The Delicate Prey: And Other Stories

Señor Ong and Señor Ha

At the end of the town’s long street a raw green mountain cut across the sky at a forty-five degree angle, its straight slope moving violently from the cloudy heights down into the valley where the river ran. In the valley, although the land was fertile, there were no farms or orchards, because the people of the town were lazy and did not want to bother clearing away the rocks that strewed the ground. And then, it was always too hot for that sort of work, and everybody had malaria there, so that long ago the town had fallen into its little pattern of living off the Indians who came down from the mountains with food and went back with cheap cloth, machetes and things like mirrors or empty bottles. Life always had been easy; although no one in the town was rich, still, no one ever went hungry. Almost every house had some papayas and a mango tree beside it, and there were plenty of avocadoes and pineapples to be had in the market for next to nothing.

Some of this had changed when the government had begun the building of the great dam up above. No one seemed to know exactly where the dam was; they were building it somewhere up in the mountains; already the water had covered several villages, and now after six years the construction was still going on. This last was the important part, because it meant that when the Indians came down from above they now brought with them not only food but money. Thus it had come about that certain people in the town had suddenly found themselves rich. They could scarcely believe it themselves, but there was the money, and still the Indians went on coming down and leaving more and more of it on the counters of their shops. They did not know what to do with all these unexpected pesos. Most of them bought huge radios which they kept going from early morning until night, all tuned in full strength to Tapachula, so that when they walked the length of the main street they were never out of earshot of the program and could follow it without a break. But still they had money. Pepe Jimenez had bought a bright new automobile in the capital, but by the time he had arrived back in town with it, after driving it over the sixty miles of trail from Mapastenango, it was no longer an object to excite admiration, and he felt that he had made an unwise purchase. Even the main street was too bumpy and muddy for him to drive it up and down, and so it stood rusting in front of Mi Esperanza, the bar by the bridge. When they came out of school Nicho and his companions would play in it, pretending it was a fort. But then a group of larger boys from the upper end of the town had come one day and appropriated the car for their own games, so that the boys who lived by the river no longer dared to approach it.

Nicho lived with his aunt in a small house whose garden ended in a wilderness of plants and vines; just below them rushed the river, dashing sideways from boulder to boulder in its shallow mist-filled canyon. The house was clean and simple, and they lived quietly. Nicho’s aunt was a woman of too easygoing a nature. Being conscious of this, she felt that one way of giving her dead sister’s child the proper care was to attempt to instil discipline in him; the discipline consisted in calling him by his true name, which was Dionisio.

Nor did she have any conception of discipline as far as her own living was concerned, so that the boy was not astonished when the day came that she said to him: “Dionisio, you will have to stop going to school. We have no more money. Don Anastasio will hire you at ten pesos a month to work in his store, and you can get the noonday meal there too. Lástima, but there is no money!”

For a week Nicho sat in the shop learning the prices of the articles that Don Anastasio sold, and then one evening when he went home he found a strange-looking man in the house, sitting in the other rocking chair opposite his aunt. The man looked a little like some of the Indians that came down from the furthest and highest mountains, but his skin was lighter, he was plumper and softer-seeming, and his eyes were almost shut. He smiled at the boy, but not in a way that Nicho thought very friendly, and shook hands without getting up from his chair. That night his aunt looked really quite happy, and as they were getting ready for bed she said to him: “Señor Ong is coming to live with us. You will not have to work any more. God has been good to us.”

But it occurred to Nicho that if Señor Ong was to live with them, he would prefer to go on working at Don Anastasio’s, in order not to be around the house and so have to see Señor Ong so much. Tactfully he said: “I like Don Anastasio.” His aunt looked at him sharply. “Señor Ong does not want you to work. He is a proud man, and rich enough to feed us both. It is nothing for him. He showed me his money.”

Nicho was not at all pleased, and he went to sleep slowly, his mind full of misgivings. He was afraid that one day he would fight with Señor Ong. And besides, what would his friends say? Señor Ong was such a strange-looking man. But the very next morning he arrived from the Hotel Paraiso with three boys whom Nicho knew, and each boy carried a large bag on his head. From the garden he watched them accept the generous tips Señor Ong gave them and then run off to school without waiting to see whether Nicho wanted to speak to them or not. “Very bad,” he said to himself as he kicked a stone around and around the bare earth floor of the garden. A little while later he went down to the river and sat on top of the highest boulder watching the milky water that churned beneath him. One of his five cockatoos was screaming from the tangle of leaves on the banks. “Collate!” he yelled at it; his own ill-humor annoyed him as much as Señor Ong’s arrival.

And everything turned out much as he had feared—only worse. Two days later, one of the boys from the upper end of the street said to him in passing: “Hola, Chale!” He replied to the greeting automatically and walked on, but a second later he said to himself: “Chale? But that means Chinaman! Chink!” Of course. Señor Ong must be a Chinaman. He turned to look at the boy, and thought of hitting him in the back with a stone. Then he hung his head and walked on slowly. Nothing would do any good.

Little by little the joke spread, and soon even his own friends called him Chale when they met him, and although it was really he who had become less friendly, he imagined that they all were avoiding him, that no one wanted to see him any more, and he spent most of his time playing by the river. The water’s sound was deafening, but at the same time it made him feel a little bit better.

