“Listen here, señor,” he said, “if I’d seen the way my mujer went when she left I would have no need to trouble you, for in that case I could do well and perhaps better still alone, than with the help of a medicine-man. All people in the village here have told me that you are a far-seer. They have told me that you have two little black tubes sewn together to make them appear like one. They say, because they know, that if you look through these tubes you can see any man or woman or dog or burro which might walk on that faraway hill yonder, and you can see an eagle perching on a high tree a hundred miles away. You have told the folks in this village that there are people living on some of the stars, because this earth we live on is also but a star only we can’t see it as a star since we are on it. All people here have watched you often when, by night, you look with your black tubes up to the sky so as to see the people on the stars and what they were doing at that time of night and how they lived there and how many cattle they had.”
I remembered I had said something to this effect to a few of the younger men of the community.
“You’ve also told here that wise men in your country to the north have another black tube, by which they can look straight into the inside of any man or woman to see if there is a bullet there and where it is located, so that these medicine-men of yours can get the bullet out without cutting open the wrong part of the body. More you have said. You have said that white men can talk to other white men who are mil and more mil miles away and they can talk to one another without shouting just the way as I talk to you now, and that they don’t even need a copper wire on which their words run along, as do telegraph-wires in our country. I want you to talk right now and before my eyes to my woman, and tell her that I am hungry and that I’ve no tortillas and no frijoles to eat. And I want you to tell her to come right home, and that she has to come home on one of those air-wagons you have said your people ride on when they are in a hurry. And I am in an awful hurry now.”
Having finished his speech with the difficulty an urchin has saying his catechism at Sunday school he began again swinging his machete pirate-fashion, obviously with the intention of making his demands more imperative.
What was I to do? If I got the better of him and clubbed him down, everybody in the village would accuse me of having killed a poor, ignorant, but honest Mexican peasant, who had done me no harm and had never meant to do me any, and who had not even insulted me, but had only come, a very humble human, to another human, asking for help which no good Christian would have denied him.
I had to do something to get me out of the hole I was in, and in which I did not feel very comfortable. As I was considered one of the greatest medicine-men, there remained nothing else for me to do but to rely on medicine. The only question was, what sort of medicine I was to use to cure myself of his desperation, and of his machete which, as he demonstrated over and over again, would cut a hair as if by magic. The medicine to be served had to be of a special kind – that is, it had to be effective enough to save both of us at the same time.
At this precious moment, when I was thinking which of the gods I might call upon for a good idea and a better medicine, there flashed through my tortured mind a mental picture of two black tubes sewn together in such a way that they might look like one.
“With your kind permission and just one minute,” I said to him and went into my bungalow.
Out I came, carrying in my hands my modest fieldglass. I carried it before me with a great solemnity, as if it were the holiest object under heaven.
I stepped close to the fence where the Mexican stood, high expectancy in his eyes.
In a mumbled voice I now spoke to the glass, moving it at the same time around over my head, now to the left, now to the right, also moving it towards the man who was watching me with an ever-growing bewilderment.
Now I pressed the glass firmly to my eyes. I bent down and searched the ground while walking round and round, slowly lifting up the glass until it was at a level with the far horizon. For many minutes I scanned the horizon, searching every part of it while moving round in a circle. And I said, loud enough so that he would understand it: “Donde estás, mujer? Where are you, woman? Answer, or I’ll make you by hell’s or heaven’s force!”
Another idea came to my mind at this minute. I whispered to him: “Where’s the village you come from?”
He tried to answer. His excitement did not allow him to speak, though he had his mouth wide open. He swallowed several times and then pointed, with one arm only slightly raised towards north.
So I knew that I had to find his woman towards the south to make my medicine work properly for his benefit and mine.
Now, all of a sudden, I yelled: “I see her. Ya la veo. I see her. There she is now, at last. Poor woman. Oh, that poor, poor woman. A man beats her terribly. He has a black moustache, that man who beats her has. I don’t know who he is. I am sure I’ve seen him once or twice in this village here. Oh, that devil of a man, how he beats that poor woman. And she cries out loud: ‘Ay mi hombre, my dear husband, come, come quick and help me; fetch me away from that brute who has taken me by force and without my will; I want to come home and cook frijoles for you because I know you must be hungry after so much hard work in the bush; help me, help me, come quick!’ That’s what she cries. Oh, I can’t stand it any longer; it’s too terrible.”
I was breathing heavily, as if entirely exhausted from the trance I had been in.
No sooner had I stopped and taken the glass off my eyes than the man, sweat all over his face, shouted as if going mad! “Didn’t I tell you, señor? I knew all the time that it must be that dirty dog Pánfilo who has raped her. He has got a black moustache. I knew it all the time. He was after her since we came to this part. Always after her and always around the house whenever I was working in the bush. All the neighbors knew it because they told me so. I haven’t sharpened my machete just for the fun of it. I knew that I would need a sharp edge somehow, somewhere and for someone, to cut off his stinking head. Now I’ll have to hurry to get her and get at the same time that Pánfilo cabron. Where is she, señor, quick, quick, pronto, pronto, say it. Ask her. Tell her that I’m on my way already.”
I looked through my glass once more and mumbled something as if asking someone a few questions. Now I said: “She is mil miles away from here, your woman is. The man with the black moustache has carried her far away, I think with an air-wagon, perhaps. She says that she is in Naranjitos. That’s way down in that direction.” I pointed towards the south-east. “It is only mil miles from here and along a trail not so very hard to go by.”
“Well, then, señor mister, excuse me, but now I have got to hurry to fetch her and leave my marks on that Pánfilo dog.”
He picked up his moral, a little bag, from the ground. It contained all he possessed on earth, a fact which made his life and his goings so easy, and it would have made him a truly happy man had it not been for women who would never be satisfied with such a little bast bag instead of some solid furniture or an electric refrigerator.
He became extremely restless now, so I thought it a good opportunity to give him another shot of the medicine. “Hustle, amigo, hurry up, or, dear God in heaven, you will miss her. And don’t you dare stop on your way. You know it’s more than mil days to walk. That rascal with the black moustache is likely to carry her farther away still. You’d better go right now, this very minute.”