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348 THE EYE op ‘rir~ HEART good-by. Maninha felt dizzy. She thought of the great world of the poor, the sick, the deformed, to which her brother had gone in an ecstasy of love, never to return. The blood-red twilight appeared to concentrate on the figure of the boy, which seemed to grow in majesty as he went farther and farther away.

K (Puppy Love) JOSE MARIA ARGUEDA

Translated by William L. Grossman

Moonlit night in Viseca Go e. Poor little pigeon, whence have you come, searching the sand, dear God, along the ground? “Justina! Ay, Justinita!” The seagull sings on the glossy lake filling my mind with pleasant memories.

“Justinay, you look like the wild pigeons of Sauslyok!” “Leave me alone, Master, go along to your young ladies!”

“And the Kutu? You love the Kutu, you like his toad face!” “Leave me alone, Master Emesto! I may be ugly but I can lasso cows, and I make the young bulls tremble with e’~~ery flick of e whip. That’s why Justina loves me.” The cholita laughed, looking at the Kutu; her eyes glittered like two stars. “Ay, Justinachal” 349

350 ThE EYE OF THE HEART “Don’t be silly, Master!” said Gregoria, the cook. Celedonia, Pedrucha, Manuela, Anitacha bunt out laughing; they shrieked with laughter. “Master’s being silly.” They clasped hands and started dancing in a ring ~ the music of Julio’s lute. Every once in a while th~, turned to look at me and laugh. I stayed outside the circle, ashamed, beaten for good. I went off toward the old mill. The whitewash o~ the wall seemed to move, like the clouds that wander over Chawala’s slopes. Eucalyptus trees around the or. chard made a long, intense sound, their shado~ stretching out to the other side of the river. I reached the foot of the mill and climbed up to the highest wall, and from, there I saw the head of Chawala: half black, rearing up, the mountain threatened to fall o~ the alfalfa fields of the hacienda. It was scary at night. During those hours the Indians would never look at it, and on clear nights always t ed with their backs turned to the mountain. “If you fell on your face, Father Chawala, we’d all be dead!” Right in the middle of the Witron, Justina sang another song: ...

May flower, May flower, first flower of the May, couldn’t you tear youself loose from that faithless prisoner?

The cholos had stopped in a circle and Justina was singing in the center. Motionless on the cobbles of the big yard, the Indians looked like those stakes you hang hides on. “That little black dot in the middle is Justina. And I love her, my heart trembles when she laughs, and it cries whenever I see her eyes on the Kutu. So why am I dying for that little black dot?”

WARMA KUYAY

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The Indians started stomping again, around and around, in time to the music. The lute player kept cir cling them, cheering them on, whinnying like n love sick colt. A paca-paca started whistling from a willow ~e that nodded on the riyerbank; the voice of the damn bird was unnerving. The lute player ran to the fence and threw stones at the willow, all the cholos fol towing him. Soon it flew off and settled in one of the peach trees in the orchard. The cholos were about to give chase when Don Froylán appeared in the door of the Witron. “Beat it! Get off to sleep!” The cholos troqped1~t9ward the crossbar of the cor ral. The Kutu remained alone in the yard. “He’s the, one she lpv.es!” Don Eroylá&s Indians ~disappeared through the gatel of haciepda con~pound,. and Don Froylán fol lowed.. “Master Ernesto!” the Kutu called. I jumped to the grou~nd and ran toward him. “Let’s go, ~1s4aster~”’ We ~Went up ~to the;ailey by ~‘ay of the metal-wash ing trough th~t was falling apart in a corner of the Witron. On top of the trough there was an immense iron pipe and several rusty wheels that came from the mines of Don Froylán’s father. Kutu said nothing till we reached the house above. The hacienda belonged to Don Froylán and my un cle; it had two main houses. Kutu and I were alone in the upper hamlet. My ncle and the other people had gone to dig potatoes and would sleep on that small farm, two leagues from the hacienda. We went up the steps, without even looking at each other. We entered the corridor and made up our beds there so we would be sleeping in the moonlight. The Kutu lay down without speaking: he was sad and trou bled. I sat down beside him. “Kutu! Has Justina given you the brush-off?” ,