Neither Señor Ong nor his aunt paid much attention to him, save for their constant mealtime demands that he eat. “Now that we have more food than we need, you don’t want to eat it,” said his aunt angrily. “Eat, Dionisio,” smiled Señor Ong. “Bien,” said Nicho, full of resentment, but in a tone of mock-resignation, and pulled off a small piece of tortilla which he chewed very slowly.

There seemed to be no question of his returning to school; at least, the subject was never mentioned, for which he was most grateful, since he had no desire to be back in the midst of his friends just to hear them call him Chale. The name by itself would have been bearable if only it had not implied the ridicule of his home life; his powerlessness to change that condition seemed much more shameful than any state of affairs for which he himself might have been at fault. And so he spent his days down by the river, jumping like a goat across the rocks, throwing stones to frighten the vultures away from the carcasses the water left for them, finding deep pools to swim in, and following the river downstream to lie idly naked on the rocks in the hot sun. No matter how pleasant to him Señor Ong might be—and already he had given him candy on several occasions, as well as a metal pencil with red lead in it—he could not bring himself to accept his being a part of the household. And then there were the singular visits of strange, rich townspeople, persons whom his aunt never had known, but who now appeared to find it quite natural to come to the house, stay for five or ten minutes talking to Señor Ong, and then go away again without so much as asking after his aunt, who always made a point of being in the back of the house or in the garden when they came. He could not understand that at all. It was still her house. Or perhaps not! Maybe she had given it to Señor Ong. Women often were crazy. He did not dare ask her. Once he was able to bring himself to inquire about the people, who kept coming in increasing numbers. She had answered: “They are friends of Señor Ong,” and had looked at him with an expression which seemed to say: “Is that enough for you, busybody?” He was more than ever convinced that there was something more to know about the visitors. Then he met Luz, and being no longer alone, he ceased for a time to think about them.

When, one windy day, he had first seen her standing on the bridge, her bright head shining against the black mountains behind, he had stopped walking and stood perfectly still in order to look more carefully: he thought there was a mistake in his seeing. Never would he have believed it possible for anyone to look that way. Her hair was a silky white helmet on the top of her head, her whole face was white, almost as if she had covered it with paint, her brows and lashes, and even her eyes, were light to the point of not existing. Only her pale pink lips seemed real. She clutched the railing of the bridge tightly, an expression of intense preoccupation—or perhaps faint pain—on her face as she peered out from beneath her inadequate white brows. And her head moved slowly up and down as if it were trying to find an angle of vision which would be bearable for those feeble eyes that suffered behind their white lashes.

A few weeks back he merely would have stood looking at this apparition; now he watched intently until the girl, who was about his own age, seemed on the point of pitching forward into the road, and then he hurried toward her and firmly took her arm. An instant she drew back, squinting into his face.

“Who?” she said, confused.

“Me. What’s the matter?”

She relaxed, let herself be led along. “Nothing,” she answered after a moment. Nicho walked with her down the path to the river. When they got to the shade, the heavy lines in her forehead disappeared. “The sun hurts your eyes?” he asked her, and she said that it did. Under a giant breadfruit tree there were clean gray rocks; they sat down and he began a series of questions. She answered placidly; her name was Luz; she had come with her sister only two days ago from San Lucas; she would stay on with her grandfather here because her parents were having quarrels at home. All her replies were given while she gazed out across the landscape, yet Nicho was sure she could not see the feathery trees across the river or the mountains beyond. He asked her: “Why don’t you look at me when you talk to me?”

She put her hand in front of her face. “My eyes are ugly.”

“It’s not true!” he declared with indignation. Then, “They’re beautiful,” he added, after looking at them carefully for a moment.

She saw that he was not making fun of her, and straightway decided that she liked him more than any boy she had ever known.

That night he told his aunt about Luz, and as he described the colors in her face and hair he saw her look pleased. “Una hija del soil” she exclaimed. “They bring good luck. You must invite her here tomorrow. I shall prepare her a good refresco de tamarindo.” Nicho said he would, but he had no intention of subjecting his friend to his aunt’s interested scrutiny. And while he was not at all astonished to hear that albinos had special powers, he thought it selfish of his aunt to want to profit immediately by those which Luz might possess.

The next day when he went to the bridge and found Luz standing there, he was careful to lead her through a hidden lane down to the water, so that she might remain unseen as they passed near the house. The bed of the river lay largely in the shadows cast by the great trees that grew along its sides. Slowly the two children wandered downstream, jumping from rock to rock. Now and then they startled a vulture, which rose at their approach like a huge cinder, swaying clumsily in the air while they walked by, to realight in the same spot a moment later. There was a particular place that he wanted to show her, where the river widened and had sandy shores, but it lay a good way downstream, so that it took them a long time to get there. When they arrived, the sun’s light was golden and the insects had begun to call. On the hill, invisible behind the thick wall of trees, the soldiers were having machine-gun practice: the blunt little berries of sound came in clusters at irregular intervals. Nicho rolled his trouser legs up high above his knees and waded well out into the shallow stream. “Wait!” he called to her. Bending, he scooped up a handful of sand from the river bed. His attitude as he brought it back for her to see was so triumphant that she caught her breath, craned her neck to see it before he had arrived. “What is it?” she asked.

