Pedro Paramo Page 6

  I carried him with me everywhere I went, wrapped in my rebozo, and then one day I lost him. In heaven they told me they'd made a mistake. That they'd given me a mother's heart but the womb of a whore. That was the other dream I had. I went up to heaven and peeked in to see whether I could recognize my son's face among the angels. Nothing. The faces were all the same, all made from the same mold. Then I asked. One of those saints came over to me and, without a word, sank his hand into my stomach, like he would have poked into a ball of wax. When he pulled out his hand he showed me something that looked like a nutshell. This proves what I'm demonstrating to you.'

  "You know how strange they talk up there, but you can understand what they're saying. I wanted to tell them that it was just my stomach, all dried up from hunger and nothing to eat, but another one of those saints took me by the shoulders and pushed me to the door. 'Go rest a while more on earth, my daughter, and try to be good so that your time in purgatory will be shortened.'

  "That was my 'bad dream,' and the one where I learned I never had a son. I learned it very late, after my body had already shriveled up and my backbone jutted up higher than the top of my head and I couldn't walk anymore. And to top it off, everyone was leaving the village; all the people set out for somewhere else and took their charity with them. I sat down to wait for death. After we found you, my bones determined to find their rest. 'No one will notice me,' I thought. 'I won't be a bother to anyone.' You see, I didn't even steal space from the earth. They buried me in the grave with you, and I fit right in the hollow of your arms. Here in this little space where I am now. The only thing is that probably I should have my arms around you. You hear? It's raining up there. Don't you hear the drumming of the rain?"

  "I hear something like someone walking above us." "You don't have to be afraid. No one can scare you now. Try to think nice thoughts, because we're going to be a long time here in the ground."

  At dawn a heavy rain was falling over the earth. It thudded dully as it struck the soft loose dust of the furrows. A mockingbird swooped low across the field and wailed, imitating a child's plaint; a little farther it sang something that sounded like a sob of weariness and in the distance where the horizon had begun to clear, it hiccupped and then laughed, only to wail once more.

  Fulgor Sedano breathed in the scent of fresh earth and looked out to see how the rain was penetrating the furrows. His little eyes were happy. He took three deep gulps, relishing the savor, and grinned till his teeth showed.

  "Ahhhh!" he said "We're about to have another good year." And then added: "Come on down, rain. Come on down. Fall until you can't fall anymore! And then move on.

  Remember that we worked the ground just to pleasure you."

  And he laughed aloud.

  Returning from its survey of the fields, the mockingbird flew past him and wailed a heartrending wail.

  The rain intensified until in the distance where it had begun to grow light the clouds closed in, and it seemed that the darkness that had been retreating was returning.

  The huge gate of the Media Luna squealed as it swung open, wet from the moist wind.

  First two, then another two, then two more rode out, until two hundred men on horseback had scattered across the rainsoaked fields.

  "We'll have to drive the Enmedio herd up past where Estagua used to be, and the Estagua cattle up to the Vilmayo hills," Fulgor Sedano ordered as the men rode by. "And hustle, the rain's really coming down!"

  He said it so often that the last to leave heard only, "From here to there, and from there, farther on up."

  Every man of them touched the brim of his hat to show that he had understood.

  Almost immediately after the last man had left, Miguel Paramo galloped in at full tilt and without reining in his horse dismounted almost in Fulgor's face, leaving his mount to find its own way to the stall.

  "Where've you been at this hour, boy?"

  "Been doing a little milking."

  "Milking who?"

  "You can't guess?"

  "Must have been that Corotea. La Cuarraca. She's the only one around here likes babies."

  "You're a fool, Fulgor. But it's not your fault."

  And without bothering to remove his spurs, Miguel went off to find someone to feed him breakfast.

  In the kitchen Damiana Cisneros asked him the same question:

  "Now where've you been, Miguel?"

  "Oh, just around. Calling on the mothers of the region."

