The Delicate Prey (3 page)

Several of the girls started to dance timidly in couples, with loud giggling. None of the men would budge. The marimba players went on pounding out the same piece over and over again. Don Federico danced with Chalía, who was stiff from her morning ride; soon she excused herself and left. Instead of going upstairs to bed she crossed onto the front veranda and sat looking across the vast moonlit clearing. The night was thick with eternity. She could feel it there, just beyond the gate. Only the monotonous, tinkling music kept the house within the confines of time, saved it from being engulfed. As she listened to the merrymaking progress, she had the impression that the men were taking more part in it. “Rico has probably opened them a bottle of rum,” she thought with fury.

At last it sounded as though everyone were dancing. Her curiosity having risen to a high pitch, she was about to rise and return to the terrace, when a figure appeared at the other end of the veranda. She needed no one to tell her it was Roberto. He was walking soundlessly toward her; he seemed to hesitate as he came up to her, then he squatted down by her chair and looked up at her. She had been right: he smelled of rum.

“Good evening, señorita.”

She felt impelled to remain silent. Nevertheless, she said, “Good evening.” She put her hand into her pocket, saying to herself that she must do this correctly and quickly.

As he crouched there with his face shining in the moonlight, she bent forward and passed her hand over his smooth hair. Keeping her fingers on the back of his neck, she leaned still further forward and kissed his lips. The rum was very strong. He did not move. She began to whisper in his ear, very low: “Roberto, I love you. I have a present for you. Forty
colones.
Here.”

He turned his head swiftly and said out loud, “Where?”

She put the bills into his hand, still holding his head, and whispered again: “Sh! Not a word to anyone. I must go now. I'll give you more tomorrow night.” She let go of him.

He rose and went out the gate. She went straight upstairs to bed, and as she went to sleep the music was still going on.

Much later she awoke and lit her lamp. It was half past four. Day would soon break. Feeling full of an unaccustomed energy, Chalía dressed, extinguished the lamp and went outdoors, shutting the gate quietly behind her. In the paddock the horses stirred. She walked by it and started along the road to the village. It was a very silent hour: the night insects had ceased their noises and the birds had not yet begun their early-morning twitter. The moon was low in the sky, so that it remained behind the trees most of the time. Ahead of her Venus flared like a minor moon. She walked quickly, with only a twinge of pain now and then in her hip.

Something dark lying in the road ahead of her made her stop walking. It did not move. She watched it closely, stepping cautiously toward it, ready to run the other way. As her eyes grew accustomed to its form, she saw that it was a man lying absolutely still. And as she drew near, she knew it was Roberto. She touched his arm with her foot. He did not respond. She leaned over and put her hand on his chest. He was breathing deeply, and the smell of liquor was almost overpowering. She straightened and kicked him lightly in the head. There was a tiny groan from far within. This also, she said to herself, would have to be done quickly. She felt wonderfully light and powerful as she slowly maneuvered his body with her feet to the right-hand side of the road. There was a small cliff there, about twenty feet high. When she got him to the edge, she waited a while, looking at his features in the moonlight. His mouth was open a little, and the white teeth peeked out from behind the lips. She smoothed his forehead a few times and with a gentle push rolled him over the edge. He fell very heavily, making a strange animal sound as he hit.

She walked back to the ranch at top speed. It was getting light when she arrived. She went into the kitchen and ordered her breakfast, saying: “I'm up early.” The entire day she spent around the house, reading and talking to Lucha. She thought Don Federico looked preoccupied when he set out on his morning tour of inspection, after closing the commissary. She thought he still did when he returned; she told him so at lunch.

“It's nothing,” he said. “I can't seem to balance my books.”

“And you've always been such a good mathematician,” said Chalía.

During the afternoon some cowboys brought Roberto in. She heard the commotion in the kitchen and the servants' cries of
“Ay, Dios!”
She went out to watch. He was conscious, lying on the floor with all the other Indians staring at him.

“What's the matter?” she said.

One of the cowboys laughed. “Nothing of importance. He had too much—” the cowboy made a gesture of drinking from a bottle, “and fell off the road. Nothing but bruises, I think.”

After dinner Don Federico asked Chalía and Lucha into his little private office. He looked drawn, and he spoke more slowly than usual. As Chalía entered she saw that Roberto was standing inside the door. He did not look at her. Lucha and Chalía sat down; Don Federico and Roberto remained standing.

“This is the first time anyone has done this to me,” said Don Federico, looking down at the rug, his hands locked behind him. “Roberto has stolen from me. The money is missing. Some of it is in his pocket still, more than his monthly wages. I know he has stolen it because he had no money yesterday and because,” he turned to Chalía, “because he can account for having it only by lying. He says you gave it to him. Did you give Roberto any money yesterday?”

