Grand Canary (20 page)

Again her oblique lustrous eyes considered him. She removed the flower between two stiff fingers as though it were a cigarette.

‘That is where there is much sickness. At Laguna it is finished. At Hermosa not so much finished.'

‘I want to go there.'

‘Not so much finished,' she said again; and with a precocious air, ‘Jesu-Maria. There is a curse.'

On they went again in silence, then, about a quarter of a mile from the town, abruptly she drew up, pointed to a side path with the languid yellow flower.

‘Behold!' she said flatly. ‘It is that way, señor, if you must go.'

The side path which she indicated drew back from the highway through a grove of pines, and, when briefly he had thanked her, he swung towards it. As he stepped into the shadow of the trees he felt that she was watching him, and instinctively he spun round. It was so. There she stood, watching; and, under his eyes, she shifted her jar, crossed herself, moved hurriedly away. And then, quite suddenly the sun went down beyond the far serrated sky-line. All at once the air was colder, as though touched by clammy fingers.

The wood was gloomy, the path narrow, scored by deep ruts and dry as bone. The massed trees hung low – dark with whispering conspiracy. A loose stone, on which he stumbled, went clattering down into a dry ravine. At that the trees drew closer, affrighted; and then a queer light air went through them, murmuring: ‘Hush – oh, hush – oh, hush.'

The sinister stillness of the copse sank into Harvey and keyed him to an answering melancholy. Like some symbolic figure he might have waded through the shadows, further – and further still, into the core of a last obliterating obscurity. But suddenly, a hundred paces further on, the trees thinned out; he crossed a wooden bridge and came again to open land, on which a house stood girt by its estate. It was a small estate but he judged it to be the place he sought – a valley of red prolific earth fed by a precious trickle, burdened beneath the tangled richness of its vegetation. So fertile the soil, so luxuriant the growth, the whole plantation throbbed with a note of wildness: a garden rank, untended, but massed with savage beauty – all fecund with a glorious primeval loveliness.

Staring through the huge wrought-iron gates Harvey caught an awed breath: flowers – such flowers! A surge of untended blossom shimmered madly across the dwindling light. Masses of wild azalea stabbed his eyes with crimson that was like pain; pale irises floated in an opal sea; a purple convolvulus twined its trumpets amongst the banks of granadilla; the crane-flowers darted, blue- and yellow-winged, poised in a still perpetual flight; and, over all, the freesia flowed in waves, white and perfumed, delicate as foam.

With a start he collected himself. He lifted the brass-ringed handle of the gate, twisted and rattled it, pushed with his shoulder upon the rusty bars. But without avail: the gate was locked. No matter – the retama hedge which encircled the domain was raddled with a dozen gaps. That was in keeping with the place. He made to move, when, suddenly, his eye, uplifted towards those massy gates, was taken by an emblem wrought upon the arch above. It was a swan, in beating flight. A swan – in beating flight!

Fascinated, he stared at the emblem of the swan, which seemed imbued with meaning and with life. Casa de los Cisnes. Of course. He caught his breath, his whole body rigid. Why hadn't it dawned on him before? Casa de los Cisnes – the House of the Swans.

He stood a long time there, his head thrown back, his being flooded by wonder and a strange excitement. The House of the Swans. Then he sighed and turned away. It was nothing; it could be nothing but mere coincidence.

Shaking the thought aside, he took three paces to the right, stepped through the hedge gap, and gained the weed-infested drive. Two little adobe houses stood on either side, and at the first of these he paused, knocked loudly upon the narrow door, then knocked again. There was no answer. Nothing but the empty echoes of his hammering. The door was fastened, the windows shuttered, the house deserted and strangely desolate.

Quickly he turned to the other hut. Here the door lay wide, the dim interior of the single room flung open to his sight. It was empty of life. But on the earthen floor a blanket formed an ochre square and on the blanket a dead man lay, his dull eyes blankly staring, his mouth dropped open as though surprised. Two candles guttered at the pallet's foot, washing the dead face with a fitful light. And the scent of the freesias filled the air like some sweet unguent.