  "I didn't mean to rile you, Miguel. How do you want your eggs."

  "Could I have them with a special side dish?"

  "I'm being serious, Miguel."

  "I know, Damiana. Don't worry. Listen. Do you know a woman named Dorotea? The one they call La Cuarraca.

  "I do. And if you want to see her, you'll find her right outside. She gets up early every morning to come by here for her breakfast. She's the one who rolls up a bundle in her rebozo and sings to it, and calls it her baby. It must be that something terrible happened to her a long while back, but since she never talks, no one knows what it was. She lives on handouts."

  "That damned Fulgor! I'm going to give him a lick that'll make his eyes whirl."

  He sat and thought for a while, wondering how the woman might be of use to him.

  Then without further hesitation he went to the back kitchen door and called Dorotea: "Come here a minute, I've got a proposition to make you," he said.

  Who knows what deal he offered her; the fact is that when he came inside he was rubbing his hands.

  "Bring on those eggs!" he yelled to Damiana. And added: "From now on, I want you to give that woman the same food you give me, and if it makes extra work, it's no problem of mine."

  In the meantime, Fulgor Sedano had gone to check the amount of grain left in the bins. Since harvest was a long way off, he was worried about the shrinking supply. In fact, the crops were barely in the ground. "I have to see if we can get by." Then he added: "That boy! A ringer for his father, all right, but he's starting off too early. At this rate, I don't think he'll last. I forgot to tell him that yesterday someone came by and said he'd killed a man. If he keeps up like this . . . "

  He sighed and tried to imagine where the ranch hands would be by now. But he was distracted by Miguel Paramo's young chestnut stallion, rubbing its muzzle against the corral fence.

  "He never even unsaddled his horse," he thought. "And he doesn't intend to. At least don Pedro is more reliable, and he has his quiet moments. He sure indulges Miguel, though. Yesterday when I told him what his son had done, he said, 'Just think of it as something I did, Fulgor.

  The boy couldn't have done a thing like that; he doesn't have the guts yet to kill a man. That takes balls this big.' And he held his hands apart as if he was measuring a squash. 'Anything he does, you can lay it on me.'"

  "Miguel's going to give you a lot of headaches, don Pedro. He likes to wrangle."

  "Give him his head. He's just a boy. How old is he now? Going on seventeen, Fulgor?"

  "About that. I can remember when they brought him here; it seems like yesterday. But he's wild, and he lives so fast that sometimes it appears to me he's racing with time. He'll be the one to lose that game. You'll see."

  "He's still a baby, Fulgor."

  "Whatever you say, don Pedro; but that woman who came here yesterday, weeping and accusing your son of killing her husband, was not to be consoled. I know how to judge grief, don Pedro, and that woman was carrying a heavy load. I offered her a hundred and fifty bushels of maize to overlook the matter, but she wouldn't take it. Then I promised we'd make things right somehow. She still wasn't satisfied."

  "What was it all about?"

  "I don't know the people involved."

  "There's nothing to worry about, Fulgor. Those people don't really count."

  Fulgor went to the storage bins, where he could feel the warmth of the maize. He took a handful and examined it to see whether it had been infested with weevils. He measured the height in the bins. "It'll do
," he said. "As soon as we have grass we won't have to feed grain anymore. So there's more than enough."

  As he walked back he gazed at the overcast sky. "We'll have rain for a good while." And he forgot about everything else.

  The weather must be changing up there. My mother used to tell me how as soon as it began to rain everything was filled with light and with the green smell of growing things.

  She told me how the waves of clouds drifted in, how they emptied themselves upon the earth and transformed it, changing all the colors. My mother lived her childhood and her best years in this town, but couldn't even come here to die. And so she sent me in her place.

  It's strange, Dorotea, how I never saw the sky. At least it should have been the sky she knew."