“Look! Silver!” he said, dropping the wet sand reverently into her outstretched palm. The tiny grains of mica glistened in the late sunlight.

“Qué precioso!” she cried in delight. They sat on some roots by the water. When the sand was drier, she poured it carefully into the pocket of her dress.

“What are you going to do with it?” he asked her.

“Give it to my grandfather.”

“No, no!” he exclaimed. “You don’t give away silver. You hide it. Don’t you have a place where you hide things?”

Luz was silent; she never had thought of hiding anything. “No,” she said presently, and she looked at him with admiration.

He took her hand. “I’ll give you a special place in my garden where you can hide everything you want. But you must never tell anyone.”

“Of course not.” She was annoyed that he should think her so stupid. For a while she had been content just to sit there with Nicho beside her; now she was impatient to get back and deposit the treasure. He tried to persuade her to stay a little longer, saying that there would be time enough if they returned later, but she had stood up and would not sit down again. They climbed upstream across the boulders, coming suddenly upon a pool where two young women stood thigh-deep washing clothes, naked save for the skirts wrapped round their waists, long full skirts that floated gently in the current. The women laughed and called out a greeting. Luz was scandalized.

“They should be ashamed!” she cried. “In San Lucas if a woman did that, everyone would throw stones at her until she was buried under them!”

“Why?” said Nicho, thinking that San Lucas must be a very wicked town.

“Because they would,” she answered, still savoring the shock and shame she had felt at the sight of the golden breasts in the sunlight.

When they got back to town they turned into the path that led to Nicho’s house, and while they were still in the jungle end of the garden, Nicho stopped and indicated a dead tree whose trunk had partially decayed. With the gesture of a conspirator he pulled aside the fringed curtain of vines that hung down across most of it, revealing several dark holes. Reaching into one of them, he pulled out a bright tin can, flicked off the belligerent ants that raced wildly around it, and held it forth to her.

“Put it in here,” he whispered.

It took a while to transfer all the sand from her pocket to the can; when it was done he replaced it inside the dark trunk and let the vines fall straight again to cover the place. Then he conducted Luz quickly up through the garden, around the house, into the street. His aunt, having caught sight of them, called: “Dionisio!” But he pretended not to have heard her and pushed Luz ahead of him nervously. He was suddenly in terror lest Luz see Señor Ong; that was something which must be avoided at any cost.

“Dionisio!” She was still calling; she had come out and was standing in front of the door, looking down the street after them, but he did not turn around. They reached the bridge. It was out of sight of the house.

“Adiós,” he said.

“Hasta mañana,” she answered, peering up at him with her strange air of making a great effort. He watched her walk up the street, moving her head from side to side as if there were a thousand things to see, when in reality there were only a few pigs and some chickens roaming about.

At the evening meal his aunt eyed him reproachfully. He averted her gaze; she did not mention his promise to bring Luz to the house for refrescos. That night he lay on his mat watching the phosphorescent beetles. His room gave on the patio; it had only three walls. The fourth side was wide open. Branches of the lemon tree reached in and rubbed against the wall above his head; up there, too, was a huge unfolding banana leaf which was pushing its way further into the room each day. Now the patio was dizzy with the beetles’ sharp lights. Crawling on the plants or flying frantically between them, they flashed their signals on and off with maddening insistence. In the neighboring room his aunt and Señor Ong occupied the bed of the house, enjoying the privacy of quarters that were closed in on all four sides. He listened: the wind was rising. Nightly it appeared and played on the leaves of the trees, dying away again before dawn. Tomorrow he would take Luz down to the river to get more silver. He hoped Señor Ong had not been spying when he had uncovered the holes in the tree trunk. The mere thought of such a possibility set him to worrying, and he twisted on his mat from one side to the other.

Presently he decided to go and see if the silver was still there. Once he had assured himself either that it was safe or that it had been stolen, he would feel better about it. He sat up, slipped into his trousers, and stepped out into the patio. The night was full of life and motion; leaves and branches touched, making tiny sighs. Singing insects droned in the trees overhead; everywhere the bright beetles flashed. As he stood there feeling the small wind wander over him he became aware of other sounds in the direction of the sala. The light was on there, and for a moment he thought that perhaps Señor Ong had a late visitor, since that was the room where he received his callers. But he heard no voices. Avoiding the lemon tree’s sharp twigs, he made his way soundlessly to the closed doors and peered between them.

There was a square niche in the sala wall across which, when he had first arrived, Señor Ong had tacked a large calendar. This bore a colored picture of a smiling Chinese girl. She wore a blue bathing suit and white fur-topped boots, and she sat by a pool of shiny pink tiles. Over her head in a luminous sky a gigantic four-motored plane bore down upon her, and further above, in a still brighter area of the heavens, was the benevolent face of Generalissimo Chiang. Beneath the picture were the words: ABARROTES FINOS. Sun Man Ngai, Huixtla, Chis. The calendar was the one object Señor Ong had brought with him that Nicho could wholeheartedly admire; he knew every detail of the picture by heart. Its presence had transformed the sala from a dull room with two old rocking chairs and a table to a place where anything might happen if one waited long enough. And now as he peeked through the crack, he saw with a shock that Señor Ong had removed the calendar from its place on the wall, and laid it on the table. He had a hammer and a chisel and he was pounding and scratching the bottom of the niche. Occasionally he would scoop out the resulting plaster and dust with his fat little hands, and dump it in a neat pile on the table. Nicho waited for a long time without daring to move. Even when the wind blew a little harder and chilled his naked back he did not stir, for fear of seeing Señor Ong turn around and look with his narrow eyes toward the door, the hammer in one hand, the chisel in the other. Besides, it was important to know what he was doing. But Señor Ong seemed to be in no hurry. Almost an hour went by, and still tirelessly he kept up his methodical work, pausing regularly to take out the debris and pile it on the table. At last Nicho began to feel like sneezing; in a frenzy he turned and ran through the patio to his room, scratching his chest against the branches on the way. The emotion engendered by his flight had taken away his desire to sneeze, but he lay down anyway for fear it might return if he went back to the door. In the midst of wondering about Señor Ong he fell asleep.

