JUSTICE MY BROTHER, MY SISTER

Copyright 1974 by Roberta Kalechofsky

This is the full text of the novel, in one file. The print version (originally entitled Justice My Brother) was originally published in 1974 by the Writer's Cooperative. Roberta's works are available from Micah Publications, 255 Humphrey St., Marblehead, MA 01945, www.micahbooks.com  Her other books include: Orestes in Progress, The Martyrdom of Stephen Werner, A View of Toledo, Solomon's Wisdom, Autobiography of a Revolutionary: Essays on Animal and Human Rights, and Bodmin 1349, which are available from Micah Publications, 255 Humphrey St., Marblehead, MA 01945, www.micahbooks.com

All of the above books are now available on CD, in a "context" of 270 related classic books,  for just $29:
Works of Roberta Kalechofsky in Context contains five novels, a book of short stories, and a book of essays by Roberta, together with 270 related classic books that provide a context for better appreciating and enjoying her work. The "context" books deal with Jewish Religion, Christian Religion, Medieval Europe (including works of Dante, Boccacio, and Chaucer), Greek classics (including Homer, Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles), Latin American History, Animals, Women's Rights, Anti-Slavery, along with works of novelists Conrad, Melville, and Hawthorne. Table of Contents

Micah Publications also publishes Jewish vegetarian and animal rightsbooks, such as: The Jewish Vegetarian Year Cookbook, Vegetarian Judaism--A Guide for Everyone, and Haggadah for the Liberated Lamb. For a full list with descriptions, see www.micahbooks.com

Review of this novel.

1

The wall that enclosed the farm of Julio Donajero was built in the traditional manner of the countryside. It was made of stones that had been picked up along the slopes of the cerros, unimportant mountains whose deception lay in their incredible steepness and loose rocky ground. These stones had been crudely cemented into place until the pile was high enough so that a man could just see over the top. Then a layer of cement had been put down across the last row and thousands of bits of colored glass had been stuck into the cement, pointed upwards. The hills and farms were dotted with these walls. They followed the curve of the earth. They made the land into a visual statement and gave it a continuity of dread and control.

After the midday rain the sunset was low and red. It danced through the pieces of glass and burned on the far horizon. Through the sunset Ricardo, Julio's young brother, rode towards the farm. His skin was tight and sallow and in his eyes there was an old look of hatred. On the horse in front of him was the rifle which Ricardo had strapped to his saddle. The rifle had Julio's initials on it and from time to time Ricardo's thumb rubbed the outline of the initials with a tense pressure. He rode with his back hunched over the neck of the horse, his sombrero drawn down over his face. He was riding to kill his brother.

He had started out in haste from San Vincente several hours before, during the rain, for a neighbor had told him that the police had come looking for him again. Ricardo knew Julio had sent the police to get back the horse. That was Julio's way. Swiftly Ricardo saddled the animal and rode out of San Vincente. But this time he did not hide. Twice before Julio had sent the police for the horse and Ricardo had fled like a fugitive, humiliated before the villagers who laughed at him. This time he turned the horse towards the farm.

Julio's behavior was an old friction to Ricardo. His decision to kill him was not precipitous. Sometimes he felt he had been born with the need to do this. Wherever Julio stood, the ground was bad for Ricardo. Sometimes when he thought about Julio he could feel nothing of himself but a bruise. He had worked hard for Julio, he had helped him build his farm. The horse was his, he had earned him with his labor. He had also earned the gun and the clothes he wore, for Julio always paid him in goods which he then claimed back. That was Julio's way, and Ricardo always gave back what he had earned, or Julio would threaten to have him arrested. Twice he had sat in jail, accused of theft by his own brother. The other villagers shied away from hiring him. They had no love for Julio, but they did not intend to cross tempers with him for Ricardo's sake.

He crossed the mean and scrubby forest that tore at his boots and kicked the horse up the steep incline of el Ocelotepetl. "Vaya," he said harshly and kicked at the horse. The road turned into a muddy stream in the rain. The horse continually lost his footing and slipped. The rain ran down Ricardo's face. He could not believe what he was going to do. He was a gentle man, he thought, with pity for a fate which had made him a violent man.

He fingered his brother's initials in the wooden handle of the rifle, and over and over he heard the crack of the gun like a sound of cruel liberation. He could see himself kneeling beside Julio's dead body with pity and remorse. The thought was bitter to him, that he desired to love his brother and could not. As a boy he had always held his breath at the angry look in Julio's eyes. When their father had died Julio had become the head of the family and ruled the house with an angry grudge. Everyone was in fear of him, even the old mother. His sisters found accommodation in derision; but Ricardo had wanted to love his brother. He gripped the rifle and kicked at the horse. The road wound up and around and he knew by the shape of the massive granite boulders that they were almost at the top of el Ocelotepetl, the Peak of the Tiger. He could feel its shape in the smoky darkness, the pressure of its size. Like tigers, the hills slunk away one after the other.

They said the mountain was alive. During the day it crouched like a tiger, but at night it stalked under the cover of darkness, maintaining the law of anger and the defense of the claw. An army of men in the days of the Conquest had disappeared into the belly of the mountain, and recently an Indian had been found in the shrubbery with his arm torn out and the skin ripped from his chest, on his face the marks of a claw, the unaccountable mark of a universe that jumbled the logic of men, except if one believed that the mountain was hungry for flesh and doomed to a lonely anger. Anger is lonely, Ricardo thought. Its sensation is private. It is in the belly, in the flesh. How is it that a man cannot cut it out?

The road fell down sharply and caught him by surprise. His horse travelled faster. Ricardo felt the labored breathing of the animal. Still, he kicked him. They galloped through the village of Netzahualcoyotl, down the rocky, terraced streets. The square adobe huts shrank in the rain, and his horse's hooves beat on the cobblestones that shone wet. Soon he saw the small, sharp hills and the little dips of farms between them. He saw Julio's farm enclosed behind its wet stone wall.

The rain stopped suddenly. There was unexpected silence after its uproar. Ricardo headed the horse towards the farm, and with a last burst of speed sprang over the gate.

Julio's wife peeped through the window and ran out.

"Go away," she said. "Go away and leave us in peace."

"In peace?" Ricardo smiled bitterly. "Why should I leave you in peace?" His eyes clouded over and he looked towards the house impatiently.

"All this will surely end in death," she cried. "Go away, go away."

"Death is good enough for me," he said. He stiffened as he saw his brother come out of the house.

Julio kept his stance, as he always did, compacted of mute violence, taut and bullish. He looked around with sluggish eyes, pained and defensive and met the world with a phlegmatic indifference that was not so much born of disinterestedness as of the felt superiority of distrust. His mustache hung with indolence and marked his mouth with bristling apathy.

Once he had had an impressive courage, but its source was this apathy and his courage had gone untested. Julio thought of himself as a fearless man. He was irritable, impatient and scornful and had become habituated to a feeling of power that he could induce in himself merely by counting others out. Conceptually, people were static to him. He estimated one or two qualities in them and built his relationships accordingly. As a soldier he had slept in the fields by himself to avoid hearing tales of danger. In the past, he had always been able to ignore loneliness. He had no sentimental ideas about his wife or his children. They worked for him. They lived in the house together. Fealty was their strongest bond, and on this he assumed the permanence of everything he counted on. He loved hard, physical work, and was a farmer out of the need to use his energies. His soul was built like a chain and all that it needed to collapse was to remove one link. His life was about to undergo a change. He was a man standing on one foot.

He looked at Ricardo with a bored tolerance. "Felícita," he called to his wife, "do not speak to him. What has he come for this time? Some bread, a pail of milk?" He kept his machete in his hand, gripping its handle. His three sons came out of the house behind him.

Ricardo pushed out his lower lip in a gesture of ironic amusement, but it was not a successful expression. He looked from Julio to Felícita to gain time as he raised the rifle to his eye, like a bad actor rehearsing for the part of a killer. Who could take him seriously?

Still, it had been many years since Julio had looked into a gun. It had been many years since anyone had challenged him, for everyone took his courage for granted. Even Julio took his courage for granted, as he took for granted the loyalty of his family. He snapped his fingers at his children as though demanding something of them, but they looked confused. The wind stirred. His children moved away from him, giving him a clearing to himself. The middle boy looked at Ricardo with interest.

Felícita stood stupidly, as if waiting for an order. Ricardo looked through the sight and levelled the gun. One of Julio's sons let out a low whistle. Julio looked at him with confusion. The wind passed over his face and waved his hair like the dispossessed bristles on a dead rat. Trembling, Ricardo shot the gun. The bullet chipped out a small hole in the bottom of the house and sent the sandy dirt into a fine spray. The horse reared. He lifted his front legs and clawed the air as he tried to scramble across the sky. Felícita was appalled, but she did not run to Julio. Instinctively he threw his hands over his face. His sensations died momentarily, but he was alive. He knew he was alive, but he stood somewhere in a space where no one else human was with him. He watched Felícita through a wet haze over his eyes. She watched back. His sons, too, stood at a distance and looked at him. A bird swooped a wing towards him. Tears ran from his eyes and mucuous from his nose as if he suffered a disease of liquefaction. His face was white and an unfamiliar agony left its mark on it. He looked at his family and thought: he would pay them back for their disloyalty. Ricardo felt relieved and sickened that the deed was not done, humiliated  and outraged. He felt as if he had killed Julio, but he hadn't, and he could not shoot the gun again.

"Never mind," he said with effort, "I will take my revenge one day." He turned his horse and galloped away.

Julio sat in the dust and watched Ricardo ride away. His bones were burning with terror and his lower region had turned to water. He had no control over his body. His breath would not come, and his urine would not stop. He did not tell himself that this was fear. He did not know it. He was preoccupied with trying to gain control over himself. He heard the expiration of suspense from his children, but not another sound.

Felícita came to him. He waved her away. "Go back to the house. Can you not see that I am all right?"

"He is crazy," she cried.

"Sí. Now go back to the house," and he pushed her away.

When Felícita and his sons had gone, Julio got up. He stared at the wet ground uncomprehendingly. Then he pushed some dry sand over the spot with his feet.

When he came into the house a few minutes later, Felícita pounced on him. "Let us go away," she said. "There is too much bad feeling between you and Ricardo. It must come to no good in the end." His children stood at the far end of the room and watched him with dark faces and white eyes.

Julio sat down at the table and cut open a plum with his knife. "Let Ricardo watch out. I too own a gun. I own a knife and a machete and I am not particular. And I do not miss." He looked across the table at his sons and smiled scornfully.

Felícita sighed to herself now that the terror was over, but grumbled, "Either way it will be no good."

"It will be good." Julio slapped the table with his hand. "Do not talk so much and do your work."

Felícita went back to the griddle and poured the corn dough on it. She sat on her haunches for a long time and watched the griddle. For years she had had a premonition about Ricardo. She did not like him, although she was glad that he was there to help Julio. She did not like his weakness; she did not trust it. Now he had shown her what she had feared.

She said to Julio, without turning around, "Ricardo did not miss. He marked you with death and left you alive for his own purpose."

"Ricardo missed," Julio said wrathfully, "I can assure you. He never could shoot. I know because I tried to teach him. I tried to teach him how to how to shoot, how to farm, how to steal, how to make love. I can assure you Ricardo missed. He never could learn anything, neither to farm, nor to steal, nor to shoot."

"Look down at your left sleeve," Felícita said. A piece of material, finely cut out as a seamstress' notch, was missing from the arm. "A man does not miss by so little at close range."

Julio threw the jacket at her. "A man aims at what he wants to," he shouted. "This is my house, my farm, my land, my rule. If you cannot control your fears, leave."

He got up from the table and went into the next room that was separated by a curtain and threw himself down on his bed. Felícita went to the makeshift altar that stood on a table against the wall. She looked at a picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe that was propped in the center of the table and made the sign of the cross. She took out a talisman of Tlaloc from a small box on the table and hung it by its ribbon over the picture and made the sign of the cross. "Protect me," she whispered, sensing a personal jeopardy in the balance of forces. Then she told her sons to go outside, for they would disturb Julio if they stayed in the house.

They sauntered behind the house, silently excited with what had happened. Juan, the youngest, crouched on the ground and drew pictures in the dirt with a stick, waiting for the talk to begin.

"What do you think?" Hernán finally said. "Do you think Ricardo missed?"

He spoke to Julio, the eldest, two years older than himself.

Julio spit in the sand. "Of course not," he said. "If he had only missed, Papa would have flung his machete at him." This clarified the silence for them. "Ricardo left the mark of death on him."

There was a fine sense of melodrama in this and even Juan, who was too young to understand, enjoyed the sensation. "He should go for Ricardo tonight," Hernán said.

'Sí, he should," Julio agreed.

"Do you think he will?"

Julio shrugged his shoulders. "A man who is marked with death has no more power left."

