Chapter 5 : Epilogue
Felipe eagerly tore the brown kraft paper and discovered the gift Diego had chosen for him: La Historia de Gil Blas de Santillana.
"I read it when I was in Madrid. A good friend of mine, Zafira, had this novel and lent it to me. I thought you'd like it and I finally managed to find a Spanish translation of it, so I ordered it for you."
Felipe smiled. Of course he wasn't really a child anymore but he liked novels and adventures; and he also knew how precious books were: it was a rather expensive gift Diego had just offered him.
Felipe's smile was all Diego needed to put a final perfect point to this beautiful Día de Reyes.
"Let's have lunch now," he told Felipe. "And just before siesta," he added in a whisper, "we'll go down and check on Tornado: Zorro will make a short and discreet courtesy call to the orphanage tonight..."
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Zorro silently crept into the mission, down the hallway and into the boy's dormitory. Through the darkness he relied on his memory of the place he saw just a few hours earlier to try to navigate his way through the room without banging into a bed and waking everyone.
He reached the bed whose occupant he had come to see and gently laid his gloved hand on what was probably the boy's shoulder. He squeezed it and shook it a little bit.
"Julio..." he whispered, "Julio!"
The child stirred but Zorro moved his hand to gently put it on the boy's mouth.
"Shh! Don't be afraid Julio, it's Zorro. Wake up, niño."
"Zorro?" Julio asked sleepily, a bit too loud.
"Shhh!" Zorro repeated. "Let's not awaken the others."
"Is it really you?" Julio whispered. "Really for real?"
Zorro smiled.
"Really for real," he confirmed.
Julio sat up straight.
"Is there somewhere we could go to talk quietly?"
Julio rubbed his eyes and answered:
"Come with me."
He got up from his bed and dragged his hero to the hallway, where he simply sat down on the floor. Zorro did the same.
"I heard you got an outfit very similar to this one, today?" Diego murmured pointing to the sleeve of his own shirt.
Julio nodded enthusiastically.
"Yes, and a sword too," he answered. "Not a real one of course, a wooden one. But no whip."
"And one of your friends here wanted to try it on too, or so I've been told."
"I had just received it, she could have waited!"
"And you two fought."
Julio looked down.
"Yes, but..."
"But...?"
"But she's a girl, couldn't she be happy with her brand new toy tea set? And she even pounced on me..."
"So it was enough of a reason for you to hit her and Don Diego with the wooden sword?"
"I know I shouldn't have..." he said very sheepish and awkward. "I know it was wrong. But she had been mean–"
"Indeed you shouldn't have."
Julio sighed.
"Tomorrow I will lend her the mask, the cape, the sword and everything. I already promised Sergeant Mendoza to do so."
"Good. And what about little Flavio wanting to try it on too?"
Julio's head shot up:
"Everyone wants me to lend them my present, now! But it's mine! That's enough that I have to lend it to Filomena tomorrow although she is a girl and can never be Zorro for real," Julio grumbled, "but Flavio now? That's ridiculous, he is Indian!"
"So what?" Zorro asked, echoing Flavio's and Mendoza's earlier question.
But this time, through the slits of his mask the intensely piercing look in his eyes almost bore a hole through Julio all the way to his soul, and the little boy lowered his head.
"Well..." the child murmured rather uneasily, "I simply meant... since he is an Indian... he can never be Zorro either... 'tis all..."
He tentatively looked at Zorro who was tilting his head with his eyes still staring at the boy.
"Hmmm..." the outlaw let out. "Why then...?"
Julio's eyes grew wide with incomprehension.
"Why what?" he asked, clearly at a loss.
Zorro suppressed a sigh. Children!
"Why couldn't he be Zorro later? Or anyone else who happens to be an Indian, for that matter?"
"Well, because... er..." Julio seemed to think hard about it for the very first time, "because... in fact... er..." He paused and seemed to be deep in thought again. "I don't really know, but it is simply how it is."
Zorro folded his arms.