The next morning when he went into the sala the pretty Chinese girl covered the niche as usual. He stood still listening: his aunt and Señor Ong were talking in the next room. Quickly he pulled out the thumbtack in the lower left-hand corner of the calendar and reached in. He could feel nothing there. Disappointed, he fastened it back and went out into the garden. In the tree his treasure was undisturbed, but now that he suspected Señor Ong of having a treasure too, the little can of sand seemed scarcely worth his interest.

He went to the bridge and waited for Luz. When she came they walked to the river below the garden and sat beside the water. Nicho’s mind was full of the image of Señor Ong bending over the niche with his tools, and his fancy was occupied with speculation as to what exactly he had been doing. He was uncertain whether or not to share his secret with Luz. He hoped she would not talk about her silver this morning; to forestall inquiries about it he mentioned curtly that he had looked at it only a half hour ago and that it was intact. Luz sat regarding him perplexedly; he seemed scarcely the same person as yesterday. Finally she said, as he continued to fix his gaze on the black pebbles at his feet: “What’s the matter with you today?”

“Nothing.” He grasped her arm to belie his word; the gesture betrayed him into beginning the confidence. “Listen. In my house there’s a lot of gold hidden.” He told her everything: Señor Ong’s arrival, his own dislike of him, the visits of the town’s rich shopkeepers to the house, and finally the suspicious behavior of Señor Ong in the sala the night before. She listened, blinking rapidly all the while. And when he had finished she agreed with him that it was probably gold hidden there in the niche, only she was inclined to think that it belonged to his aunt, and that Señor Ong had stolen it from her. This idea had not occurred to Nicho, and he did not really believe it. Nevertheless, it pleased him. “I’ll get it and give it back to her,” he declared. “Of course,” said Luz solemnly, as if there were no alternative. They sat a while without speaking. Up in the garden all the cockatoos were screaming at once. The prospect of stealing back the gold in order to return it to his aunt excited him. But there were dangers. He began to describe the hideousness of Señor Ong’s person and character, extemporaneously adding details. Luz shivered and looked apprehensively toward the shadowy path. “Hay que tener mucho cuidado,” she murmured. Then suddenly she wanted to go home.

Now there was only one thing to wait for: Señor Ong’s absence from the house. In Tlaltepec there lived a Chinese man whom he usually visited each week, going on the early bus in the morning and returning in time for the midday meal. Three days went by. People came to the house and went away again, but Señor Ong sat quietly in the sala without once going into the street. Each day Nicho and Luz met on the bridge and sat by the river discussing the treasure with an excitement that steadily grew. “Ay, qué maravilla!” she would exclaim, holding her hands far apart. “This much gold!” Nicho would nod in agreement; all the same he had a feeling that when he saw the treasure he would be disappointed.

Finally the morning came when Señor Ong kissed Nicho’s aunt on the cheek and went out of the house carrying a newspaper under his arm. “Where is he going?” Nicho asked innocently.

“Tlaltepec.” His aunt was scrubbing the floor of the sala.

He went into the patio and watched a humming-bird buzz from one to another of the huele-de-noche’s white flowers. When his aunt had finished in the sala she shut the door and started on the floor of the bedroom. In agitation he tiptoed into the room and over to the calendar, whose two lower corners he unfastened from the wall. Again the niche was empty. Its floor consisted of four large flower-decorated tiles. Without touching them he could tell which was the loose one. He lifted it up and felt underneath. It was a paper packet, not very large, and, which was worse, soft to the touch. He pulled out a fat manila envelope, replaced the tile and the calendar, and walked softly out through the patio, into the garden to his tree.

In the large envelope were a lot of little envelopes, and in some of the little envelopes there was a small quantity of odorless white powder. The other little envelopes were empty, held together by a rubber band. That was all there was. Nicho had expected a disappointment, but scarcely so complete a one as this. He was furious: Señor Ong had played a joke on him, had replaced the gold with this worthless dust, just out of devil-try. But when he thought about it, he decided that Señor Ong could not have guessed that he knew about the niche, so that after all this powder must be the real treasure. Also he felt it un-likely that it belonged to his aunt, in which case Señor Ong would be even more angry to find it gone. He took out two of the small empty envelopes, and from each of the others he poured a tiny bit of powder, until these two also contained about the same amount. Then he replaced both empty and full envelopes in the larger folder, and seeing that his aunt was in the kitchen, went back to the sala with it. Señor Ong would never notice the two missing envelopes or the powder that Nicho had poured into them. Once back in the garden he hid the two tiny packets under the tin can full of sand, and wandered down to the bridge. .