Their father lay on his bed and stared at the curtain in front of him. The room was dark except for the pinpoints of light that filtered through the slats of the wall where the daylight and the talk of his sons slipped through. "Ricardo missed," he hissed back at them under his breath. He closed his eyes and thought of his eldest son. The boy was tall and big.

It was a bad thing for a boy to be taller than his father. It was time for Julio the son to marry, for he would soon be eighteen.

In the morning Julio did an unprecedented thing. He took his own breakfast and left without his son. "Let them find an empty house," he thought and went out. He passed the spot where he had fallen. The ground was dry. He pulled his sombrero over his eyes and went down into the fields.

That evening Julio told his wife that it was time for their eldest son to marry, and she agreed. He watched Felícita with narrowed eyes, but as she agreed nothing more was said for several days, while her mind was taken up with reviewing the young girls in the village. There were only two señoritas who were pleasing to her, and she felt sure that one of them would be chosen.

Then a week later, after their evening meal, Julio told her that in the morning he would leave for Cuernavaca.

"But why," she asked, "we have nothing to buy or sell there at this time."

"Sí," we have," Julio said. Felícita waited for him to explain, but Julio sat and drank his coffee in silence. She went to the hearth to put out the fire and to scrape what was left of the corn dough into a clay pot.

"I will buy my son a bride in Cuernavaca," he said suddenly, continuing to drink his coffee.

Felícita scrambled up from her knees. "In Cuernavaca?" she cried, "but why from there?"

Julio's eyes rolled sluggishly under their lids. "It will make no difference to you where the bride is from. Julio will not live with us. He will live with the parents of the girl, so it will make no difference to you where she is from."

Felícita sat down heavily in her chair. "I do not want a girl from Cuernavaca." Of what use was such a marriage if she could not have a daughter-in-law in the house to help her with the chores and to gossip with. She had been unlucky with sons and there had been no one to help her. She did the work of three women and wanted relief.

"Oh, well," Julio said. "That is how it will be anyway. Even if the girl is from Netzahualcoyotl or San Vincente or Donaciano Sur, Julio will not live with us, so it can make no difference to you where the bride is from."

"That is a bad thing," Felícita exclaimed. "The bride must live in the home of her husband's parents. It has always been that way."

"It must not be any way but how I like it. Now I have a girl in mind. She is from the family of Manuel Cholopis. He weaves baskets. I sell him many things for his straw."

"A basket weaver!" Felícita sneered.

"Sí, a basket weaver. What do you think our son is fit for?"

"Last week he was fit for farming. This week he is only fit for the daughter of a basket weaver."

Julio's eyes rolled under his lids, but he made no answer. He would not contend about such an issue with a woman. It was good business to do it thus. His son was not a good farmer. It was better for him to go to the city. He and Hernán and Juan could work the farm by themselves. For poor farming he could not afford to feed two extra mouths and pay the chichitomin into the bargain. Julio had come many times with him to Cuernavaca and had shown interest in trade. He had shown interest in Eustaquia Cholopis. What was wrong then with the transaction?

"I say it is a good thing. Julio will have a good house in Cuernavaca. That much I will ask for from Manuel Cholopis. In return Julio will work one year for him before the wedding and I will give thirty pesos for the chichitomin."

Felícita drew the corners of her mouth down into silent obedience. They waited until the other children went to bed and then Julio told his son. "You know Eustaquia Cholopis?"

Julio knew immediately what they were going to say to him. He fought back his smile. "Sí," he said cautiously. "I will ask her father for you."

Julio could not help smiling now. How could his father have known his feelings? He felt foolish that they had been obvious. He answered with restraint. "If she is to your liking."

"Sí, she is to my liking."

His son looked about him, waiting for congratulations, but nothing else was said. Felícita kept her head turned away from him. "And you?" he asked his mother and touched her shoulder.

She shrugged it off and waved her hand. "Oh, me, I do not know her."

Julio felt uneasy. He thought his mother was angry because a girl had not been chosen from the village. But for that he was grateful, for there was not a girl in the village who interested him. He liked the girls from the city very much. As for their liking to live on a farm, they would soon get used to it. "Oh, as for that," he smiled, "you will come to know her."

"Sí, sí, sí," Julio said and dismissed the subject. "Now I must go to sleep to leave early in the morning," and he left the room.

Felícita followed him and lay down beside him. Juan now slept with his brothers in the other bed and they had a bed to themselves.

"It is the best thing," Julio said, but Felícita lay awake and thought of good reasons against this marriage.

Julio left after breakfast. The road he took led him through a corner of the farm. It was a good farm, for his hard work, brutal work, had made it that way. The land had not meant itself to be farmed, for the earth was poor,sandy and almost white, but Julio had farmed it. He had never had enough money for a plough, and even if he had had he did not see why he should pay for the labor of oxen when his own cost him nothing. Originally, he had owned only a few acres, but from government money given him in payment for his services as a soldier, he had added to these acres. The farm was divided into thirds and only one third could be tilled during the year.

Unlike most farmers who lived in the village Julio lived on his farm site, and as recompense for the neighbors he didn't have, he had a house with two rooms and a wooden floor in place of the usual earthen one. He considered it uneconomical to spend time travelling to his farm and to pay someone to guard it against animals and evil spirits. Now the corn shoots stood straight in the sun. He would take some along to Manuel Cholopis and say to him, "You see, my son comes from a farm that grows corn like this," but he left them in the fields for the regular harvest. He thought how when the time came for that he would have to hire strangers to help him now that Ricardo was gone and his son, Julio, would soon be going. They would not be able to do the work themselves. Juan was still a child, better left in the house with his mother, and Hernán did not have the strength for farming that his brother had. Julio remembered there was a time before he had had sons to help him when he had worked the farm by himself. He wondered if he could do this again. Felícita used to come into the fields then, but against her will and ashamed to do such work. He no longer had the ambition to put up with her rancorous antagonisms, but it was a grim thought that they might have to hire strangers, for instinctively he felt that his authority and power depended upon familiarity with those whom he ruled. The trail through the farm began to climb upwards, through the portion that had been left fallow for that year. The land was still black. It had been burnt and reseeded for almost twenty years, and each year it was harder to cultivate and grew poorer corn. Gloomily Julio thought of the work it would take to reseed it when the time came. His horse stumbled on a stone, and he kicked it viciously for this blunder. They made their way through the charred portion of the farm and followed the trail out into the forest. The tall trees closed overhead and shut out what there was of the early sun. A damp chill rose from the forest floor. Julio felt the cold against his chest and drew his serape close about him. Sí, he thought again, it was true, they must now hire strangers. 

When Ricardo left his brother's farm he headed the horse back towards San Vincente. That way the sun still lay and he had no other destination. It had been some time since he had found work and he had to try the surrounding villages. The loose stones slipped from under the horse's hooves, but Ricardo urged him on. He meant to get to San Vincente before the cold darkness closed over the cerros. Peak of the Wounded, of the Butterfly, Peak of Light, of Air, of the Treasure. All around him were the upheavals of the earth. He knew where each one stood, though he could hardly see the path in the graying twilight.

The ledge went up steeply and he felt the hard breathing of the horse.

"Poor animal," he murmured. He was sorry he had ridden him so hard, but there was no helping that now. That too he blamed on Julio, that his animal labored painfully. But Ricardo felt guilty. Gentle, weak, his passions swollen beyond what his nerves could bear, he wished to comfort, but he was repelled by a world of human ugliness that seemed at every turn to betray his need to love. Sometimes he thought he had powers of divination and that he could smell the evil in a man: he would feel someone brush against him in the marketplace, and would shudder. The sensation of knowing was physical and painful. If others did not wish to hire him it was good enough, for except that he must earn his living he did not wish to work for anyone.

The human race hurt his eyes to look at it, though he felt that its disease was his and fitful needs for self-mortification would seize him. He had a temperament capable of self flagellation and even suicide. He had dreams of love and of having children which existed alongside a wish to vanish from existence. He thought of how he had missed killing Julio. He was helplessly something he did not wish to be, and he would be this thing until he died.

It was late and the cerros melted into the darkness. Only instinct knew where they were. He made his way down the trail and rode through the village where he found lodgings at the edge of the town in a small, dirty-white hotel. He put his horse into the barn and went into the lobby, humiliated by the fact that he asked for a room he could not pay for.

"For how long?" the owner said, taking note of his demeanor and the gun carried haphazardly in his hand.

"One, two, three days. Maybe a year," Ricardo laughed disagreeably. "Who can tell?"

"You are looking for work?"

"Sí."

"San Vincente is no good for work."

"What place is good?"

"Any place is good but San Vincente. You come from Netzahualcoyotl? That is a good place for work. Why do you go from Netzahualcoyotl if you are looking for work?"

Ricardo's face clouded over. "Maybe someday I go back to Netzahualcoyotl," he said truculently. "First I need money, my own money."

"Ah, you need money?" the owner said and gave him the pen to sign with.

"That is what work is for." His eyes wandered over Ricardo's tense shoulders, his haunted eyes, his empty hands and surmised that he was fleeing from someone. Later that night the owner, Mariano Ruiz, came to his room, emboldened by Ricardo's demeanor.

"You wish work?"

"Sí."

"In Cuernavaca?"

"No, in San Vincente."

"There is no work in San Vincente. In Cuernavaca there is work."

Ricardo pushed himself up on the bed and lit a cigarette. "I am a farmer. In Cuernavaca there are no farms."

Señor Ruiz sat down in a shadow and let his eyes wander over Ricardo's slight build, his slim hands, his small head shaped like a plum, his vulnerability. "This is a bad season for farming. What crop do you harvest?"

"Corn. What other crop is there?"

"Money," Mariano Ruiz said. He drew his chair to the side of the bed. "You look like a man of moods. Tomorrow maybe you will be unfit. But tonight I think you are fit to harvest money."

Ricardo smiled ruefully. "Then this work does not last so long."

"It does not have to. Tomorrow you will be able to buy your own land," he said sympathetically, understanding the hunger of the landless and the rejected for a little power. Hunger and humiliation were simple motives.

Ricardo understood too, but he was not the man to do criminal work.

Mariano Ruiz opened his hands with a gesture of futility. "Sí," he said, "sometimes fortune comes to us like that." But he was not insistent, he did not wish to be responsible for a weak man. Yet, who knows when a bird is let loose what nest it will find for its home. He kept silent and let Ricardo make up his mind.

Ricardo knew only that he could not return to Netzahualcoyotl, for no one there would hire him. But where else was there to go? Without his village he felt confused, expelled from his physical and psychic environment. He thought of the days ahead without work, without food, without pay for this room. Hills rose up in his mind, brown, dry, without green, without water. "You should know, Señor, there is little I can do except farm. What is it you expect of me?"

Señor Ruiz clicked his teeth at such despondency, though this was exactly the trait he needed. He took out a small box from his pocket. "Nothing more than to deliver this box to a Mr. Schencker in Cuernavaca."

Ricardo looked suspiciously at the box. "What is in it?"

Señor Ruiz laughed. "I do not have to tell you that and I think you would not look. But I believe in being honest. A diamond is in the box. It has come all the way from South Africa by way of Germany and Austria and is bound for," he spread his hands, "who knows? I do not know and do not want to know, but I assure you it is perfectly legal, only a matter of evading the tariff. All you need to know is the way between here and Cuernavaca."

Ricardo drew in his breath with a whistle. "Why don't you deliver it yourself and collect my pay for this errand?"

"No, Señor. I too am a poor man. I am content with a little. I will come so far and no further. If I leave my hotel in the season for tourists and appear in Cuernavaca, immediately there will be suspicion, and so on and so on. Besides, my wife cannot be left alone to do all the business in my absence, but you, a man without property, without work, without anything to tie you to a routine, you have a right to appear anywhere."

Ricardo tried to decide whether to believe him or not. "Tell me, do you approach in this way any man who walks into your lobby? How do you know I will not report you?"

"No Señor, I do not approach everyone and I do not think you will report me for the matter of a tariff when I do not think you have the money to pay for this room. There are authorities for everything. That is how it is, Señor. I would not wish to report you if you left in the morning without paying. You have left Netzahualcoyotl where there is work to come to San Vincente were there is no work. I do not know your personal life, but I guess that you wish to exchange it for another one."

Ricardo crushed his cigarette out in the ashtray next to his bed, swung his feet off the bed and paced around the room with tortured energy. Señor Ruiz had estimated him properly. Ricardo's soul was naked to the world. He stopped at the window and watched the moon light up the rust colored tiles on the surrounding roofs and run black in the narrow lanes of the street.

It was true, he was not a farmer, he was not a tradesman, he was not anything. His hatred for his brother made him unfit for ordinary life.

With suicidal self pity, he said, "What must I do?"

"Only carry this box to Cuernavaca. I will give you the address where to deliver it. You will memorize it, and after you have delivered the box you will forget the address and go away. Do not loiter in your execution of this task, and do not again deal in such business, even if Mr. Schencker himself should ask you to. Your contact must be of the slightest nature."

