“Look here, señor doctor, that old hussy and tramp that she is and always was, she is gone. She is gone with that ugly cabron and dirty son of a heathenish dog, that thief Pánfilo, you know him, señor, the one I mean, that would steal the horns of the devil if they were not grown on, you know that housebreaker, and if you don’t know him, so much the better for you because he steals barbed wire and cuts telegraph poles and the telegraph wire also and no hog is safe if he is around. I wish him the smallpox all over his face and the most terrible disease extra to make it worse for him. I come home. I come home from my work in the bush. In the bush I had to cut down hard trees for making charcoal; you see. I sell the wood and the charcoal if I have any to the agents – who are thieves, too. I come home tired and hungry. Home in my jacalito. I’m hungry more than a dog, that’s what I am, from hard work in the bush. No tortillas ready. No frijoles in the pot. Nothing. I tell you the truth, señor doctor, nothing. I call my woman, that old hussy. My mujer I mean. No answer. I look around. She isn’t at home, my woman isn’t. Her sack with her dress in it, and her shirt and her torn stockings, which are in that same sack also, are all gone. The sack used to hang on a peg. My mujer has ran away. She doesn’t ever return. Never, such what I say. And she is so full of lice too, my woman is. I’ve no tortillas for me to eat. Nor black beans for my empty belly. Off she went like the stinking hussy that she is. If I only knew who she ran off with, that useless old nag. I’ll get him. And I’ll learn him how to steal decent and honest women that belong to other men. He is a mil times worse than any dirty cabron.” (Mil means thousand; to his kind, though, mil means anything between one hundred and one thousand billions.) “Now, I ask you, mister doctor señor, who will make tortillas for me? That’s what I want you to tell me right now.”
So he asked, but he did not wait for my answer and he went on with his story, hardly stopping to catch a full breath.
“Nobody is going to make me tortillas now. That’s what it is, I tell you. She has ran away. I’ll catch him and he won’t live to tell who done it. I come home in my choza. I come home from the hot bush. Hungry and dying of thirst. I don’t mind the thirst. I come home and no tortillas. No frijoles. She is gone. She has taken her sack with her dress and her stockings along with her.”
At this point of his sad story he cried so bitterly that for the next three minutes it was difficult to understand what he was saying now because it was all blubbering. Slowly he calmed down once more. Yet, crying or not crying, he talked on and on like a cracked phonograph record.
“I come home. From the bush I come home and I’ve worked all day long under that blistering sun and no—”
“Now wait a minute, manito,” I interrupted him before he went into his speech again and made it impossible for me to stop him before he reached that part of his story where he would have to cry for a few minutes. “Let’s talk this over quietly. You’ve told me your heartbreaking experience fifteen times by now. I admit it is heartbreaking. But I can’t listen to it a mil times because I’ve got other things to attend to. All I can say is that your mujer is not here in my jacal. Step in and look around and make sure.”
“I know, señor mister, that she isn’t in your house. A fine educated doctor like you would never even touch such a filthy one like her, and so full of lice that sometimes you might think the wind is in her hair, so fast it moves from all the lice in it.”
The lice seemed to remind him once more of his loss and he started telling the story again. The whole thing began to bore me and I said: “Why, for hell’s sake, do you have to tell all that just to me? Go to the alcalde – the mayor, I mean – and tell him your story. He is the proper person to attend to such matters. I’m just a simple doctor here without any political influence and no disputado backing me up. I’ve no power and so I can do nothing for you. Nothing, do you hear? Nothing at all. Go to the alcalde. He’ll catch your mujer. It’s his duty, because he is the authority in this place.”
“That alcalde, you mean, señor? I can tell you right now and here that he is the biggest ass under heaven. That’s why he was elected alcalde. And he is a thief too, and also a woman-raper. Just for his meanness and his stupidity it was that he got elected because no decent and no honest person had any word in that election, see? You ought to know that, señor.”
“Anyway, amigo,” I said, “he has to look after your troubles. And as I said before, I’ve no power, no power at all, to do anything for you. Get this in your mind, friend. I’ve no power.”
“But you’re wrong, mister caballero. You’ve got all the powers in the world. We know this very well. And no mistake. You can pull bullets out of the bodies of killed bandits with fishing hooks and make them live again. I mean the boys with federal bullets in their bellies and legs. You understand what I want to say and what I know and what the federales would be so very eager to know also. Because you have all the powers to do anything under heaven. That’s why you know where my woman is at this hour. Tell her that I’m hungry and that I’ve come home from the bush after much hard work. She has to make tortillas and cook frijoles for me. I’m very hungry now.”
“Now look here, friend. Let’s be calm about it.” I spoke to him as I would have to a little boy. “See here, I’ve not seen your woman go away. Since I’ve not seen where she went I can’t tell you where she is at present. I can’t even imagine where she perhaps might be. In fact, I know nothing, nothing at all. I don’t even know her face or what she looks like. Please, amigo, do understand, I know nothing of her. And that’ll be all. Thank you for paying me such a delightful visit. Now I’m busy. Goodbye. Adiós.”
He stared at me with his brown dreamy eyes as if in wonder. His belief in the infallibility of a white, and particularly in the immaculate perfection of a Norte-americano had been shaken profoundly. At the same time, though, he seemed to recall something which had evidently been hammered into his head since he could speak his first words, and that was something which, in his opinion, was forever connected with the Americanos, as is the color green with young grass.
So he said: “I’m not rich, señor. No, I’m not. I can’t pay you much. I’ve only two pesos and forty-six centavitos. That’s all I have in the world. But this whole fortune of mine I’ll give you for your work and for your medicine so that I can find my woman and get her back to my side, that hussy, because I am very hungry.”
“I don’t want your money. Even if you would give me mil gold pesos I could not get your woman back. I don’t know where she is and therefore I can’t tell her that you must have your tortillas and your frijoles. Can’t you understand, man, that I don’t know where your woman is?”
Suspicion was in his eyes when he looked at me after I had finished. He was quite evidently not certain whether it was the little money he could offer me which kept me from helping him or that in fact I might really not know the whereabouts of his spouse.
Gazing for a few minutes at me in this manner he finally shook his head as if full of doubts about something of which he had thought himself very sure before. Honoring me once more with that suspicious glance, he left my place, but not until I had told him several times more that I had to cook my dinner and could no longer stand idly around and listen to his troubles, for which I had no remedies.