It was too early to expect Luz. A thin gray curtain of rain came drifting up the valley. In another few minutes it would have arrived. The green mountainside at the end of the street glared in the half light. Don Anastasio came walking jauntily down the main street, and turned in at the side street where Nicho’s house was. Obeying a blind impulse, he called to him: “Muy buenos, Don Anastasio!” The old man wheeled about; he seemed none too pleased to see Nicho. “Good day,” he replied, and then he hurried on. Nicho ran from the bridge and stood at the entrance of the street watching him. Sure enough, he was about to go into Nicho’s house.

“Don Anastasio!” he shouted, beginning to run toward him.

Don Anastasio stopped walking and stood still, his face screwed up in annoyance. Nicho arrived out of breath. “You wanted to see Señor Ong? He’s gone out.”

Don Anastasio did not look happy now, either. “Where?” he said heavily.

“I think to Mapastenango, perhaps,” said Nicho, trying to sound vague, and wondering if that could be counted as a lie.

“Qué malo!” grunted Don Anastasio. “He won’t be back today, then.”

“I don’t know.”

There was a silence.

“Can I do anything for you?” faltered Nicho.

“No, no,” said Don Anastasio hastily; then he stared down at him. During the week when Nicho had been working at his store, he had had occasion to notice that the boy was unusually quick. “That is,” he added slowly, “I don’t suppose—did Señor Ong. . . ?”

“Just a minute,” said Nicho, feeling that he was about to discover the secret and at the same time become master of the situation. “Wait here,” he added firmly. At the moment Don Anastasio showed no inclination to do anything else. He stood watching Nicho disappear around the corner of the house.

In a minute the boy returned panting, and smiled at Don Anastasio.

“Shall we go to the bridge?” he said.

Again Don Anastasio acquiesced, looking furtively up and down the long street as they came out into it. They stood on the bridge leaning over the water below, and Nicho brought one of the little envelopes out of his pocket, glancing up at Don Anastasio’s face at the same time. Yes! He had been right! He saw the features fixed in an expression of relief, pleasure and greedy anticipation. But only for an instant. By the time he was handing over the packet to Don Anastasio, the old man’s face looked the same as always.

“Muy bien, muy bien,” he grumbled. The first small drops of rain alighted softly on their heads, but neither noticed them. “Do I pay you or Señor Ong?” said Don Anastasio, pocketing the envelope.

Nicho’s heart beat harder for a few seconds: Señor Ong must not know of this. But he could not ask Don Anastasio not to tell him. He cleared his throat and said: “Me.” But his voice sounded feeble.

“Aha!” said Don Anastasio, smiling a little; and he ruffled Nicho’s hair in paternal fashion. Finding it wet, he looked up vacantly at the sky. “It’s raining,” he commented, a note of surprise in his voice.

“Sí, señor,” assented Nicho weakly.

“How much?” said Don Anastasio, looking at him very hard. In the valley the thunder groaned faintly.

Nicho felt he must answer immediately, but he had no idea what to say. “Is a peso all right?”

Don Anastasio stared at him even harder; he felt that the old man’s eyes would cut through him in another instant. Then Don Anastasio’s countenance changed suddenly, and he said: “A peso. Good.” And he handed him a silver coin. “Next week you come to my store with another envelope. I’ll give you an extra twenty centavos for making the trip. And—sssst!” He put his fingers to his lips, rolling his eyes upward. “Ssst!” He patted Nicho on the shoulder, looking very pleased, and went up the street.

Señor Ong came back earlier than usual, wet through, and in rather a bad humor. Nicho never had paid any attention to the conversations that passed between his aunt and Señor Ong. Now from the kitchen he listened, and heard him say: “I have no confidence in Ha. They tell me he was in town here two days ago. Of course he swears he was in Tlaltepec all the time.”

“Three thousand pesos thrown into the street!” declared his aunt savagely. “I told you so then. I told you he would go on selling here as well as in Tlaltepec. Yo te lo dije, hombre!”

“I am not sure yet,” said Señor Ong, and Nicho could imagine his soft smile as he said the words. Now that he had stolen from him he disliked him more than ever; in a sense he almost wished Señor Ong might discover the theft and accuse him, thereby creating the opportunity for him to say: “Yes, I stole from you, and I hate you.” But he knew that he himself would do nothing to hasten such a moment. He went out through the rain to his tree. The earth’s dark breath rose all around him, hung in the wet air. He took out the can of sand and dropped the peso into it.

It rained all day and through the night; Nicho did not see Luz until the following day. Then he adopted a mysterious, baffled air and conducted her to the tree.

“Look!” he cried, showing her the tin can. “The silver has made a peso!”

Luz was convinced and delighted, but she did not seem really surprised. “Qué bueno!” she murmured.

“Do you want to take it?” He held up the coin. But he was careful to keep his hand over the envelope in the tree’s hollow.

“No, no! Leave it! Maybe it will make more. Put it back! Put it back!”

He was a little crestfallen to find that she took his miracle so nearly for granted. They stamped their feet to knock off the ants that were beginning to climb up their legs.

“And the gold?” she whispered. “Did you get it back for your aunt? Was it heavy? What did Señor Ong say?”

