The Delicate Prey: And Other Stories

“No. It is not hot,” said Jacinto. He was feeling increasingly sure of himself, and he drew out the last cigarette and began to smoke it. “What are you doing here in this town?” he asked her after a moment.

“Passing on my way south to the border,” she said, and she told him how she was traveling with two friends, a husband and wife, and how she often took a walk when they had gone to bed.

Jacinto listened as he drew in the smoke and breathed it out. Suddenly he jumped up. Touching her arm, he said: “Come to the market.”

She arose, asking: “Why?” and walked with him across the park. When they were in the street, he took her wrist fiercely and pressing it, said between his teeth: “Look at the sky.”

She looked up wonderingly, a little fearfully. He went on in a low, intense voice: “As God is my witness, I am going into the hotel and kill the man who came here with you.”

Her eyes grew large. She tried to wrest her arm away, but he would not let it go, and he thrust his face into hers. “I have a pistol in my pocket and I am going to kill that man.”

“But why?” she whispered weakly, looking up and down the empty street.

“I want his wife.”

The woman said: “It is not possible. She would scream.”

“I know the proprietor,” said Jacinto, rolling his eyes and grinning. The woman seemed to believe him. Now he felt that a great thing was about to happen.

“And you,” he said, twisting her arm brutally, “you do not scream.”

“No.”

Again he pointed to the sky.

“God is my witness. You can save the life of your friend. Come with me.”

She was trembling violently, but as they stumbled through the street and he let go of her an instant, she began to run. Wit h one bound he had overtaken her, and he made her stop and look at the sky again as he went through his threats once more. She saw his wide, red-veined eyes in a bright flash of lightning, and his utterly empty face. Mechanically she allowed him to push her along through the streets. He did not let go of her again.

“You are saving your friend’s life,” he said. “God will reward you.”

She was sobbing as she went along. No one passed them as they moved unsteadily on toward the station. When they were nearly there they made a great detour past the edge of town, and finally came to the cemetery.

“This is a holy place,” he murmured, swiftly crossing himself. “Here you are going to save your friend’s life.”

He took off his shirt, laid it on the stony ground, and pushed her down. There was nothing but the insistent, silent flashing in the sky. She kept her eyes shut, but she shuddered at each flash, even with her lids closed. The wind blew harder, and the smell of the dust was in her nostrils.

He took her back as far as the park and there he let go of her. Then he said: “Good night, señorita,” and walked away very quickly. He was happy because she had not asked for any money.

The next year when he came down to the town he waited at the station four afternoons to see the train come in. The last afternoon he went to the cemetery and sat near the small square building that had the stone woman on top of it. On the ground the dust blew past. The enormous clouds hung in the sky and the vultures were there high above him. As he smoked he recalled the yellow-haired woman. After a time he began to weep, and rolled over onto the earth, clutching the pebbles as he sobbed. An old woman of the town, who came every day to her son’s grave, passed near to him. Seeing him, she shook her head and murmured to herself: “He has lost his mother.”

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.