Bradbury, Ray - SSC 11 (30 page)

 
          
 
"A month later I met Quillan again. He
was about to dart into a dark entrance way in MacDougal Street, when he saw me.
'Oh, God!' he cried, sweating. 'Don't tell on me! My wife must never know!'

 
          
 
"I was about to swear myself to secrecy
when a woman called to Quillan from a window above.

 
          
 
"I glanced up. My jaw dropped.

 
          
 
"There in the window stood the dumpy,
seedy little woman!!

 
          
 
"So suddenly it was clear. The beautiful
redhead was his wife! She danced, she sang, she talked loud and long, a
brilliant intellectual, the goddess Siva, thousand-limbed, the finest throw
pillow ever sewn by mortal hand. Yet she was strangely—tiring.

 
          
 
"So my friend Quillan had taken this
obscure Village room where, two nights a week, he could sit quietly in the
mouse-brown silence or walk on the dim streets with this good homely dumpy
comfortably mute woman who was not his wife at all, as I had quickly supposed,
but his mistress!

 
          
 
"I looked from Quillan to his plump
companion in the window above and wrung his hand with new warmth and
understanding. 'Mum's the word!' I said. The last I saw of them, they were
seated in a delicatessen, Quillan and his mistress, their eyes gently touching
each other, saying nothing, eating pastrami sandwiches. He too had, if you
think about it, the best of all possible worlds."

 
          
 
The train roared, shouted its whistle and
slowed. Both men, rising, stopped and looked at each other in surprise. Both
spoke at once:

 
          
 
"You get off at this stop?"

 
          
 
Both nodded, smiling.

 
          
 
Silently they made their way back and, as the
train stopped in the chill December night, alighted and shook hands.

 
          
 
"Well, give my best to Mr. Smith."

 
          
 
"And mine to Mr. Quillan!"

 
          
 
Two horns honked from opposite ends of the
station. Both men looked at one car. A beautiful woman was in it. Both looked
at the other car. A beautiful woman was in it.

 
          
 
They separated, looking back at each other
like two schoolboys, each stealing a glance at the car toward which the other
was moving.

 
          
 
"I wonder," thought the old man,
"if that woman down there is .. .”

 
          
 
"I wonder," thought the young man,
"if that lady in his car could be ..."

 
          
 
But both were running now. Two car doors
slammed like pistol shots ending a matinee.

 
          
 
The cars drove off. The station platform stood
empty. It being December and cold, snow soon fell like a curtain.

 
          
 
Filomena flung the plank door shut with such
violence the candle blew out; she and her crying children were left in
darkness. The only things to be seen were through the window—the adobe houses,
the cobbled streets, where now the gravedigger stalked up the hill, his spade
on his shoulder, moonlight honing the blue metal as he turned into the high
cold graveyard and was gone.

 
          
 
"Mamacita, what's wrong?" Filepe,
her oldest son, just nine, pulled at her. For the strange dark man had said
nothing, just stood at the door with the spade and nodded his head and waited
imtil she banged the door in his face. "Mamacita?”

 
          
 
"That gravedigger.” Filomena's hands
shook as she relit the candle. "The rent is long overdue on your father's
grave. Your father will be dug up and placed down in the catacomb, with a wire
to hold him standing against the wall, with the other mummies.'*

 
          
 
"No, Mamacita!"

 
          
 
"Yes.” She caught the children to her.
"Unless we find the money. Yes.”

 
          
 
"I—I will kill that gravedigger!"
cried Filepe.

 
          
 
"It is his job. Another would take his
place if he died, and another and another after him."

 
          
 
They thought about the man and the terrible
high place where he lived and moved and the catacomb he stood guard over and
the strange earth into which people went to come forth dried like desert
flowers and tanned like leather for shoes and hollow as drums which could be
tapped and beaten, an earth which made great cigar-brown rustling dry mummies
that might languish forever leaning like fence poles along the catacomb halls.
And, thinking of all this fainiliar but unfamiliar stuff, Filomena and her
children were cold in summer, and silent though their hearts made a vast stir
in their bodies. They huddled together for a moment longer and then:

 
          
 
"Filepe," said the mother,
"come." She opened the door and they stood in the moonlight listening
to hear any far sound of a blue metal spade biting the earth, heaping the sand
and old flowers. But there was a silence of stars. "You others," said
Filomena, "to bed."

