The Delicate Prey: And Other Stories

He looked down at Marta. The child was staring at him quite without expression. Like a cat, he reflected.

Again he began to protest. “Nicolas,” he cried, his voice very high, “this is impossible!” He felt a hand grip his arm, and turned to receive a warning glance from Mateo.

Nicolas had already advanced toward the pavilion, his face like a thundercloud. As he seemed about to speak, the pastor interrupted him quickly. He had decided to temporize. “She may stay at the mission today,” he said weakly.

“She is your wife,” said Nicolas with great feeling. “You cannot send her away. You must keep her.”

“Diga que si,” Mateo was whispering. “Say yes, senor.”

“Yes,” the pastor heard himself saying. “Yes. Good.” He got up and walked slowly into the house, holding the alligator with one hand and pushing Marta in front of him with the other. Mateo followed and closed the door after them.

“Take her into the kitchen, Mateo,” said the pastor dully, handing the little reptile to Marta. As Mateo went across the patio leading the child by the hand, he called after him. “Leave her with Quintina and come to my room.”

He sat down on the edge of his bed, staring ahead of him with unseeing eyes. At each moment his predicament seemed to him more terrible. With relief he heard Mateo knock. The people outdoors were slowly leaving. It cost him an effort to call out, “Adelante.” When Mateo had come in, the pastor said, “Close the door.”

“Mateo, did you know they were going to do this? That they were going to bring that child here?”

“Si, senor.”

“You knew it! But why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you tell me?”

Mateo shrugged his shoulders, looking at the floor. “I didn’t know it would matter to you,” he said. “Anyway, it would have been useless.”

“Useless? Why? You could have stopped Nicolas,” said the pastor, although he did not believe it himself.

Mateo laughed shortly. “You think so?”

“Mateo, you must help me. We must oblige Nicolas to take her back.”

Mateo shook his head. “It can’t be done. These people are very severe. They never change their laws.”

“Perhaps a letter to the administrator at Ocosingo . . .”

“No, senor. That would make still more trouble. You are not a Catholic.” Mateo shifted on his feet and suddenly smiled thinly. “Why not let her stay? She doesn’t eat much. She can work in the kitchen. In two years she will be very pretty.”

The pastor jumped, and made such a wide and vehement gesture with his hands that the mosquito netting, looped above his head, fell down about his face. Mateo helped him disentangle himself. The air smelled of dust from the netting.

“You don’t understand anything!” shouted Pastor Dowe, beside himself. “I can’t talk to you! I don’t want to talk to you! Go out and leave me alone.” Mateo obediently left the room.

Pounding his left palm with his right fist, over and over again, the pastor stood in his window before the landscape that shone in the strong sun. A few women were still eating under the mango tree; the rest had gone back down the hill.

He lay on his bed throughout the long afternoon. When twilight came he had made his decision. Locking his door, he proceeded to pack what personal effects he could into his smallest suitcase. His Bible and notebooks went on top with his toothbrush and atabrine tablets. When Quintina came to announce supper he asked to have it brought to his bed, taking care to slip the packed valise into the closet before he unlocked the door for her to enter. He waited until the talking had ceased all over the house, until he knew everyone was asleep. With the small bag not too heavy in one hand he tiptoed into the patio, out through the door into the fragrant night, across the open space in front of the pavilion, under the mango tree and down the path leading to Tacate. Then he began to walk fast, because he wanted to get through the village before the moon rose.

There was a chorus of dogs barking as he entered the village street. He began to run, straight through to the other end. And he kept running even then, until he had reached the point where the path, wider here, dipped beneath the hill and curved into the forest. His heart was beating rapidly from the exertion. To rest, and to try to be fairly certain he was not being followed, he sat down on his little valise in the center of the path. There he remained a long time, thinking of nothing, while the night went on and the moon came up. He heard only the light wind among the leaves and vines. Overhead a few bats reeled soundlessly back and forth. At last he took a deep breath, got up, and went on.

Call at Corazon

“But why would you want a little horror like that to go along with us? It doesn’t make sense. You know what they’re like.”

“I know what they’re like,” said her husband. “It’s comforting to watch them. Whatever happens, if I had that to look at, I’d be reminded of how stupid I was ever to get upset.”

He leaned further over the railing and looked intently down at the dock. There were baskets for sale, crude painted toys of hard natural rubber, reptile-hide wallets and belts, and a few whole snakeskins unrolled. And placed apart from these wares, out of the hot sunlight, in the shadow of a crate, sat a tiny, furry monkey. The hands were folded, and the forehead was wrinkled in sad apprehensiveness.

“Isn’t he wonderful?”

“I think you’re impossible—and a little insulting,” she replied.

He turned to look at her. “Are you serious?” He saw that she was.

She went on, studying her sandaled feet and the narrow deck-boards beneath them: “You know I don’t really mind all this nonsense, or your craziness. Just let me finish.” He nodded his head in agreement, looking back at the hot dock and the wretched tin-roofed village beyond. “It goes without saying I don’t mind all that, or we wouldn’t be here together. You might be here alone . .

“You don’t take a honeymoon alone,” he interrupted.

“You might.” She laughed shortly.

He reached along the rail for her hand, but she pulled it away, saying, “I’m still talking to you. I expect you to be crazy, and I expect to give in to you all along. I’m crazy too, I know. But I wish there were some way I could just once feel that my giving in meant anything to you. I wish you knew how to be gracious about it.”

“You think you humor me so much? I haven’t noticed it.” His voice was sullen.

“I don’t humor you at all. I’m just trying to live with you on an extended trip in a lot of cramped little cabins on an endless series of stinking boats.”

“What do you mean?” he cried excitedly. “You’ve always said you loved the boats. Have you changed your mind, or just lost it completely?”

She turned and walked toward the prow. “Don’t talk to me,” she said. “Go and buy your monkey.”

An expression of solicitousness on his face, he was following her. “You know I won’t buy it if it’s going to make you miserable.”

“I’ll be more miserable if you don’t, so please go and buy it.” She stopped and turned. “I’d love to have it. I really would. I think it’s sweet.”

“I don’t get you at all.”

She smiled. “I know. Does it bother you very much?”

After he had bought the monkey and tied it to the metal post of the bunk in the cabin, he took a walk to explore the port. It was a town made of corrugated tin and barbed wire. The sun’s heat was painful, even with the sky’s low-lying cover of fog. It was the middle of the day and few people were in the streets. He came to the edge of the town almost immediately. Here between him and the forest lay a narrow, slow-moving stream, its water the color of black coffee. A few women were washing clothes; small children splashed. Gigantic gray crabs scuttled between the holes they had made in the mud along the bank. He sat down on some elaborately twisted roots at the foot of a tree and took out the notebook he always carried with him. The day before, in a bar at Pedernales, he had