"When do I start?"

"First you will eat a good meal."

"Do you mean tonight? Back through the cerros? I have just come from there. You would not have me travel that way at night?"

"Why not? You are acquainted with the terrain."

"Sí, like my hand. But I would not travel through the cerros through the night."

Señor Ruiz stood up and smiled, "You sleep with your hand at night."

"Sí, I must."

"Sí, you must also forget these legends. The mountains are the mountains. Your hand is your hand. Still, at night you fear them both. That is not economical. One half of your life your hand is useless."

"I do not fear my hand will attack me," Ricardo said impatiently. "Now, Señor, give me the box and the address and let us go to supper."

After he had eaten Señor Ruiz went with him to the stable. It was decided that he should have a new horse, for his own was too tired to make the return journey, and that he would leave his gun behind, for a man with a gun was suspicious. It was agreed that he would come back in a month's time for his things, but Ricardo doubted whether he would see his horse again. He stroked the animal on his nose and bade him to be well. Then he mounted his new horse. Señor Ruiz led him out of the stable and to the path that led up to the mountains. "Now you know everything," he said. "When you come to Cuernavaca do not loiter with the task, although you must wait for the right moment to do it. Do not go right away to el Méjico to collect your money. Wait a week's time to dispel connections. You have now enough money to see you through this time. When you come to the post office in el Méjico ask for an envelope for Doménico Alvarez. Your money will be in that name." He patted Ricardo's thigh. "Adiós."

"Sí," Ricardo said moodily and spurred his horse. How swiftly his life had changed. He was spinning like a weathervane. Any wind had him. Again he felt the ground rising. The grade was familiar, but it was a comfort not to see how high they were and how sheer the drop was. Often, as he had come this way in the daytime, picking his steps along the narrow ledges, he had grown dizzy with an almost loving loss of himself as he saw how close to death they walked. He had not thought to find the night so comfortable. It flattened out the peaks, it filled in the ravines and closed up the caves where one kept watchful eyes for animals and ghosts. Yet he knew it was for this reason that the night was treacherous. He had to check his instinct to yield to its dark arms.

The night was cold, but Ricardo felt sweat over his eyes. His clothes stuck to him and the reins slipped from his wet hands. Then in a valley of cold darkness he felt the falling movement of the ground, the trembling sickness of death, as he thought they had plunged over the edge. Ghosts, spirits, wind and memory fluttered. He surrendered his will and put his arms around the horse's neck and let him carry him down.

When they came into Cuernavaca, the sound of the horse's hoofs on paved road roused him. The sun was coming up. Instinctively, he was hungry. He bought some breakfast and fed the horse. Then, following his instructions, he led the animal to the outskirts of the town and gave him a pat on his buttocks. Relieved, he said, "Go home and tell your master we have arrived."

He strolled back into the center of the town, found lodgings, and thought about his moves. He was to become familiar with Mr. Schencker's routine, so that casually, as a beggar, a peddlar or even a thief he could accost him in the street and drop the box into his hands. They need not talk to one another. Indeed, Ricardo had been instructed not to talk to him.

Mr.Schencker would know immediately what his purpose was. Ricardo had been told that he had been waiting seven months for someone to deliver this box to him. He wondered how many faces Señor Ruiz had scrutinized and had passed over until his judgment had settled on him.

After his supper he went immediately to the neighborhood of Mr. Schencker and found his house. It was a large, white stucco, three stories high. Though most of it was hidden from view by a white concrete wall that ran around it, Ricardo did not think it looked like the house of a man who could not pay the government tariff. There were several balconies that projected from the windows, with potted plants arranged on them in dusty cheerfulness.

The house was a conventional one and disappointed Ricardo with its look of ordinary doings. But patiently and obediently he spent the next two days watching the house and, when he could, following Mr. Schencker on his errands. From time to time he fingered the box in his pocket and tried to inject it with more drama. He longed to escape vacancy and needed a passion, whether of a criminal or of a religious nature. Yet the time he spent in Cuernavaca came to seem as an interim period in which he was nothing but an instrument in the ambitions of another man. After the first half-day he became maliciously bored. He had waited outside Mr. Schencker's house from six:thirty in the morning until almost ten, he had followed him to his office and then had waited in the street until three in the afternoon. The business of spying was tiresome. By the second day he was fretful with the idleness of his watch and conceived a loathing for Mr. Schencker whom he imagined detained him from other business. Mr. Schencker was large, fat, and sweated in his clothes, even to the outer layers of his white jacket.

He changed his clothes frequently, and the excessive fastidiousness in a nature that was not designed for it, the constant battle against self-nature, antagonized Ricardo. He could not decide how to accost this man. He could not measure him, and three days went by in which he tried to exert his imagination to this peculiar task.

On the evening of the third day he sat down in a café for his supper and wondered again how to do this thing. After his supper he went to a nearby church. He selected a statue of Mary that stood to the right of the altar and seated himself in front of it. The half-burnt candles on the pedestal threw long shadows in the folds of the drapes and lit up the waxen face which gazed down on him, but it was dark where her hands reached overhead with prayer to heaven. Ricardo covered his face with his hands and prayed that he deliver this diamond soon, "for I must do it sometime," he said to her. He took his hands away and looked up at Mary. Her mouth was tiny and half-smiling, pursed with unconfused serenity. Her nose was small and straight, softened by a shadow and her eyes were hollow, emptied of thought as they gazed at him. She seemed too slight to carry such a burden of motherhood, and Ricardo felt more desolate than ever. "Why do I float upon this earth?" he asked her. "It is not true that I have kin. I am fatherless and motherless. I feel that I have been made like a machine from some parts in a garage. I do not think that I was ever born." He looked up at her, hoping she would dissuade him of this awful feeling, that she would miraculously arrange for him to be born again as some other person. That was what he wanted! To be born again and feel himself to be human.

He left the church and stood on the steps outside with a dizzy sense of aimlessness. From the top of the steps he looked down on the zocalo and the Friday night strollers in the plaza across the street. The serenata had begun. The music from the band bounced against the night with a jaunty tilt and pervaded the air with magic and gaiety. When he felt better he went down to the sidewalk and crossed the street to the plaza, following the scent of the crowd and the distraction of the festivity.

The band played on a raised platform and around it in a circle the girls walked clockwise while the men circled them counter clockwise. Ricardo sat down on a bench and watched them. The musicians in their tattered, bravely red uniforms looked warm and overworked. They played a peculiar tune, jaunty and sad, comical and brave, a ragged piece of music through which the trumpeter pierced with a massive sadness that filled the night like an organ.

Ricardo closed his eyes and listened to the music. It was a lonely thing like himself in spite of a dense crowdedness of stars and people. The park glittered with lights and the air was filled with whispers. Everyone had a companion. The conviviality was insidious. The girls smiled and their teeth were healthy. They raised their arms and the light caught the dark hair in the hollow of their armpits. The boys looked alternately serious and daring and irresponsible. He saw some men who were older than he was.

Mostly, these were serious and scanned the female faces with a declared purpose. Some looked as if they might say: I have a piece of good land, some horses. My wife must be young so that she can work hard. Come, I know what I am worth and what you are worth. We are worth the same thing in love. Others looked more uncertain as if they were not sure whether they had land or horses, and others with a sad frankness sought to catch the eyes of the unattractive women, while still others looked tired as if they went around out of habit. These walked with their heads down and did not bother to look at anyone.

But the señoritas smiled with embarrassed boldness, and Ricardo felt himself caught in the contagion of wooing. He fidgeted on his seat, then he stood up abruptly and stepped into the outer circle. Some of the younger boys slapped him on his back with welcome and pushed him along. The procedure was awkward to him. He put his hands behind his back and walked slowly with his eyes on the ground.

Little by little he raised his eyes and looked into the passing faces. He was surprised when one or two looked back at him. Their interest excited him. His eyes went from girl to girl, and as the night became warmer each one became possible.

Then he caught sight of Mr. Schencker sitting on a bench close by, his white suit immaculate against the dark background. He was talking with another man; they paid no attention to the serenata. Ricardo was annoyed that he was there. His presence distracted him from the magical circle; the faces blurred. He made up his mind that he must deliver the box as soon as possible, that night. If the other man left Mr. Schencker for a moment, he would do it and be done with the problem. He did not take his eyes from the bench, and the girls passed like shadows.

A half hour went by and Ricardo wearied of the movement. The boys jostled him along and the girls passed him, brown and dark-haired, vying for his attention. Mr. Schencker and his friend continued to sit on the bench. The tree above bent low branches and shrouded them in a discreet enclosure.

People strolled behind them, faces peered into the circle, faces passed and reappeared, caught the light upon their foreheads and went back into the dark of the trees.

Ricardo was afraid that the night would end and nothing would come of it. He watched so intently for his moment that soon he knew every tree and stone that was near the bench. Around and around he went, time and again he passed the place where Mr. Schencker sat and then, uncannily, as if he had slid out of the night, in a little clearing to the left of the bench stood Julio who watched him with disbelief. How had he come there? Each time Ricardo came round in the circle, Julio was there under a street light, watching him. Ricardo felt dizzy, but he looked back at Julio long and grimly.

Julio pushed his lower lip out and wet it. He stared back at Ricardo for a moment, then he lowered his eyes.

The circle became unbearable. Some boys pushed Ricardo in the shoulder and he pushed them back roughly. The young girls smiled with nothing but white teeth, and the older men went around and around, their hard eyes calculating chances and risks.

Suddenly the man left Mr. Schencker. Immediately Ricardo stepped from the circle and approached his bench from the left, deliberately walking across Julio's path. "Señor Schencker," Ricardo smiled

Julio hesitated, then he faded behind a nearby tree.

Mr. Schenker looked up carefully. "Sí?" he said.

"I have something to deliver to you," Ricardo said. He took out the box and placed it in his hand. Ricardo felt Mr. Schencker's palm cup itself under his and his fingers close on the box with instinctive knowledge.

"Gracias," he said, "gracias."

But Ricardo did not move away. He was seduced by the thought that Julio was secretly watching him and said loudly, "Can I do anything else for you?"

Mr. Schencker glanced at him with veiled surprise. "No, Señor," he whispered, "you have done everything already. Gracias, gracias."

But still Ricardo did not move. He wished to elongate the moment for as long as possible. Mr. Schencker put his hand in his pocket for his wallet.

Ricardo was disappointed. "Please, Señor," he said, "truly if you wish me to do anything more I stay at the Casa del Noche." Ricardo was convinced that Julio was watching him and carefully chose his demeanor as he spoke louder than necesssary.

Mr. Schencker took his hand away. "Gracias," he said, "it is most kind of you to tell me so." He rose heavily and went away. When he arrived at his house he went into his study and thought about what he should do about this curious incident. Then he made a telephone call. 

4

Julio left Cuernavaca immediately. He did not wait for the morning to make this trip.

When Felícita heard someone at the door late at night, she woke up with alarm. "Julio, Juan, Hernán," she called. But Julio had already banged in the door. "Shut up. It is me."

Felícita lit a candle. "What are you doing home?"

"Do you know what I saw this night?"

Felícita shrugged her shoulders.

Julio took off his serape. Abruptly he sat down on a chair and stared straight ahead. Felícita waited for him to speak.

"Sí, I saw a bad thing tonight," he said in a low voice with a nod of his head, as if he were talking to himself. His eyes rolled around to where Felícita was standing, to see if she were listening. She had never seen Julio frightened. Immediately she deemed he had seen a ghost and wanted to go for the priest. He took out a cigarette and looked at it before he lit it, as if all things were new to him. Then he said: "In the afternoon I went to the house of Manuel Cholopis. We struck a good bargain." Felícita nodded her head dryly to this. "First I thought I would leave immediately after this, but then I thought to myself, this is Friday night, I will walk through the plaza and listen to the music." Felícita looked at him dry-eyed. There was hardness in her soul towards him for this, but she passed it over with a flicker of her eyes. "And there in the circle," Julio said, "in the serenata, was Ricardo, Ricardo in Cuernavaca, looking for a wife."

"So what is that?" Felícita asked, relieved that that was all that had frightened him. His impatience with her obtuseness burst out: "Ricardo has no money to get married with. Why should he be in Cuernavaca looking for a wife!"

"Perhaps he has found work, or he was only flirting."

Julio's eyes rolled beneath his swollen eyelids. "Sí, he has found work. I saw him speaking with Señor Schencker. Do you know who Señor Schencker is?"

"How should I know?" she shrugged her shoulders.

Julio drew in on his cigarette. "They say many things about Señor Schencker. They say he is very wealthy. They say he is a lawyer. They say he is a foreigner, that he deals in contraband goods. They say he hires people to murder other people."

Felícita had no taste for catastrophe. "Why does the government not arrest him?"