There was nothing to be done. Harvey turned away, closing the door behind him. He began to walk up the drive which swung southwards in a gentle curve leading him towards the casa, looming whitely against the slope of hill and the sombre background of the trees. It was a noble dwelling fashioned of creamy stone, low yet stately, but fallen to sad disorder: the portico sunk down, the balcony adrift, the shutters rotted and awry, the walls all stained with damp and lichen. Two great urns that flanked the door were tumbled on their sides.

He climbed the worn steps, between the crevices of which a vivid scarlet fungus lay like blood, and rang the bell. Minutes passed with dragging slowness. Again he rang the silly, echoing bell. Then a middle-aged servant woman in a dress of spotted calico opened the door. She stared at him through the grudging aperture as though he were an apparition until he said:

‘I want to see your mistress.'

Then her face, enclosed by the tight-drawn inky hair and a red and yellow scarf, grew suddenly evasive and afraid.

‘It is late, señor,' she answered. ‘The day is ending.'

‘It is not yet ended.'

‘Before God, señor, the sun is past the Peak. Tomorrow would be a better day.'

He shook his head.

‘I must see her.'

‘But, señor, the marquesa is old. And she has trouble. She does not receive.'

He took two steps forward, causing her to retreat before him into the hall.

‘Tell her I am here.'

She stood, her eyes searching his face, her hands moving indecisively about her apron, then, muttering, she turned and went slowly up the stairs.

He looked round. The hall was lofty, reaching darkly to the arabesque-encrusted roof, echoing to the voice like an old church nave. The faint light had a sombre quality issuing from a single, deep-set window stained with a faded emblem of the Swan. Upon the plaster walls curved swords were swung in patterns. As they had swung for years. Striking the silent emptiness, formidable and grotesque. Beneath the scimitars a shell of armour stood like a shrunken figure of a warrior knight, palsied of arm and bent of knee, but still intimidating – the spear advanced, the visor parted with a grim pugnacity. The figure bore down on Harvey. The whole place affected him strangely, made him almost afraid to stir a foot. And he felt empty – weak. I'm tired, he thought defensively. I've walked too far.

Suddenly arose the sound of footsteps upon the wooden staircase. Abruptly he lifted his head. A little old woman was descending from the gallery above. She came slowly, one aged claw clutching the heavy polished banister, one slurred foot dragging upon the other. Yet for all her slowness she bore her small thin figure upright with the dignity of race. She was dressed entirely in black even to the band around her pompadour frizzed hair, and the fashion of her dress was of a bygone age: the skirt trailing, the sleeves puffed, the neck-band ruffled and high. As she drew nearer, Harvey saw plainly the marks of her senility. Her skin was parchment yellow, scored with a maze of wrinkles, the tendons of her neck taut as the leg-strings of a fowl. She had a little tight-drawn aquiline beak and a tiny pouting mouth. Her dark eyes were pouched and glazed. She wore a score of bangles on her wrists, and on her fingers a galaxy of ancient rings. Immediately Harvey saluted her; announced himself directly.

‘I am an English doctor,' he said. ‘My name is Leith. I know you've got fever on your estate and in the village near. Very bad fever. I've come to give you my assistance, if you'll have it.'

Like a little black-clothed statuette she stood, with all the stillness of great age, seeming to look right through him with her opaque yet living eyes.

‘No one comes here,' she said at last, and her voice held a curious sing-song cadence. ‘No one comes now to the Marquesa de Luego. She is very old. All day she sits in her room, descending only when she is summoned. What else is there to do, I pray you, señor? Prayers have great virtue, have they not? So Don Balthasar said. He, too, is dead. Not so is Isabel de Luego. So she sits in her room and waits till she is summoned. Assuredly it is a kindness for you to visit her.'

Yes, she is queer, he thought, she is talking about herself. But there was about that oddity a pathos which struck straight into his heart.

‘It was scarcely kindness,' he said. ‘I was in Santa Cruz. I heard of the sickness you have here – and in Hermosa. The plain fact is that I had nothing else to do. So I came.'

‘It was an act of grace, señor – which grows by the denial. Have they taken your horse? What was it you required? It is forgotten. Pobre de mi. So much is forgotten. And so many have gone away. But you must dine. Good advice comes from the aged. Assuredly you must dine.'

‘There is no need,' he said quickly. ‘ Let me see first where the sickness is.'

