Juan Rulfo - Pedro Páramo

“Dolores came and told me everything, in a quandary about what to do. She said there was no two ways about it, she couldn’t go to bed with Pedro Paramo that night. Her wedding night. And there I was, trying to convince her she shouldn’t put any stock in that Osorio, who was nothing but a swindler and a liar.

“‘I can’t,’ she told me. ‘You go for me. He’ll never catch on.’

“Of course I was a lot younger than she was. And not quite as dark-skinned. But you can’t tell that in the dark.

“‘It’ll never work, Dolores. You have to go.’

“‘Do me this one favor, and I’ll pay you back a hundred times over.’

“In those days your mother had the shyest eyes. If there was something pretty about your mother, it was those eyes. They could really win you over.

“‘You go in my place,’ she kept saying.

“So I went.

“I took courage from the darkness, and from something else your mother didn’t know, and that was that she wasn’t the only one who liked Pedro Paramo.

“I crawled in bed with him. I was happy to; I wanted to. I cuddled right up against him, but all the celebrating had worn him out and he spent the whole night snoring. All he did was wedge his legs between mine.

“Before dawn, I got up and went to Dolores. I said to her: ‘You go now. It’s a new day.’

“‘What did he do to you?’ she asked me.

“‘I’m still not sure,’ I told her.

“You were born the next year, but I wasn’t your mother, though you came within a hair of being mine.

“Maybe your mother was ashamed to tell you about it.”

Green pastures. Watching the horizon rise and fall as the wind swirled through the wheat, an afternoon rippling with curling lines of rain. The color of the earth, the smell of alfalfa and bread. A town that smelled like spilled honey…

“She always hated Pedro Paramo. ‘Doloritas! Did you tell them to get my breakfast?’

Your mother was up every morning before dawn. She would start the fire from the coals, and with the smell of the tinder the cats would wake up. Back and forth through the house, followed by her guard of cats. ‘Dona Doloritas!’

“I wonder how many times your mother heard that call? ‘Dona Doloritas, this is cold. It won’t do.’ How many times? And even though she was used to the worst of times, those shy eyes of hers grew hard.”

Not to know any taste but the savor of orange blossoms in the warmth of summer.

“Then she began her sighing.

“‘Why are you sighing so, Doloritas?’

“I had gone with them that afternoon. We were in the middle of a field, watching the bevies of young thrushes. One solitary buzzard rocked lazily in the sky.

“‘Why are you sighing, Doloritas?’

“‘I wish I were a buzzard so I could fly to where my sister lives.’

“That’s the last straw, dona Doloritas!’ You’ll see your sister, all right. Right now. We’re going back to the house and you’re going to pack your suitcases. That was the last straw!’

“And your mother went. Til see you soon, don Pedro.’

“‘Good-bye, Doloritas!’

“And she never came back to the Media Luna. Some months later, I asked Pedro Paramo about her.

“‘She loved her sister more than she did me. I guess she’s happy there. Besides, I was getting fed up with her. I have no intention of asking about her, if that’s what’s worrying you.’

“‘But how will they get along?’

“‘Let God look after them.’”

… Make him pay, Son, for all those year she put us out of his mind.

“And that’s how it was until she advised me that you were coming to see me. We never heard from her again.”

“A lot has happened since then,” I told Eduviges. “We lived in Colima. We were taken in by my Aunt Gertrudis, who threw it in our faces every day that we were a burden. She used to ask my mother, ‘Why don’t you go back to your husband?’

“‘Oh? Has he sent for me? I’m not going back unless he asks me to. I came because I wanted to see you. Because I loved you. That’s why I came.’

“‘I know that. But it’s time now for you to leave.’

“‘If it was up to me…’”

I thought that Eduviges was listening to me. I noticed, though, that her head was tilted as if she were listening to some faraway sound. Then she said:

“When will you rest?”

The day you went away I knew I would never see you again. You were stained red by the late afternoon sun, by the dusk filling the sky with blood. You were smiling. You had often said of the town you were leaving behind, “I like it because of you; but I hate everything else about it — even having been born here.” I thought, she will never come back; I will never see her again.

“What are you doing here at this hour? Aren’t you working?”

“No, Grandmother. Rogelio asked me to mind his little boy. I’m just walking him around.

I can’t do both things — the kid and the telegraph. Meanwhile he’s down at the poolroom drinking beer. On top of everything else, he doesn’t pay me anything.”

“You’re not there to be paid. You’re there to learn. Once you know something, then you can afford to make demands. For now, you’re just an apprentice. Maybe one day you will be the boss. But for that you need patience and, above all, humility. If they want you to take the boy for a walk, do it, for heaven’s sake. You must learn to be patient.”

“Let others be patient, Grandmother. I’m not one for patience.”

“You and your wild ideas! I’m afraid you have a hard row ahead of you, Pedro Paramo.”

What was that I just heard, dona Eduviges?”

She shook her head as if waking from a dream.

“That’s Miguel Paramo’s horse, galloping down the road to the Media Luna?”

“Then someone’s living there?”

“No, no one’s living there.”

“But…?”

“It’s only his horse, coming and going. They were never apart. It roams the countryside, looking for him, and it’s always about this time it comes back. It may be that the poor creature can’t live with its remorse. Even animals realize when they’ve done something bad, don’t they?”

“I don’t understand. I didn’t hear anything that sounded like a horse.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Then it must be my sixth sense. A gift God gave me — or maybe a curse. All I know is that I’ve suffered because of it.”

She said nothing for a while, but then added:

“It all began with Miguel Paramo. I was the only one knew everything that happened the night he died. I’d already gone to bed when I heard his horse galloping back toward the Media Luna. I was surprised, because Miguel never came home at that hour. It was always early morning before he got back. He went every night to be with his sweetheart over in a town called Contla, a good distance from here. He left early and got back late. But that night he never returned…. You hear it now? Of course you can hear it. It’s his horse coming home.”

“I don’t hear anything.”

“Then it’s just me. Well, like I was saying, the fact that he didn’t come back wasn’t the whole story. His horse had no more than gone by when I heard someone rapping at my window. Now you be the judge of whether it was my imagination. What I know is that something made me get up and go see who it was. And it was him. Miguel Paramo. I wasn’t surprised to see him, because there was once a time when he spent every night at my house, sleeping with me — until he met that girl who drank his blood.

“‘What’s happened,’ I asked Miguel Paramo. ‘Did she give you the gate?’

“‘No. She still loves me,’ he said. The problem is that I couldn’t locate her. I couldn’t find my way to the town. There was a lot of mist or smoke or something. I do know that Contla isn’t there anymore. I rode right past where it ought to be, according to my calculations, and there was nothing there. I’ve come to tell you about it, because I know you will understand. If I told anyone else in Comala they’d say I’m crazy — the way they always have.’