 
          
 
The door shut. The candle flickered.

 
          
 
The cobbles of the town poured in a river of
gleaming moonsilver stone down the hills, past green parks and little shops and
the place where the coffin maker tapped and made the clock sounds of
death-watch beetles all day and all night, forever in the life of these people.
Up along the shde and rush of moonlight on the stones, her skirt whispering of
her need, Filomena hurried with Filepe breathless at her side. They turned in
at the Official Palace.

 
          
 
The man behind the small, littered desk in the
dimly lit office glanced up in some surprise. "Filomena, my cousin!"

 
          
 
"Ricardo." She took his hand and
dropped it. "You must help me."

 
          
 
"If God does not prevent. But ask."

 
          
 
"They—" The bitter stone lay in her
mouth; she tried to get it out. "Tonight they are taking Juan from the
earth."

 
          
 
Ricardo, who had half risen, now sat back
down, his eyes growing wide and full of light, and then narrowing and going
dull. "If not God, then God's creatures prevent. Has the year gone so
swiftly since Juan's death? Can it truly be the rent has come due?" He
opened his empty palms and showed them to the woman. "Ah, Filomena, I have
no money."

 
          
 
"But if you spoke to the gravedigger. You
are the police."

 
          
 
"Filomena, Filomena, the law stops at the
edge of the grave."

 
          
 
"But if he will give me ten weeks, only
ten, it is almost the end of summer. The Day of the Dead is coming. I will
make, I will sell, the candy skulls, and give him the money, oh, please,
Ricardo."

 
          
 
And here at last, because there was no longer
a way to hold the coldness in and she must let it free before it froze her so
she could never move again, she put her hands to her face and wept. And Filepe,
seeing that it was permitted, wept, too, and said her name over and over.

 
          
 
"So," said Ricardo, rising.
"Yes, yes. I wUl walk to the mouth of the catacomb and spit into it. But,
ah, Filomena, expect no answer. Not so much as an echo. Lead the way." And
he put his official cap, very old, very greasy, very worn, upon his head.

 
          
 
The graveyard was higher than the churches,
higher than all the buildings, higher than all the hills. It lay on the highest
rise of all, overlooking the night valley of the town.

 
          
 
As they entered the vast ironwork gate and
advanced among the tombs, the three were confronted by the sight of the
gravedigger's back bent into an ever-increasing hole, lifting out spade after
spade of dry dirt onto an ever-increasing mound. The digger did not even look
up, but made a quiet guess as they stood at the grave's edge.

 
          
 
"Is that Ricardo Albanez, the chief of
police?"

 
          
 
"Stop digging!" said Ricardo.

 
          
 
The spade flashed down, dug, lifted, poured.
"There is a funeral tomorrow. This grave must be empty, open and
ready."

 
          
 
"No one has died in the town."

 
          
 
"Someone always dies. So I dig. I have
already waited two months for Filomena to pay what she owes. I am a patient
man."

 
          
 
"Be still more patient." Ricardo
touched the moving, hunching shoulder of the bent man.

 
          
 
"Chief of the police." The digger
paused to lean, sweating, upon his spade. **This is my country, the country of
the dead. These here tell me nothing, nor does any man. I rule this land with a
spade, and a steel mind. I do not like the live ones to come talking, to
disturb the silence I have so nicely dug and filled. Do I tell you how to
conduct your municipal palace? Well, then. Good night." He resumed his
task.

 
          
 
"In the sight of God," said Ricardo,
standing straight and stiff, his fists at his sides, "and this woman and
her son, you dare to desecrate the husband-father's final bed?"

 
          
 
"It is not final and not his, I but
rented it to him." The spade floated high, flashing moonlight. "I did
not ask the mother and son here to watch this sad event. And listen to me,
Ricardo, police chief, one day you will die. I will bury you. Remember that: /.
You will be in my hands. Then, oh, then!”

 
          
 
"Then what?" shouted Ricardo.
"You dog, do you threaten me?"

