Bradbury, Ray - SSC 11 (31 page)

 
          
 
And Filepe escaped the jeering children and shut
the door on the hot white day and said, "Yes, Mamacita?"

           
 
"Sit, nino, we must talk, in the name of
the saints, we must!"

 
          
 
She felt her face grow old because the soul
grew old behind it, and she said, very slowly, with difficulty, "Tonight
we must go in secret to the catacomb."

 
          
 
"Shall we take a knife"—Filepe
smiled wildly—"and kill the dark man?"

 
          
 
"No, no, Filepe, listen.. .."

 
          
 
And he heard the words that she spoke.

 
          
 
And the hours passed and it was a night of
churches. It was a night of bells, and singing. Far off in the air of the
valley you could hear voices chanting the evening Mass, you could see children
walking with lit candles, in a solemn file, 'way over there on the side of the
dark hill, and the huge bronze bells were tilting up and showering out their
thunderous crashes and bangs that made the dogs spin, dance and bark on the
empty roads.

 
          
 
The graveyard lay glistening, all whiteness,
all marble snow, all sparkle and glitter of harsh gravel like an eternal fall
of hail, crunched under their feet as Filomena and Filepe took then* shadows
with them, ink-black and constant from the unclouded moon. They glanced over
their shoulders in apprehension, but no one cried Halt! They had seen the
gravedigger drift, made footless by shadow, down the hill, in answer to a night
summons. Now: "Quick, Filepe, the lock!" Together they inserted a
long metal rod between padlock hasps and wooden doors which lay flat to the dry
earth. Together they seized and pulled. The wood split. The padlock hasps sprang
loose. Together they raised the huge doors and flung them back, rattling.
Together they peered down into the darkest, most silent night of all. Below,
the catacomb waited.

 
          
 
Filomena straightened her shoulders and took a
breath.

 
          
 
"Now."

 
          
 
And put her foot upon the first step.

 
          
 
In the adobe of Filomena Diaz, her children
slept sprawled here or there in the cool night room, comforting each other with
the sound of their warm breathing.

 
          
 
Suddenly their eyes sprang wide.

 
          
 
Footsteps, slow and halting, scraped the
cobbles outside. The door shot open. For an instant the silhouettes of three
people loomed in the white evening sky beyond the door. One child sat up and
struck a match.

 
          
 
"No!" Filomena snatched out with one
hand to claw the light. The match fell away. She gasped. The door slammed. The
room was solid black. To this blackness Filomena said at last:

 
          
 
"Light no candles. Your father has come
home."

 
          
 
The thudding, the insistent knocking and
pounding shook the door at midnight.

 
          
 
Filomena opened the door.

 
          
 
The gravedigger almost screamed in her face.
"There you are! Thief! Robber!"

 
          
 
Behind him stood Ricardo, looking very rumpled
and very tired and very old. "Cousin, permit us, I am sorry. Our friend
here—"

 
          
 
"I am the friend of no one," cried
the gravedigger. "A lock has been broken and a body stolen. To know the
identity of the body is to know the thief. I could only bring you here. Arrest
her."

 
          
 
"One small moment, please." Ricardo
took the man's hand from his arm and turned, bowing gravely to his cousin.
"May we enter?"

 
          
 
"There, there!" The gravedigger
leaped in, gazed wildly about and pointed to a far wall. "You see?"

 
          
 
But Ricardo would look only at this woman.
Very gently he asked her, "Filomena?"

 
          
 
Filomena's face was the face of one who has
gone through a long tunnel of night and has come to the other end at last,
where lives a shadow of coming day. Her eyes were prepared. Her mouth knew what
to do. All the terror was gone now. What remained was as light as the great
length of autumn chaff she had carried down the hill with her good son. Nothing
more could happen to her ever in her life; this you knew from how she held her
body as she said, "We have no mummy here."

 
          
 
"I believe you, cousin, but"—Ricardo
cleared his throat uneasily and raised his eyes—"what stands there against
the wall?"

 
          
 
"To celebrate the festival of the day of
the dead ones"— Filomena did not turn to look where he was looking—"I
have taken paper and flour and wire and clay and made of it a life-size toy
which looks like the mummies."

           
 
"Have you indeed done this?" asked
Ricardo, impressed.

 
          
 
"No, no!" The gravedigger almost
danced in exasperation.

 
          
 
"With your permission." Ricardo
advanced to confront the figure which stood against the wall. He raised his
flashlight "So," he said. "And so."

 
          
 
Filomena looked only out the open door into
the late moonlight "The plan I have for this mummy which I have made with
my own hands is good."

 
          
 
"What plan, what?" the gravedigger
demanded, turning.

 
          
 
"We will have money to eat with. Would
you deny my children this?"

 
          
 
But Ricardo was not listening. Near the far
wall, he tilted his head this way and that and rubbed his chin, squinting at
the tall shape which enwrapped its own shadow, which kept its own silence,
leaning against the adobe.

 
          
 
"A toy," mused Ricardo. "The
largest death toy I have ever seen. I have seen man-sized skeletons in windows,
and man-sized coffins made of cardboard and filled with candy skulls, yes. But
this! I stand in awe, Filomena."