Julio looked at her, puzzled. Suddenly he felt lonely. Only he could see the handwriting on the wall, and that was a lonely feeling. "What do I care why the government does not arrest him," he exploded. "Can you not see what I see? I am not telling you an idle tale."

Felícita blinked her eyes with indifference. The hour was late, and she had no sense for the devious. Julio was talking in circles and she suspected that he was being highhanded with her.

"Now, what is this about Señor Schencker?" she asked with a trace of boredom.

Julio clicked his tongue with disgust. "When a man who swears vengeance on you becomes the friend of a man who murders without care, it is something to think about."

"But if Ricardo wishes to murder you, why does he need someone else to do it?"

"Because he cannot do it himself. That much I am sure of. I say he missed because he could not do it. But see," he grabbed his head between his hands, "what lengths a man will go to to get around his own soul."

"All this is in your mind," Felícita sniffed. Her feet were beginning to get cold. The startle had worn off and she paid attention to her tiredness.

Julio thought he was not explaining himself well. Again he felt a momentous wave of loneliness, for the third time in his life since Ricardo had come to kill him. He felt hatred for his wife that she could not see his thoughts, and he would not say anything more to her. He stood up to go to bed and made an unprecedented announcement. "Tomorrow I will see about selling the farm."

Felícita's eyes opened wide. There was a gasp in her throat. "What are you talking about? This is a night for jokes!"

Julio smiled with satisfaction. Now Felícita read his thoughts very well. "Sí," he repeated more emphatically, "Tomorrow I will see about selling the farm." It gave him some of his self-control back to see her reaction. But the idea startled him as well, even as he said it. "Now do you understand me?" he shouted at her.

"But where will we go?" she cried.

"We will buy land somewhere else." He waved his hand. "Wherever you go there is dirt and earth."

Felícita buried her face in her hands. "We will starve," she cried remorsefully.

Julio sat down again, heavily. Her cries settled the fact that he intended to sell the farm. He shrugged his shoulders to diminish the impact of the idea. "What of it? That is a known death and nothing to fear. I have gone hungry many times. There is nothing to it. One always finds food in the end."

"Sí, garbage, dogs, rats," she said bitterly, for one took much in marriage, but in return one expected to be fed.

Julio waved her anger away. "We will not starve. The price I will get for this farm will buy me a good farm anywhere in the country. That I can assure you. What is there in Netzahualcoyotl? Rocks, texcal, cerros. For a man who wishes to farm, the land must yield itself a little. I have always wanted to feel rich earth in my hands, to think to myself that my labor will be cut by a little, for the earth is willing. I tell you this land here," he hit the table with his fist, "I attacked her. Sí, I dug my strength into her and demanded what I wished. Now I am tired and I wish for the land to be easy." He clasped his hands together and held them tensely between his knees. "You yourself said last week, let us leave. When Ricardo came, then you wanted to leave."

"Last week you said your son was a good farmer."

Julio jumped up and laughed. "So, each man carries his own burden. Sí, and I will carry mine. Julio," he shouted for his son.

All the brothers knew what was being said, for the separation of rooms meant nothing, but Julio listened with special eagerness for news about himself.

He stepped out and waited expectantly.

"I have seen Manuel Cholopis this day," his father said.

Julio's face lit up. His father looked at him with derision. "Sí, I saw your future father-in-law. Everything is arranged. You will work for him for one year and live in his house. At the end of that time you will marry his daughter. Manuel will build a good house for you nearby in the street in which he lives."

Julio looked at his father blankly. "Qué es? What is this? Why should he build a house for me?"

"Because that is where you will live."

"But am I not to live in your house. What can I do in Cuernavaca? I cannot farm there."

"You can weave baskets there," Felícita sneered.

Julio looked from one to the other. He now understood the arrangement. He had been betrayed, but why? "What is the good of such a marriage. I will be a servant to my wife in the house that her father built. She is a girl from the city. She must come to the farm. If I who am from the farm go to the city I must learn from her. It will never work, such a marriage."

"You wish not to marry her?" Julio shouted. He appeared dumbfounded and personally piqued. "I have already paid the chichitomin. and now you wish not to marry her? Do you think Manuel will return this money?"

"Am I being driven away?" his son asked.

"Ach," Julio said with disgust. "Do you think I wish to lose a good farmer? Not only do I lose my money but I must now pay for a laborer to take your place. But Eustaquia Cholopis took your eye and I said to myself that my son will marry from the heart. Sí. I saw for myself how glad you were with her and I did what I could. So now you are angry with me."

Julio did not know what to think. His father put his arm about him.

"Come," he said. "I will pack your things for you. Go tomorrow to Cuernavaca. In a week's time you will feel differently. Besides," he waved his hand, "I think to sell this farm and go elsewhere. It will be good to know that my eldest son has work and a house and a bride."

"Why do you sell the farm?" his son asked, amazed.

Julio's face clouded over. "Because I am tired of it. Sí. That is enough of an answer. Now I am tired of talking too," and he went into his bedroom.

When Julio left in the morning he said goodbye to his father. "Basta," Julio said to him irritably, "enough brooding. You will do well in Cuernavaca."

"Sí," the son answered without warmth. Then he turned his horse and started for the road. Angrily he bent down along the way and ripped out a blade of grass. "Sí," he thought, stung with the turn of events, and moodily made his journey to the house of his bride. 

5

Ricardo slept badly that night. The air was hot and his room was a small one. The rain had come and gone hours ago, but the air was still heavy with wetness. Time and again he woke and saw vividly the details of the evening, how he went round and round in the circle under the plaza lights while the band played its majestic and sad melody and Señor Schencker sat on the green bench in his white suit; and how Julio's head had appeared from between the dark trees. Everything was wet. All the lights were muted and covered with rings of wetness. The rain hung over their heads and the people walked with difficulty as if through slime. They went round him and he shuddered as they passed his shoulder. They peered at each other through a wet twilight. How had he not noticed any of these things? Mr. Schencker nodded his head through the wetness and said: Gracias. It is most kind of you to tell me so; Julio watched all the while from behind a dark tree, and Ricardo knew that he had placed his life in jeopardy. But to whom? He could not tell. Yet the danger was there. He felt it sharp and close.

There could be no one else in the room. It was too small, there were no closets, no furniture to hide behind. Only his bed and the shadow outside the door that came and went. He could not lie still. He made up his mind to find Julio. He knew where he would probably lodge, he would enter his room quietly and lay a hand on his shoulder. Julio, he would say, you fear death, Julio? and then the agony would pass through them both.

Ricardo got up from the bed. Quietly he went down the hallway and slipped out of the hotel. The streets were dark, there were no people in them, only the sound of a drunken laugh and the shadow of a man a few paces behind him. In the lonely street his mind became attuned to the man's step. He began to walk faster, he crossed the park and came to the open plaza, but everything was dark and deserted. Still he heard the footsteps behind him. He wanted to call out in the dark, "Julio. Sí, it is Ricardo. Come here." But he did not. With the soul of the hunted, he could not change his role. He was being pursued, another had molded the circumstances of the night and he had to run.

He came into a lighted district where there were a few cabarets and he paused for a second to choose his route. But even in the light the shadow came closer. With a little cry, Ricardo felt the stranger's hands on his back and he darted into a nearby doorway. He tried to hold his breath. He squeezed into the doorway as tightly as he could. The shadow stopped too. It lingered just beyond his eyes' range, for Ricardo did not dare to turn his head. The door behind him was closed. He could not move to open it, and he knew that the man, whoever he was, had found him exactly. With a willessness that could not hope, he squeezed his eyes shut and then the sharp, precise clatter, the violence of the night, sounded, and he slumped to the floor, aware of a pain in his shoulder.

He lay still and felt his heart beating, and over his hand where it had flown involuntarily to his shoulder, he felt the blood running, but he was no longer sick. He felt better than he had for hours, since he had seen Julio staring at him from behind the tree. So that is how he had felt when I held the gun, he thought, and a passion seized him, an agony of heat and pain flooded his belly and his genitals, his thighs and his calves. He could not tell whether he commiserated with love and anguish for Julio's agony, or whether he was glad for it.

The door opened behind him and a woman looked at him with a musty charity. She saw the blood and hesitated, holding in check an exhausted pity. Then she said in a tired voice, "Señor, are you hurt?"

"Sí," Ricardo looked up, gratefully.

She seemed angry with herself for coming to his aid, but she helped him to his feet. "Come in," she said, and led him into a cabaret, a small, square room whose brick walls were uncovered. They sat down at a table and she brought over some wet towels and two drinks. Others looked at them hastily and covertly. The shot had been heard, but curiosity lay quiescent in the darkened room. Only the woman who had helped him looked at him with constrained pity. Sympathy, she knew, was invariably costly, and what could she do for him anyway? They sat in silence until Ricardo said, "You do not ask me about this thing."

The woman raised her hand as if to ward off an evil. "I do not want to know. I came down to get you. That is enough."

Ricardo was disappointed, for he felt talkative, he wanted to talk about the uniqueness of his pain. The room was dark and crowded. Blue lights were strung along the ceiling and brown tables and chairs stood everywhere. Now and then somebody laughed in a high pitch mixed with drink. Ricardo felt dizzy. Faintness came at him like birds that lifted him off the ground and then set him back in the dark room.

"It was my brother," he said. He meant to have her hear him, and he felt that this would startle her attention. Besides, it was most likely Julio.

The woman raised her shoulder to her ear as if to say that it mattered not a whit to her, but Ricardo sensed that the movement was merely habitual, and that underneath it he had scratched her curiosity. He saw what she was and that her gestures had been acquired in the trade, deliberately to leave her with the least possible amount of commitment to any tale she was likely to hear. But she was human and curious. People love each other, he said lightheadedly to himself, that is why they like to hear tales of other people. They are desperate for news of another's soul. For a moment he felt confused in this new belief. The thought made him feel gay and miserable at the same time.

"Sí, my brother," he whispered. He waved his hand haphazardly. "We have a long enmity."

"That is bad when it is that way between brothers," she said phlegmatically.

"Sí. Worse than when it is between friends. It is something in the blood." Ricardo waved his hand again. "When the blood makes an enemy of its own kind, it is worse, much worse than otherwise. It is a bad enemy, I think." He seemed to have forgotten his thought. He opened his eyes a few seconds later. "Do you know how that is?"

She lowered her head. Suddenly Ricardo took her hand. "Tell me what I am to do?" The woman took her hand away. The blood was soaking through the towels she had given him. He could no longer sit erect in his chair. Some people nearby gazed covertly, pretending not to see anything.

"If you wish to talk to me," she said indifferently, "my room is in the next street." She shrugged her shoulders to indicate how little it mattered to her, but she helped him to his feet and helped him out of the cabaret. When he sat down on her bed she asked him if he had money for a doctor. He took out all he had and gave it to her. Then he lay down to rest while she went to fetch a doctor. The unfamiliar room, dirty and gray like a rat's hole, twirled through his brain. The woman came back soon with a doctor who gave Ricardo some liquor to drink. Then he cut out the bullet. Ricardo passed out for a time. When he regained consciousness the doctor was still there and Ricardo asked him for the bullet.

The doctor looked at him curiously. "What will you do with it? Shoot it back?" The woman's eyes flickered. Ricardo smiled distractedly, but he held his palm open for it. When the doctor put the bullet in his hand he closed his fingers over it and fell asleep.

He woke several times in the next few days, took some food and went back to rest, but he did not let go of the bullet. By the fourth day he felt well enough to get out of bed and dress.

"You go, Señor?" the woman said.

"Sí," he laughed and hit his chest. "I feel good this morning. I bet you it is a fine day outside."

"Sí, the sun is shining."

Ricardo looked at her and felt very warm in his heart. She had a small, white, unpretty face, thick, red lips and small, round, unshapely eyes, but her face had become familiar to him and it looked like a good face.

"Where will you go?" she asked.

He gazed blankly at the floor. Then he felt the bullet in his palm.

Carefully he laid it in the pocket of his pants. "I do not know. My horse is in San Vincente. I must go there to get him. But first I must go to el Mejico. After that?" he shrugged his shoulders, "who knows? This morning I will not think about it. I will think only as far as el Mejico."

When he was ready to leave he looked with embarrassment at her. He had no money. "The other night I gave you money for the doctor."

"Sí," she said.

"This morning I have no money at all."

"Señor," she said, "you have been in my room for four days and I could not have any customers."

"Sí, I know. But I have no money for breakfast."

She clucked her tongue and took out from her purse two pesos. Ricardo looked at them dimly. He had given her more than fifty pesos. "But you were kind to me."

"Sí," she shrugged her shoulders. "My kindness does not cost. It is my room that costs."

Ricardo left. He no longer had an appetite for breakfast and walked aimlessly about. After a while he sat down on a bench. His shoulder throbbed and his belly hurt with anger. It was with an effort that he went into a café to eat. Now, I must find work, he thought, real work. He had not enough money to feed himself for the day, and he must wait a few more days before he could go to Mexico City. After he had finished eating he asked the owner of the café if there was something he could do, but there was no work for him. He went out into the street and stopped and inquired in all the cafés and shops. There was no work.

