Free Arcadio by William Goyen Page B

did not know his own strength. We do not know our own strength, I said. Sí said Tomasso, this is what Hondo the trusty taught me that we do not know our own strength. How could he know that he was choking Sweet Janine to death, Hondo said, that night when he was so full of loving for her? She was una virgen and went to Virgin’s Heaven, Tomasso related to me. Are you a virgen he asked me and I said what? and he said this is a virgin’s hair off the head of a virgin killed by a man who did not know his own strength, Hondo; he give it to me to hold for good luck until he can excape and find me. Which will be when he and Old John can make the hole larger. Every night they are adigging. Uh-huh, I says. Virgin’s Heaven, Tomasso continued to tell me, was a place of small population for you had to be sixteen to make it. I would not have made it at ten, I said to myself, and I wondered what Tomasso would have thought of my wild boyhood in the China Boy . If I had told him he’d have run away I am sure. My pure sweet brother, my saint brother, I cried to Tomasso, I will not let nothing hurt you I will be your mother and father. I loved Tomasso more than anything ever in this world, you wan hear. I sat under a tree while he climbed up in it and I heard him singing up there in his boy’s voice, clear like a sweet bird and oh will he fly away from me, I wondered, like his mother will he fly away? I bathed him in clean creeks and washed his long black hair, black, black and saw his brown body turning in the silver water and wondered would he ride on down the current of the creek and down the falls under the tunnel of the low trees and ride away from me in the dark tunnel of the trees. Once he cut his foot and I carried him all day upon my hip he rode there like a warm brown animal and at nights he folded upon my breast. When some boys came upon Tomasso in a street I moved into them like a lion, feroz , and scattered them away. I threw one up into a tree, we run on hearing the cries from the tree. I did not know my own strength, like Hondo. Nobody was going to hurt Tomasso, nobody was going to harm the hair of his head nor cause one bit of pain to him. Wonder will he die, I thought, my God will he get sick? I thought my God love is too much for me to do, the feelings that love brings me washes me over like a wave I feel like I am drownding why did I ever hunt and find my brother, is this what brother’s love is, pain and ascared to lose them? And sometimes I felt my mother’s nature in me that I wanted you wan hear to run away, I wanted to excape. This made me feel so bad that I run and grabbed him up and held him full of fear and pain against my breast until he cried agasping Arcadio Arcadio what is there trying to get us what is after us why are you afraid and shaking and tears are falling on me from your eyes, Arcadio don’t be afraid God and Jesucristo will protect us like you say like La Biblia Blanca says that you read out to me, Lo I am always with you even to the end of the world . Remember Arcadio? he says. And I says out to him with all my tears, sí recuerdo , I remember, do not be afraid, no tienes miedo . Tell me that you’ll never leave me like your mother did. You wan hear.
    It was very hard for me to find one thing of my mother’s ways in him. Except maybe for his staying to himself, for his solitario part. Otherwise he was as gentle as the little white jumping dog which once I loved so much and that loved me. Yet sometimes I would catch a look across his face that was my mother’s, a look of mi madre would brush across, something misterioso; but Tomasso’s lips upon his mouth was mine. God knows what features his Jewish father showed up on him, this we would never be able to tell until we found our mother who would recognize the marks that could be left on somebody by a one day’s loving.
    Together we went on, my half brother Tomasso and me, hunting for our mother.