15
Chapter Fifteen
Sunday was visiting day among the Indians, and while some of them went faithfully to Mass in the church in town, everyone spent the better part of the day going from house to house to talk and drink chicha, the sweet fermented drink made from corn or rice and occasionally rendered very festive by the addition of a pineapple bought in the market. There were always a few who succeeded in getting drunk and had to be pushed and hauled home, but chicha was not powerful enough to do much damage if drunk in ordinary quantities. Rosa made hers on Fridays and set it in clay pots by the door. She often gave me a glassful on Sundays when I would go to visit and it became almost a habit for the children to beg me for a story as I sat on the little “porch” drinking my glass of chicha and listening to the other visitors talk. I had some Bible story books with large colored illustrations and I practiced my Quichua by explaining these pictures to the children and recounting the incidents that went with them. As soon as I arrived Jorge, instead of disappearing as he used to do, would inexplicably appear from nowhere.
“Señorita shamun!” he would whisper, “The señorita comes!” and any children present who did not know me would dive for cover while Pava, Romero and Jorge, with any others who had satisfied themselves that I was harmless, crowded around.
“Huillai, huillai, señorita!” they begged, using the single Quichua word for “Tell us a story, tell us a story!”
“Atiu!” I would hear from the background—this was the expression of astonishment. ‘You mean she speaks our language?”
“She speaks it!” This was an overstatement, but children are easy to please, and I would begin, showing first a picture, then explaining it and asking questions to find out whether they understood. At times adult conversation ceased and I found everyone listening intently.
“Shut up! She’s talking about God.”
“About God?”
“Yes. That’s the way she talks. Will it be for nothing, or will it be true? Who knows?”
Pava learned all the stories by heart and prompted me when I left out a detail. “No, señorita, not a goatskin—you said his mother put two kidskins on him to deceive his brother!” or, “You forgot to say that David cut off the giant’s head—with the giant’s own sword. Tell about that, señorita.” And she would sit with her chin in her hand, her bright eyes darting from me to the other listeners to see if they were taking it in. Every now and then she would swat Jorge on the side of the head, whispering loudly, “What sort of a child are you, anyway? Shut up! Don’t you hear the señorita talking?”
Romero would follow the movements of the story sometimes with pantomimes of his own—picking up five smooth stones and turning them over in his grubby brown hand, wondering, no doubt, if he could kill a man with those. When I tried to translate the Shepherd’s Psalm for them, and described how the shepherd anointed the head with oil, I caught Romero rolling his eyes upward and shooting out his lower lip. Oil was a precious commodity, and involuntarily he tried to save it.
Pava persuaded her father several times to come and listen, although he probably felt that he had to listen enough on weekdays to my halting Quichua. Gradually, however, he took more interest in the stories.
“This is what your old fathers used to tell?” he asked.
“Well, yes, Pedro, my grandfather and my father told me these stories, but they learned them from a book, God’s book. You know about that. Someday you and I are going to translate it into your language so your people will hear what God says.”
“Is it for nothing that God speaks? Or is it true?”
“It is true, Pedro. It is not for nothing.”
“It is a nice word. Your old fathers knew some good stories.”
Rosa never actually came and sat down. When Pava asked her to listen she only fanned the fire more vigorously and said, “As if I have time to listen to stories!” When I asked her if she would like to hear, she gave me a faint smile and said, “I have to give my visitors chicha.” I suspected once in a while that she listened with one ear, forgetting herself when the story got absorbing and pausing in her work. She was busy at once when she found me looking.
Months passed, and I continued my weekday work and my Sunday visiting. I had told the story of Calvary several times, but there were some very important words missing—“to save” and “to forsake” were words I had not come across until one day when Rosa told me that while she was at the brook washing her clothes a friend’s small child had fallen into the deepest place. By grabbing the child’s foot Rosa had “saved” her. I had no sooner written it down than I heard Jorge crying outside and he burst into the house to tell his mother that Romero was going to take him to the lake to sail his reed boat. Between sobs he managed to say, “But Gustavo and Vicente came and Romero ran away with them and forsook me!” Rosa paid very little attention to the recital, and sent Jorge off to bring in some dried grass for the fire. I was overjoyed to learn the word, and the following Sunday I told again the story of the crucifixion of Jesus, quoting the mockers who said, “He saved others; Himself He cannot save,” and trying to make clear to the Indians that the death of Jesus was that they might be saved. Pedro’s cigarette grew a long ash as I told of Jesus’ cry from the cross, “My God! My God! Why hast Thou forsaken me?” The ash fell on his poncho but still he did not move. I did not go on to the end of the story, and the Resurrection. I waited for Pedro to speak. Surely he had something to say this time, for his eyes did not leave my face.
