Country of the Bad Wolfes

John Roger that they would not solicit his permission personally. As he had been aware for some time, they not only never asked him for anything, they never asked him anything at all. He had no idea why they had taken such a stance, but there was no mistaking they had. He was tempted to refuse them permission to use the guns until they came to him and asked directly, but the notion struck him as childish and he told Reynaldo to let them.

But Don Juan, Margarita said, even though it irritates that they will not ask anything of you, is it not commendable that they are of such strong independence? That they are of such strong will? Forgive my presumption, but perhaps you respect them more than you realize.

That they are of such hard heads would be nearer to the truth, he said. And you are indeed presumptuous, my dear. Have I ever told you how much you sometimes sound like the crone?

Margarita cackled.

The first time they fired the pistols, he heard them at it and went out on a balcony to watch. They were shooting at bottles they had set against the side of a dirt mound. So far as he knew, they had never held a gun except during their escape from the armory, and they had not fired them then. Yet they were scoring with every shot. At age eleven they were better shots than any man he knew. And come to think of it, better swimmers. Lizzie had been the best swimmer he’d ever seen until them. And what divers! Whenever they climbed a high riverside tree to make a dive, everyone in sight of the landing would stop to watch. He had often looked on from his window. From the highest branches they would execute perfect dives, plunging into the water with hardly more splash than a coconut. Sometimes they would not resurface for so long that some in the crowd would begin to cry out that this time they had surely drowned—and then their heads would pop up some thirty or forty yards up or down the river and the crowd would go wild with cheering. They are grand entertainers, John Roger said. Very popular with the folk.

Tell me, Don Juan, have you ever said to them that they are admirable swimmers? That their boat is a fine one? That they shoot well?

What for? They know what they’re good at. And they don’t lack pride about it, believe me. You can see it in their faces.

“Ay, hombre,” she said with a reproving shake of her head.

When he first heard they were good fighters it had pleased him to know they could defend themselves. Then he heard disturbing things about one of their fights. They had seen some boys pouring lamp oil on a cat trapped in a fruit crate and they were going to set it on fire for fun. In preventing the cruelty, the twins badly beat up several of the boys, all of them bigger than the twins, according to Reynaldo. A nose was broken, a few teeth. Understandable things that could happen in a fight. But it troubled John Roger to learn that one boy had an ear ripped off, and that the twins’ punishment of them didn’t end with the beatings. They pinned the leader of the group facedown and soaked the backside of his pants with oil and set it aflame and then laughed to see him run howling for the nearest water trough with his ass on fire. Reynaldo had assured John Roger the burned boy would recover, although for the next few weeks he would eat standing up and sleep on his stomach. It bothers me, John Roger said, that they can be so vicious.

They were vicious only to punish the more vicious.

You and the crone, you just have to side with them don’t you? Vicki Clara’s the same way. I would think women had better sense.

You have a good heart, my darling, but you do not know women very well.

The simple fact was that the twins excelled at everything they took a liking to. They had begun riding at the age of six, just as John Samuel had. But while John Samuel had been obliged to train hard to make himself into the excellent horseman he now was, they could ride with an easy grace from the day they first sat a pony. They did stunts no one else on the hacienda would even attempt. They would stand up on their galloping horses, riding side by side, and switch mounts in sidewise leaps. They would ride in pursuit of a chicken and position it between them and then one or the other would hang far down the side of his mount, clinging to the saddle with one hand, and snatch up the running bird by the head. John Samuel had witnessed some of these exhibitions and had been able to mask his resentment from everyone but his father. It’s natural that he’s a little jealous of their horsemanship, John Roger said, even if he’ll never admit it. He loves horses, you see, but I think he believes the twins use them as only another way to show off.

Is that why he does not love them? Margarita asked. Because they are better horsemen? Because they are showoffs?

I didn’t say he doesn’t love them.

You did not have to.

Look, you have to understand something about John Samuel. It’s hard for him to express his feelings. He loved his mother very dearly and her loss was very hard on him. They nearly died together when he was a baby. Twice they nearly died together. She used to sing to him at night—have I told you that? She sang him to sleep every night until he was eleven or twelve. She was his first teacher. He was fifteen when she died. I don’t think anyone can know how terrible it was for him to lose her.

But the twins also lost her. That is terrible too.

It’s not the same thing. They never knew her.

Maybe that is more terrible.

How could it be? You can’t miss somebody you never knew as much as somebody you did.

“Pero que tonteria, hombre!” she said. Of course you can! Even a child who never knew his mother knows what a mother is. To have no memory of her can be worse than to remember her at least a little.

He sighed. I don’t know. If Lizzie had lived, then maybe all of them . . . ah hell.

She asked if he still locked them up for punishment.

Yes, sometimes. But he had reached an accord with them about it. If he put them in the same room they would stay there for as long as he decreed. He didn’t even have to lock the door, not that a lock would have much effect. They had also come to an agreement about camping in the jungle. They could go for five days at a time but had to tell him or Josefina the direction they were going and about how far. It was an agreement made of air, since he couldn’t enforce his conditions or even stop them from going short of chaining them to the cellar walls and posting guards at every portal—and even then he wouldn’t be surprised if they escaped. And yet they had held to their end of the bargain. So far, anyway.

She wanted to hear more, but the hour was late and they were both tired, so they would have to wait until his next visit.

When he returned to El Castillo two weeks later the house mistress greeted him with a somber face and the news that Margarita was dead. Six days earlier, the afternoon post had included a letter for her, the only one she received in the four and a half months she’d been there. The house mistress recalled that the envelope bore no indication of the sender or the point of origin. She sent the letter upstairs to her, and some hours later, when Margarita still had not come down to begin her evening’s duty, the house mistress went up to her room and found her on the bed, blue-faced and rigoring. On the bedside table was a nearly empty cup of tea and next to it the little vial of poison. A saucer held the letter’s charred residue. She left no note. She was buried in the city cemetery.

The house mistress averted her eyes for a moment while John Roger regained his composure. He cleared his throat and asked if she knew why Margarita had done it. The woman shrugged. She said Margarita was not the first girl to work at El Castillo whose specific reason for being there or even her real name was known to no one in the house. She had shown up one day and said she sought employment. She gave her name as Margarita Damascos and admitted its falseness. It was obvious she was well-bred but she would reveal nothing of where she came from or even how she had learned of El Castillo de las Princesas. Then again, the house mistress said, it was not a profession that required the biographical facts of its practitioners.

John Roger wanted to know how it could possibly be that no one she had lived and worked with knew who she was. The house mistress said such a circumstance was far more common in this world more than he might think. She suggested the possibility that the person who wrote the letter was someone Margarita had never wanted to see again, almost certainly a man—a father, a husband, a lover. Someone who had somehow found out where she was and what name she was using and had written to tell her something she could not bear.

Like what? John Roger said.

Who knows? Maybe that he was coming for her.