He thought of his fifty pesos, and thought of the woman who had helped him. In the end she had been cruel to him. But only in the end, he reminded himself, and he did not know what to make of her. Soon he came to the stall which Manuel Cholopis owned in the market.. "What can you do?" Manuel said.

"Collect the straw, dye it, stitch it. I will go from house to house and sell for you. I need work for only a few days."

Manuel Cholopis looked at him suspiciously, but he said congenially, "Aaaach, I have too many workers already. I have four sons who need work and now a new worker." He nodded his head in the direction of a young man who sat on a box and braided lengths of straw. As soon as Ricardo saw the young Julio, he understood. He had not been able to persuade himself that the man who followed him that night had been his brother. His shadow had been too thin, narrow-shouldered and his step too light. But it had been Julio, his son.

"What are you doing here?" he shouted at him.

"This is my daughter's husband in one year's time," Manuel said, but Ricardo did not believe him and pushed him aside.

"It is true," Julio said with humiliation.

"Ha!" Ricardo said, "Since when does my brother permit his son to weave baskets for his bride?"

Julio shrugged his shoulders. "I do not know," he said, "but that is how it is."

Ricardo thought for a while, then decided not to believe him. He put his hands on Julio's shoulders and said, "I will not take up my quarrel with you, but I promise I will be at the farm by this night." He turned to leave but Julio caught his arm.

"Jesu," he said, "can you not let it go?" Ricardo shrugged him off and walked away.

Julio turned to Manuel and said, "I must go to my father's farm today. I will be back in the afternoon," and he quickly saddled his horse.

Julio arrived at the farm by late morning. His father came out of the door at the sound of the horse and regarded him suspiciously.

"Qué es?" he said. "What is this?"

Julio hesitated, for he had come for his father's benefit and the thought touched his sense of irony. When he had guessed Ricardo's mind he had been frantic to make the journey as quickly as possible and warn his father, but now as he faced him he remembered the deception that had been practised on him and the generous impulse died. His father looked at him with frank suspicion that he had deserted the pact.

"What is it?" he asked. "Is not Eustaquia worth some weaving?"

His son got off his horse and walked into the house. "First I will eat," he said. "Then I will tell you."

Julio walked into the house behind him and grabbed him by the back of his shirt. "Since when do you speak to me in this way?"

"Since the year in which I was betrayed," he turned on his father.

"Basta," Felícita said. "Qué es?" she asked her son soothingly. "You do not wish to go through with this marriage?"

"No, but I will, for it is better to weave baskets and to be alive than to farm the land of a dead man." He spoke with deliberate histrionic emphasis. Julio drew his eyes closed to a glint. "So?" he said, "in Cuernavaca you find much gossip."

"Some," his son said truculently.

"And you have come all this way to tell me what you know," Julio said mockingly.

His son lowered his eyes. "That is why I came when I first started out, but now I would not have come."

"Then I am fortunate that you are here. Tell me quickly what it is that you know."

Julio shifted his gaze uncomfortably. His charity had turned into his humiliation. He could not withhold the warning from his father, but it was out of straitened discipline and unloving obedience that he answered him. "I saw Ricardo in the marketplace. This morning. He is bound for here."

Julio thought for a minute. "Then why is he not here? You have arrived."

"I cannot tell you why he has not come. Perhaps he comes on foot. He had no horse when I saw him."

"No horse?" Julio laughed. "What would he do with his horse? He cannot sell it, for it has my mark on it and who would buy a thief's horse?" His son lowered his eyes again."You gave the horse to Ricardo," he said with pain.

"Sí, in return for three month's labor."

"He was only one week short and you drove him away."

"Then he should send me back one leg from the horse," Julio laughed.

"Basta," he shouted. "Each man sees justice in his own way. Go back to your bride. I will take care of this matter myself."

"First let him eat," Felícita said. "The rain is starting."

Julio shrugged his shoulders by way of consent. He put on his sandals and his serape and went to saddle his horse.

"Where are you going?" Felícita asked.

Julio did not answer her. He went outside and saddled his horse and mounted it.

"Where are you going?" Felícita ran after him.

"Pack what you can," he said in a quick voice. "Bring Hernán and Juan in from the fields and get the wagon. I will go into the village to see who will buy the farm."

"You are crazy," Felícita said, but he had already turned his horse away. "You are crazy," she shouted after him. "Come back. You are crazy."

Her son came out of the house. "What is it?" he asked.

"He has gone to sell the farm," she said in a hoarse rasp.

"Is it because of Ricardo?" he asked with awe.

"Sí," she cried, "sí, sí, sí, because of Ricardo, because of a man half his size."

Julio shuffled his feet in the sand. "What shall we do?"

"Go bring your brothers in from the fields. Quickly," she hissed, as if she were scatting a cat.

When they returned, Felícita had already rolled up the straw mats and taken apart the boards of the bed frames. "You, Hernán," she said, "bring the wagon to the door."

When he stood uncertainly, she shouted at him, "Do as I tell you. He is sick. Sí, he is sick. He has seen a ghost. He has been bewitched. There is nothing we can do now."

"Maybe I should go for the priest," Julio said.

"Aaii, the priest," she said in a voice hard as a stone,"I have not one peso with me to pay him."

"He has never been afraid," Julio said.

"Sí. That is true. But you must ask elsewhere why he is now afraid," she said with futility. "You, Hernán, bring the wagon pronto."

Hernán brought the wagon in front of the doorway and Felícita began to pile the comal, the metate, her clay pots, the straw mats, the two bed frames, the chairs and the table on to it. She took the clothes down from their hooks and laid them in a wooden chest which Julio and Hernán hoisted on to the wagon. Then she went to the little makeshift altar at the back of the room and began to disassemble it. She put into the wooden chest the picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the straw flowers she had braided, the candles, and folded away the paper tablecloth.

When Julio returned they were finished packing and were waiting for him. His face was gray. The rain dripped off his sombrero and his serape was soaking so that you could tell that his shoulders and chest were wet. His sluggish eyes rolled with disbelief and anger. He took the money out of his pocket and flung it on the floor. "Two thousand pesos," he said. "For the land, for the house, for three hogs and a cow," he shouted. Tears came to his eyes. "May Ricardo rot in an open grave. May his flesh stink up the wind that it is carried in."

Felícita quickly picked up the money. "Give it back. Give it back quickly."

Julio waved her down.

"What has come over you?" she cried. "Ricardo has killed you already. You have no need to run. Here," she took his machete from his belt. "Take it and find him, Better use the money to bring the priest here. You suffer from el espanto," she hissed.

"El espanto? Sí," he said in a voice that was new to his family. "But I will not be able to find him. Nor will the priest, for he will come in the dark. I did not tell you that I dreamed three nights ago how he and my son, Julio, said things to each other. I could not hear them. In a dream you do not hear, but you know what is being said. Then Julio came today on his horse, but he said nothing. He sat on his horse and laughed. When he came this afternoon I knew right away. Sí. It is as I have dreamed it. He will come in the dark." He looked around at his family. "Basta," he said angrily, "make haste and let us leave."

Felícita put down the machete. "Sí. Make haste We are now pursued by dreams and I am married to this till I die." She felt overtaken by an unprecedented scorn, an emotion she had never felt towards her husband, but then she had never known him to have felt fear. Now they both faced each other with a complex of new feelings that had not been in the tradition of their lives, that they had not known existed in the relationship between a husband and wife. "Maybe now you will find women," she turned her bitterness on him. "Sí," she looked about at her son, recollecting herself for the moment. But then she disregarded even this caution and turned back to her husband. "What woman will you find to cook for you now and to eat your garbage?"

Julio took hold of her hands and pinched them tightly. "Ask your saints to protect you," he said and walked out of the house.

Felícita did not fear Julio's threats. Physical pain did not frighten her. Chaos did. She looked about the empty room. Only the hearth was left. Her sons had gone out to help Julio tie down their things with hemp. The curtain that had divided the two rooms had been taken down. Hernán had disassembled the table where the altar had stood and had taken it out.

There was no longer any shape to the house, nothing to mark the occupations and habits of those who had lived in it, which had seemed as unquestionably permanent to her as the village she had been born into. Now it was nothing but an empty room and she stood in the empty corner and looked at the three stones of the hearth set in a triangle. This they could not take, for Julio had cemented them into the floor. "Sí," she thought, "I ask for protection." But she could not say what she was to be protected from. She had once feared Julio, but everything she had feared had shown her its teeth and she had learned not courage nor not to fear, but that fear would not annihilate her. So she had reckoned fear when Julio had first lain down beside her, fourteen and young beyond remembering it any more, had lain down beside her in the dark, wordless and entered her body with an abrupt physicality and had left her just as abruptly with her eyes open, listening to the insects crawling on the floor. When his son was being born that first corruption pierced her body again and again for three days and nights while his mother watched her with eyes that said, "All is as it should be and there will be no voices of comfort." That she had learned, that there were no voices of comfort. Now unfamiliar feelings floated up in her, and she had no preparation for them. Nothing but life to begin again, and the fear of that.

When she left the house, Julio was sitting in the wagon. Felícita climbed in beside him, and Hernán and Juan climbed into the back with the household belongings. No one spoke. Their eldest son untied his horse and mounted him to go back to Cuernavaca. The afternoon rain drove in with hard winds.

Soon the land was running with mud. The wagon started up and Julio watched his father and mother and his brothers drive away through the slanting rain. He had a perplexed feeling, a sense of density about life he had not felt before. He watched for some time after they had gone, then spurred his horse and rode back to Cuernavaca.

6

Ricardo walked all that day from Cuernavaca to Netzahualcoyotl. The rain wet him through his clothes and his feet slipped on the paths. His sandals became clogged with mud and he had to stop frequently to empty them. His shoulder hurt and he kept his hand over it. He could feel the heat from the wound through his wet shirt.

The maguey stretched along the flat plains like clusters of thorny stars in the steaming gray. In the distance, the rain was thick like smoke hissing from the ground. The cars went by in small huddles of comfort through the beguiling monotony of the rain.

The land on both sides of the road was a flat, yellow plain that stretched for miles. It enveloped him all around in monotonous stretches of rain through which he could see nothing. He moved dreamily in the wet movement . Weak and in pain he lowered his eyes and remembered his life as he walked along the road. His old mother sat in the square room enclosed on all sides by the rain. She sat at the table with her fantastically hard eyes that were like plum stones, and the grim wisdom in her grim set lips which did not argue with anyone, but with a point of her finger and a nod of her head said everything. His three sisters sat with puffed and sullen faces. With a nod of her head his mother routed them from their flagrant daydreams and without a margin of hope set them to work at the household tasks. Go to market, grind the corn, sew the clothes, sweep the floor, fetch the water, make the tortillas. Ricardo, a belated infant, sat on a chair near the table and looked at the strangers. The rain fell outside. It hit the earth with a fuzzy thud. Everybody else was quiet. Julio portioned out the food. Ricardo was very hungry, but he dare not ask for more. He could not understand why there was a prohibition, or if there was one except that Julio portioned out the food, and nobody asked for more than what they got. He could smell the damp earth of the floor and the wet clothes dripping over the fire, he could hear the rain splashing outside but he could not hear anyone talking. They sat around the table, their faces bent over their plates and ate silently. He could feel the scratch on his legs from the chair, and the warm steam from the food on his eyes, but he could not hear them talking, only the orgiastic, voluptuously indulgent, churning, smacking sound of food and saliva in Julio's mouth.

Cars passed him, but he did not flag any down. His face was hidden under his sombrero and it was not clear whether he was a young man or an old one. He was lost in the past. He sat at the table. He was six years old, and everyone was very big. Julio ate with one hand and with the other dipped the big spoon into the pot and put the food on the plates as they went by. Ricardo was stung with disappointment at his little portion. The food he was given to eat was never enough.

As if he carried the little boy he once was, he entered Netzahualcoyotl late that afternoon with the misplaced ambition to defend this little boy. It was true that the child was somebody else whose destiny was finished, but Ricardo wanted to retrieve him and for his sake set a fire in the world. He demanded payment for this child's inarticulateness.

