The Schoolmaster by Earl Lovelace

Author:Earl Lovelace [Lovelace, Earl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Novela, Drama, Realista
Publisher: ePubLibre
Published: 1968-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

I

Walking under the broiling Sunday-afternoon sun above Kumaca, in the company of Consantine Patron, Francis Assivero, the father of Pedro, was many times tempted to slacken his collar and remove the tie choking at his throat. But although perspiration broke out again and again on his face, and ran down the skin of his back to wet the white shirt underneath his black jacket, and although his brown shoes newly taken on credit at the shop of Dardain were not yet broken in and pinched his toes, he knew that he had to endure every maddening discomfort because of the dignity of the occasion, for his own dignity, and for the sake of his son.

He was carrying in a brown, wooden jewel-box, a treasure of his earlier and prosperous times, a letter which his son had written to Paulaine Dandrade. He held the box in his right hand, and in his left his handkerchief which was damp now with the perspiration he had wiped from his face.

‘Your Pedro will be fortunate to have such a girl as wife,’ Consantine Patrone said.

Patron wore neither jacket nor tie, but his shirt was buttoned at the wrists and at the neck. Yet about him there was something that made him look dignified and fit for the occasion. Maybe it was the way he walked, or the words that came out of his mouth, or the set of his face with its high brow and hawk’s nose. Maybe it was because he was a big man and everybody knew his name, and they knew his face in Valencia even beyond the gayelles, and in many places in Zanilla.

‘She is a nice girl,’ Francis Assivero, the older of the two men, said. ‘But Pedro is a good boy too.’

‘I wonder how Paulaine will take it. That girl, since the death of his wife, has been like a mother to him and his sons.’

‘You mean that my son is not good enough?’

‘I do not say that, Francis. Why do you get so touchy? Everybody in Kumaca knows that at one time you owned half the village, and had many, many gamecocks.’

Assivero wiped his face, and shifted the jewel-box to the other hand.

‘They know better that I do not have hardly anything now, and that I am too often drunk with rum from the shop of Dardain.’

‘You say that?’

‘I say it. I know. It is when your head reaches where your knees used to be that you get to understand the ways of people. Then it is very late. But it is life, eh, Mr Consantine.’

‘It is life,’ Consantine Patron said.

‘But I do not doubt Pedro will be fortunate to have such a girl for wife. In Kumaca, everybody give her a good name … In my days now … In my days, I would give them the biggest wedding in Kumaca. Ah!’

‘It can still be a big wedding,’ Consantine Patron said.

‘I would go to Port-of-Spain to buy such a suit for my son, and there would be so much to drink … Whisky and rum and wines of all description.

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