  "I don't know, Juan Preciado. After so many years of never lifting up my head, I forgot about the sky. And even if I had looked up, what good would it have done? The sky is so high and my eyes so clouded that I was happy just knowing where the ground was. Besides, I lost all interest after padre Renteria told me I would never know glory. Or even see it from a distance. . . . It was because of my sins, but he didn't have to tell me that. Life is hard enough as it is. The only thing that keeps you going is the hope that when you die you'll be lifted off this mortal coil; but when they close one door to you and the only one left open is the door to Hell, you're better off not being born. . . . For me, Juan Preciado, heaven is right here."

  "And your soul? Where do you think it's gone?"

  "It's probably wandering like so many others, looking for living people to pray for it. Maybe it hates me for the way I treated it, but I don't worry about that anymore. And now I don't have to listen to its whining about remorse. Because of it, the little I ate turned bitter in my mouth; it haunted my nights with black thoughts of the damned. When I sat down to die, my soul prayed for me to get up and drag on with my life, as if it still expected some miracle to cleanse me of my sins. I didn't even try. This is the end of the road,' I told it. 'I don't have the strength to go on.' And I opened my mouth to let it escape. And it went. I knew when I felt the little thread of blood that bound it to my heart drip into my hands."

  They pounded at his door, but he didn't answer. He heard them knock at door after door, waking everyone around. Fulgor - he knew him by his footsteps — paused a moment as he hurried toward the main door, as if he meant to knock again. Then kept running.

  Voices. Slow, scraping footsteps, like people carrying a heavy load.

  Unidentifiable sounds.

  His father's death came to his mind. It had been an early dawn like this, although that morning the door had been open and he had seen the gray of a dismal, ashen sky seeping through. And a woman had been leaning against the doorframe, trying to hold back her sobs. A mother he had forgotten, forgotten many times over, was telling him: "They've killed your father!" In a broken quavering voice held together only by the thread of her sobs.

  He never liked to relive that memory because it brought others with it, as if a bulging sack of grain had burst and he was trying to keep the kernels from spilling out. The death of his father dragged other deaths with it, and in each of them was always the image of that shattered face: one eye mangled, the other staring vengefully. And another memory, and another, until that death was erased from memory and there was no longer anyone to remember it.

  "Lay him down here. No, not like that. Put his head that way. You! What are you waiting for?"

  All this in a low voice.

  "Where's don Pedro?

  "He's sleeping. Don't wake him. Don't make any noise."

  But there he stood, towering, watching them struggle with a large bundle wrapped in old gunnysacks and bound with hemp like a shroud.

  "Who is it?" he asked.

  Fulgor Sedano stepped forward and said:

  "It's Miguel, don Pedro."

  "What did they do to him?" he shouted.

  He was expecting to hear "They killed him." And he felt the stirrings of rage forming hard lumps of rancor; instead he heard Fulgor Sedano's soft voice saying: "No one did anything to him. He met his death alone."

  Oil lamps lighted the night.

  "His horse killed him," one man volunteered.

  They laid him out on his bed; they turned back the mattress and exposed the bare boards, and arranged the body now free of the bonds they had used to carry it home. They crossed his hands over his chest and covered his face with a black cloth. "He looks bigger than he was," Fulgor thought to himself.

  Pedro Paramo stood there, his face empty of expression, as if he were far away.

  Somewhere beyond his consciousness, his thoughts were racing, unformed, disconnected. At last he said:

  "I'm beginning to pay. The sooner I begin, the sooner I'll be through."

  He felt no sorrow.

  When he spoke to the people gathered in the patio, to thank them for their presence, making his voice heard above the wailing of the women, he was not short either of breath or of words. Afterward, the only sound was that of the pawing of Miguel Paramo's chestnut stallion.

  "Tomorrow," he ordered Fulgor Sedano, "get someone to put that animal down and take him out of his misery."

  "Right, don Pedro. I understand. The poor beast must be suffering."

  "That's my feeling, too, Fulgor. And as you go, tell those women not to make such a racket; they're making too much fuss over my loss. If it was their own, they wouldn't be so eager to mourn."