“There was nothing there at all,” said Nicho, feeling uncomfortable without knowing why.

“Oh.” She was disappointed.

They took a long walk down the river, and came upon an enormous iguana sunning himself on a rock above a pool. Nicho threw a stone, and the monster lumbered away into the leaves. Luz clutched his arm tightly as it disappeared from sight; there was the heavy sound of its body dragging through the underbrush. All at once Nicho shook himself free, pulled off his shirt and trousers, and gave a running leap into the pool. He splashed about, beating wildly at the water with his arms and legs, yelling loudly all the while. With an uncertain gait Luz approached the edge, where she sat down and watched him. Presently she said: “Find some more silver.” She did not seem at all shocked by his nudity. He sank to the bottom and scrabbled about, touching only rock. Up again, he shouted: “There isn’t any!” Her white head followed his movements as he cavorted around the pool. When he came out, he sat on the opposite side, letting the sun dry him. Behind the hill the machine-gun practice was again in progress.

“In San Lucas do you think they’d throw stones at me?” he shouted.

“Why?” she called. “No, no! Claro quenó! For boys it’s all right.”

The next few days were sunny, and they came each afternoon to the pool.

One morning, the other little envelope in his pocket, Nicho went into the center of town to Don Anastasio’s shop. The old man seemed very glad to see him. He opened the envelope behind the counter and lookd carefully at its contents. Then he handed Nicho a peso and a half.

“I have no change,” said Nicho.

“The tostón is for you,” said Don Anastasio gruffly. “There’s a cinema tonight. Come back next week. Don’t forget.”

Nicho ran down the street, wondering when he would have the chance to fill another envelope for Don Anastasio. It was about time for Señor Ong to make a trip to Tlaltepec.

A moment before he got to the bridge a tall woman stepped out of a shop and confronted him. She had very large eyes and a rather frightening face.

“Hola, chico!”

“Si, señora.” He stood still and stared at her.

“Have you got something for me?”

“Something for you?” he repeated blankly.

“A little envelope?” She held out two pesos. Nicho looked at them and said: “No, señora.”

Her face became more frightening. “Yes. Yes. You have,” she insisted, moving toward him. He glanced up and down the street: there was no one. The shop seemed to be empty. It was the hot hour of the day. He was suddenly terrified by her face. “Tomorrow,” he cried, ducking to one side in order to dart past her. But she caught hold of his neck. “Today,” she said roughly; her long fingernails were pushing into his skin. “Si, señora.” He did not dare look up at her. “On the bridge,” she grated. “This afternoon.”

“Sí, señora.”

She let go and he walked on, sobbing a little with anger and shame for having been afraid.

In the sala Señor Ong and his aunt were talking excitedly. He did not go in, but climbed into a hammock in the patio and listened. Don Anastasio’s name was mentioned. Nicho’s heart skipped ahead: something had happened!

“Now I am almost sure,” Señor Ong said slowly. “It is two weeks since he has been here, and Saenz tells me he is perfectly happy. That means only one thing: Ha must be supplying him directly.”

“Of course,” said his aunt bitterly. “You needn’t have waited two weeks to know that. Three thousand pesos dropped into the river. What a waste! Qué idiota, tú!”

Señor Ong paid no attention to her. “There’s also the Fernandez woman,” he mused. “She should have been around a few days ago. I know she has no money, but so far she has always managed to scrape together something.”

“That old hagl” said his aunt contemptuously. “With her face now, she’ll be lucky if she can raise twenty, not to speak of fifty.”

“She can raise it,” said Señor Ong with confidence in his voice. “The question is, has Ha already found her and is he giving it to her for less?”

“Don’t ask me all these questions!” cried his aunt with impatience. “Go to Tlaltepec and ask the old man himself!”

“When I go there,” said Señor Ong in a quiet, deadly voice, “it will not be to ask him anything.”

At that moment a knock came at the front door; his aunt immediately left the room, shutting the door behind her, and went through the patio into the kitchen. For a few minutes Nicho could hear only the confused sound of low voices talking in the sala. Presently someone closed the front door. The visitor was gone.

Before the midday meal Nicho went out into the garden and tossed the two silver coins Don Anastasio had given him into the can of sand. It gave him pleasure to think of showing them to Luz; her credulity made him feel clever and superior. He determined never to tell her about the powder. All through lunch he thought about the tall woman he was to meet on the bridge. When the meal was over, Señor Ong did something unusual: he took up his hat and said: “I am going to see Saenz and have a talk with him.” And he went out. Nicho watched him disappear into the main street; then he went into the house and saw his aunt shut herself into the bedroom for her siesta. Without hesitating he walked straight to the niche in the sala and took out the big yellow envelope. He knew he was doing a dangerous thing, but he was determined to do it anyway. Quickly he slipped two fat little envelopes into his pocket. He left one in his tree, and with the other he went out and stood on the bridge to wait for the woman. She was not long in spotting him from the shop. As she came toward him, her haggard face seemed to darken the afternoon. He held the little white envelope out to her even as she approached, as if to keep her at a certain distance from him. Frowning mightily, she reached for it, snatched it from his fingers like a furious bird, and violently pushed it inside her bodice. With the other hand she put two pesos into his still outstretched palm; and then she strode away without saying a word. He decided to remain on the bridge, hoping that Luz would appear presently.