3~2 THE ~yx op m~ HEART “Don Froylán has abused her, Master Ernesto!” “That’s a lie, Kutu, a lie!” “He did it just yesterday, at the canal when she went to bathe with the kids!” “It’s a lie, Kutullay, a lie!” I hugged him around the neck. I was frightened; I thought my heart would break, it was pounding so. j began to cry, as if I were alone, abandoned in that great black ravine. “Stop it, Master! Look, I’m only an Indian; I can’t stand up to the patron. Some other time, when you’re a lawyer, you will fix Don Froylán.” He picked me up like a yearling and laid me down on my cot. “Go to sleep, Master! I’m going to talk to Justina now so she’ll like you. You’ll sleep with her sometime, would you like that, Master? Yes? Justina has some feeling for you, but you’re still a boy, and she’s afmid because you’re the young master.” I knelt on my bed. I looked at Chawala; it seemed dark and terrible in the stillness of the night. “Kutu, when I grow up, I’m going to kill Don Froylán!” “Right you are, Master Ernesto, right you are. Mak’tasul” In the corridor the cholo’s thick voice sounded like the snarling of the lion that used to come up to the settlement hunting for hogs. Kutu stood up. He was in great spirits, as if he had just brought down that thief of a puma. “The pa On arrives tomorrow. We better go to Justina tonight. Sure thing the patrOn makes you sleep in his room. Let the moon go in so we can start.” His high spirits made me furious. “And why don’t you kill Don Froylán? Let him have it with your sling, Kutu, from across the river, as if he were a prowling puma.”

353 “His little kids, Master! There are nine of them! But they’ll be big by the time you’re ~~Iawyer.” “You’re lying, Kutu, you’re lying! )~ou,’re scared, like a woman!” “You don’t know what you’re tailcing about, Master. You think I haven’t ,~een? You’re sorry for little year lings, but you don’t care about men.” “Don Froylan! He’s bad! Ranchers are bad; they make Indians like you cry, they carry off other people’s cows, or else they starve them to death in their corrals. Kutu, Don Froyl~n is worse than a wild bull! So kill him, Kutucha, even if by gushing a rock off the Capi tana cliff.” “Indian can’t, Master! Indian can’t!” He was a coward! He 1~ought’ cjown wild stallions, he made colts quiver, he• laid open the backs of plow horses with a whip; when.cver. cows of dther cholos wandered into my uncle’s pastures, he shot them with his sling from a long: way off; ~ut .he was a coward. Hopeless Indiau!~ I looked at him closely: his flat nose~ his-alrnQst slant ing~ eyes, his, thin lips b1~ckened by ~opoa.. ‘He’s the one she loves! A d ~he was so pretty; her rosy face was always well-scrubbed, her black eyes flashed, she wasn’t like the other cholas, her eyelashes were long, her mouth called for lov~~ and wouldn’t let me sleep. At fourteen, I loved her. Her small breasts were like plump lemons; they drove me wild. But she was Kutu’s, had been for a long time now, this toad-faced cholo. Thinking of this, my suffering was very much like dying. And now? Don Froylán had raped her. “It’s a lie, Kut~! She must have asked for it, she must have!” My eyes flooded with tears. My heart was shaking me again, as if it were stronger than my whgle body. “Kutu! The two of us better kill her—you want to?” The cholo grew frightened. He put his hand to my forehead it was damp with sweat. WAR1~tA ICUYAY

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354 THE EYE or’ ‘mx HEART “True! This is how white men love.” “Take me to Justina, Kutu! You’re a woman, you’re not good enough for her! Leave her alone!” “Sure, Master, I let you have her, she’s all yours. Look, the moon is going behind Wayrala.” The mountains blackened quickly, and little stars sprang out all over the sky. The wind whistled in the darkness, crashing into the peach and eucalyptus trees in the orchard. Farther down, at the bottom of the gorge, the great river sang in its harsh voice.

355 foot; I slowly turned the lock and stepped out into the gallery. The moon was already up; its white light washed the ravine; stiff, silent, the trees held their arms up to the sky. I went down the gallery in two eaps, ran across the cobbled alley, jumped the wall of th corral and reached the yearlings. There was Zari nacha, that night’s victim, lying on the dry dung, with her muzzle on the ground: she seemed unconscious. I put my arms around her neck. I kissed her a thousand times on the mouth with it’s odor of fresh milk, and on her great black eyes. “Forgive me, girl, forgive me!” .1 joined my hands, and,’ on my knees, I humbled myself before her. “It was that dirty bastird, little sister, it wasn’t me. Kutu, that dirty.Jndian, that dog!” The salt of my tears kept me feeling bitter .for a long time.. Zarinacha looked at me~olëmn1y, with her soft’hum-’ bleeyes. “I’ care about you, girl, I doV’ And a perfect tenderness, pure and sweet like the light in that nurturing ravine, lit up my lifd.. Next morning I found the cholo in the CapiI~ana al falfa field. The sky wa~ clear, and joyous, the fields green, and still cool. The ICutu was already lea~ving, very early, to look for victim~ in my uncle’s; pastures, to relieve his fury. “Kutu, get out of 1~ere,” ,I told him~ “Nd one wants you around here any mor~. All the Indians laugh at you bec~use you’re trash!”’ His gloomy eyes looked at me with some fear. “You’re a murderer too, Kutu. A little calf is like a baby. There is no place for you in Viseca, you worth less Indian!” “Only me, eh? You too. But look at Father Chawala: I’m going to leave ten days from now.” WARMA EUYAY