“Señorita. . .”
“What is it, Pedro?”
“My brother is in jail. I was going to visit him today. Will you come with me?”
Pedro had mentioned his brother only once before, and I had not met him. Of course I would go.
The jail was on a tiny narrow street in Indi Urcu which had nothing to distinguish it from other side streets—there were doorways and a few windows on one side, a single double wooden gate set into high mud walls on the other. As we approached this gate a ragged little girl came slithering out from under it. An older girl was waiting nearby.
“Did you see her? What did she say about the money?” she asked the younger one. I could not hear the reply as the two went off down the street. There was a tiny square window in each half of the door, and a hand came through one of them.
“A little charity, señorita. Please, for the love of God a little charity.”
Pedro banged on the gate and the face of a guard appeared at the other window.
“What is it?”
“I want to see Juan Chimbu.”
“Who are you?”
“I am Pedro Chimbu, brother of Juan.”
“Who is with you?”
“The señorita. The foreigner.”
The gate opened and the owner of the hand, an old woman, pressed my arm, “A little charity, señorita,” while the guard waved us inside. Several women hung around the gate, taking turns at the little window. They too were prisoners, Pedro told me, but they were allowed to beg and to see their children if the children were small enough to squeeze under the gate.
A game of volleyball was in progress in the open courtyard. The players seemed to be mostly of the cholo class. Three or four guards stood sleepily by. The one who had let us in led us through the yard into a passageway lined with cells, in each of which were two or three men or women. Most of them got up from their cots to watch us as we went down the passage. At the end of the first passage we came to a cement platform on which were some charred sticks and ashes.
“That is where the prisoners cook their food,” Pedro said.
“They cook their own food?”
“If they have any to cook. When there is food, they cook it there.”
“Does the prison not give them food?” I was incredulous.
“Sometimes they give them food. Sometimes the white prisoners get food. Juan doesn’t get much. I brought him this.” Pedro had a cloth bundle in his hand. The guard turned a corner and gestured toward a cell.
“There he is. What are you bringing him?”
“Some food, captain. Only a little food.”
The guard took the bundle, opened it and dug into the cooked corn and beans with his hand, then handed it back to Pedro.
“Half an hour,” he said, and left us.
Juan was sitting on a wooden bed with some sort of mattress on it, whittling on what looked like a flute. He looked up without speaking, and Pedro thrust the bundle through the bars.
“Good,” said Juan. Pedro turned to me, feeling that something ought to be said, but all he could think of was “This is my brother, Juan.” I greeted Juan and told him who I was, that I lived in the town, and I was a friend of Pedro and Rosa. He nodded and whittled. Another man sat behind him, on the other side of the bed, gluing together tiny pieces of wood to make a little toy dresser. He got up and brought one of the finished drawers over to the bars.
“Look, señorita. Would you like to buy this? I am making it to sell.”
“He is here for debts,’’ Juan volunteered, and Pedro joined in eagerly, as though he were the man’s agent.
“Buy it, señorita Margarita! It is very nice.”
The work was indeed skillful and my mind was again filled with the old turmoils. The bleak prison, the dark cell, the hopelessness of getting out of debt, the numbers who were in similar straits, and here was this charming little piece of furniture, a bauble, a toy to cheer the heart—for a few moments—of some fortunate child. I said nothing. I had learned that an answer was not always required in this country and it spared me from having to think of a truthful and appropriate one. The three men glanced at each other. No one knew just how to pass the allotted half hour. Juan did not ask after Pedro’s family or crops, and Pedro offered no information about Juan’s. Finally Juan asked, “Have any of my children died?”
“No,” said Pedro. ‘They live. Your wife lives.”
Another silence. Then suddenly Pedro turned to me. “Tell a story, señorita.” I was taken aback. Tell Juan a story?
“What story, Pedro?”
“The one you told at my house. About killing Jesus.”
Juan whittled on his flute without speaking. The other man sat with the toy dresser on his knees, waiting to see what we would do. When I looked back later at that moment I wondered what made me hesitate. Had I failed utterly to grasp the implications of the opportunity? This was the very thing I had prayed and worked and schemed to achieve. But when the request came I saw it very simply—four people who were virtual strangers to one another (indeed, Pedro and Juan seemed hardly to be friends) who needed a way to pass the time. Quichuas loved stories—think of all the stories Pedro had told me. I obliged them by telling as much of the account of the crucifixion as I could with my limited vocabulary and time.
