The Pearl
By John Steinbeck
| Day 6 Audio |
The wind blew fierce and strong, and it pelted them with bits of sticks, sand,
and little rocks. Juana and Kino gathered their clothing tighter about them and
covered their noses and went out into the world. The sky was brushed clean by
the wind and the stars were cold in a black sky. The two walked carefully, and
they avoided the center of the town where some sleeper in a doorway might see
them pass. For the town closed itself in against the night, and anyone who moved
about in the darkness would be noticeable. Kino threaded his way around the edge
of the city and turned north, north by the stars, and found the rutted sandy
road that led through the brushy country towards Loreto, where the miraculous
Virgin has her station. Kino could feel the blown sand against his ankles and he
was glad, for he knew there would be no tracks. The little light from the stars
made out for him the narrow road through the brushy country. And Kino could hear
the pad of Juana's feet behind him. He went quickly and quietly, and Juana
trotted behind him to keep up. Some ancient thing stirred in Kino. Through his
fear of dark and the devils that haunt the night, there came a rush of
exhilaration; some animal thing was moving in him so that he was cautious and
wary and dangerous; some ancient thing out of the past of his people was alive
in him. The wind was at his back and the stars guided him. The wind cried and
whisked in the brush, and the family went on monotonously, hour after hour. They
passed no one and saw no one. At last, to their right, the waning moon arose,
and when it came up the wind died down, and the land was still. Now they could
see the little road ahead of them, deep cut with sand-drifted wheel tracks. With
the wind gone there would be footprints, but they were a good distance from the
town and perhaps their tracks might not be noticed. Kino walked carefully in a
wheel-rut, and Juana followed in his path. One big cart, going to the town in
the morning, could wipe out every trace of their passage. All night they walked
and never changed their pace. Once Coyotito awakened, and Juana shifted him in
front of her and soothed him until he went to sleep again. And the evils of the
night were about them. The coyotes cried and laughed in the brush, and the owls
screeched and hissed over their heads. And once some large animal lumbered away,
crackling the undergrowth as it went. And Kino gripped the handle of the big
working knife and took a sense of protection from it. The music of the pearl was
triumphant in Kino's head, and the quiet melody of the family underlay it, and
they wove themselves into the soft padding of sandalled feet in the dust. All
night they walked, and in the first dawn Kino searched the roadside for a covert
to lie in during the day. He found his place near to the road, a little clearing
where deer might have lain, and it was curtained thickly with the dry brittle
trees that lined the road. And when Juana had seated herself and had settled to
nurse the baby, Kino went back to the road. He broke a branch and carefully
swept the footprints where they had turned from the roadway. And then, in the
first light, he heard the creak of a wagon, and he crouched beside the road and
watched a heavy two-wheeled cart go by, drawn by slouching oxen. And when it had
passed out of sight, he went back to the roadway and looked at the rut and found
that the footprints weregone. And again he swept out his traces and went back to
Juana. She gave him the soft corn-cakes Apolonia had packed for them, and after
a while she slept a little. But Kino sat on the ground and stared at the earth
in front of him. He watched the ants moving, a little column of them near to his
foot, and he put his foot in their path. Then the column climbed over his instep
and continued on itsway, and Kino left his foot there and watched them move over
it. The sun arose hotly. They were not near the Gulf now, and the air was dry
and hot so that the brush cricked with heat and a good resinous smell came from
it. And when Juana awakened, when the sun was high, Kino told her things she
knew already. "Beware of that kind of tree there," he said, pointing. "Do not
touch it, for if you do and then touch your eyes, it will blind you. And beware
of the tree that bleeds. See, that one over there. For if you break it the red
blood will flow from it, and it is evil luck." And she nodded and smiled a
little at him, for she knew these things. "Will they follow us?" she asked. "Do
you think they will try to find us?" "They will try," said Kino. "Whoever finds
us will take the pearl. Oh, they will try." And Juana said: "Perhaps the dealers
were right and the pearl has no value. Perhaps this has all been an illusion."
