bit of road between the executive ghetto and his house Chepe was still following and could no longer pretend he wasn’t; so Mat turned and walked back to him. The boy had none
of his usual confidence. He only murmured a reply to cheerful greetings and immediately pulled a small and filthy lump from inside his shirt, thrusting it into Mat’s hands. His eyes were on
the ground—an entirely new and bashful Chepe—except for a second when he lifted them to Mat’s face with what was plainly an appeal. Then, again unlike any known Chepe, he ran.

The whole act was untranslatable. If Mat had been dealing with an adult who looked at him with the same expression and the same slight air of guilt, he would have assumed the man was desperately
trying to say ‘keep this safe for me’, as if the police were after him and his only chance was to hand over to a stranger. But who the devil was going to take it, whatever it was, away
from Chepe and why should he want to get rid of it?

The thought intruded, instantly to be dismissed, that the object might blow up. Mat pinched it. There was nothing inside. If it had a couple of legs sown on, it would look like a doll. He played
with the idea that in fact it was a doll, that he was expected to provide legs and that Chepe was too embarrassed at possessing such a plaything to say what he wanted. That, however, must be
fantasy. While he might be a sort of extra father able to mend a mechanical toy, he couldn’t possibly be a mother who sewed legs on dolls. He put the thing in his pocket and carried it home,
carefully concealing it in a collar box from Pepe and Amelia. That was the least he could do. The secret could not be explained but evidently it was a very intimate one belonging to both himself
and Chepe.