"Perhaps because most people think Indians are lesser people..." he suggested. "Do you think that Flavio is a lesser person than you are? Or little Jorge, or Ana Rosa?"
Julio looked like he was in agony. It was never the same when general principals were suddenly applied to the people you knew and were close to.
"No... no, of course not," Julio slowly admitted.
"Do you think that Indians are not courageous enough to be Zorro?"
"No, no, most of them are brave I think!"
"So perhaps you think they don't ride well enough?"
"Of course not, everyone knows they are excellent riders!"
"Do you think they can't fight? They can't learn how to fence?"
"No, I suppose everyone can learn fencing if they are taught well..."
"So...?" Zorro asked.
"So... I don't know", the child replied. "It simply sounds like a weird idea, an Indian Zorro..."
Under his mask, Diego frowned. Then he had an idea:
"Julio, what makes you so sure I'm not an Indian...?"
The boy tilted his head to the side, clearly pondering whether his hero was pulling his leg.
"Would it change anything, in your eyes?" Diego asked.
"Er...I don't think so... Except that... you are not an Indian anyway, are you?"
"Who knows..." Zorro cryptically answered. "Do you think my moustache is too blond for instance?"
Julio giggled.
"Blond? Certainly not. So I guess that yes, perhaps you are an Indian after all... Or a Mestizo. Are you?"
Diego smiled.
"I won't tell. No one must know who I am. Too dangerous a knowledge, for everyone involved. But as you just said, Zorro could just as well be an Indian. Or a Mestizo, or a Spaniard alike."
"Or even a woman..." Julio added earnestly. "Like Filomena perhaps, when she is older."
Diego pulled a face. A woman? Taking his place? His mission? What a strange idea...
But talking about Filomena, he remembered he had another visit to make tonight.
"Good," he simply told the boy. "Now go back to bed Julio, and have a good night's sleep. Sweet dreams my young friend!"
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"Shh! Don't be afraid, young lady! It's me, Zorro..."
Diego slowly removed his hand from Filomena's mouth and took seat on the edge of her hay mattress.
"Zorro?" the girl repeated, sounding a bit fearful.
He felt her small hands tentatively grab his upper arms and go up his shoulders, then his neck, his face, and when her fingers found the mask she said:
"It's really you!"
"Not so loud, Filomena!" he whispered, gently grabbing her wrists to take her hands away from his face. "You are going to wake the other girls..."
He couldn't see her nod but supposed she did, and apparently she complied because next second her voice was barely audible when she whispered sheepishly:
"You have come to punish me, right?"
Taken aback, Diego didn't reply immediately.
"What? No! Why would I punish you?" he finally whispered back.
She sighed – out of relief or acceptance, he couldn't tell – and she explained:
"Because I have been mean to Julio today, I thought you came for that. Usually you punish the meanies or send them to jail, don't you?"
Diego smiled.
"I do, when I can, but my role is not to raise children... and certainly not to punish them when their parents or the adults who raise them already did so... I haven't come to put you in jail, Filomena."
Despite the darkness he sensed that the girl pushed on her hands to sit up on her mattress.
"Really?"
He nodded but she couldn't see it.
"Really," he confirmed.
Filomena relaxed and silence fell between them, but it wasn't an awkward silence at all.
"So why are you here?" she finally dared ask. "Are you hiding from the soldiers outside?"
He smiled.
"No. I have come for you. I heard what happened between you and Julio today, and you have already been punished for that. But I needed to understand: why would you want to be me?"
"You are strong," Filomena replied immediately. "Except for the alcalde, no one dares try to harm you or make fun of you, and people like you. And you help everyone. And you can fight, and you absolutely always win. And... and you have the most beautiful horse ever."
She paused and Diego didn't know what to answer. He reflected that since the beginning of the day, he realised that he really didn't know how to react with children, what to tell them. He supposed it meant that he wasn't really ready for parenthood yet. But could anyone really ever be...?
