Джон Макдональд - The Last One Left

When, leaving the Harkinson place, with ’Cisca beside him, turning from the narrow road onto the highway he had seen the new-looking gray Plymouth sedan still parked in the same spot, he remembered the weapon in his glove compartment. He had not thought of it for weeks.

From time to time during that Monday evening, as he pleaded vainly with the stubborn and unyielding Francisca, he kept remembering the gray car. And at last it provided inspiration.

“Now then, Señorita,” he said, her dark eyes looking at him over the rim of the cup as she sipped her coffee, “I must outline the situation.”

“Oh, of course. Completely. And then perhaps it will be possible, Señor, to talk of other things?”

“Perhaps. You will not quit your job.”

“The job will end itself when she can no longer pay me. Until then it is easy work. She does not interfere in my life. I am content.”

“You refuse to marry me.”

“Or anyone.”

“Or come with me to California on any basis.”

“To go so far! No.”

“Then, truly, I must not go, because I cannot leave you.”

“You will find friends there. I will find them here. I am not so important to anyone, Raoul.”

“To me you are.”

“But I do not wish it to be that way.”

“It is that way, regardless of what you wish, querida .”

“Perhaps it should be ended then.”

“I would stay near you in any case, ’Cisca. And one day, perhaps this year, perhaps next, they will manage to kill me.”

Watching her closely he saw the vapid look which signaled her change from shop-girl Spanish to crude and clumsy English. “Sotch a crazy theeng! Oh boy.”

“They’ve tried twice.”

“Ho! To rob sotch a reech man, you bet.”

He reached across the booth table, captured both slender wrists in his workman’s hands. She tugged, looking angry, but he held her firmly.

“The same people who killed your brother, querida .”

“Let me go!”

“The people’s republic in the land of peace and brotherhood, baby. Because I’m still fighting. Because I sting them with the words I write.”

“Please. Let go!”

“You won’t read what I write. You want to make believe nothing ever happened. You can’t remember Havana, eh? You were never there. There isn’t any war. You never scrubbed the soldiers’ barracks on your hands and knees out at Rancho Luna. That was some other girl. And when they kill me, you’ll forget that too, like everything else.”

She made such a sudden violent effort she nearly wrested her hands free, but he did not let her go. She lowered her head, chin on her chest, so that all he could see of her was the lustrous darkness of her hair. A waitress moved near, curious and concerned. He gave her a nod and a smile to reassure her. She moved away, but glanced back, her expression showing a certain dubiousness.

Her arms were completely limp. He released his hold slowly. She remained there unmoving, and he could see the slow lift and fall of her breath under the pale green blouse.

Oh, you are a clever one, Kelly, he thought. Without any trouble at all you push her back into her empty and silent cave. The operation was brilliant, but the patient died on the table.

Slowly she raised her head and looked at him. Tears were streaming down her face. But her eyes had a look of awareness of him and of herself he had not seen before. They were the eyes of Señorita Francisca Torcedo y Sarmantar, only daughter of Don Estebán, only sister of Enrique.

To his vast astonishment she spoke in English, husky, halting, thickened by grief. “Doan be deads. Then nobody. Nobody left. Nothings. Not loving me, please. Sotch a rotten girl! Not to marry, please. But you for safe, I go with. Any places. All my life, I go with. Care for you, anytimes you say. Jesus help me. I swear for it.”

She lowered her head again, sighed very deeply. His own eyes were wet as he realized how desperately he had needed this affirmation of her love, kept so carefully hidden. It had been more than his pride which had been affronted by her apparent happy willingness to think of their relationship as a casual affair, something suitable for a housemaid who would be expected to have a boyfran who would take her to movies, to the beach, and to bed. And he suddenly understood why, once she had been forced into revelation, it had to come out in English. There were too many blocks for it to be said in Spanish. She had used it like a code, a way to say things she could not say, like the secret languages children invent.

When he took her out to the car she moved like one recovering from illness. She was remote, emotionally exhausted, shy.

He decided that if English was the way to reach her, he would stay with English. The “rotten girl” part puzzled him. It indicated that there was guilt involved in her long withdrawal, as well as shock and grief and sickness. But what could cause her to feel so unworthy? He suspected that it would be very unwise to try to find out. Maybe some day. Certainly she would not feel guilt at having tried to kill one of those “liberators” who had so clumsily shot the adored papa, or guilt at having been made pregnant under circumstances she had no way of controlling.

As he drove down the dark highway with the girl sitting passively beside him, he suddenly thought of one possible situation which could make her feel that she was rotten. She had spent months as a prisoner. What if one of them, one of the village boys, had taken pity on the little upperclass pollita ? Some young and gentle lad, who had treated her with a natural kindness, smuggled better food to her, saved her from the more brutalizing kinds of labor. He knew the capacity for warmth and gentleness the young village men of his country often had. A young boy, perhaps as young as she. In her anguish and despair, she might well have responded to him, willingly. But she could not realize that both she and the young militiaman were both victims of the merciless random patterns of history. She would know only that she had given herself to the Enemy, that out of a weakness and helplessness she would misinterpret as callousness and lust, she had lain with the murderer of father and brother. Then, after her rescue, having not the ability to physically kill herself, perhaps because of the mandate of the church, she had killed the guilty Francisca and had become someone else.

At first he thought the diagnosis fanciful, but there was too much weight of detail to support it, and indeed he could not think of any other factor which could have so distorted a person of her strength, spirit and intelligence. A lesser woman could have devised useful rationalizations for indulging herself with the Enemy. To the daughter of Don Estebán, the sister of Enrique, it would be a matter of personal honor, and an insupportable memory. Such a woman could live only with the memory of never having been taken except by force.

He sensed the ultimate irony, that what she thought of as rottenness was in truth a measure of her great worth.

“You’ll give Mrs. Harkinson notice?”

“Tomorrow I say it. I work what she say. One week. Two.”

“You don’t owe her anything.”

“I do what is right.”

“I will send a letter to California tonight to tell them I accept. When you tell me when you can leave, I will tell the paper. If you can leave soon, we will drive.”

“If you say it.” Her voice was listless.

He parked outside the gate, walked her to her stairs. She turned, leaned against him, sighed heavily and touched her soft mouth to the side of his chin. “We are in love,” he whispered.

“If you say it.”

As he turned around and drove out he thought of the pale car. It was still there. He had seen it for an instant when he had turned off the highway. His lights had touched it as he turned. It was fifty yards south of the road to the Harkinson place, on the same side, and backed into the semi-concealment of a small grove of trees. There had been no need to mention it to Francisca. It would only worry her. He had not needed to prove to her that he was possibly in danger. He was no longer as proud of his device of the posthumous publication. If they had learned of this attachment, and had identified her, they would need only to pick her up and take her into the city and hide her, and Raoul Kelly would do anything they asked of him.