When she came, he suddenly did not want to take her to the tree, or even to the river. Instead, grasping her hand, he said: “I have an idea.” This was not true: as yet he had no idea, but he felt the need of doing something new, important.

“What idea?”

“Let’s take a trip!”

“A trip! Where to?”

They started up the street hand in hand.

“We can take a bus,” he said.

“But where?”

“No importa adonde.”

Luz was not convinced the idea was sound; her mind was encumbered with visions of her older sister’s stern face when she returned. Nevertheless he could see that she would go. As they came to where the houses and shops began, he let go of her hand for fear of meeting one of his friends. He had never walked on the street with her. The sun’s light was intense, but a gigantic white cloud was rising slowly up from behind the mountains in front of them. He turned to look at her pale shining head. Her eyes were painful, squinting slits in her face. Surely no one else in the world had such beautiful hair. Glancing at the cloud he whispered to her: “The sun will go in soon.”

At the central plaza there was a bus half full of people. From time to time the driver, who stood leaning against its red tin body, shouted: “Tlaltepec! Tlaltepec!” No sooner had they got aboard and taken seats near the back alongside the windows than Luz, in an access of apprehensiveness, asked to get out. But he held her arm and said, hurriedly inventing: “Oye, I wanted to go to Tlaltepec because we have something very important to do there. We have to save somebody’s life.” She listened attentively to his story: the monstrous Señor Ong was going to kill old Señor Ha for not having kept his promise to stay in Tlaltepec. As he recounted the tale, and recalled the wording of Señor Ong’s threat, he began to believe the story himself. “When I go there it will not be to ask him anything.” The old man would be given no opportunity to explain, no chance to defend himself. As the bus moved out of the plaza, he was as convinced as Luz that they were off to Tlaltepec on an heroic mission.

Tlaltepec was below, in a closed valley with mountains on all sides. The great white cloud, its brilliant edges billowing outward, climbed higher into the sky; as into a cave, the bus entered the precinct of its shadow. Here suddenly everything was green. Scraps of bird-song came in through the open windows, sharp above the rattling of the ancient vehicle.

“Ay, el pobrecitol” sighed Luz from time to time.

They came into Tlaltepec, stopped in the plaza. The passengers got out and quickly dispersed in different directions. The village was very quiet. Bright green grass grew in the middle of the streets. A few silent Indians sat around the plaza against the walls. Nicho and Luz walked up the main street, awed by the hush which enveloped the village. The cloud had covered the sky; now it was slowly pulled down like a curtain over the other side of the valley. A sad little churchbell began to ring behind them in the plaza. They turned into a small shop marked Farmacia Moderna. The man sitting inside knew Señor Ha: he was the only Chinese in the village. “He lives opposite the convent, in the last house.” In Tlaltepec everything was nearby. The bell was still tolling from the plaza. In front of the ruined convent was an open square of sward; basketball posts had been put up at each end, but now they were broken. Before the last house stood a large tree laden with thousands of lavender flowers. In the still air they fell without cease, like silent tears, onto the damp earth beneath.

Nicho knocked on the door. A servant girl came and looked at the two children indifferently, went away. In a moment Señor Ha appeared. He was not quite so old as they had expected; his angular face was expressionless, but he looked closely at both of them. Nicho had hoped he would ask them into the house: he wanted to see if Señor Ha had a calendar like the one at home in the sala, but no such hospitality was forthcoming. Luz sat down on the stone step below them and picked up some of the blossoms that had fallen from the tree while Nicho told Señor Ha who he was and why he had come. Señor Ha stood quite still. Even when Nicho said: “And he is going to kill you,” his hard little eyes remained in exactly the same position. Nothing in his face moved; he looked at Nicho as though he had not heard a word. For a moment Nicho thought that perhaps he understood nothing but Chinese, but then Señor Ha said, very clearly: “What lies!” And he shut the door.

They walked back to the plaza without saying anything, and sat down on an iron bench to wait for the bus. A warm, mistlike rain moved downward through the air, falling so softly that it was inaudible even in the stillness of the deserted plaza. At one point while they waited Nicho got up and went to the main street in search of some candy. As he came out of the shop, a little man carrying a briefcase walked quickly past and crossed the street. It was Señor Ha.

While they sat eating the candy a battered sedan came out of the main street and bumped across the plaza; on the edge of its back seat, leaning forward talking to the driver, was Señor Ha. They stared. The car turned into the road that led up the mountainside toward the town, and disappeared in the twilight.

“He’s going to tell Señor Ong!” cried Nicho suddenly. He let his mouth stay open and fixed the ground.

Luz squeezed his arm. “You don’t care,” she declared. “They’re only Chinamen. You’re not afraid of them.”

He looked blankly at her. Then with scorn he answered: “No!”

They talked very little on the ride up in the rain. It was night by the time they arrived in the town. Wet and hungry, they went down the street toward the bridge, still without speaking. As they crossed the river Nicho turned to her and said: “Come and have dinner at my house.”

“My sister . . .”

But he pulled her roughly along with him. Even as he opened the front door and saw his aunt and Señor Ong sitting inside, he knew that Señor Ha had not been there.

“Why are you so late?” said his aunt. “You’re wet.” Then she saw Luz. “Shut the door, niña,” she said, looking pleased.

