Francisco Jose - Don Vicente - Two Novels

“I don’t know now where the grave was,” Luis said, admitting defeat. “God, it could have been anywhere here, even on this very spot where we are standing.”

She pressed his hand and did not speak. “Can we go back to Santos and ask him?” she asked after a while.

Luis smiled. “It was not he who wanted this land plowed,” he said. “No one but Father and his friends. Whoever worked here will not speak with us now.” He turned again to the river. “It is a fine day for a woman with child to go walking,” he said lightly. “Aguray lies beyond.”

They went down a gully choked with weeds and rotting banana trunks. In the soft sand of the riverbed they walked again hand in hand. The water was only ankle-deep in many places, but in a few weeks the rains would come in earnest and the water would rise, muddy-brown and swift, and it would no longer be possible to cross the river except by raft.

“Why should they stay there?” Trining asked. “Why don’t they come back to Sipnget or to any part of the hacienda, where you will let them farm?”

The sun was now warm, and Luis opened her umbrella and shielded her from it. “We stayed there once during the war,” Luis said. “It is quite inaccessible during the rainy season, when the river is flooded and portions of the delta become a swamp. Now that the delta is dry, so is Aguray. It is a kind of stopover, a temporary haven. I am sure that they are merely biding time, that when it becomes more propitious, they will come back.”

She paused, her brow glistening with sweat as the baby inside her stirred again and she grimaced with pain.

“Are you sure you want to go on?” he asked.

She smiled at him. “Yes,” she said. “We are here now. We must proceed.”

He led her to the shade of the tall grass and let her rest on a huge, smooth boulder. He took off her sneakers and rubbed her feet. She watched him, his devotion, and when he was through he took off his shoes, too, for now they would cross the river. He folded the cuffs of his pants and placed their shoes in the lunch basket.

The water was cool, a murmur over the pebbles. It rose no higher than their knees at the deepest, and they walked slowly, holding hands. He was afraid lest she stumble where the stones were mossy.

Her thoughts were far, far away. After a while she said, “Luis, I don’t know, but there’s just the two of us. We don’t need much, do we?”

“What are you thinking of?”

“If it is the land they want, don’t you think we can sell it to them cheap — or even give it to them in time? I know Tio would not do it if he were alive, but he is gone, Luis. We can leave Rosales, go to the city — anywhere you want to go, maybe America or Europe. You can write there, and I will look after you. Just us — I will love it that way.”

What he heard pleased him and he would readily have accepted her idea, but it suddenly occurred to him that he wanted to keep everything intact, that he wanted to play landlord, too, in a fashion different from his father’s. “It is not that easy,” he found himself saying. “Even charity is not that simple. It has to be administered with great responsibility. That means slow, hard work. It means surveys, seeing to it that the land is equitably divided and that it goes to the right people. It means the building of institutions that will replace us — perhaps some sort of bank for crop loans, or a lending agency to which the farmers can run when someone in the family gets sick or gets married. Also, someone has to teach them the basics of farm management — you know, all these things must be done professionally …”

She was looking at him intently, and when he paused she said, “It would be simple, Luis, if you really put your mind to it.”

“Yes,” he said. “It can be made simpler, but it means that we couldn’t get away. It means we will have to stay here — and work.”

“There are always problems coming up — like those clouds. It has been very warm. Do you think it will rain?”

He followed her gaze. The clouds were dark, and they stretched up the hollow curve of the sky. “If it does, it will do us good,” he said. He guided her to the shallows, and the water sloshed around their ankles and sang among the pebbles and the moss-covered boulders. As they went farther across, the water evened out and Trining did not bother lifting her skirt. Then they reached the other bank and walked barefoot on the sand, which had begun to warm. This was the first time he had come to Aguray since the war — and although the yearly monsoon blotted out the trails, new ones were always etched on the sandy loam at the beginning of the dry season and one whose sense of direction was as keen as the wind’s could not miss Aguray.

Now they came across the small clearings, watermelon and cucumber patches that seemed abandoned, for there were no signs that the thatched sheds at the fringes of the clearings were inhabited. Before noon they rested again in the shade of a lone acacia tree on the sandy plain. Trining opened the lunch basket. She had not forgotten her husband’s preference for salted eggs and tomatoes. They ate slowly. Trining held her belly once, pain beclouding her face, but only for a moment. She drank cold water from the thermos bottle, and soon she was fresh and ready for the walk that lay ahead.

At high noon Luis stopped and pointed to the far end of the wide delta, to the trees and the bamboo clumps that marked Aguray. “There, that’s where they should be,” Luis said.

They hurried on, past the thicker growths of grass that sprouted from the dunes, past many clearings planted to root crops and sweet potatoes, all of which were overgrown with weeds. It had become very warm, and Luis took off his shirt. Trining continually mopped her brow with her scarf, and although she tried courageously to keep in step with her husband, she started to lag behind and Luis had to walk slowly. “You cannot go farther,” he said, drawing her into the shade of another camachile tree before the riverbank. She was panting and pale, but she smiled wordlessly. He smothered the grass in the shade, and spreading his damp shirt on it, he bade her sit. She did not want to but he was firm, so she sat down slowly, holding her belly. All around them the grass was tall, ready to burst into white plumed flowers. A cloud of dragonflies hovered over them, the gauzy wings glinting like specks of silver against the sky. He let her rest until her breathing was easy again, then he helped her up and they walked down the sandy bar, up the gully that led to Aguray.

During the war Victor and he used to go to the village and feel secure — but only during the rainy season, when the river was full and Aguray itself was isolated. There were so many small islands of sandy loam there, each with its own moat, and one could not easily cross the waters and navigate unless one came from the place and knew each of the waterways, for every year these changed, depending on the way the current moved.

He ran up the riverbank, which was a low incline, and looked down at the Aguray that he knew. This was the haven that he and Vic and Commander Victor had known — but if Sipnget was now gone, so too, was Aguray. There was not a single house in the sandy wasteland. He raced down the path, which was still unclaimed by grass, and he came across yards where thatched houses once stood, where people used to gather in the early evenings. Nothing was there now. He turned to his wife, who had followed him, and tears scalded his eyes as he said, “You can see for yourself — they were hounded even here.”

“It is not true!” she cried. “There must be a way we can find where they are! They cannot vanish like smoke. Santos — he would really know. He keeps that ledger. The soldiers, the policemen in town … You are the hacendero now. They must respect you and give you what you want.” The words poured out of her in a torrent.