Juan Rulfo - Pedro Páramo

But why is it that women always have doubts? What is it, anyway? Do they receive their information from on high? His wife had not been at all sure he would be rewarded.

“You’ll have to work like a dog to keep your head above water. You won’t get anything from him.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I just know.”

He was still walking toward the front door, listening for a sudden summons:

“Oh, Gerardo! I’ve been so preoccupied that I wasn’t thinking straight. You know I owe you favors that can’t be repaid with money. Here, take this: a small thank-you.”

But the summons never came. He left through the front entrance and untied his horse from the hitching post. He mounted and slowly started back toward Comala, trying not to ride out of earshot, in case anyone called. When he realized that the Media Luna had faded from sight, he thought, “What a terrible comedown it would be to ask for a loan.”

Don Pedro. I’ve come back because I’m not happy with myself. I’d be pleased to continue to look after your affairs.”

He was again sitting in Pedro Paramo’s office, which he’d left less than a half hour before.

“Fine with me, Gerardo. Here are the papers, right where you left them.”

“I’d also appreciate… My expenses… Moving… A small advance on my fees… And a little something extra, if that seems all right.”

“Five hundred?”

“Couldn’t we make it a little, well, just a little more?”

“Will a thousand do?”

“How about five?”

“Five what? Five thousand pesos? I don’t have that much. You of all people know that everything I have is tied up. Land, cattle. You know that. Take a thousand. That’s all you’ll need.”

Trujillo sat thinking. With his head on his chest. He heard pesos clinking on the desk where Pedro Paramo was counting the money. He was remembering don Lucas, who had always put off paying his fees. And don Pedro, who’d started with a clean slate. And his son Miguel. What a lot of trouble that boy had caused!

He had got him out of jail at least fifteen times, if not more. And there was the time he’d murdered that man. What was his name? Renteria, yes, that was it. They’d put a pistol in the corpse’s hand.

Miguelito’d been scared to death, though he’d laughed about it later. How much would just that one time have cost don Pedro if things had moved ahead to legal proceedings? And what about all the rapes, eh? Think of all the times he’d taken money from his own pocket to keep the girls quiet. “You should be thankful,” he’d told them, “that you’ll be having a fair-skinned baby.”

“Here you are, Gerardo. Take good care of this, because money doesn’t grow on trees.”

And Trujillo, who was still deep in his meditations, replied, “Just like dead men don’t spring up from their graves.”

It was a long time till dawn. The sky was filled with fat stars, swollen from the long night.

The moon had risen briefly and then slipped out of sight. It was one of those sad moons that no one looks at or pays attention to. It had hung there a while, misshapen, not shedding any light, and then gone to hide behind the hills.

From far away, shrouded in darkness, came the bellowing of bulls.

“Those creatures never sleep,” said Damiana Qusneros. “They never sleep. They’re like the Devil, who’s away, out looking for souls to spirit away.”

She turned over in bed, putting her face close to the wall. That was when she heard the knocking.

She held her breath and opened her eyes. Again she heard three sharp taps, as if someone were rapping on the wall. Not right beside her, but farther away — although on the same wall.

“Heaven help us! It must have been San Pascual, tapping three times as warning to one of his faithful that his hour has come.”

Since she hadn’t made a novena for so long because of her rheumatism, she didn’t worry; but she was afraid, and even more than afraid, curious.

She quietly got up from her cot and peered out the window.

The fields were black. Even so, she knew the landscape so well that she could see the large mass of Pedro Paramo’s body swinging into the window of young Margarita.

“Oh, that don Pedro!” said Damiana. “He never gets over chasing the girls. What I don’t understand is why he insists on doing things on the sly. If he’d just let me know, I would have told Margarita that the patron had need of her tonight, and he wouldn’t have had the bother of leaving his bed.”

She closed the window when she heard the bulls still bellowing. She lay down on her cot and pulled the cover up over her ears, and then lay there thinking about what must be happening to young Margarita.

A little later she had to get up and strip off her nightgown, because the night seemed to have turned hot….

“Damiana!” she heard.

And she was a girl again.

“Open the door, Damiana!”

Her heart had leapt like a toad hopping beneath her ribs.

“But why, patron!”

“Open up, Damiana!”

“But I’m fast asleep, patron.”

Then she had heard don Pedro stalking off down the long corridor, his heels clicking loudly, as they did when he was angry.

The next night, to avoid angering him again, she left the door ajar, and even went to bed naked to make things easy for him. But Pedro Paramo had never returned.

And so tonight, now that she was the head of all the Media Luna servants, and was old and had earned her respect, she still thought of that night when the patron had called, “Open the door, Damiana!”

And she fell asleep thinking how happy young Margarita must be at this hour.

Later, she again heard knocking, but this time at the main door, as if someone were trying to beat it down with the butt of a gun.

A second time she opened the window and looked out into the night. She saw nothing, although it seemed to her the earth was steaming, as it does after a rain when the earth is roiling with worms. She could sense something rising, something like the heat of many men. She heard frogs croaking, and crickets: a quiet night in the rainy season. Then once again she heard the pounding at the door.

A lamp spilled its light on the faces of a band of men. Then it went out.

“These things have nothing to do with me,” said Damiana Cisneros, and closed her window.

I heard you got your tail whipped, Damasio. Why did you let that happen?”

“You got the wrong story, patron. Nothing happened to me. I didn’t lose a man. I have seven hundred of my own, and a few tagalongs. What happened was that a few of the old-timers got bored with not seeing any action and started firing at a patrol of shave-heads who turned out to be a whole army. Those Villistas, you know.”

“Where had they come from?”

“From the North, leveling everything they found in their path. It seems, as far as we can make out, that they’re riding all through here getting the lay of the land. They’re powerful.

You can’t take that from them.”

“Well, why don’t you join up with them? I’ve told you before we have to be on the side of whoever’s winning.”

“I’ve already done it.”

“Then why are you here?”

“We need money, patron. We’re tired of eating nothing but meat. We don’t have a taste for it anymore. And no one wants to give us credit. That’s why we’ve come, hoping you can buy us provisions and we won’t have to steal from anyone. If we were way off somewhere, we wouldn’t mind ‘borrowing’ a little from the locals, but everyone around here is a relative, and we’d feel bad robbing them. It’s money we need, to buy food, even if only a few tortillas and chilis. We’re sick of meat.”