While they ate in the covered part of the patio, Señor Ong continued with what he apparently had been saying earlier in the evening . . . “She looked directly at me without saying a word.”

“Who?” said his aunt, smiling at Luz.

“The Fernandez woman. This afternoon.” Señor Ong’s voice was edged with impatience. “For me that is proof enough. She’s getting it somewhere else.”

His aunt snorted. “Still you’re looking for proof! Niña, take more meat.” She piled extra food on Luz’s plate.

“Yes, there’s no doubt now,” Señor Ong continued.

“What beautiful hair! Ay, Dios!” She smoothed the top of the girl’s head. Nicho was ashamed: he knew that he had invited her to dinner because he had been afraid to come home alone, and he knew that his aunt was touching her hair only in order to bring herself good luck. He sighed miserably and glanced at Luz; she seemed perfectly content as she ate.

Suddenly there were several loud knocks on the front door. Señor Ong rose and went into the sala. There was a silence. A man’s voice said: “Usted se llama Narciso Ong?” All at once there followed a great deal of noise; feet scuffled and furniture scraped on the tile floor. Nicho’s aunt jumped up and ran into the kitchen where she began to pray very loudly. In the sala there was grunting and wheezing, and then as the racket grew less intense, a man said: “Bueno. I have it. A hundred grams, at least, right in his pocket. That’s all we needed, my friend. Vamonos.”

Nicho slid down from his chair and stood in the doorway. Two men in wet brown ponchos were pushing Señor Ong out the front door. But he did not seem to want to go. He twisted his head and saw Nicho, opened his mouth to speak to him. One of the men hit him in the side of the face with his fist. “Not in front of the boy,” said Señor Ong, wriggling his jaw back and forth to see if it was all right. “Not in front of the boy,” he said again thickly. The other man slammed the door shut. The sala was empty. There was no sound but his aunt’s wailing voice in the kitchen, crying aloud to God. He turned to look at Luz, who was sitting perfectly still.

“Do you want to go home?” he said to her.

“Yes.” She got up. His aunt came out of the kitchen wringing her hands. Going over to Luz she laid her hand briefly on the white hair, still muttering a prayer.

“Adiós, niña. Come back tomorrow,” she said.

There was still a light rain falling. A few insects sang from the wet leaves as the two silent children passed along the way to the house where Luz lived. When they rapped on the door it was opened immediately. A tall thin girl stood there. Without speaking she seized Luz with one arm and pulled her violently inside, closing the door with the other.

When Nicho got home and went into the sala, his first thought was that Señor Ong had returned, but the next instant he felt that he was in the middle of a bad dream. Señor Ha was sitting there talking with his aunt. She looked up tearfully. “Go to bed,” she commanded.

Señor Ha reached out from his chair as Nicho passed and caught his arm—caught it very tightly. “Ay!” said Nicho in spite of himself. “One moment,” said Señor Ha, still looking at Nicho’s aunt, and never for a second relaxing his grip. “Perhaps this one knows.” And without turning his face toward Nicho he said: “The police have taken Señor Ong to prison. He will not come back here. He hid something in this house. Where is it?”

It seemed as though the hard fingers would cut through his skin. His aunt looked up at him hopefully. He felt suddenly very important.

“There,” he said, pointing to the calendar.

Señor Ha rose and yanked the pretty girl down from the wall. In an instant he had the yellow envelope in his hand. As he examined its contents, he said: “Is there any more?”

“No,” said Nicho, thinking of the envelope lying in the safety of his tree out there in the rainy night. Señor Ha began to twist his arm, but the thought of his secret made him feel strong; his pain and his hatred flowed into that feeling of strength. He stood stiffly and let Señor Ha hurt him. A moment later Señor Ha let go of him and gave him a violent push that sent him halfway across the room. “Go to bed,” he said.

When Nicho had gone out and closed the door, Señor Ha turned to the aunt. “Tomorrow I shall come back with my clothes,” he said. “It is not good to have a boy around the house doing nothing; he gets into trouble. From now on he will deliver it; there will be no one coming to the house.”

“But if the police catch him . . .” she objected.

“There will be no trouble with them. It is all arranged. Fortunately I had nearly three thousand pesos on hand.” He picked up his briefcase and went to the door. She looked after him with frank admiration and sighed deeply. “You won’t stay tonight?” She said the words timidly, and they sounded strangely coquettish.

“No. The car is outside waiting for me. Tomorrow.” He opened the door. Rising, she went and took his hand, pressing it warmly between her two hands. “Tomorrow,” he repeated.

When the car had driven away and she could no longer hear it, she closed the door, turned off the light, and went out into the patio, where she got into a hammock and lay swinging gently back and forth.

“An intelligent man,” she said to herself. “What good luck!” She stopped swinging a moment. “Good luck! Of course! Dionisio must bring her to the house again one day very soon.”

The town went on being prosperous, the Indians kept coming down from the heights with money, the thick jungle along the way to Mapastenango was hacked away, the trail widened and improved. Nicho bought a packet of little envelopes. Far down the river he found another hollow tree. Here he kept his slowly increasing store of treasure; during the very first month he picked up enough money on the side to buy Luz a lipstick and a pair of dark glasses with red and green jewels all around the rims.