“Can’t you do that somewhere else? It’s harmful to spend so much time in the toilet. Besides,
you ought to be doing something useful. Why don’t you go and grind some corn for your
grandmother? “Okay, Mama. I’m going.”
“Grandmother, I’ve come to help you grind corn.”
“Sorry, we’ve already finished and we’re going to make some cocoa. But where have you
been? We have been looking for you ever since the storm began.”
“I was in the other patio.”
“What were you doing? Praying?”
“No, Grandmother, just watching the rain.”
His grandmother looked at him with grey eyes that were half yellow and seemed to be able to
look at what was inside you.”
“All right then; now you can go and clean out the grinder.”
(‘There, hundreds of meters above all the clouds, and farther away than everything else, you
are hidden, Susana. Hidden in the immensity of God, behind His Divine Providence, where I
cannot reach you, or see you, and where you cannot hear my words.’)
“Grandmother, the grinder isn’t working, one of the blades is broken.”
“That Micaela; she must have been grinding corncobs in it. You just can’t get her to stop
those bad habits. But I suppose we’ll just have to put up with it.”
“Why don’t we buy another one? This one is so old now it doesn’t work most of the time.”
“Yes, you’re right. But with the all expenses we had when we buried your grandfather, plus
the amount we had to pay the Church, we haven’t got a penny left. Nevertheless, we will have to
make a sacrifice and get another one. It would be good if you would go and see Dona Ines
Villalpando and ask her to give us until October. We will pay her after we finish the harvests.”
“Okay, Grandmother, I’ll do that.”
“And while you’re there, tell her to loan us a sieve, and a pruning knife. At the rate that the
plants are growing, we can hardly get them into the barns. If I had a big house with the large
barns I used to have, I wouldn’t have to worry about it. But your grandfather left all that behind
when we moved here. Well, that’s the way it is; things never turn out like you want them. Tell
Dona Ines we will pay all we owe her when the harvest is finished.”
“Yes, Grandmother.”
There were humming birds this time of the year. You could hear the sound of their wings
whirring among the jasmines that were loosing their petals.
He walked over to the shelf of the Sacred Heart where he found twenty four cents. He left
four cents, and took twenty. Before leaving, his mother stopped him:
“Where are you going?”
“To Dona Ines Villalpando to get a new grinder. The one we have is broken.”
“Ask her to give you a yard of black taffeta, like this,” and she showed it to him. “Tell her to
charge it our account.
“Okay, Mama.”
“On your way back buy me some aspirins; you’ll find the money in the jar in the hall.”
He found a peso. He took the peso and left the twenty cents..
“Now I’ll have enough to buy something else, if I want to,” he thought to himself.
“Pedro!” someone shouted at him. “Pedro!”
But he wasn’t able to hear it, since he was already too far away.
That night it started to rain. The sound of rain falling was heard for a long time. Then he must
have fallen asleep, because when he woke up there was only a light drizzle. The windows were
dark, and streams of water were flowing down like tears on the other side of the glass. “I was
watching the drops illuminated by lightning flashes, and with each breath I sighed, and each time
I was thinking I thought of you, Susana.”
The rain had transformed into a breeze. He heard: “The forgiveness of our sins and the
resurrection of the flesh. Amen.” It was inside, where women were saying the end of the rosary.
They rose up, they locked up the birds, they closed the door, and they put out the light.
All that remained was the dim light, and the sound of rain, like the chirping of crickets…
“Why didn’t you go to say the rosary? It’s now nine days after the death of your grandfather.”
There was his mother in the doorway holding a candle in her hand. Her shadow stretched up
toward the roof, very long, and spit in two. The beams of the roof separated it into two different
pieces.
“I am feeling sad,” she said.
She turned around, and she blew out the candle. Then she closed the door and her sobs were
heard, mixed with the sound of the rain.
The clock in the church struck the hour, again and again, sounding as if time had somehow
contracted.
“Yes, I was almost your mother. Didn’t she ever tell you about that?” Eduviges asked
“No, she only told me good things. I heard of you from a mule-driver who brought me here.
He said his name was Abundio.”
“Ah, Abundio. So he still remembers me? I used to give him something for every traveler he
would send to my house. We got along very well. Now, unfortunately, everything here has
changed because, since this place has become so impoverished no one thinks about us any more.
So then, he told you to come to see me?”
“Yes, he told me to come and see if you were still here.”
