until she was buried under them!”
“Why?” said Nicho, thinking that San Lucas must be a very wicked town.
“Because they would,” she answered, still savoring the shock and shame she had felt at the sight of the golden breasts in the sunlight.
When they got back to town they turned into the path that led to Nicho’s house, and while they were still in the jungle end of the garden, Nicho stopped and indicated a dead tree whose trunk had partially decayed. With the gesture of a conspirator he pulled aside the fringed curtain of vines that hung down across most of it, revealing several dark holes. Reaching into one of them, he pulled out a bright tin can, flicked off the belligerent ants that raced wildly around it, and held it forth to her.
“Put it in here,” he whispered.
It took a while to transfer all the sand from her pocket to the can; when it was done he replaced it inside the dark trunk and let the vines fall straight again to cover the place. Then he conducted Luz quickly up through the garden, around the house, into the street. His aunt, having caught sight of them, called: “Dionisio!” But he pretended not to have heard her and pushed Luz ahead of him nervously. He was suddenly in terror lest Luz see Senor Ong; that was something which must be avoided at any cost.
“Dionisio!” She was still calling; she had come out and was standing in front of the door, looking down the street after them, but he did not turn around. They reached the bridge. It was out of sight of the house.
“Adios,” he said.
“Hasta manana,” she answered, peering up at him with her strange air of making a great effort. He watched her walk up the street, moving her head from side to side as if there were a thousand things to see, when in reality there were only a few pigs and some chickens roaming about.
At the evening meal his aunt eyed him reproachfully. He averted her gaze; she did not mention his promise to bring Luz to the house for refrescos. That night he lay on his mat watching the phosphorescent beetles. His room gave on the patio; it had only three walls. The fourth side was wide open. Branches of the lemon tree reached in and rubbed against the wall above his head; up there, too, was a huge unfolding banana leaf which was pushing its way further into the room each day. Now the patio was dizzy with the beetles’ sharp lights. Crawling on the plants or flying frantically between them, they flashed their signals on and off with maddening insistence. In the neighboring room his aunt and Senor Ong occupied the bed of the house, enjoying the privacy of quarters that were closed in on all four sides. He listened: the wind was rising. Nightly it appeared and played on the leaves of the trees, dying away again before dawn. Tomorrow he would take Luz down to the river to get more silver. He hoped Senor Ong had not been spying when he had uncovered the holes in the tree trunk. The mere thought of such a possibility set him to worrying, and he twisted on his mat from one side to the other.
Presently he decided to go and see if the silver was still there. Once he had assured himself either that it was safe or that it had been stolen, he would feel better about it. He sat up, slipped into his trousers, and stepped out into the patio. The night was full of life and motion; leaves and branches touched, making tiny sighs. Singing insects droned in the trees overhead; everywhere the bright beetles flashed. As he stood there feeling the small wind wander over him he became aware of other sounds in the direction of the sala. The light was on there, and for a moment he thought that perhaps Senor Ong had a late visitor, since that was the room where he received his callers. But he heard no voices. Avoiding the lemon tree’s sharp twigs, he made his way soundlessly to the closed doors and peered between them.
There was a square niche in the sala wall across which, when he had first arrived, Senor Ong had tacked a large calendar. This bore a colored picture of a smiling Chinese girl. She wore a blue bathing suit and white fur-topped boots, and she sat by a pool of shiny pink tiles. Over her head in a luminous sky a gigantic four-motored plane bore down upon her, and further above, in a still brighter area of the heavens, was the benevolent face of Generalissimo Chiang. Beneath the picture were the words: ABARROTES FINOS. Sun Man Ngai, Huixtla, Chis. The calendar was the one object Senor Ong had brought with him that Nicho could wholeheartedly admire; he knew every detail of the picture by heart. Its presence had transformed the sala from a dull room with two old rocking chairs and a table to a place where anything might happen if one waited long enough. And now as he peeked through the crack, he saw with a shock that Senor Ong had removed the calendar from its place on the wall, and laid it on the table. He had a hammer and a chisel and he was pounding and scratching the bottom of the niche. Occasionally he would scoop out the resulting plaster and dust with his fat little hands, and dump it in a neat pile on the table. Nicho waited for a long time without daring to move. Even when the wind blew a little harder and chilled his naked back he did not stir, for fear of seeing Senor Ong turn around and look with his narrow eyes toward the door, the hammer in one hand, the chisel in the other. Besides, it was important to know what he was doing. But Senor Ong seemed to be in no hurry. Almost an hour went by, and still tirelessly he kept up his methodical work, pausing regularly to take out the debris and pile it on the table. At last Nicho began to feel like sneezing; in a frenzy he turned and ran through the patio to his room, scratching his chest against the branches on the way. The emotion engendered by his flight had taken away his desire to sneeze, but he lay down anyway for fear it might return if he went back to the door. In the midst of wondering about Senor Ong he fell asleep.