Kino reached into his clothes and brought out the pearl. He let the sun play on
it until it burned in his eyes. "No," he said, "they would not have tried to
steal it if it had been valueless." "Do you know who attacked you? Was it the
dealers?" "I do not know," he said. "I didn't see them." He looked into his
pearl to find his vision. "When we sell it at last, I will have a rifle," he
said, and he looked into the shining surface for his rifle, but he saw only a
huddled dark body on the ground with shining blood dripping from its throat. And
he said quickly: "We will be married in a great church." And in the pearl he saw
Juana with her beaten face crawling home through the night. "Our son must learn
to read," he said frantically. And there in the pearl Coyotito's face, thick and
feverish from the medicine. And Kino thrust the pearl back into his clothing,
and the music of the pearl had become sinister in his ears, and it was
interwoven with the music of evil. The hot sun beat on the earth so that Kino
and Juana moved into the lacy shade of the brush, and small gray birds scampered
on the ground in the shade. In the heat of the day Kino relaxed and covered his
eyes with his hat and wrapped his blanket about his face to keep the flies off,
and he slept. But Juana did not sleep. She sat quiet as a stone and her face was
quiet. Her mouth was still swollen where Kino had struck her, and big flies
buzzed around the cut on her chin. But she sat as still as a sentinel, and when
Coyotito awakened she placed him on the ground in front of her and watched him
wave his arms and kick his feet, and he smiled and gurgled at her until she
smiled too. She picked up a little twig from the ground and tickled him, and she
gave him water from the gourd she carried in her bundle. Kino stirred in a
dream, and he cried out in a guttural voice, and his hand moved in symbolic
fighting. And then he moaned and sat up suddenly, his eyes wide and his nostrils
flaring. He listened and heard only the cricking heat and the hiss of distance.
"What is it?" Juana asked. "Hush," he said. "You were dreaming." "Perhaps." But
he was restless, and when she gave him a corn-cake from her store he paused in
his chewing to listen. He was uneasy and nervous; he glanced over his shoulder;
he lifted the big knife and felt its edge. When Coyotito gurgled on the ground
Kino said: "Keep him quiet." "What is the matter?" Juana asked. "I don't know."
He listened again, an animal light in his eyes. He stood up then, silently; and
crouched low, he threaded his way through the brush towards the road. But he did
not step into the road; he crept into the cover of a thorny tree and peered out
along the way he had come. And then he saw them moving along. His body stiffened
and he drew down his head and peeked out from under a fallen branch. In the
distance he could see three figures, two on foot and one on horseback. But he
knew what they were, and a chill of fear went through him. Even in the distance
he could see the two on foot moving slowly along, bent low to the ground. Here,
one would pause and look at the earth, while the other joined him. They were the
trackers, they could follow the trail of a big horn sheep in the stone
mountains. They were as sensitive as hounds. Here, he and Juana might have
stepped out of the wheel rut, and these people from the inland, these hunters,
could follow, could read a broken straw or a little tumbled pile of dust. Behind
them, on a horse, was a dark man, his nose covered with a blanket, and across
his saddle a rifle gleamed in the sun. Kino lay as rigid as the tree limb. He
barely breathed, and his eyes went to the place where he had swept out the
track. Even the sweeping might be a message to the trackers.
He knew these inland hunters. In a country where there was little game they
managed to live because of their ability to hunt, and they were hunting him.