“Well, I can only thank him for that. He was a good man, and very helpful. He was the one
who brought the mail, and he continued doing that, even after he became deaf. I remember the
terrible day when he had his misfortune. We were very sorry, because we all liked him. He used
to bring and take our letters. He told us how things were going there, in the other part of the
world, and he surely must have also told them about us too. He was quite a talker. But not later;
after his accident he stopped talking. He said he didn’t feel like saying things he couldn’t hear,
things that for him had no sound. It all happened after he shot off one of those rockets we use
here to scare away water moccasins very close to his head. After that he became mute, even
though he wasn’t a mute, but he never stopped being a good person.”
“ The man I talked to could hear just fine.”
“Then it must not have been him; besides, Abundio has already died. He must have died,
surely. Do you see? It couldn’t have been him.”
“Yes, I agree.”
“Okay, getting back to your mother, I was telling you…”
Without stopping to listen to her, I started to look at the woman who was in front of me. I
thought she must have gone through some difficult times. Her face was white, as if she had no
blood, and her hands were withered and covered with wrinkles. Her eyes were sunken so deep
into her face they were almost invisible. She was wearing an old white dress, and hanging from
a cord around her neck was an image of Santa Maria del Refugio, with an inscription that said:
“Refuge of Sinners.”
“…This person I am talking about was a horse trainer at Pedro Paramo’s ranch, Media Luna.
He said his name was Inocencio Osorio. However, we all knew him by the name of Saltaperico,
because he was so light and agile in his movements. My friend Pedro said he was not even fit to
train colts, but he also had another occupation: that of ‘provocateur.’ He was a provoker of
dreams. That’s really what he was. And he tricked your mother, just like he tricked others.
Among them, me. Once I felt sick he came and said to me: ‘I am going to massage you to see if
that makes you feel better.’ And what that amounted to was squeezing you, first your fingertips,
then your hands; after that your arms, and finally fooling around with your legs so provocatively
that you soon become angry. And while he maneuvered, he would talk about your future. He
would go into a trance, rolling his eyes, invoking and cursing, covering you with globs of spit,
like gypsies do. Sometimes he was stark naked, because he said it was what we wanted.
Sometimes he was right; he hit on so many different things, that something had to give.”
“The thing is that this man Osorio went to see your mother and he told her she shouldn’t sleep
with any man, because that night the moon was full.”
“Dolores came to me in a big hurry, telling me that she couldn’t do it. That it would be
impossible for her to sleep with Pedro Paramo that night. It was her wedding night, and there I
was, trying to convince her not to believe Osorio, that he was only a duplicitous liar. ‘I can’t’
she told me. ‘Please, you go in my place. He won’t be able to tell,’”
“Of course I was much younger than she was and didn’t have such dark hair. But it would not
have been noticeable in the darkness. But I still told her, ‘Dolores, you have to go yourself.’”
“At that time your mother was a young woman, with humble eyes. If there was something
really beautiful about your mother, it was her eyes. They were very persuasive.”
“Please go in my place,” she asked again.
“And I went.”
“I took advantage of the darkness; and something your mother wasn’t aware of was that I also
liked Pedro Paramo.”
“I slept with him, with pleasure and desire. I held him tight and pressed against him, but the
revelry the day before had left him so exhausted that he went to sleep and snored all night long.
All he did was squeeze his legs in between mine.”
“Before it got light I got out of bed and went to see Dolores. I told her:
“Now it’s your turn. This is now another day.”
“What did he do to you?” she asked me.
“I don’t know yet,” I said.
“The year after that you were born, but not to me, even though that was something that almost
happened. Perhaps your mother never told you, because she felt ashamed.”
“…Green prairies. Seeing the horizon rise and fall as the wind moves the corn stalks, the
afternoon rippling as the heavy rain falls, the color of the ground, the smell of alfalfa and bread.
A town that smells like spilled honey…”
“She always hated Pedro Paramo. ‘Dolores, didn’t I tell you to fix my breakfast?’ And your
mother always got up before dawn. She lit the stove. The cats woke up when they smelled the
fire. And she went everywhere, followed by the cats. ‘Dona Dolores!’
“How often your mother heard that call! ‘Dona Dolores, this is cold, this is no good.’ How
many times? And although she got used to this treatment, her humble eyes grew hardened.”
“…She was not able to smell any other odor except that of the blossoms on the orange trees in
that hot weather.”
“Then she began to sigh. ‘Why are you sighing, Dolores?’
“She had gone with him that afternoon. He was in the middle of the field, watching a flock of
thrushes fly over them. There was also a solitary vulture flying around.”
‘Why are you sighing, Dolores?’
‘I would like to be that vulture so I could fly to the place where my sister lives.’
‘Of course, Dona Dolores. You can go and see your sister right away. Of course. Let’s go
back to the house so they can pack your bags.’