Chalía looked puzzled. “No,” she said. “I thought of giving him a
colon
when he brought me back from the ride yesterday morning. But then I thought it would be better to wait until we were leaving to go back to the city. Was it much? He's just a boy.”

Don Federico said: “It was forty
colones.
But that's the same as forty
centavos.
Stealing . . .”

Chalía interrupted him. “Rico!” she exclaimed. “Forty
colones!
That's a great deal! Has he spent much of it? You could take it out of his wages little by little.” She knew her brother would say what he did say, a moment later.

“Never! He'll leave tonight. And his brother with him.”

In the dim light Chalía could see the large purple bruise on Roberto's forehead. He kept his head lowered and did not look up, even when she and Lucha rose and left the room at a sign from their brother. They went upstairs together and sat down on the veranda.

“What barbarous people they are!” said Lucha indignantly. “Poor Rico may learn some day how to treat them. But I'm afraid one of them will kill him first.”

Chalía rocked back and forth, fanning herself lazily. “With a few more lessons like this he may change,” she said. “What heat!”

They heard Don Federico's voice below by the gate. Firmly it said,
“Adiós.”
There were muffled replies and the gate was closed. Don Federico joined his sisters on the veranda. He sat down sadly.

“I didn't like to send them away on foot at night,” he said, shaking his head. “But that Roberto is a bad one. It was better to have him go once and for all, quickly. Juan is good, but I had to get rid of him too, of course.”

“Claro, claro,”
said Lucha absently. Suddenly she turned to her brother full of concern. “I hope you remembered to take away the money you said he still had in his pocket.”

“Yes, yes,” he assured her, but from the tone of his voice she knew he had let the boy keep it.

Don Federico and Lucha said good night and went to bed. Chalía sat up a while, looking vaguely at the wall with the spiders in it. Then she yawned and took the lamp into her room. Again the bed had been pushed back against the wall by the maid. Chalía shrugged her shoulders, got into the bed where it was, blew out the lamp, listened for a few minutes to the night sounds, and went peacefully to sleep, thinking of how surprisingly little time it had taken her to get used to life at Paso Rojo, and even, she had to admit now, to begin to enjoy it.

Pastor Dowe at Tacaté

Pastor Dowe delivered his first sermon in Tacaté on a bright Sunday morning shortly after the beginning of the rainy season. Almost a hundred Indians attended, and some of them had come all the way from Balaché in the valley. They sat quietly on the ground while he spoke to them for an hour or so in their own tongue. Not even the children became restive; there was the most complete silence as long as he kept speaking. But he could see that their attention was born of respect rather than of interest. Being a conscientious man he was troubled to discover this.

When he had finished the sermon, the notes for which were headed “Meaning of Jesus,” they slowly got to their feet and began wandering away, quite obviously thinking of other things. Pastor Dowe was puzzled. He had been assured by Dr. Ramos of the University that his mastery of the dialect was sufficient to enable his prospective parishioners to follow his sermons, and he had had no difficulty conversing with the Indians who had accompanied him up from San Ger6nimo. He stood sadly on the small thatch-covered platform in the clearing before his house and watched the men and women walking slowly away in different directions. He had the sensation of having communicated absolutely nothing to them.

All at once he felt he must keep the people here a little longer, and he called out to them to stop. Politely they turned their faces toward the pavilion where he stood, and remained looking at him, without moving. Several of the smaller children were already playing a game, and were darting about silently in the background. The pastor glanced at his wrist watch and spoke to Nicolás, who had been pointed out to him as one of the most intelligent and influential men in the village, asking him to come up and stand beside him.

Once Nicolás was next to him, he decided to test him with a few questions. “Nicolás,” he said in his dry, small voice, “what did I tell you today?”

Nicolas coughed and looked over the heads of the assembly to where an enormous sow was rooting in the mud under a mango tree. Then he said: “Don Jesucristo.”

“Yes,” agreed Pastor Dowe encouragingly.
“Bai,
and Don Jesucristo what?”

“A good man,” answered Nicolás with indifference.

“Yes, yes, but what more?” Pastor Dowe was impatient; his voice rose in pitch.

Nicolás was silent. Finally he said, “Now I go,” and stepped carefully down from the platform. The others again began to gather up their belongings and move off. For a moment Pastor Dowe was furious. Then he took his notebook and his Bible and went into the house.

At lunch Mateo, who waited on table, and whom he had brought with him from Ocosingo, stood leaning against the wall smiling.

“Señor,” he said, “Nicolás says they will not come again to hear you without music.”

“Music!” cried Pastor Dowe, setting his fork on the table. “Ridiculous! What music? We have no music.”

“He says the father at Yalactín used to sing.”