He went through the village quickly and came out into the countryside. The rain had stopped and there was a low haze of sullen clouds in the sky. He walked through the mud and across the little streams of water. The later afternoon sun picked out the colors in the bits of glass that were stuck into the walls around the farms. This time it must be finished. To kill Julio would be everything he could say about life. This time he must do it. He picked up a large rock to use as a weapon. His shoulder was in great pain, and that was good. He needed to remember pain. He pushed open the gate to Julio's farm and almost footless, like wind, made his way across the front yard. The mud cushioned his steps and the earth sank beneath his feet. His heart beat uncomfortably. The rock was an ungainly weapon. It required a different pose. The thought that he might fail again spread through him like a sickness. He crossed the front yard and looked into a window of the hut. The fire was out, the furnishings were gone. No one was there, the fire was out, the altar was gone. He wheeled around. Everything was empty. There was no wagon in the yard. The gate swung idly, the sun dried in the late sun, covering the tracks of the wagon, the mud turned to sand and the pebbles began to show lifeless in the dry heat. Everything was empty. Not a soul in the fields, not a sound from the road. Empty! Excruciatingly empty! A fit seized him and he began to shake uncontrollably. Julio was gone and his plate was empty. He was a stick shaking without meaning. He was empty, he was sand blowing without shape.

He was nothing, only sand that took one shape when Julio called and another shape when he did not. Julio was gone and he was falling apart, blowing away like sand in a wind. He shuddered violently. His soul was wet through and through. Yet somewhere there must be power, he thought. The earth has terrible forces. Somewhere there must be power to breathe. He looked about him at the emptiness and shut his eyes. Julio had humbled him again.

He walked out of the yard and through the gate. The sun danced along the bits of glass in the wall and picked out the colors of red, purple, green, black. But the gate swung open on an empty yard. Ricardo needed air, the high, thin air of the cerros. The sun that had come out so late in the day burned terrifically. It was a setting sun and hung precariously on a distant peak, though wet breezes informed the atmosphere of more rain. Everything in the twilight warned against the mountains, the growing darkness, the moving clouds gathering into humps of hugeness, the air which had picked up wind and speed. Nevertheless, Ricardo went up and up until he could look back down and barely make out Julio's farm surrounded by its wall of dancing color. Dimly he could see the gate swinging in the growing wind. No one came to fasten it. The dried earth blew in little swirls, the wind blew through the open door.

Ricardo cut off the main path and climbed straight into the mountain. He caught hold of the boulders with his hands. His shoulder tore at him with pain, but he drew himself further up the mountain. Soon he was on top of El Ocelotepetl. He could feel its shape in the gray darkness, it boulders hanging all about him. His shoulder tore his body apart. He wanted to be rid of the pain, to cut it out, to cut off some part of himself and be rid of his pain. There was lightning in the distance and the black clouds came up on his right. The rain thundered in his head: Everything gotten had to be paid for. One made a sacrifice for everything, for rain, for corn, for harvest, for peace. Perhaps he could cut off his arm and offer it and be rid of his pain. How was it he could not live in this world in a simple, human way as others seemed to do.

The lightning cracked overhead and unleashed the rain. With a leap Ricardo fled across the mountain top and crossed on to El Tlaminetepetl, Peak of the Wounded. His foot slipped in the wetness and he clung to the boulders with his fingers. He could hear his nails scratch on the rocks as he struggled to keep his grip. One step below him was death. His foot cringed away from the crevice, his toes curled on the shrubbery, his hands dug themselves into sheer rock, his armpits were stretched beyond endurance. With malice the rain beat him on his head and struck his eyes. He hung over the edge of death and he wanted to die, but his fingers would not let go. They were filled with treason. They had departed from the willing mind and sought their own preservation. With a leap of freedom and terror his mind fell down and lay torn at the bottom of the mountain, but his body clung, his fingers scratched on the rock for life, and his arms were flung around El Tlaminetepetl.

Thus he clung for half an hour while the rain beat him against the peak. There was no thought in him now, neither desire to die nor surprise that he lived. No terror or fear, hope or pain. He lay like a broken doll with his cheek on the rock and his arms around the wet boulder. There was only persistence.

After a while the rain abated. The lightning was in the distance and the thunder rolled away over further peaks. Ricardo pulled himself up on top of the peak. His armpits ached and his back was wrenched. Everywhere around him the world was awash with rain. He could not see any villages or other peaks. The countryside was gone. He alone crawled across the top of the world in cold loneliness until he found a small cave into which he squeezed himself. There was a statue of Jesus in it, and a few flowers, intensely red and white, with beaten petals.

It grew dark and he was cold, but he did not think of going down from the mountain to find food and shelter. He sat and shivered and looked at the statue of Jesus. It was carved fom dark wood and smelled of rotting dampness. Its jowls were cut with deep ruts to mark the pain of death, and the belly was crumpled with wrinkles, an elongated sagging over the loin cloth, as if gravity were his tormentor.

The smell of the wet wood and the rot warmed Ricardo's nostrils. It was drugging like the odor that comes out of a pestiferous hole and it crowded his head with a thousand memories, smell upon smell rising from the earth.

He thought of the rain in a damp house, he thought of the food standing on the table, the children who lay three in a bed rubbing their dust and their grease and their scum into the straw. He could smell the flesh, the sweat, the urine in the child's bed. He was not sure but that he dozed, for he started once or twice with the thought that someone was near him. But there was no one.

Little by little the rain stopped altogether and the air blew with a dry wind. Ricardo sat dazed in the cave as the known universe resumed itself. He thought the world had been washed away. The stars continued to come out, enormously and innocent of tragedy. He could make out the villages below and his heart went cold at the sight of them. Netzahualcoyotl down below. San Vincente to the south, Donciane Sur to the west. He knew every step along the way. When he went down, he went down to the same world. He dragged himself out of the cave and supported himself against the side of the mountain. He looked down into the valley for a long time. Like Satan who, after having heard the rumor that a world had been created, circled the earth in search of a way to enter it, Ricardo looked into the dark valley and wondered how it was possible for him to find a way into the world. "Jesu," he cried, "for pity's sake, be merciful and give me love." He did not love the world, he would destroy it if he could, but he longed to love it, he longed desperately, sickeningly, with all the aching senses of his body to find himself in the human spectrum, he longed beyond any gift, beyond any offering the world could make, to love this loveless world. 

7

The day was drawing to a close when Julio and his family approached the outskirts of the capital city. Again the rain clouds hung low and behind them they could see sheets of water falling over an isolated region. Tlaloc had spared them that at least, Felícita thought, and they had passed through the mountains during a few hours of sunshine. But when had they ever prayed against rain or had found the gift superfluous? They were turned against their gods. If they were not in Netzahualcoyotl farming, of what use was Tlaloc? Rain, rain, rain and rain. For what purpose now? Henceforth all would be mischief.

Juan and Hernán sat in the back of the wagon. They rested on their haunches and wore their sombreros low over their eyes. Juan would have spoken with his brother, but Hernán showed no interest. There was eight years between them, for the gods had been good to Felícita and had spared her children.

She had no gift for child-bearing and had prayed to Mary to give her the tranquillity of a barren womb. When several years had passed after Hernán, she thought her prayers had been answered, but then her body had flickered and had splintered into pieces with shudders. Now it was eight years again since Juan had been born and a terrible startle had gone through her again. How treacherous the gods had become.

Hernán was uncomfortable with his parents throughout the trip. No one spoke. His father drove the horse sullenly and slowly as if he were in no hurry to get anywhere. Hernán did not know how his father felt except that he looked two ways at the same time, and his mother sat far away from him. Hernán kept his hat over his eyes and his eyes open and wakeful as the wagon rolled through the streets. There were sidewalks so white they looked as if they had been painted, and the houses rose up in many shapes and angles. He kept his hat low and looked as if he were sleeping, but he watched everything.

"Basta," Julio said and reined in the horse. "We stop here."

Felícita looked about her with a grimly accepting air. It was a narrow street with no sidewalk. The buildings grew up flat from the black street. The windows were black with no glass in them. She had never seen tall buildings before, one after the other, but she had seen garbage and she saw that it stood in huge piles before every doorway and that it ran in the streets with the black water. Her eyes were hard as nuts.

Julio got down from the wagon and disappeared into a doorway. Felícita waited for him. The rain began to fall. Neither she nor the children moved, and the rain rolled down their faces like down the flat buildings. Soon he came out. "Bueno," he said, "we stay here for a few days." They climbed out of the wagon and took with them whatever they could carry. Felícita followed Julio out of habit. Obedience was the one quality she remembered from their relationship.

They climbed four flights of stairs before Julio opened the door to their room. The floor and the walls were made of gray slats, with pink holes in them where the rats had chewed. The rain blew in through an open window. A smell of decaying wood was everywhere.

They put down what they had carried up. Felícita unpiled the straw mats and placed them against a wall away from the window.

"It will be all right," Julio said. "I had this address once when I came to el Méjico many years ago." Felícita stood in the middle of the empty room, a look of sullen resentment on her face which she tried to hide. But he saw it very well. He knew that her grim willessness was a pose she was using to wound him with, as if in her severe negation of herself, in the perfection of her wifely obedience she would rob him of every pretence that he had a wife. All through the trip she had sat like that, like a wooden doll, like a wooden statue in the side of the mountain, with a wooden face and wooden eyes that saw everything but did not blink. All through the trip, he could not speak to her because she sat thus, with her eyes moving neither to the left nor to the right and the rain falling from her as down the side of a house and the sun drying her as if she were a patch of ground that lays and waits for itself to be dried. Was it his fault he had had a dream? He did not ask for it. But dreams should be listened to sometimes. He had thought, even as he was selling the farm, that he would go back and get his gun. Sí. If he did not like a man he took his gun or his machete and waited for him. That was him, Julio.

The thought revived him as if he had forgotten who he was and the next morning he told Felícita that they would return. "I have had enough. Let Ricardo look out for his life as he can."

Felícita regarded him with sluggish eyes. It was the first time she had slept in a strange room, and she had not slept well. She had been out of bed for hours, rising at dawn out of habit, but there were no chores to perform and she had stood for hours watching the blank brick building opposite her room where a feeble sun penetrated its dark window. Everything had been stripped away: chores, work, duty, gossip, arguments. There were only empty hours and an empty room. She did not even know where to cook their breakfast. And there was no food. Sí, she would like to go back, but first Julio must know that everything had been stripped away.

"What will you do in Netzahualcoyotl?" she asked with scorn. "Do you think you can buy back your farm for two thousand pesos? What kind of farm can you buy for that money? You think we can break new ground? You think I can still pull rocks on my back? The farm will not even yield us enough to feed ourselves. It will not have a house with two rooms and a wooden floor. Ha!" she hissed, "what sort of a farm will it be now that you have only yourself and Hernán to work it?" So she went on, though she was in pain to return at any price or loss. But a disease had infected her system, and it was more important to wound Julio than to protect her life.

He listened to her with mocking patience, but he felt the foolishness of what he had done. He could not understand the man who would do the thing he had done, and it was this which kept him from becoming angry as her behavior demanded. He had been tricked by a dream, a moment's lapse of thinking, whose cost was incalculable. Felícita's words were of his own practical nature and they made him feel as foolish as a man who has gone out of his home without his clothes and is surprised by his nakedness.

"Basta," he said weakly in an indefinable voice. "Basta," he shouted and raised his arm to her. "All will go well in spite of your evil tongue," and he left the house with a declared rage.

Felícita felt desolate when he had gone, but her sense of desolation gave her power, it gave her unvoiced protests, brooding contempt and arguments which she rehearsed silently all afternoon or sporadically to her sons; it gave her an inconsolable weapon against Julio.

She did not go out all day and she would not permit Juan or Hernán to go out. They sulked about the room and argued viciously with each other. In the late afternoon they were all very hungry, but Felícita had no money with her. By late evening their hunger had become painful; they had not eaten in more than a day. Juan lay with his head on her shoulder and whined, and Hernán drew pictures in the dust on the floor and rubbed them out with his feet. They were bored, listless, hungry, argumentative; but a fire raged in Felícita and she reckoned the hours that they waited as so many weapons for her use.

Julio finally returned, drunk. "Get me some water," he grumbled. She took out a clay pot and sent Hernán down the hall to the bathroom to get the water. Julio washed his face enormously, he splashed the water over his head and down his chest. Then he lay down on a mat and fell asleep.

"I am hungry," Hernán whispered.

"Sí," Felícita said. She lay Juan down on a mat and beckoned to Hernán to lay himself down too.

Hernán lay down, but he looked at her with puzzled eyes. "I am hungry," he said again.

"Sí," she said. "That is an ugly feeling," and she lay herself down on a mat. But she did not sleep. All night long the sensation of hunger kept her awake, and she did not know whether she relished it or whether she sought to accommodate herself to it with foreboding. Never before had she known hunger. Her father would not permit such a thing. Her hunger was so acute now it was a thing not to be argued with. It kicked and pinched her, it flushed her with heat and emptied her with blasts of cold air. A man who permitted his family to go hungry was evil. She listened to the sound of Julio sleeping next to her. His breathing was deep and laborious like a man who is walking quickly to catch something before it disappears. Julio dreamed. He dreamed that he was standing on a stretch of sand in the afternoon under a pearlized sky. His silhouette hung on the horizon, black in the sunlight, a figure of heat, the outline of an old power. That was him, he knew, and he ran as hard as he could to catch himself.