"When I am older," Filomena went on, "I'd like to know how to fight for myself. And to stand up for others too. And I'd like to have a horse like yours. But I know of course that this is all a dream, it can never happen: I am an orphan with no family, I can never be rich. And such a beautiful horse as yours must be so expensive! And I can never learn how to fight either. Girls are not taught that, and the poor are not taught fencing anyway, so there is not a chance for me..."
Diego frowned, but he didn't want to lie to the girl: she was right: she was an orphan, and poor, and a girl: the best she could expect in adulthood was to find a position as a housemaid in a good and kind family, and she was already aware of it. She didn't own anything so there was little chance she'd marry a farmer who owns his own patch of dry land and works it for a living. She'd more probably marry either another fellow servant or a tenant farmer, a peon.
And even the mighty Zorro couldn't change that.
Diego sighed. But then he smiled. He couldn't change her future, okay, but at least he could do something for her present. And in fact he had come here tonight exactly for that.
"Filomena, there isn't much I can do for you to ever own a horse like Tornado, but right now, I can tuck you in if you want."
"Really? You have the time for that?"
Diego hesitated: each minute spent in the pueblo as Zorro was an additional danger. But he liked far too much playing with fire when he was wearing this outfit. He suddenly understood the appeal this guise had in the eyes of these children. Perhaps he too was still a child, after all. No grown-up in his right mind would have come up with such an idea, and no responsible adult would have let it go on like this for so many months!
He smiled at himself. What a fool he was being...
"I will take the time. Slip back under the cover, now."
Filomena happily complied and Diego pulled her blanket up to her chin.
"Once upon a time," he murmured, "there was a little boy named... er... Jaime. Jaime didn't have parents, but he had been granted an incredible gift: he had an inexhaustible source of joy in his heart. And one day..."
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Always the same, Diego inwardly lamented. A year had passed and nothing had changed: he was still late on the schedule, the presents were not wrapped yet, once again he ordered Felipe's gift too late to receive it on time, and to top it all this year both his father and Victoria had flatly refused to impersonate the Wise Men until Diego changed the formula for his glue and tested it on someone else than them.
So now here he was, hidden in one of the tavern's bedrooms, looking at how he just transformed Sergeant Mendoza into some oriental-looking majestic dignitary.
He sighed as Felipe was applying the glue to his cheeks. The boy frowned and raised his mentor's chin up with his knuckle, making a clucking noise with his tongue. Don't move, it meant.
Once Felipe was done with the glue, he applied the fake beard on it. Diego watched the young man's face while he was doing that: Felipe was already proudly sporting his thick beard and the contrast with his obviously juvenile features was creating a rather weird impression, but if even Victoria could look like one of the Three Kings from a distance the previous year, with Felipe it certainly could do the trick too...
Diego looked through the window: outside on the plaza the orphans from the mission were making the most of the last rays of sunlight to play rather excitedly. A short girl – Ana Rosa? yes, probably – had donned Julio's Zorro outfit and was threatening a much taller Flavio who appeared to act like a soldier wanting to catch her. Filomena was cheering them with a few others and playing panpipes. A little bit further, Jorge was making an interesting use of Filomena's tea set: he was now happily using a tin toy saucepan as a drum and was hitting it with the miniature wooden spoon. It was making quite a racket so Sister Lucia soon came to make it stop and she gathered all her children for dinner.
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Sister Maria de la Cruz heard a knock and went to open the door. It was now almost dark outside but she recognised the visitor.
"Oh, Don Alejandro, welcome! And merry Twelfth Night to you!"
"Buenas tardes Sister, and thank you. I am bringing oranges for the niños..."
"Come in, come in," the padre told him from inside the room, "Señorita Escalante just brought a big King's cake for the children and stayed to share it with us. Please have a seat and a bite of it with us too."
He entered the room and Victoria understood the signal: Don Alejandro's presence here meant that Sergeant Mendoza, Don Diego and Felipe were about to enter the scene. She looked through the window.
"Oh, look!" she almost shouted, pointing at it, "Los Reyes!"
And on the opposite side of the plaza, as he was slowly riding his fake camel and waving at the mission, Diego thought that he really liked this tradition. Of course life was not perfect, but every year this night was...
Fin