The next morning when he went into the sala the pretty Chinese girl covered the niche as usual. He stood still listening: his aunt and Senor Ong were talking in the next room. Quickly he pulled out the thumbtack in the lower left-hand corner of the calendar and reached in. He could feel nothing there. Disappointed, he fastened it back and went out into the garden. In the tree his treasure was undisturbed, but now that he suspected Senor Ong of having a treasure too, the little can of sand seemed scarcely worth his interest.
He went to the bridge and waited for Luz. When she came they walked to the river below the garden and sat beside the water. Nicho’s mind was full of the image of Senor Ong bending over the niche with his tools, and his fancy was occupied with speculation as to what exactly he had been doing. He was uncertain whether or not to share his secret with Luz. He hoped she would not talk about her silver this morning; to forestall inquiries about it he mentioned curtly that he had looked at it only a half hour ago and that it was intact. Luz sat regarding him perplexedly; he seemed scarcely the same person as yesterday. Finally she said, as he continued to fix his gaze on the black pebbles at his feet: “What’s the matter with you today?”
“Nothing.” He grasped her arm to belie his word; the gesture betrayed him into beginning the confidence. “Listen. In my house there’s a lot of gold hidden.” He told her everything: Senor Ong’s arrival, his own dislike of him, the visits of the town’s rich shopkeepers to the house, and finally the suspicious behavior of Senor Ong in the sala the night before. She listened, blinking rapidly all the while. And when he had finished she agreed with him that it was probably gold hidden there in the niche, only she was inclined to think that it belonged to his aunt, and that Senor Ong had stolen it from her. This idea had not occurred to Nicho, and he did not really believe it. Nevertheless, it pleased him. “I’ll get it and give it back to her,” he declared. “Of course,” said Luz solemnly, as if there were no alternative. They sat a while without speaking. Up in the garden all the cockatoos were screaming at once. The prospect of stealing back the gold in order to return it to his aunt excited him. But there were dangers. He began to describe the hideousness of Senor Ong’s person and character, extemporaneously adding details. Luz shivered and looked apprehensively toward the shadowy path. “Hay que tener mucho cuidado,” she murmured. Then suddenly she wanted to go home.
Now there was only one thing to wait for: Senor Ong’s absence from the house. In Tlaltepec there lived a Chinese man whom he usually visited each week, going on the early bus in the morning and returning in time for the midday meal. Three days went by. People came to the house and went away again, but Senor Ong sat quietly in the sala without once going into the street. Each day Nicho and Luz met on the bridge and sat by the river discussing the treasure with an excitement that steadily grew. “Ay, que maravilla!” she would exclaim, holding her hands far apart. “This much gold!” Nicho would nod in agreement; all the same he had a feeling that when he saw the treasure he would be disappointed.
Finally the morning came when Senor Ong kissed Nicho’s aunt on the cheek and went out of the house carrying a newspaper under his arm. “Where is he going?” Nicho asked innocently.
“Tlaltepec.” His aunt was scrubbing the floor of the sala.
He went into the patio and watched a humming-bird buzz from one to another of the huele-de- noche’s white flowers. When his aunt had finished in the sala she shut the door and started on the floor of the bedroom. In agitation he tiptoed into the room and over to the calendar, whose