They scuttled over the ground like animals and found a sign and crouched over it
while the horseman waited. The trackers whined a little, like excited dogs on a
warming trail. Kino slowly drew his big knife to his hand and made it ready. He
knew what he must do. If the trackers found the swept place, he must leap for
the horseman, kill him quickly and take the rifle. That was his only chance in
the world. And as the three drew nearer on the road, Kino dug little pits with
his sandalled toes so that he could leap without warning, so that his feet would
not slip. He had only a little vision under the fallen limb. Now Juana, back in
her hidden place, heard the pad of the horse's hoofs, and Coyotito gurgled. She
took him up quickly and put him under her shawl and gave him her breast and he
was silent. When the trackers came near, Kino could see only their legs and only
the legs of the horse from under the fallen branch. He saw the dark horny feet
of the men and their ragged white clothes, and he heard the creak of leather of
the saddle and the clink of spurs. The trackers stopped at the swept place and
studied it, and the horseman stopped.The horse flung his head up against the bit
and the bit-roller clicked under his tongue and the horse snorted. Then the dark
trackers turned and studied the horse and watched his ears. Kino was not
breathing, but his back arched a little and the muscles of his arms and legs
stood out with tension and a line of sweat formed on his upper lip. For a long
moment the trackers bent over the road, and then they moved on slowly, studying
the ground ahead of them, and the horseman moved after them. The trackers
scuttled along, stopping, looking, and hurrying on. They would be back, Kino
knew. They would be circling and searching, peeping, stopping, and they would
come back sooner or later to his covered track. He slid backward and did not
bother to cover his tracks. He could not; too many little signs were there, too
many broken twigs and scuffed places and displaced stones. And there was a panic
in Kino now, a panic of flight. The trackers would find his trail, he knew it.
There was no escape, except in flight. He edged away from the road and went
quickly and silently to the hidden place where Juana was. She looked up at him
in question. "Trackers," he said. "Come!" And then a helplessness and a
hopelessness swept over him, and his face went black and his eyes were sad.
"Perhaps I should let them take me." Instantly Juana was on her feet and her
hand lay on his arm. "You have the pearl," she cried hoarsely. "Do you think
they would take you back alive to say they had stolen it?"
His hand strayed limply to the place where the pearl was hidden under his
clothes. "They will find it," he said weakly. "Come," she said. "Come!" And when
he did not respond, "Do you think they would let me live? Do you think they
would let the little one here live?" Her goading struck into his brain; his lips
snarled and his eyes were fierce again. "Come," he said. "We will go into the
mountains. Maybe we can lose them in the mountains." Frantically he gathered the
gourds and the little bags that were their property. Kino carried a bundle in
his left hand, but the big knife swung free in his right hand. He parted the
brush for Juana and they hurried to the west, towards the high stone mountains.
They trotted quickly through the tangle of the undergrowth. This was panic
flight. Kino did not try to conceal his passage; he trotted, kicking the stones,
knocking the tell-tale leaves from the little trees. The high sun streamed down
on the dry creaking earth so that even the vegetation ticked in protest. But
ahead were the naked granite mountains, rising out of erosion rubble and
standing monolithic against the sky. And Kino ran for the high place, as nearly
all animals do when they are pursued. This land was waterless, furred with the
cacti which could store water and with the greatrooted brush which could reach
deep into the earth for a little moisture and get along on very little. And
underfoot was not soil but broken rock, split into small cubes, great slabs, but
none of it water-rounded. Little tufts of sad dry grass grew between the stones,
grass that had sprouted with one single rain and headed, dropped its seed, and
died. Horned toads watched the family go by and turned their little pivoting
dragon heads. And now and then a great jack-rabbit, disturbed in his shade,
bumped away and hid behind the nearest rock. The singing heat lay over this
desert country, and ahead the stone mountains looked cool and welcoming. And
Kino fled. He knew what would happen. A little way along the road the trackers
would become aware that they had missed the path, and they would come back,
searching and judging, and in a little while they would find the place where
Kino and Juana had rested. From there it would be easy for them - these little
stones, the fallen leaves and the whipped branches, the scuffed places where a
foot had slipped. Kino could see them in his mind, slipping along the track,
whining a little with eagerness, and behind them, dark and half-interested, the
horseman with the rifle. His work would come last, for he would not take them
back. Oh, the music of evil sang loud in Kino's head now, it sang with the whine
of heat and with the dry ringing of snake rattles. It was not large and
overwhelming now, but secret and poisonous, and the pounding of his heart gave
it undertone and rhythm.
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