Ursula Le Guin - The Eye of the Heron

Lev came, at a run, having just got news of the prisoners’ return. He hugged the first ones he came to, in the excited group that had gathered in the street to welcome them. “You’re back, you’re back—All of you?”

“Yes, yes, they’re all back, you can go eat supper now!”

“The others, Hari and Vera—”

“No, not them. They didn’t see them.”

“But all of you—They didn’t hurt you?”

“Lev said he couldn’t eat anything till you got back, he’s been fasting.”

“We’re all right, go eat some dinner, what a stupid thing to do!”

“They treated you well?”

“Like guests, like guests,” old Pamplona asserted. “We’re all brothers. Isn’t that so? A good big breakfast they gave us, too!”

“Our own rice we grew, that’s what they gave us. Fine hosts! to lock their guests up in a barn as black as night and as cold as last night’s porridge, I have an ache in every bone and I want a bath, every one of those guard people was crawling with lice, I saw one right on his neck, the one that arrested me, a louse the size of your fingernail, ugh, I want a bath!” This was Kira, a buxom woman who lisped because she had lost her two front teeth; she said she didn’t miss the teeth, they got in the way of her talking anyhow. “Who’ll put me up for the night? I’m not going to walk home to East Village with every bone aching and a dozen lice creeping up and down my backbone!” Five or six people at once offered her a bath, a bed, hot food. All the freed prisoners were looked after and made much of. Lev and Andre went off down the little side street that led to Lev’s home. They walked in silence for a while.

“Thank God!” said Lev.

“Yes. Thank God. They’re back; it worked. If only Vera and Jan and the others had come back with them.”

“They’re all right. But this lot—none of them was ready, they hadn’t thought about it, they hadn’t prepared themselves. I was afraid they’d be hurt, I was afraid they’d be frightened, get angry. It was our responsibility, we led the sit-down. We got them arrested. But they held out. They weren’t frightened, they didn’t fight, they held fast!” Lev’s voice shook. “It was my responsibility.”

“Ours,” Andre said. “We didn’t send them, you didn’t send them; they went. They chose to go. You’re worn out, you ought to eat. Sasha!” They were at the door of the house. “Make this man eat. They fed his prisoners, now you feed him.”

Sasha, sitting by the hearth sanding down a hoe handle, looked up; his mustache bristled, his eyebrows bristled over his deep-set eyes. “Who can make my son do what he doesn’t want to do?” he said. “If he wants to eat, he knows where the soup bowl is.”

The Senhor Councillor Falco gave a dinner party. During most of it, he wished sincerely that he had not given a dinner party.

It was to be a party in the old style, the Old World style, with five courses, and fine clothes, and conversation, and music after dinner. The old men arrived at the hour, each accompanied by his wife and an unmarried daughter or two. Some of the younger men, such as young Helder, also arrived on time, with their wives. The women stood about the fireplace at one end of the hall of Casa Falco in their long gowns and jewelry, and chattered; the men stood about the fireplace at the other end of the, hall in their best black suits, and talked. All seemed to be going well, just as it had gone when Councillor Falco’s grandfather Don Ramon had given dinner parties, just like dinner parties back on Earth, as Don Ramon had often said with satisfaction and conviction, for after all his father Don Luis had been born on Earth and had been the greatest man in Rio de Janeiro.

But some of the guests had not come on time. It got later, and still they did not come. Councillor Falco was summoned by his daughter to the kitchen: the cooks’ faces were tragic, the superb dinner would be ruined. At his command the long table was carried into the hall and set, the guests sat down, the first course was served, eaten, cleared away, the second course was served, and then, only then, in came young Macmilan, young Marquez, young Weiler, free and easy, without an apology and, what was worse, with a whole rabble of their friends, uninvited: seven or eight big bucks with whips in their belts and broad-brimmed hats which they didn’t know enough to take off indoors, and dirty boots, and a lot of loud dirty talk. New places had to be set, crowded in among the others. The young men had been drinking before they came, and went on swilling Falco’s best ale. They pinched the maidservants, but ignored the ladies. They shouted across the table, and blew their noses in the embroidered napkins. When the supreme moment of the dinner arrived, the meat course, roast coney—Falco had hired ten trappers for a week to supply this luxury—the latecomers piled their plates so greedily that there was not enough to go round, and no one at the foot of the table got meat. The same thing happened with the dessert, a molded pudding made with root starch, boiled fruits, and nectar. Several of the young men scooped it out of the bowls with their fingers.

Falco signaled his daughter, at the foot of the table, and she led a retreat of the ladies to the garden sitting room at the back of the house. This left the young toughs all the more freedom to lounge, spit, belch, swear, and get drunker. Small cups of the brandy for which the stillrooms of Casa Falco were famous got tossed off like water, and the young men yelled at the bewildered servants to refill. Some of the other young men, and some of the older ones, liked this crude behavior, or perhaps thought it was how one was expected to behave at a dinner party, and joined in it. Old Helder got so drunk he went and vomited in the corner, but he came back to table and started drinking again.

Falco and some close friends, the elder Marquez, Burnier, and the doctor, withdrew to the hearth and tried to talk; but the noise around the long table was deafening. Some were dancing, some quarreling; the musicians hired to play after dinner had mixed in with the guests and were drinking like fish; young Marquez had a serving girl on his lap, where she sat white-faced and cringing, muttering, “Oh hesumeria! Oh hesumeria!”

“A very merry party, Luis,” old Burnier said, after a particularly painful outburst of song and screeching.

Falco had remained calm throughout; his face was calm as he replied, “A proof of our degeneration.”

“The young fellows aren’t used to such feasts. Only Casa Falco knows how to give a party in the old style, the real Earth style.”

“They are degenerates,” Falco said.

His brother-in-law Cooper, a man of sixty, nodded. “We have lost the style of Earth.”

“Not at all,” said a man behind them. They all turned. It was Herman Macmilan, one of the latecomers; he had been guzzling and shouting with the rest, but showed no signs of drunkenness now, except perhaps the heightened color of his handsome young face. “It seems to me, gentlemen, that we’re rediscovering the style of Earth. After all, who were our ancestors that came from the Old World? Not weak, meek men, were they? Brave men, bold, strong men, who knew how to live. Now we’re learning again how to live. Plans, laws, rules, manners, what’s that got to do with us? Are we slaves, women? What are we afraid of? We’re men, free men, masters of a whole world. It’s time we came into our inheritance; that’s how it is, gentlemen.” He smiled, deferential, yet perfectly self-confident.

Falco was impressed. Perhaps this wreck of a dinner party might serve some purpose after all. This young Macmilan, who had never seemed anything but a fine muscular animal, a likely future match for Luz Marina, was showing both willpower and brains, the makings of a man. “I agree with you, Don Herman,” he said. “But I’m able to agree with you only because you and I are still able to talk. Unlike most of our friends there. A man must be able to drink and think. Since only you of the young men seem able to do both, tell me: what do you think of my idea of making latifundia?”