Pan's Labyrinth: The Labyrinth of the Faun(7)

That would make things easier anyway. He had grown tired of Carmen. He grew tired of every woman quite easily. They usually tried to get too close. Vidal didn’t want anyone to get close. It made him vulnerable. All order was lost when love moved in. Even desire could be confusing unless one fed it and moved on. Women didn’t understand that.

“And what about my son?” he asked. The child was all he cared about. A man was mortal without a son.

The doctor looked at him in surprise. His eyes always looked slightly surprised behind those silver-rimmed glasses. He opened his soft mouth to answer when Garces and Serrano appeared in the doorway.

“Capitán!”

Vidal silenced his officers with a wave of his hand. The fear on their faces never ceased to please him. It even made him forget what a miserable place this was, so far away from the cities and battlefields where history was written. Being stationed in this dirty, rebel-infested forest—he would make it count. He would plant fear and death with such precision that the generals who had sent him here would hear about it. Some of them had fought with his father.

“My son!” he repeated, impatience cutting like a razor in his voice. “How is he?”

Ferreira still looked at him with bewilderment. Did I ever meet a man like you? his eyes seemed to ask. “For the moment,” he replied, “there is no reason to be alarmed.”

Vidal reached for a cigarette and his cap. “Very good,” he said, pushing his chair back. Which meant: Go.

But the doctor was still standing in front of the table.

“Your wife shouldn’t have traveled, Capitán. Not at such a late state of pregnancy.”

What a fool. A sheep shouldn’t talk like that to a wolf.

“Is that your opinion?”

“My professional opinion. Yes, Capitán, it is.”

Vidal slowly walked around the table, his uniform cap under his arm. He was taller than Ferreira. Of course. Ferreira was a small man. He was losing his hair and his scraggly beard made him look old and pathetic. Vidal loved the clean-shaven chin a sharp razor delivered. He felt nothing but contempt for men like Ferreira. Who wants to heal in a world that is all about killing?

“A son,” he stated calmly, “should be born wherever his father is.”

Fool. Vidal walked toward the door, the smoke of his cigarette following him through the sparsely lit room. Vidal didn’t like lights. He liked to see his own darkness. He was almost at the door when Ferreira once again raised his annoyingly gentle voice.

“What makes you so sure the baby is male, Capitán?”

Vidal turned with a smile, his eyes as black as soot. He could make men feel his knife between their ribs just by looking at them.

“You should leave,” he said.

He could see that Ferreira felt the blade.

The soldiers on guard duty had captured two rabbit hunters poaching past the curfew. Vidal was surprised that Garces had found that worth calling him, although all his officers knew how much he hated to be disturbed at such a late hour.

The moon was a starved sickle in the sky when they stepped out of the mill.

“At eight we detected movement in the northwest sector,” Garces reported as they crossed the yard. “Gunfire. Sergeant Bayona searched the area and captured the suspects.” Garces always talked as if he were dictating his words.

The captives, one old and one much younger, were as pale as the sickly moon. Their clothes were filthy from the woods and their eyes were dim with guilt and fear.

“Capitán,” the younger one said as Vidal scrutinized them wordlessly, “this is my father.” He gestured to the older man. “He is an honorable man.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.” Although Vidal enjoyed fear in a man’s face, it made him angry at the same time.

“And uncover your head in front of an officer.”

The son removed his worn-out cap. Vidal knew why the boy was avoiding his eyes. Dirty peasant! He was proud—one could hear it in his voice—and clever enough to know that his captors wouldn’t like that.

“We found this on them.” Serrano handed Vidal an old rifle. “It’s been fired.”

“We were hunting for rabbits!” The boy was proud and without respect.

“Did I say you could talk?”

The old man was so scared that his knees almost gave way. Scared for his son. One of the soldiers holding him yanked the rucksack from his bent shoulders and handed it to Vidal. He pulled out a pocket almanac issued by the Republican government to all farmers—it looked like it had been read many times. The back cover showed the Republican flag and Vidal read the slogan aloud with a sneer:

“‘No god, no country, no master.’ I see.”

“Red propaganda, Capitán!” Serrano looked proud and relieved that he hadn’t just disturbed his capitán for two dirty peasants. Maybe these two even belonged to the resistance fighters against General Franco, who they had come to hunt in this accursed forest.

“It’s not propaganda!” the son protested.

“Shhh.”

The soldiers heard the threat in Vidal’s hissed warning, but the stupid young peacock was too eager to protect his father. Love kills in many ways.

“It’s just an old almanac, Capitán!”

No, the boy wouldn’t shut up.