  Years later Father Renteria would remember the night when his hard bed had kept him "awake and driven him outside. It was the night Miguel Paramo died.

  He had wandered through the lonely streets of Comala, his footsteps spooking the dogs sniffing through the garbage heaps. He walked as far as the river, where he stood gazing at how stars falling from the heavens were reflected in the quiet eddies. For several hours he struggled with his thoughts, casting them into the black waters of the river.

  It had all begun, he thought, when Pedro Paramo, from the low thing he was, made something of himself. He flourished like a weed. And the worst of it is that I made it all possible. "I have sinned, padre. Yesterday I slept with Pedro Paramo." "I have sinned, padre. I bore Pedro Paramo's child." "I gave my daughter to Pedro Paramo, padre." I kept waiting for him to come and confess something, but he never did. And then he extended the reach of his evil through that son of his. The one he recognized -only God knows why.

  What I do know is that I placed that instrument in his hands.

  He remembered vividly the day he had brought the child to Pedro Paramo, only hours old.

  He had said to him:

  "Don Pedro, the mother died as she gave birth to this baby. She said that he's yours. Here he is."

  Pedro Paramo never even blinked; he merely said:

  "Why don't you keep him, Father? Make a priest out of him."

  "With the blood he carries in his veins, I don't want to take that responsibility."

  "Do you really think he has bad blood?"

  "I really do, don Pedro."

  "I'll prove you wrong. Leave him here with me. I can find someone to take care of him."

  "That's just what I had in mind. At least he'll eat if he's with you."

  Tiny as he was, the infant was writhing like a viper.

  "Damiana! Here's something for you to take care of. It's my son."

  Later he had uncorked a bottle:

  "This one's for the deceased, and for you."

  "And for the child?"

  "For him, too. Why not?"

  He filled another glass and both of them drank to the child's future.

  That was how it had been.

  Carts began rumbling by toward the Media Luna. Father Renteria crouched low,

  hiding in the reeds along the river's edge. "What are you hiding from?" he asked himself.

  "Adios, padre," he heard someone say.

  He rose up and answered:

  "Adios! May God bless you."

  The lights in the village went out
one by one. The river was glowing with luminous color.

  "Padre, has the Angelus rung yet?" asked one of the drivers.

  "It must be much later than that," he replied. And he set off in the opposite direction, vowing not to be stopped.

  "Where are you off to so early, padre?"

  "Where's the death, padre?"

  "Did someone in Contla die, padre?"

  He felt like answering, "I did. I'm the one who's dead." But he limited himself to a smile.

  As he left the last houses behind, he walked faster.

  It was late morning when he returned.

  "Where have you been, Uncle," his niece Ana asked. "A lot of women have been here looking for you. They wanted to confess; tomorrow's the first Friday."

  "Tell them to come back this evening."

  He sat for a quiet moment on a bench in the hall, heavy with fatigue.

  "How cool the air is, Ana."

  "It's very warm, Uncle."

  "I don't feel it."

  The last thing he wanted to think about was that he had been in Contla, where he had made a general confession to a fellow priest who despite his pleas had refused him absolution.

  "That man whose name you do not want to mention has destroyed your church, and you have allowed him to do it. What can I expect of you now, Father? How have you used God's might? I want to think that you're a good man and that you're held in high esteem because of that. But it's not enough to be good. Sin is not good. And to put an end to sin, you must be hard and merciless. I want to think that your parishioners are still believers, but it is not you who sustains their faith. They believe out of superstition and fear. I feel very close to you in your penury, and in the long hours you spend every day carrying out your duties. I personally know how difficult our task is in these miserable villages to which we have been banished; but that in itself gives me the right to tell you that we cannot serve only the few who give us a pittance in exchange for our souls. And with your soul in their hands, what chance do you have to be better than those who are better than you? No, Father, my hands are not sufficiently clean to grant you absolution. You will have to go elsewhere to find that."