In the morning he gave Hernán some money. "There is a store at the end of this street. Buy some food and bring it back quickly."

"Where will we cook it?" Felícita asked.

"Here you can buy food that does not need cooking, bread, fruit, cheese. Go."

When Hernán returned with the packages and they sat down on the floor to eat Felícita thought of not eating, as if to touch food would be a betrayal of her suffering, but Julio pushed the bread to her. "Eat. You are right, Felícita. It would be foolish to go back now. I tell you what. Yesterday I spoke with three men. One man owns a restaurant. Hernán will sweep the floor for him and wash the dishes." Felícita's mouth dropped open, but she made no sound.

"I am to go to work?" Hernán asked with surprise and eagerness.

"You are a stupid boy," Felícita said.

"It will be only for a little while," Julio said, surprising himself that he sought to mollify her.

"And who are the other men you spoke to?" she mocked.

Julio did not enjoy this conversation. Usually when he parcelled out the work for the family and told each what he would do, it set the future in order; but this morning nothing was in order. He ignored the mockery in Felícita's voice; he would not tell her what their future would be, although he had thought it out very well. Last night there had been a light in his dream, a light that had bored a hole into his head like a vision of himself in power and in sunlight. He would not tell her again that he meant to buy back the farm and that Ricardo had better look out for himself. It had come to him during the day how this trip to el Méjico would throw Ricardo off the track. He would think that Julio had sold the farm. It was a matter of time and of the correct moment.

"For the second man," he said, "you and Juan will sell newspapers. They say a small child sells more newspapers and you will go with Juan to see that he does not get into trouble and that he counts his change."

Felícita pulled the wrinkled lids over her eyes and looked at her food. She made no sound except to chew it.

"And I am going to sell bread in the streets. So, we will soon have more to eat than we had on the farm."

"I never went hungry," Felícita said, "but last night I was hungry. Even on a small farm you can find what to feed yourself with. You never go hungry on a farm."

"Aaach, I have had enough of the farm. To think I have only to stand in one place and sell bread. Is this not better than pushing my hands in dirt? I tell you what, it was a good saint that sent us away from the farm. Sí. I did not tell you how a saint spoke to me how I was growing old and soon would not be able to dig and told me to find another trade before I would be too old. Sí, that was why I sent Julio to Cuernavaca. You see how it was, how I established him with a wife and a house and a trade before I sold the farm. What do you think you would do anyway if I could not farm the land? You would have to gather wood to sell, or make tortillas and sell them on the road. So now you sell newspapers and they are lighter than wood and you do not have to cook them."

Felícita looked at him through glazed eyes as if she were looking at a cold fact of existence through a dream. "Which saint was it that told you this?" "Saint Dominic," Julio said and bit into his bread. 

8

Ricardo walked along the side of the road. The sun was already hot, but a little morning wind made the heat bearable. He had been walking for over an hour. He was tortured with hunger. Grimly he thought it possible that he might faint by the side of the road. He had seen men lying thus, their skin quivering for survival, their nails scratching in the sand to hold on while they slowly lost their battle for life. His belly flamed with hunger.

He paid its pain the respect of minute attention. That much he had learned on the mountain top, that his body had an autonomous life whose will he could not break. In the end, it was the soul that whimpered with defeat. Several cars passed him on the road and set up a little wind. He began to wait for the cars so that he could take advantage of them by turning his head to the road for the breeze. He knew that he could not walk more than another hour and then he must sit down, and then he must lie down, and then he would close his eyes and scratch in the sand.

How soon the time passed. Perhaps he had held out for more than an hour, perhaps it had been for two hours, he thought with a dismal sense of honor for his struggle; but then his legs folded underneath him and he sat down by the side of the road and stared into the silver space of air.

The cars continued to pass him, and as the day wore on they came more quickly. Instinctively he lifted his chin as he heard the drone of a motor and caught the gas-filled beeeze on his lips. Hazily he thought that it was time to lie down, but his body remained rigid to the thought. Still, his eyes closed and behind them darkness swam in flashes of silver.

"Señor," someone nudged him on the shoulder. "Señor, are you sleeping?" The voice was sympathetic yet impatient.

Ricardo opened his eyes and tried to smile. He saw that a car had stopped beside him, that the sun was overhead, that it was noon, that time had passed. "I am hungry," he said peevishly.

"Sí. Get in the car and we will go to eat." He helped Ricardo up. "I am a priest," he told him. Ricardo was surprised.

"Why are you surprised?" the man asked.

"I do not know," Ricardo shrugged his shoulders. "I have known some priests, but I never thought to ride in a car with one."

"Do not be humble in spite of what the scriptures say. My name is Father Ferenza. And you?"

"Ricardo Donajero." He climbed into the car, amazed and suspicious, wondering if he were being kidnapped. They found a café, and Father Ferenza gave Ricardo some money. "Go in yourself," he said. "I will wait for you. I am not hungry and I have work to do." He took out a portfolio of papers and began to examine them.

When Ricardo returned he got back into the car hesitantly. "Where are we going?"

Father Ferenza smiled at him. "I am going to la Ciudad, but I do not know where you are going."

Ricardo's face lit up with gratitude for good fortune. "That is where I am going too. I have money waiting for me in a post office."

"Sí?"

"Sí." He wondered if the priest would regret his favor if he knew that he drove Ricardo to collect illegal money. "The money," he said, "I worked honestly for it, but I think it is a thief's money." He immediately regretted his confession.

"Sí?'

"Sí," Ricardo said, but controlled his desire to talk any further about this. "Why did you stop on the road for me?"

"You looked hungry."

Ricardo glanced at him with embarrassed surprise. "And you feed all the hungry?"

"All that I find. Hunger is the only evil. Hunger for food, hunger for love, hunger for comfort."

Ricardo smacked his thigh and broke out into an embarrassed laugh. "I have known some priests, but none that were good. They were not bad, but they were not good."

"Perhaps you have not lived long enough," Father Ferenza said, amused. He drove his car impatiently, darting in and out of lanes. He kept his left arm out the window and the sun flashed on his wristwatch. He was of medium height, a bit bullish in build, around fifty, with graying black, wiry, short cropped hair. His face was dark, a hint of the mestizo, the skin on it as taut and brown as old parchment. He wore rimless glasses behind which his brown eyes were restless, briskly assaying the world. He displayed no sentimentality, nothing of the emotion that led him to stop on the road and inquire after a stranger's condition. He was dressed conservatively in a dark suit, but his clothes seemed chosen for efficiency, like a serviceable travelling companion. Ricardo noticed that his shoes were clean and shone like mirrors as his feet went up and down with expert impatience on the accelerator and clutch.

"Why do you stare at me?" Father Ferenza asked, hoping to snare him. Ricardo blushed. "I do not know, Padre," he whispered, and turned away. Father Ferenza was touched that he had not denied it, and gauged Ricardo's simplicity. "I am flattered," he said, without irony.

Ricardo turned back and stared at him more frankly. "You do not look like a priest."

"How many priests have you seen?"

"Three or four."

"And how many times?"

"At the fiestas. Two or three times a year and two or three times in church."

"You are not a religious man?"

"Sí, I am," Ricardo answered with pique. "In my village we go to the rezandero. Only the cacique go to the priest."

"Then how do you know how a priest looks?"

"I have seen him in the church."

Father Ferenza smiled cunningly. He was not above enjoying the surprise that his manner inspired. "You mean I do not look as you think a priest should look, praying and mumbling and wearing black robes."

To Ricardo this was blasphemy. Father Ferenza was content. "Well, Señor, you see, I am not a religious man either." Ricardo became suspicious, even fearful that Father Ferenza might be a demon. He made up his mind to restrain his curiosity, lest it ensnare him, but his curiosity got the better of him: "If, as you say, you are a priest but you are not a religious man, how do you pray for your people, how can you cure their souls?"

"Oh, sí," Father Ferenza responded offhandedly, "I do not know if I cure their souls."

"But what do you tell them when they ask things?"

"Sometimes I tell them what I believe. Sometimes I tell them what they believe. Sometimes I tell them what it is good for them to hear and nobody believes."

"But how can you give a man an answer then?"

"Señor, I cannot give a man an answer." "Then of what use are you?"

Father Ferenza gripped the wheel of the car and swerved out of lane. When the car righted itself, he laughed. "I do not know, but I have a great self-pride."

"Sí, it must be. But what do you tell the dying?"

Father Ferenza looked at him over his glasses. "What is there to say to them?"

"If they ask where they are going and if they will see God?"

Father Ferenza sighed. "The dying I have seen are concerned with what they are leaving, not where they are going."

"But do you not believe they are going somewhere?"

Father Ferenza said almost belligerently, "No, Señor, I do not believe so." Ricardo whistled under his breath. "Sí, you are not a religious man." He reflected on this for a while and shook his head with fear and dismay.

"Then what is the use?"

"The use of what?" Father Ferenza said testily.

"What is the use of life," Ricardo said heavily, "if there is no better life after this one?"

"If you do not know the use of this life what is the use of another one?" Ricardo felt driven back on vague memorizations of answers. "Is it not true that in the next world all things will be made clear?"

Father Ferenza said irritably, "Señor, if they are made clear in the next world, of what use is it for this world? That is what I wish those who come to me to think about. Do not wait for the next world."

Ricardo was intrigued but alarmed. He had heard others speak this way, men who had joined revolutionary bands, but never had he heard a priest speak this way. They passed the long fields of maguey plants. Slowly the fields were replaced by houses, a filling station, brick buildings, a cinema. Soon they entered the city and were driving through its outskirts of rural villages and the perceptible beginnings of a metropolis. Father Ferenza waited for Ricardo to tell him where he should be left off, but as he said nothing, he drove into the city in the direction of his home. Ricardo sat up alertly as they passed into a residential section, the fringe of cosmopolitan life whose energy is spent in escaping the disorder of the center. He had a sensation of immense cleanliness, of so much whiteness and swept walks and freshly painted walls it was as if the sun sat in the streets. All the gardens came to a trim finish, all the trees and bushes were pinned back by low walls, disorder and excess were checked everywhere and the dust was laid to rest under a paved road. Ricardo was dazzled.

"This is my home," Father Ferenza said as they drove down a wide-lawned boulevard. The sun was cooler and the air so full of blue and gold and the mik of white clouds that Ricardo felt as if his soul were being washed in a stream. He came abreast of la Ciudad with feelings of veneration.

"I do not know where you wish to go," Father Ferenza said. The car stopped in front of a house set back behind a low stucco wall. A patch of orange hung out from one of the windows, a balcony floating in space, a gay and brilliant patch of orange against the blue sky. Father Ferenza looked at Ricardo and smiled, "Señor, you come from a poor village. I am not a rich man."

Ricardo felt stupid, but the priest patted his thigh. "Do not take all things so heavily. In two days' time you will know the difference between la calle Tomás and Lomas de Chapultepec."

"Is that where the richest men live?"

"No, Señor, there are no richest men. There are the rich and those who are richer and always someone who is richer."

"Sí," Ricardo sighed, disappointed at this fresh proof of the impossibility of knowing anything, even of knowing who is the richest man in the world. "Now where is it you wish to go?"

"To the post office in la calle de Reyes."

Father Ferenza took some money from his wallet and gave it to him. "That is a long way from here. You will have to take a bus."

Ricardo tried to give back the money. "Tomorrow I will be a rich man," he said.

"Sí? That is very good. But today you cannot pay for the bus you must take and you must wait for tomorrow to become rich. In the meantime, one must eat and sleep." He put the bill in Ricardo's hand. "Walk to the end of this street, then left, you will find the bus to take you to la Calle de Reyes. There you will be able to find a room to sleep in until tomorrow.

Now, Señor, adiós."

"I wish to thank you."

"Sí, sí, buena suerte."

But Ricardo did not go towards the bus. He was too dazzled to do anything so definite. He stayed in the neighborhood of Father Ferenza's house and walked around and around the blocks encircling the house. He watched the twilight rub out the incredible light from the sidewalks and the white walls, from the red roses and the blue lilacs that grew everywhere. The colors pierced him and he clung to them with hunger for their clarity against the growing night. Even at twilight, the air remained pure as if the sun was still shining. The trees and flowers retreated into the night, but the stars came out, incredibly still, incredibly pure, incredibly bright. Everywhere the smudge had been wiped away from the world, and the colors of objects were bright. Ricardo had never known anything else but a dusty village and he now felt that men who did not breathe dust in with their every breath were different from men who did. For them life was blue, life was green, life was orange.

