Hot Night in the City

poverty? No. Rich men travel in search of yet greater wealth. Poverty is something you can enjoy at home.

Oh, yes, the evidence of Benat's wealth was overwhelming. And it must be confessed that his hidden riches (in search of which the boys of my era spent many afternoons, digging in all the unlikely places a fox of an idiot might bury his gold) were a source of concern among the men of the village. You must not think that we envied him his good fortune. It is not within the Basque character to be envious—save for the grasping people of Licq, where it is understandable, as they have everything to be envious of. No, it was not envy that our people felt, it was a keen sense of the injustice of it all. We rankled at the knowledge that when poor old Benat died, his fortune would pass to his family, the Hastoys, those rich and haughty owners of an espadrille factory in Mauleon. It twisted a man's heart to think that all those good gold francs scraped together throughout a long life of eating onions and wearing tattered old clothes would end up in the pockets of people who were already too rich to pass, as some camels are said to do, through the eyes of needles, particularly as one of the Hastoys had recently lost a chance to marry a plain, honest girl from our village and had ended up marrying a dolled-up strumpet from Licq, and we all know the circumstances under which that occurs.

It was widely accepted that old Benat was a distant and maybe oblique member of the snooty Hastoy clan, their overweening pride being the reason they had cast him out and now denied him. After all, what family likes to admit being related to an idiot, even a rich one? To be sure, whenever anyone suggested to Benat that he was a Hastoy, he denied it with a grin. But what credence is to be given to the word of an idiot? And what significance must one give to that grin? Eh? Eh? And whenever a Hastoy was confronted with the question of relationship, he denied it with an angry vehemence that would make anyone suspicious. Obviously a sore point.

One afternoon, some men giving themselves a little rest from life's cares at Mayor Aramburu's cafe/bar saw old Benat pass the window with his jerky, uncoordinated stride.

'Eh-ho!' the witty and teasing Zabala-One-Leg called out. 'Come join us for a drink, Benat!' And everybody laughed.

'No thank you, sir,' old Benat responded, grinning and nodding as idiots do on such occasions.

'Don't you like wine?' another wag asked, winking at his fellows.

'It is too expensive for me, sir,' the idiot answered, standing at the entrance but not entering, for he was shy of the company of gentlemen with fine work clothes.

Everyone laughed and several eyelids were tugged down at this well-known bit of cupidity.

'Say, where have you been, Benat?' a young shepherd asked. 'I've not seen you for a week.'

'Ah, sir, as for that, I have been walking.'

'Oh? Whither?'

'As the road took me, sir. From stone wall to stone wall.'

'All the way to Paris?'

'Paris? Paris? Well... I suppose that's possible, sir.'

'On business, were you?'

'Business, sir?'

'Harken, old man. Don't make too many sous. They will only end up in Hastoy pockets.'

'My sous? In the pockets of the Hastoys? But I don't understand. Why will that be so, sirs?'

'It is ever so. The family inherits. Unless you make a will with Maitre Etchecopar to the contrary. What's wrong, Benat? Don't you want your money to go to the Hastoys?'

'Well... no. No, I need my few sous.'

'For what?' the young wit cried. 'To buy onions?'

Everyone laughed when old Benat said, 'Just so, sir. To buy onions.'

'Well, Benat,' Mayor Aramburu said from his throne behind the bar, 'if you don't want your money to go to the Hastoys, you'd better make your will with Maitre Etchecopar next Thursday.'

'If you say so, sir. But... what is a will?'

'A will is a thing you make with a lawyer when you think you are going to die,' informed the mayor, who not only had a telephone, but who also read the newspaper all day long behind his bar and therefore was—after our priest, of course—the most knowledgeable man in the village.

Old Benat's face twisted with the effort to comprehend this. At last he said, 'Then, yes, I must make a will. For I have a feeling I shall die soon. Well, thank you, sirs. I must be off.'