“Ridiculous!” said the pastor again. “In the first place I can't sing, and in any case it's unheard of!
Inaudito!”

“Sí, verdad?”
agreed Mateo.

The pastor's tiny bedroom was breathlessly hot, even at night. However, it was the only room in the little house with a window on the outside; he could shut the door onto the noisy patio where by day the servants invariably gathered for their work and their conversations. He lay under the closed canopy of his mosquito net, listening to the barking of the dogs in the village below. He was thinking about Nicolás. Apparently Nicolás had chosen for himself the role of envoy from the village to the mission. The pastor's thin lips moved. “A troublemaker,” he whispered to himself. “I'll speak with him tomorrow.”

Early the next morning he stood outside Nicolás's hut. Each house in Tacaté had its own small temple: a few tree trunks holding up some thatch to shelter the offerings of fruit and cooked food. The pastor took care not to go near the one that stood near by; he already felt enough like a pariah, and Dr. Ramos had warned him against meddling of that sort. H e called out.

A little girl about seven years old appeared in the doorway of the house. She looked at him wildly a moment with huge round eyes before she squealed and disappeared back into the darkness. The pastor waited and called again. Presently a man came around the hut from the back and told him that Nicolás would return. The pastor sat down on a stump. Soon the little girl stood again in the doorway; this time she smiled coyly. The pastor looked at her severely. It seemed to him she was too old to run about naked. He turned his head away and examined the thick red petals of a banana blossom hanging nearby. When he looked back she had come out and was standing near him, still smiling. He got up and walked toward the road, his head down, as if deep in thought. Nicolás entered through the gate at that moment, and the pastor, colliding with him, apologized.

“Good,” grunted Nicolás. “What?”

His visitor was not sure how he ought to begin. He decided to be pleasant.

“I am a good man,” he smiled.

“Yes,” said Nicolás. “Don Jesucristo is a good man.”

“No, no, no!” cried Pastor Dowe.

Nicolás looked politely confused, but said nothing.

Feeling that his command of the dialect was not equal to this sort of situation, the pastor wisely decided to begin again. “Hachakyum made the world. Is that true?”

Nicolás nodded in agreement, and squatted down at the pastor's feet, looking up at him, his eyes narrowed against the sun.

“Hachakyum made the sky,” the pastor began to point, “the mountains, the trees, those people there. Is that true?”

Again Nicolás assented.

“Hachakyum is good. Hachakyum made you. True?” Pastor Dowe sat down again on the stump.

Nicolás spoke finally, “All that you say is true.”

The pastor permitted himself a pleased smile and went on. “Hachakyum made everything and everyone because He is mighty and good.”

Nicolás frowned. “No!” he cried. “That is not true! Hachakyum did not make everyone. He did not make you. He did not make guns or Don Jesucristo. Many things He did not make!”

The pastor shut his eyes a moment, seeking strength. “Good,” he said at last in a patient voice. “Who made the other things? Who made me? Please tell me.”

Nicolas did not hesitate. “Metzabok.”

“But who is Metzabok?” cried the pastor, letting an outraged note show in his voice. The word for God he had always known only as Hachakyum.

“Metzabok makes all the things that do not belong here,” said Nicolás.

The pastor rose, took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. “You hate me,” he said, looking down at the Indian. The word was too strong, but he did not know how to say it any other way.

Nicolás stood up quickly and touched the pastor's arm with' his hand.

“No. That is not true. You are a good man. Everyone likes you.”

Pastor Dowe backed away in spite of himself. The touch of the brown hand was vaguely distasteful to him. He looked beseechingly into the Indian's face and said, “But Hachakyum did not make me?”

“No.”

There was a long pause.

“Will you come next time to my house and hear me speak?”

Nicolás looked uncomfortable.

“Everyone has work to do,” he said.

“Mateo says you want music,” began the pastor.

Nicolás shrugged. “To me it is not important. But the others will come if you have music. Yes, that is true. They like music.”

“But
what
music?” cried the pastor in desperation.

“They say you have a
bitrola.”

The pastor looked away, thinking: “There is no way to keep anything from these people.” Along with all his other house-hold goods and the things left behind by his wife when she died, he had brought a little portable phonograph. It was somewhere in the storeroom piled with the empty valises and cold-weather garments.

“Tell them I will play the
bitrola,”
he said, going out the gate.

The little girl ran after him and stood watching him as he walked up the road.

On his way through the village the pastor was troubled by the reflection that he was wholly alone in this distant place, alone in his struggle to bring the truth to its people. He consoled himself by recalling that it is only in each man's own consciousness that the isolation exists; objectively man is always a part of something.