He found a small park close by and lay down on a bench and looked into the blackblue of the sky. An orange flag blew across the night. It was jaunty, it was cocksure, it was childish, naive, frisky. Never had he seen such a color before. He felt it must take a different kind of people to hang such a color from one's window. But the soul, Ricardo thought as he fell asleep, the soul could never be orange. The color of the soul was black. In the morning the sky struck his eyes with light again. The leaves came back green. As he boarded the bus the breeze blew through his shirt with the crispness of early air. But by the time he arrived at his destination the sun was hot and the air was worn and musty. La calle de Reyes was dense and packed hotly with people, stores and buses. Exhaust fumes, talk and noise hung over the rooftops with the sultry smudge of a dirty summer street. Girls pulled each other by the arm and the men walked quickly, their legs clicking in haste in their gray pants. Fruit cores and dirt lay in the streets and the shop windows reflected everything with double noise and movement. Before he went into the post office Ricardo treated himself to a full breakfast. He had not spent much time thinking about what he would do with his money. He did not understand its sum, but he felt confident it would be enough to assuage his appetite.

In the stilted words he had rehearsed for himself he asked the postal clerk for an envelope for Dominico Alvarez. The administrador de correos looked in the mailbox under "A" and returned, shaking his head.

Ricardo felt a sick premonition. He asked the official to look under "Donajero." The administrador de correos pursed his lips with offense. He looked in the mailbok marked "D." Showing impatience that anyone doubted his efficiency, he shouted at Ricardo, "No, Señor, nada, nada," and waved him aside. Ricardo's mouth dried. The earth fell inside him with a small explosion of dust, people and trust.

Outside the sky was foggy. Ricardo looked up and down the street wondering where now to go. Neither direction meant anything to him. The block was long, hot and crowded with people. A cat walked along the curb. Ricardo watched it until it disappeared between the legs of the crowd. When he could not see it anymore he stared into the window of a china shop until the owner came out with a suspicious glance at his serape and sandals and told him to move on. He moved down the block to another window. A peddlar came by and touched him on his arm to catch his attention. Revolted, Ricardo drew his arm in under his serape and hurried away. He did the only thing he knew what to do in the city: he took the bus back to Father Ferenza's house.

A servant told him to wait and shuffled away without haste. His ears tingled with shame.

"Sí, I am here," he said as Father Ferenza came towards him, with pen still in hand from his writing desk. "The money was not there."

"No?" Father Ferenza said without surprise.

"Sí. It was not there," Ricardo said with disbelief. I have come back because again I am hungry and again I am without money." His spirit collapsed. He sat down on a bench and wiped his brow. "I do not know where to go. I do not know at all where to go. My soul is dead."

Father Ferenza screwed the top on to his pen. "Come, first we will eat. As always. Then we will talk of souls." He led Ricardo into the dining room.

"So," he said as if retelling a familiar story. "You have no friends, no money, no trade, no relations, and now no soul."

"I have a brother," Ricardo said.

"Sí? And what does your brother do?"

"He is a farmer."

"Why do you not work for him?"

"It is not that way between us."

"Is he a prosperous farmer?"

"Sí."

"Then it is very bad between you if you cannot work for him and he can afford to hire you.

Ricardo eyes clouded over. "Sí, it is very bad between us. I wish to murder him."

"Hmmm."

The servant brought in food and Father Ferenza spread a napkin on his lap.

"Eat. That much you can do."

Ricardo ate obediently, though he was not hungry. Suddenly he leaned across to Father Ferenza and said, "Do you believe that Cain was an evil man?" "Is that why you do not murder your brother? Because you do not wish to be an evil man?"

Ricardo smiled badly as if he were displaying a sack of stolen goods and, not wishing to appear ashamed, appeared brazen. "I am already an evil man." "Then why do you not murder your brother and complete your destiny?"

Ricardo gasped. "Do you sanction this?"

Father Ferenza clicked his tongue. "I, I do not sanction anything." But he reconsidered this approach. "What if I did?" When Ricardo did not answer, he leaned across and said, "You see? My sanction only makes your thoughts more burdensome because your soul knows best what it wants to do." Ricardo covered his face with his hand and pressed the tired ideas from his eyes like tears. "Padre, do you love the human race?"

"It is not easy to say one way or the other. Almost any answer is bound to be wrong, for the world moves about you in such a fashion, always changing its pattern that sometimes you are moved to love and sometimes you are moved to hatred."

"But it is wrong to hate."

"Perhaps so," Father Ferenza shrugged his shoulders without conviction, "but it is human. I do not argue with the human. That is my own humility. To accept what was fashioned, for thus we were fashioned. You do not argue with nature because she gave claws to the tiger. You learn to defend yourself against the claws. And it is possible to learn how to defend our souls against the claws of others."

"But how is it possible to live and work among others unless you have some love for them? Often I have wondered how it is possible to take a woman into your bed if you do not love her. But I have done that very thing and it is a mystery to me how I have done it, for afterwards I only felt a greater hatred for her and for myself."

"Perhaps that hatred is testimony of the love you wish were there." Father Ferenza whistled mischievously. "Whew! What a sacrifice man makes of himself. If he cannot love he wishes to destroy himself. Now what is the use of that. You see, you thought you were an evil man. Now you discover that sometimes hatred is proof of your good heart, as it was with the prophets. Their hatred grew on the same tree as their love."

Such a sermon was too much for Ricardo. Everything Father Ferenza said was the opposite of what he expected to hear. He grew fearful again that he was an evil spirit in disguise, for it was thus evil spirits worked, beguiling you with confusion. They attacked your mind and blurred your knowledge of good and evil.

"You do not eat," Father Ferenza said.

"Sí, I am not hungry." Suddenly Ricardo felt clever. "The devil has taken my appetite away."

Father Ferenza's nostrils pinched together as if what Ricardo said dispelled a bad odor. "Señor, you have lost your appetite, nothing more. The devil did not carry it away with wings." He decided that Ricardo was not a likable person, mixing his sublimity with streaks of boorish cleverness, and his self-annihilating humility with a maudlin appreciation of it, but he thought he should alleviate his immediate needs. More he could not do for him, for Ricardo believed in the devil and Father Ferenza knew that in the minds of the villagers and the Indians a belief in the devil was almost enough to create one. "Let us pretend that you do not have a brother. Let us forget him for a little while, until your soul heals. You do not need to remind yourself every day of your lashes. I have need here for another servant, a man to sweep the rooms, polish the furniture, run errands for me. Would you like to do this?"

Ricardo forgot his terror that Father Ferenza was a devil. "Sí, sí." He grabbed his hand and kissed it. Father Ferenza clicked his teeth with disgust. 

9

Felícita's feet were cold as she stood barefoot on the mosaic floor under the marquee. She leaned against the red enamel box of the ticket seller and adjusted the strap on her shoulder that held up her sack of newspapers. Her shapeless cotton skirt hung to the middle of her bare legs with an uneven hem. Her feet looked almost leprous in their stumpy, callous growth and her breasts rested against her ribs like sacks in her blouse.

She poked Juan to stand with more attention. It was past midnight and the doors would soon open to let out the last spectators. She let down her rebozo and shifted the baby to her hip. He made a moan of annoyance at being disturbed. This one was not healthy. He was almost two and could not walks. His legs were thin and bent and when he stood on them they bowed out in such a curve she thought the bones would crack. And still she had had all the travail for bringing him into the world.

The doors opened and people began to come out. She poked Juan again. Immediately he jerked himself into movement and to call out his wares in birdlike cheeps. "Paper, Meester, Meester, Meester, paper, ekxtras, allekxtras, very good paper, meester." He threw himself into the crowd with mechanical automation and ran frantically between the legs of the spectators. He wore white short pants and a shirt whose sleeves had been ripped off. His legs and arms were dirty, and to the spectators rubbing their eyes from the darkness of the movie house he looked like a romantic street urchin. They smiled benevolently as he attacked them like an insect buzzing his paper in their faces.

Felícita remained where she was. From a sack on her right hip she drew out papers and held them high overhead. Juan now spoke more Spanish than Nahuatl and had learned some English words from the tourists, but Felícita had learned nothing more than the few Spanish words she had always known, and she remained silent, grunting now and then to call attention to herself. Otherwise she remained silent and stared with black eyes into the faces that moved about her, while Juan scampered like a pig bleating and oinking his papers. Only when the shuffle of his bare feet stopped did she move her eyes to single him out and make sure of his whereabouts. She could count his sales with her ears, hearing the lapse of his feet and the shuffle of a paper, and she looked at him not for her comfort but to impress him with her presence and the obedience that would be exacted from him in the tally of his change. Then her eyes moved back to the interior of the crowd and stared into it without expression. She singled no one out, she found nothing of interest in the people who went by, their clothes did not arouse her jealousy. Only the figure who paused to buy a paper from her brought her to life.

But one thing she had seen which confused her and made her set her lips grimly together: that was that the work which she and Juan did was looked upon as a plight. She saw that many bought papers from them out of kindness as if they were beggars, and intuitively Juan changed his voice to capitalize on this. Occasionally an American would look at the small boy, then look at his wristwatch and shake his head disapprovingly; and when the baby cried the people would look at her with curiosity and a watery sympathy. What is there to a baby crying? Felícita thought with bewilderment. Always these people looked at her bare feet. She had come to see that she and Juan carried on themselves the signs of dismal poverty. It only hurt her pride a little, but every bone in her body chattered with bewilderment and loneliness, for without being strange to herself she was strange to others.

The crowd began to thin and she had not sold a single paper, while Juan still had half of his. He bleated more loudly with frantic haste while a sharper gleam of urgency crept into her immobile eyes and she stared harder. Now they would have to go to the restaurants and the cafés to finish their sales, and they would not return home for another two hours.

They made their way out of the lobby and walked up the Paseo de la Reforma for half a mile. Felícita walked ahead of Juan and he followed behind, stopping to look into the blackened windows of the shops. He picked up a stick and ran it along the bars that protected the windows. Clap, clap, clap in the windless night. When the stores stopped, he dropped the stick and ran to catch up with his mother.

They turned down a dark street and found an open restaurant. Felícita poked Juan to go in, but she stayed outside. The baby had begun to cry and she removed her rebozo. She sat down on the curb and started to nurse him, though she knew he was not crying from hunger, for he scarcely ate. She removed a breast and put it into his mouth, but he would not suck. Time and again he opened his mouth to cry and she pushed the nipple between his gums, but he would not suck. She clamped his face between her fingers and pushed his chin up with her thumb, but he only choked and struggled, and she could hear his struggle against eating in the back of his throat while tears slid out of his eyes.

Never had she heard this one cry from hunger. He cried from something she could not find. Her distress for him was mixed with anger. Julio said it was her milk. He said she had become like a poisonous root and her milk had gone bad. Sí, it was true. The saliva ran black in her mouth. When she had felt the baby push out from between her legs a scream had fallen over her, and her thighs wrenched themselves free from the grasp of the midwife. Her thighs screamed out how it was in their power to crush this brown worm and she had felt her knees grate against the bone of his head.

She drew out some drops of milk with her finger and tried to smear them on the baby's tongue to entice him to eat. It sat on his tongue for a few seconds, then slowly he rolled it to the back of his mouth and swallowed it.

She squeezed out some more and placed them in his mouth. When he swallowed them again she drew the nipple in between his teeth. He sucked speculatively for a few seconds. Then his mouth fell open, he dropped the nipple and fell into a drugged sleep.

Felícita sat quietly with her rage and waited for Juan to return. A man came down the street and passed her. He paused a few feet away and came back.

"Señora, are you without a home?" he asked.

"Nada, nada," she waved her hand at the stranger. She had become accustomed to people looking at her as if she were homeless and did not bother to look up. She kept her head lowered to the baby and sat in the shadow of her rebozo.

The stranger noticed her sack of newspapers. He took some money from his pocket and pressed it into her hand. "Permit me to buy your papers."

Felícita looked up with a curiosity quickened to the advantages of charity. Her brow wrinkled as she recognized Ricardo's voice. She drew her lids over her eyes and sunk her face down beneath the shadow of her rebozo. "Gracias," she said as she held out her hand for the money.

Ricardo hesitated a second. Then he bent down and took one paper from her sack. "Señora, keep the newspapers and give them to your friends."

Felícita smiled. "Gracias," she said in a muffled, simpering voice. "Gracias. May Christ protect you."

When he walked away she shifted the baby back into the rebozo. She stood up and adjusted the sack of newspapers to her shoulder and spat on the sidewalk.

Ricardo's appearance was not a suprise to her. Twice before she had seen him in the street and once Hernán had come home and said he had seen Ricardo come into the restaurant where he waited on tables, and that he had come with another man.

Julio's lips had curled with anger, tasting in his mouth the co-mingling of the fact of Ricardo's appearance and Hernán's excitement about it. Hernán ran like a river with the news. "The other man was Señor Schencker," Julio screamed, and struck Hernán on his lips, embittered by the thought that for his son Ricardo was a different experience than it was for him. "You are no son of mine."

Felícita thought Hernán was stupid to have told his father this news. She herself had told no one that she had seen Ricardo, once emerging from the cinema and once crossing her path in an automobile. What was there to tell? She was confident that some day or night Julio would see Ricardo for himself. The city was not so big that they would not find each other if Julio did n