'I'll say you're off! 'Way, 'way off!' cried Zabala-One-Leg as Benat left the doorway and departed for his nest in the barn of the late Widow Jaureguiberry—God comfort and reward her.

The ambience in the mayor's bar became suddenly heavy and morose, and men sat staring into their glasses. It is not wise to speak of death, for it is widely known that mentioning bad things beckons them.

'Hm-m-m. Could it be that he is going to die soon?' the mayor wondered aloud. 'It is possible, my friends, that idiots know things that others do not, for idiocy is largely a matter of the mind.'

The men nodded gravely as they silently hefted this morsel of insight.

Now, those envious, backbiting Licquois always try to make much of the fact that our village does not have a full-time lawyer, and that Maitre Etchecopar comes over from Licq only one Thursday a month to attend to our legal business. The truth be known, we are a peace-loving village and our men are brave, so the few disputes we have are settled honorably with fists, unlike those thieving cowards from Licq who are forever at one another's throats in the safe, cowardly way of litigation and are therefore obliged to have a full-time lawyer.

Thus it was that old Benat had to wait until Thursday to consult Maitre Etchecopar in his ad hoc office in the sitting room of the priest's house. And when the idiot shambled out of that office, grinning and muttering to himself, all the men at the window of the bar and all the women watching from behind their curtains experienced a satisfying sense of justice done, and the pleasure of knowing that those haughty Hastoys had been cut out of his will. Now the new Hastoy wife, that strumpet of a Licquoise, would not be lording it over us with money that belonged to the village in which it had been hoarded for more years than there are loafers in the government!

That afternoon the men giving themselves a little rest from life's rigors in Mayor Aramburu's cafe/bar were more than usually silent as they sat over their glasses of strong emerald green Izarra. (The weaklings in Licq drink the milder urine yellow Izarra.) After a time, one of them drew a sigh and gave voice to what everyone was thinking, 'But then... if not the Hastoys, who?'

The mayor stopped wiping his glass and scowled at the bigmouth, for he had been considering that very thing for several hours, and he could see no advantage in everyone in the village troubling themselves over the issue of Benat's inheritance.

'Ah-ha. I think I know who'll get it,' said a man standing by the window. 'Regard.' He gestured to the church across the square where Benat was walking down the stone steps with the village priest. All the men gathered at the window and looked across the square with fatalistic shakes of their heads. To be sure, it was the priest's duty to grab for the Church as much as he could from old people who, approaching death, seek to assure their places in heaven through acts of charity. And we were proud to know that our priest, who had studied both at Pau and Bayonne, could grab more in a day than the bungling old fool of a priest at Licq could grab in a year. But there were so many things a man could do with those piles of buried gold. Useful things. Enjoyable things. Perhaps... who knows?... even good deeds.

The men shrugged and sighed, then returned to their tables and conversations. It was evident that the Church would have old Benat's gold, and there was no point in weeping over a stillborn lamb. But our mayor pondered the matter at greater depth, for people with telephones listen and learn things, and they become craftier than others. The mayor reasoned that old Benat had seen the priest after he had visited the lawyer. Therefore, it was not necessarily true that the Church had the old idiot's gold firmly in its holy fist. And while there is time, there is opportunity.

A week later, the men who gathered at the mayor's cafe/bar to discuss plans for the fete of the village's patron saint were surprised to find old Benat installed at the table by the window, drinking a pressed lemon as he listened to our long arguments and debates with his vague grins and friendly nods. We learned that the mayor had employed the idiot to do light chores about the cafe, and in return for this labor he received a nice little room overlooking the mountain stream that runs through our village. Also, Benat took his meals with the mayor's family, sitting between his host's two plump and pretty daughters, who were solicitous of his comfort and often put the choicest morsels on his plate. The work required of Benat was minimal, so he passed most of his days sunning himself on the bench in front of the cafe/bar, or sitting in the shade of the plane trees, and he was grateful to the