           
 
"I dig." The man was very deep now,
vanishing in the shadowed grave, sending only his spade up to speak for him
again and again in the cold light "Good night, senor, senora, nino. Good
night."

 
          
 
Outside her small adobe hut, Ricardo smoothed
his cousin's hair and touched her cheek. "Filomena, ah, God."

 
          
 
"You did what you could."

 
          
 
"That terrible one. When I am dead, what
awful indignities might he not work upon my helpless flesh? He would* set me
upside down in the tomb, hang me by my hair in a far, unseen part of the
catacomb. He takes on weight from knowing someday he will have us all. Good
night, Filomena. No, not even that For the night is bad."

 
          
 
He went away down the street

 
          
 
Inside, among her many children, Filomena sat
with face buried in her lap.

 
          
 
Late the next afternoon, in the tilted
sunlight, shrieking, the schoolchildren chased Filepe home. He fell, they
circled him, laughing.

 
          
 
"Filepe, Filepe, we saw your father
today, yes!"

 
          
 
"Where?" they asked themselves
shyly.

 
          
 
"In the catacomb!" they gave answer.

 
          
 
"What a lazy man! He just stands
there!"

 
          
 
"He never works!"

 
          
 
"He don't speak! Oh, that Juan
Diaz!"

 
          
 
Filepe stood violently atremble under the
blazed sun, hot tears streaming from his wide and half-blinded eyes.

 
          
 
Within the hut, Filomena heard, and the knife
sounds entered her heart She leaned against the cool wall, wave after
dissolving wave of remembrance sweeping her.

 
          
 
In the last month of his life, agonized,
coughing, and drenched with midnight perspirations, Juan had stared and
whispered only to the raw ceiling above his straw mat

 
          
 
"What sort of man am I, to starve my
children and hunger my wife? What sort of death is this, to die in bed?"

 
          
 
"Hush." She placed her cool hand
over his hot mouth. But he talked beneath her fingers. "What has our marriage
been but hunger and sickness and now nothing? Ah, God, you are a good woman,
and now I leave you with no money even for my funeral!"

 
          
 
And then at last he had clenched his teeth and
cried out at the darkness and grown very quiet in the warm candleshine and
taken her hands into his own and held them and swore an oath upon them, vowed
himself with religious fervor.

 
          
 
"Filomena, listen. I will be with you.
Though I have not protected in life, I will protect in death. Though I fed not
in life, in death I will bring food. Though I was poor, I will not be poor in
the grave. This I know. This I cry out. This I assure you of. In death I will
work and do many things. Do not fear. Kiss the little ones. Filomena. Filomena
. . ."

 
          
 
And then he had taken a deep breath, a final
gasp, like one who settles beneath warm waters. And he had launched himself
gently under, still holding his breath, for a testing of endurance through all
eternity. They waited for a long time for him to exhale. But this he did not
do. He did not reappear above the surface of life again. His body lay like a
waxen fruit on the mat, a surprise to the touch. Like a wax apple to the teeth,
so was Juan Diaz to all their senses.

 
          
 
And they took him away to the dry earth which
was like the greatest mouth of all which held him a long time, draining the
bright moistures of his life, drying him like ancient manuscript paper, until
he was a mummy as light as chaff, an autumn harvest ready for the wind.

 
          
 
From that time until this, the thought had come
and come again to Filomena, how will I feed my lost children, with Juan burning
to brown crepe in a silver-tinseled box, how lengthen my children's bones and
push forth their teeth in smiles and color their cheeks?

 
          
 
The children screamed again outside, in happy
pursuit of Filepe.

 
          
 
Filomena looked to the distant hill, up which
bright tourists' cars hummed bearing many people from the United States. Even
now they paid a peso each to that dark man with the spade so that they might
step down through his catacombs among the standing dead, to see what the
sun-dry earth and the hot wind did to all bodies in this town.

 
          
 
Filomena watched the tourist cars, and Juan's
voice whispered, "Filomena." And again: “This I cry out. In death I
will work ... I will not be poor . . . Filomena . . ." His voice ghosted
away. And she swayed and was almost ill, for an idea had come into her mind
which was new and terrible and made her heart pound. "Filepe!" she
cried suddenly.