When I finished, Juan looked up from his whittling and said to Pedro, “Do you listen to that?”
“I listen to it,” answered Pedro.
“She talks for nothing.” Juan kicked away the shavings with his foot. “What is it worth, that talk?”
“Can it be for nothing? It is what God wrote, she says.” Pedro spoke gently, not wishing to create an issue with his brother, nor to offend me. Juan’s eyes narrowed and he ran the blade of his knife against the palm of his hand.
“That’s what the priest says, too. He’s always talking about that—about the Virgin and God and Jesus and Our Father and Christ and Our Lady and all those people. Who are they? Who knows them? Why talk so much about them?”
Juan’s face was deeply lined, his hair matted, with a few strands of gray showing. He must be a good deal older than Pedro, I thought I wonder why he is in jail? I had hesitated to ask Pedro, and he had given no hint as to the reason. His crime must be worse than the crimes of those who were playing volleyball in the courtyard.
The guard, a white man with a baggy khaki uniform and a gleaming badge on his cap, appeared and said, “Now.” He gave Pedro a small shove and waved me toward the entrance. As we reached the courtyard a great cheer suddenly rose from the players—I thought it was the winning team congratulating themselves, but saw that the gate was opening and a man was leading two sheep into the prison. The game had stopped and the men looked hungrily at the animals. Today they would have meat. Would any of those in the cells share in it?
The guard looked us up and down before drawing back the bolt on the doors. He slammed them hard behind us and I heard the bolt grate in the slot. As we went silently down the sunny street together Juan’s face stayed before me—much like Pedro’s in its features, but older, more suspicious, more willful and determined. Not that Pedro was anything but strong. He had a ruggedness about him that inspired my honest respect, but there was an openness that Juan did not seem to have, a tenderness with his children that I could not picture Juan displaying. But then, I told myself, I don’t know Juan. Certainly I had seen precisely the same expression of suspicion and guardedness in Pedro’s face on our first meetings in the market. He was not to be taken in any more than Juan. Perhaps Juan, too, would lay a hand softly on his little daughter’s hair as I had seen Pedro do. Both men were members of a once proud race, a people of great intelligence and artistic sensibility. They had worshiped the sun, through which they had received warmth, abundance and life. They were defeated by a people who came to them in the name, they said, of the one true God—and in that name they plundered, betrayed and murdered. I thought of the prince, Atahualpa, shut up in a cell until his ransom—a roomful of gold—should be paid. And over the Andes came hundreds of llama—loads of precious ornaments and vessels of pure gold until the room was filled up to the mark on the wall. The Incas obeyed in good faith, confident that the price would release to them their leader. And then he was hanged, a kindness on the part of his captors, who had intended to bum him at the stake. With a Bible in one hand and a crucifix in the other, they had asked him if he would choose the true God, and he had consented and his punishment was mitigated.
There must be, of course, a just reason for Juan’s being in prison. But if the white man had never come, what might he have been? I could not resist glancing sideways at Pedro, who walked a little behind me and to my right. What went on in his mind as he left his brother behind those walls?
What effect had Juan’s attitude to my story had on him? Would he tell me what Juan had done against the law?
We did not go through the main plaza on our return. The less Pedro was seen in my company the easier it would be for him, I knew. There was a side street that would take me to my house and when we came to this I said goodbye unceremoniously so that Pedro could slip away without more ado. But it was then, for the first time since we left the jail, that he stopped in the street and spoke.
“Señorita Margarita,” he said, “that word that you spoke—it is God’s word, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is God’s word.”
“Juan doesn’t believe that. But I, I believe it, señorita. It appears to me that the word is true. We ought to put it in my language.”
“That is what I want to do, you know. That is why you have been helping me to learn your language.”
“Good. I like that word. Juan, too, might like it if he saw it written on paper and knew that God said it.”
He stood for a moment, pushing a stone with his toes, as though he had many things on his mind. Then he said, ‘Well, goodbye. You will be coming to my house soon?”
“Yes, on Tuesday, Pedro, as always. Goodbye.”
As I turned up the street toward home I wondered if this was what it meant to be a believer. Pedro had said, “I believe it, señorita.” If so, the angels in heaven must be singing. I should be singing, too, in the late Sunday quiet of the village street, but I did not want to make a spectacle of myself, even on the occasion of a soul’s salvation, and I silently thanked God that He had not forgotten His promises.