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I despised Kutu. Tiny and cowardly, his yellow eyes made me tremble with rage. “Indian, you better dr p dead, or take off for Nazcal The • alaria will finish you off there, they’ll bury you like a dog!” I used to tell him. But the herdsman would just lower his head, hum bly, and go off to the Witron, to the alfalfa fields, to the pasture of the yearlings, and take it out on the bodies of Don Froylán’s animals. At first I went along with him. At night we would sneak into th corral, hiding as we went. We picked out the slenderest, most delicate yearlings; Kutu would spit on his hands, grip the whip hard, and rip open the backs of the young bulls. One! Two! Three! A hundred lashes. The lit.. tie ones writhed on the ground, they rolled over on their backs, the3’ cried out; and the Indian kept on, hunched over, vicious. And I? I sat in a corner and en joyed it. I enjoyed it. “They’re Don Froylan’s—who cares? He’s my en erny!” He spoke loudly so as ~to ‘fool me, to cover up the pain that tightened my lips and filled my heart. But once I was in bed, alone, a dark drñ’ing. anguish swept over my so,ul and I’ cried fOr two or thiee hours. Until one night my. heart. w~s ready to bur~t. Tears weren’t enough; I was overcome by’ despair and re morse. I jumped out of bed and ran to the door, bare...

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356 THE EYE OF THE HEART Hurt, more miserable than ever, he galloped off On my uncle’s bay. Two weeks later, Kutu asked for his pay and le~ My aunt cried for him, as if she had lost her son. Kutu had the bloo of a woman: he trembled befo~ Don Froylán, he was afraid of almost all the men They took away his woman and afterwards he went to communities of Sondondo, Chacralla. he was a coward! I stayed with Don Froylán, alone, but near Justina, my heartless -Justinacha. And I wasn’t unhappy. By that foaming river, listening to the singing of the wild pigeons and the arbor vitae, I lived without hope; but she was under the same sky as I, in that ravine that was my nest. Gazing at hen black eyes, listening to her laughter, watching her ‘from a distance, I was almost happy. Because my love for Justina was a warma kuyay, I believed I had no right to her yet; I knew that she would have to belong to another, to a grown man who could already handle the long leather thong, who could curse pungently, could fight with whips at the carnivals. And since I loved animals and Indian fiestas and harvests and seedtime with music and jarawi, I lived happily in that ravine, verdant and caressed by th,e, sun’s l~eat. Till one day they. tore me away from my heaven, to bring me to all. this nc$ise and commo. tion,,to people I don’t care for arid don’t understand. The Kutu at one end and I at another~ ‘Maybe he has forgotten. He~sjn lis element; in som~ qqiet little town, even if he’s trash, he must be the best herds man, the ‘besf tamer of ~young mares, and’ the commu nity respects him. While P live here, bitter and pale, like an animal fro,m the cold’ plains’, taken to the coast, to bumin~ and alien sands.

how Porthncula thrMniatto Got The ii~psi~ Off..fli~ flack

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Translated by Hardie St. Martin

JWIU~EIAMBO ir. •1

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• The gringo who dropped anchor here years ago was a tight-mouthed and fair-skitmed guy. No one had aver seen anybody’.~w~io liked to drink so much. To say ‘be guz4ed the booze is~’t to’ the point,;because we all do that, pra~ise the Lord!’d,s~end two days and two nights nursing the bdttles and npt turn a hair. He diçln’t. start blabbing or picking a fight; he didn’t begin on t~e old-time songs, and he didn’t .spil over with harçblu~k stories from way back.’ Tight-mouthed he was and tight-inouthed.he reiqained; only his blue eyes kept narrowing, a little at a ti’me, one red-hot coal in every glance ~uming u the blue. They told lots of stories about him, and some tricked out so ijeat it was a pleasure listening to them. But :11 hearsay, because frdm the ghngo’s own mouth you couldn’t learn a thing—that sewn-up mouth that didn’t even open on the big fiestas wh -Ei~ your legs feel like .lead ‘with the booze accumulating in your feet. Not even Merced~s—with a .~ieákness .fdr the gringo that was no ~ecret to an~’ of us, ‘and inüisitive as only she coul~d be—cOuld s’queezè ‘out one ~leàr fact about that woman lie killed in his èountry,, or about that guy he kept hounding year in and year ‘out, through one 357