When he arrived home he sent Mateo to the storeroom to look for the portable phonograph. After a time the boy brought it out, dusted it and stood by while the pastor opened the case. The crank was inside. He took it out and wound the spring. There were a few records in the compartment at the top. The first he examined were “Let's Do It,” “Crazy Rhythm,” and “Strike up the Band,” none of which Pastor Dowe considered proper accompaniments to his sermons. He looked further. There was a recording of A1 Jolson singing “Sonny Boy” and a cracked copy of “She's Funny That Way.” As he looked at the labels he remembered how the music on each disc had sounded. Unfortunately Mrs. Dowe had disliked hymn music; she had called it “mournful.”

“So here we are,” he sighed, “without music.”

Mateo was astonished. “It does not play?”

“I can't play them this music for dancing, Mateo.”

Cómo nó, señorl
They will like it very much!

“No, Mateo!” said the pastor forcefully, and he put on “Crazy Rhythm” to illustrate his point. As the thin metallic tones issued from the instrument, Mateo's expression changed to one of admiration bordering on beatitude.
“Qué bonitol”
he said reverently. Pastor Dowe lifted the tone arm and the hopping rhythmical pattern ceased.

“It cannot be done,” he said with finality, closing the lid.

Nevertheless on Saturday he remembered that he had promised Nicolás there would be music at the service, and he decided to tell Mateo to carry the phonograph out to the pavilion in order to have it there in case the demand for it should prove to be pressing. This was a wise precaution, because the next morning when the villagers arrived they were talking of nothing but the music they were to hear.

His topic was “The Strength of Faith,” and he had got about ten minutes into the sermon when Nicolás, who was squatting directly in front of him, quietly stood up and raised his hand. Pastor Dowe frowned and stopped talking.

Nicolás spoke: “Now music, then talk. Then music, then talk. Then music.” He turned around and faced the others. “That is a good way.” There were murmurs of assent, and everyone leaned a bit farther forward on his haunches to catch whatever musical sounds might issue from the pavilion.

The pastor sighed and lifted the machine onto the table, knocking off the Bible that lay at the edge. “Of course,” he said to himself with a faint bitterness. The first record he came to was “Crazy Rhythm.” As it started to play, an infant nearby, who had been singsonging a series of meaningless sounds, ceased making its parrotlike noises, remaining silent and transfixed as it stared at the platform. Everyone sat absolutely quiet until the piece was over. Then there was a hubbub of approbation. “Now more talk,” said Nicolas, looking very pleased.

The pastor continued. He spoke a little haltingly now, because the music had broken his train of thought, and even by looking at his notes he could not be sure just how far he had got before the interruption. As he continued, he looked down at the people sitting nearest him. Beside Nicolas he noticed the little girl who had watched him from the doorway, and he was gratified to see that she was wearing a small garment which managed to cover her. She was staring at him with an expression he interpreted as one of fascinated admiration.

Presently, when he felt that his audience was about to grow restive (even though he had to admit that they never would have shown it outwardly) he put on “Sonny Boy.” From the reaction it was not difficult to guess that this selection was finding less favor with its listeners. The general expression of tense anticipation at the beginning of the record soon relaxed into one of routine enjoyment of a less intense degree. When the piece was finished, Nicolás got to his feet again and raised his hand solemnly, saying: “Good. But the other music is more beautiful.”

The pastor made a short summation, and, after playing “Crazy Rhythm” again, he announced that the service was over.

In this way “Crazy Rhythm” became an integral part of Pastor Dowe's weekly service. After a few months the old record was so badly worn that he determined to play it only once at each gathering. His flock submitted to this show of economy with bad grace. They complained, using Nicolás as emissary.

“But the music is old. There will be no more if I use it all,” the pastor explained.

Nicolás smiled unbelievingly. “You say that. But you do not want us to have it.”

The following day, as the pastor sat reading in the patio's shade, Mateo again announced Nicolás, who had entered through the kitchen and, it appeared, had been conversing with the servants there. By now the pastor had learned fairly well how to read the expressions on Nicolás's face; the one he saw there now told him that new exactions were at hand.

Nicolás looked respectful. “Señor,” he said, “we like you because you have given us music when we asked you for it. Now we are all good friends. We want you to give us salt.”

“Salt?” exclaimed Pastor Dowe, incredulous. “What for?”

Nicolás laughed good-naturedly, making it clear that he thought the pastor was joking with him. Then he made a gesture of licking. “To eat,” he said.

“Ah, yes,” murmured the pastor, recalling that among the Indians rock salt is a scarce luxury.

“But we have no salt,” he said quickly.

“Oh, yes, señor. There.” Nicolás indicated the kitchen.

The pastor stood up. He was determined to put an end to this haggling, which he considered a demoralizing element in his official relationship with the village. Signaling for Nicolás to follow, he walked into the kitchen, calling as he entered, “Quintina, show me our salt.”