“And your mother departed:
‘I’ll see you later, Don Pedro.’
‘Goodbye, Dolores.’
“But she didn’t see him later. She left Media Luna for good.”
“I asked Pedro Paramo about her many times after that. ‘She loved her sister more than me.
She must be happy there. Besides, she drove me crazy. And I do not want to know about her, if
that is what is worrying you.’
‘But what will they live on?’
‘May God watch over them.’
“…Make him pay dearly, my son, for the way he has neglected us.”
“She told me you would come to see me, but since then we haven’t heard anything from her.”
“Lots of things happened,” I told her. “We were in Colima with aunt Gertrudis, who was
taking care of us: ‘Why don’t you go back to your husband?’ Getrudis asked my mother.”
‘Has he ever asked me to return? I’m not going back unless he asks me to. I came here
because I wanted to see you. Because I cared about you, that’s why I came.’
‘I understand how you feel. But now things have changed, and now it’s time for you to go.’
‘As if it were up to me!’”
I thought Dona Eduviges was listening to me, but I noticed that her head was turned as though
she was listening to something farther away. Then I said:
“When are you going to take a rest?”
“The day you left I knew I would never see you again. You left covered by the red light of the
afternoon sun, by the bloodstained twilight. You were smiling. You were leaving behind the
town of which I had heard you say more than once: ‘I love it because of you, but I hate it for
everything else, even for having been born there,’ Then I thought, she will not ever come back,
she will never return.”
“What are you doing here now? Aren’t you supposed to be working?
“No, Grandmother. Rogelio wants me to take care of his son. I am taking him for a walk. It’s
hard to take care of two things (the child and the telegraph) while he spends his time drinking
beer in the pool hall. Besides, he doesn’t pay me anything.”
“You’re not there to earn money, but to find out when you have learned something; then you
can be more demanding. For now, you’re just an apprentice; perhaps tomorrow, or the day after,
you will be the boss. But for that you need to have patience and, more than anything, humility.
If they ask you to take care of a child, do it for God’s sake. You must resign yourself.”
“Let others resign themselves, Grandmother. Resignation is not for me.”
“You and your bad habits! I’m afraid that they are going to come back and haunt you, Pedro
Paramo.”
“What are you listening to, Dona Eduviges?”
She shook her head, as if she had awakened from a dream.
“It’s the horse of Miguel Paramo that is galloping out there on the road from Media Luna.”
“Then someone is still living in Media Luna?”
“No, nobody lives there now.”
“Then, what about the horse?”
“It’s only the horse that runs back and forth. They were inseparable. It runs all over the place
still looking for him, especially at this hour. Perhaps the poor thing is plagued by remorse.
Since even animals realize when a wrong has been done, isn’t that so?”
“I don’t understand. I haven’t heard the sound of a horse.”
“You didn’t?”
“No.”
“Then it must be my sixth sense. A gift that God gave me; or perhaps a curse. Only I know
how much I have suffered because of this.”
“It all began with Miguel Paramo. I was the only person who knew what happened to him the
night he died. I was in bed when I heard his horse coming by on the way back to Media Luna. I
was surprised, because he never came back that early. He usually arrived when it was beginning
to get light. He was going to see his girlfriend in a town called Contla, some distance from here.
He left early, and was late coming back. But that night he didn’t come back… Do you hear it
now? I can definitely hear it once more. The horse is now coming back this way.”
“I don’t hear anything.”
“Then it must be me. All right, as I was saying, the idea that he didn’t come back was just a
rumor. His horse had just gone by when I heard someone tapping on my window. God only
knows if it was just an illusion. The truth is that something made me go to see who it was. And
it was him, Miguel Paramo. I wasn’t surprised to see him, since he had sometimes spent the
night in my house, sleeping with me, until he met that girl who swallowed his brains.”
“What’s going on?” I asked Miguel Paramo. “Did she leave you in the lurch?”
“No. She still loves me,” he said. “The thing is, I couldn’t find her. The town had
disappeared. There may have been some fog, or smoke, or I don’t know what. But I know now
that Contla does not exist. I went even farther than I planned, but I could never find it. I came to
tell you, because you understand me. If I told anyone else, they would say I was crazy, like they
always say I am.”
“You’re not crazy, Miguel. You must be dead. Remember, they told you the horse was going
to kill you someday. Don’t forget that, Miguel Paramo. Or maybe you did something crazy, and
that is something else.”
“I only jumped over the stone wall that my father had ordered them to build. I made my
horse, Colorado, jump over it, in order to avoid going a long way around until I reached the road.
I know I jumped over it and kept going but, like I told you, after that there was nothing more
than smoke, and more smoke.