‘In the village. There, so many sick. And now so many are dead. Here on the fiunca they are all dead or run away. All but Manuela and me. Pablo – he was the last. Pablo, the gate-keeper. He died at noon. After, you shall see.' She gave a little ghostly laugh, and, turning to the woman who stood in the background listening with a sullen face, she exclaimed:

‘Manuela, the señor will dine tonight with the Marquesa de Luego.'

Manuela's look grew more sullen: she made a gesture of distrust.

‘But, marquesa, it is already upon the table, your supper.'

There was protest in the voice: but it fell upon the air. The marquesa was repeating to Harvey with a childish lift of gaiety to her voice:

‘You see, it is already upon the table. Assuredly you are expected. And the marquesa? Already she has made a toilet most elegant. Is it not good chance? Come, señor.'

She led the way through the hall into a long room panelled in dark encina wood and hung with faded portraits framed in tarnished gilt. For the rest the floor was bare, the ceiling painted with the figure of an enormous swan, one wall hidden by an enormous ebony
aparador.
And in the middle of the room upon the walnut refectory table was laid out a simple meal of fruit, cold fowl, cheese, and milk.

Sulkily Manuela set a second place, pushed forward another heavy hide-backed chair; darting a final covert glance at Harvey, she withdrew.

The marquesa seated herself with a little mincing air, poured out a glass of milk abstractedly, let it stand before her. Then she took a fig from the dish and began to slice it into green and scarlet pieces.

‘You must eat,' she said, raising her head delicately like a bird. ‘He fasts enough who eats with reason. That cheese is good. It is made with cardo – from the wild artichoke. Little blue flowers. Yes, little blue flowers. I have picked them when I was a child. And that was not yesterday.'

Harvey took some cheese and rough, yellow bread, shook off his own strange sense of unreality. He wanted to hear more about the epidemic.

‘How did this trouble begin?' he asked.

‘Trouble, señor? What is life but trouble. Out of the mire and into the swamp. It is a saying. There was a man José returning to his family. A sailor who came upon a ship. Then he died and others after him. It is like the old Modorra plague that came to Laguna when Ferdinand was King. You will find now sometimes little heaps of bones in the hill caves. That is where the Guanches wandered out to hide themselves and die. A long, long time ago.'

Touched almost by awe he said:

‘Your family has been here a long time.'

Her eyes looked beyond him contemplating the past.

‘But, señor, you do not understand. What is a long time? Not months, not years. Puneta, no señor. It is longer perhaps than that.' She paused dreamily, and lifting her hand, directed his gaze through the narrow window to where in the darkening patio a most fantastic tree rose up, its smooth, tube branches uncouthly twisted, like some beast in mortal agony. ‘You see that tree, señor. It is the dragon-tree. Still young, that tree, and yet four hundred years old. No, no! I do not jest. It is four hundred years since Don Cortez Alonso de Luego, el Conquistador and Adelantado, came to this house. From here he made war with his levies from Castille. On the Guanches. At La Mantaza. At the Tower of Refuge. And was wounded at the Place of the Massacre. Since that time, señor, always the de Luegos have lived here. Always, always.' She sighed and let her small hand fall upon her lap. ‘But now all is changed. My brother, rest to his soul, lost – lost all – years past – in the fall of cochinilla. Everything was then planted in cactus for the cochineal. But another tintura was found, you understand – all made from quimico. It is no good then for cochineal. My brother, alas, is ruined. And dead now ten years. Since then nothing but misfortune which comes by the yard and goes by the inch. Weeds are not hindered by the lack of water. No one to control but Don Balthasar. And he is dead. Dios mio, it is sad, señor, for Isabel de Luego. She is old in truth. But she still has love of life. The more of life the more of love of life. That is a proverb of Galicia. And here, too, the sun is warm on old bones. Take more milk, señor, if you please. It is sweet, like honey.'

Obediently he poured himself a measure of the warm goat's milk which frothed into the tall, fluted glass. He saw it all: surviving an age when the authority of lineage was paramount, her brother ruined by the discovery of aniline dyes, she was here – old now, enfeebled and alone, victimised, perhaps, by an indolent peasantry, a dishonest overman, stricken even by a disastrous epidemic, the pitiful survival of a noble race.