 
          
 
"Awe?" said the gravedigger, his
voice rising to a shriek. *This is no toy, this is—"

 
          
 
"Do you swear, Filomena?" said
Ricardo, not looking at him. He reached out and tapped a few times on the
rust-colored chest of the figure. It made the sound of a lonely drum. "Do
you swear this is papier-mache?"

 
          
 
"By the Virgin, I swear."

 
          
 
"Well, then." Ricardo shrugged,
snorted, laughed. "It is simple. If you swear by the Virgin, what more
need be said? No court action is necessary. Besides, it might take weeks or
months to prove or disprove this is or is not a thing of flour paste and old
newspapers colored with brown earth."

 
          
 
"Weeks, months, prove, disprove!"
The gravedigger turned in a circle as if to challenge the sanity of the
universe held tight and impossible in these four walls. "This 'toy' is my
property, mine!"

 
          
 
"The toy,'" said Filomena serenely,
gazing out at the hills, "if it is a toy, and made by me, must surely
belong to me. And even," she went on, quietly communing with the new
reserve of peace in her body, "even if it is not a toy, and it is indeed
Juan Diaz come home, why, then, does not Juan Diaz belong first to God?"

 
          
 
"How can one argue that?" wondered
Ricardo.

 
          
 
The gravedigger was willing to try. But before
he had stuttered forth a half-dozen words, Filomena said, "And after God,
in God's eyes, and at God's altar and in God's church, on one of God's holiest
days, did not Juan Diaz say that he would be mine throughout his days?"

 
          
 
"Throughout his days—ah, ha, there you
are!" said the gravedigger. "But his days are over, and now he is
mine!"

 
          
 
"So," said Filomena, "God's
property first, and then Filomena Diaz' property, that is if this toy is not a
toy and is Juan Diaz, and anyway, landlord of the dead, you evicted your
tenant, you so much as said you did not want him, if you love him so dearly and
want him, will you pay the new rent and tenant him again?"

 
          
 
But so smothered by rage was the landlord of
silence that it gave Ricardo time to step in. "Grave keeper, I see many
months and many lawyers, and many points, fine points, to argue this way and
that, which include real estate, toy manufactories, God, Filomena, one Juan
Diaz wherever he is, hungry children, the conscience of a digger of graves, and
so much complication that death's business will suffer. Under the circumstances
are you prepared for these long years in and out of court?"

 
          
 
"I am prepared— “ said the gravedigger,
and paused. “My good man," said Ricardo, "the other night you gave me
some small bit of advice, which I now return to you. I do not tell you how to
control your dead. You, now, do not say how I control the living. Your
jurisdiction ends at the tombyard gate. Beyond stand my citizens, silent or
otherwise. So..."

 
          
 
Ricardo thumped the upright figure a last time
on its hollow chest. It gave forth the sound of a beating heart, a single
strong and vibrant thump which made the gravedigger jerk.

 
          
 
"I pronounce this officially fake, a toy,
no mummy at all. We waste time here. Come along, citizen gravedigger. Back to
your proper land! Good night, Filomena's children, Filomena, good cousin."

 
          
 
"What about it, what about him?” said the
gravedigger, motionless, pointing.

 
          
 
"Why do you worry?" asked Ricardo.
"It goes nowhere. It stays, if you should wish to pursue the law. Do you
see it running? You do not. Good night. Good night."

 
          
 
The door slammed. They were gone before
Filomena could put out her hand to thank anyone.

           
 
She moved in the dark to place a candle at the
foot of the tall corn-husk-dry silence. This was a shrine now, she thought,
yes. She lit the candle.

 
          
 
"Do not fear, children," she
murmured. "To sleep now. To sleep." And Filepe lay down and the
others lay back, and at last Filomena herself lay with a single thin blanket
over her on the woven mat by the light of the single candle, and her thoughts
before she moved into sleep were long thoughts of the many days that made up
tomorrow. In the morning, she thought, the tourist cars will sound on the road,
and Filepe will move among them, telling them of this place. And there will be
a painted sign outside this door: Museum —30 CENTAVOS. And the tourists will
come in, because the graveyard is on the hill, but we are first, we are here in
the valley, and close at hand and easy to find. And one day soon with these
tourists' money we shall mend the roof, and buy great sacks of fresh com flour,
and some tangerines, yes, for the children. And perhaps one day we will all
travel to Mexico City, to the very big schools because of what has happened on
this night

 
          
 
For Juan Diaz is truly home, she thought. He
is here, he waits for those who would come to see him. And at his feet I will
place a bowl into which the tourists will place more money that Juan Diaz
himself tried so hard to earn in all his life.

 
          
 
Juan. She raised her eyes. The breathing of
the children was hearth-warm about her. Juan, do you see? Do you know? Do you
truly understand? Do you forgive, Juan, do you forgive?

 
          
 
The candle flame flickered.

 
          
 
She closed her eyes. Behind her lids she saw
the smile of Juan Diaz, and whether it was the smile that death had carved upon
his lips, or whether it was a new smile she had given him or imagined for him,
she could not say. Enough that she felt him standing tall and alone and on
guard, watching over them and proud through the rest of the night.