The Night Visitor

by B. TRAVEN

  “Now, compadre, come, come. Don’t try to sell me that,” the dinner guest clattered, making visible efforts to smile. “Out with the truth. I can bear it. You said ‘For one thing’ when you started explaining. Now tell me the other thing as well. I can stand the truth.”

  “All right then,” Macario said quietly. “You see, compadre, I realized the very moment I saw you standing before me that I would not have any time left to eat as little as one leg, let alone the whole turkey. So I said to myself, as long as he eats too, I will be able to eat, and so I made it fifty-fifty.”

  The visitor turned his deep eyeholes in great surprise upon his host. Then he started grinning and soon he broke into a thundering laughter which sounded like heavy clubs drumming a huge empty barrel. “By the great Jupiter, compadre, you are a shrewd one, indeed you are. I cannot remember having met such a clever and quick-witted man for a long time. You deserve, you truly and verily deserve to be selected by me for a little service, a little service which will make my lonely existence now and then less boresome to me. You see, compadre, I like playing jokes on men now and then as my mood will have it. Jokes that don’t hurt anybody, and they amuse me and help me to feel that my job is, somehow, less unproductive, if you know what I mean.”

  “I guess I know how you mean it.”

  “Do you know what I am going to do so as to pay honestly for the dinner you offered me?”

  “What, compadre? Oh, please, sir, your lordship, don’t make me your assistant. Not that, please, anything else you wish, but not your helper.”

  “I don’t need an assistant and I have never had one. No, I have another idea. I shall make you a doctor, a great doctor who will outwit all those haughty learned physicians and superspecialists who are always playing their nasty little tricks with the idea that they can put one over on me. That’s what I am going to do: make you a doctor. And I promise you that your roast turkey shall be paid for a millionfold.”

  Speaking thus he rose, walked some twenty feet away, looked searchingly at the ground, at that time of the year dry and sandy, and called back: “Compadre, bring your guaje bottle over here. Yes, I mean that bottle of yours which looks as though it were of some strange variety of pumpkin. But first pour out all the water which is still in it.”

  Macario obeyed and came close to where his guest waited for him. The visitor spat seven times upon the dry ground, remained quiet for a few minutes and then, all of a sudden, crystal-clear water sputtered out of that sandy soil.

  “Hand me your bottle,” the Bone Man said.

  He knelt down by the little pool just forming and with one hand spooned up the water and poured it into Macario’s guaje bottle. This procedure took quite some time, for the mouth of the bottle was extremely small.

  When the bottle, which held about a quart, was full, the Bone Man, still kneeling by the pool, tapped the soil with one hand and the water immediately disappeared from view.

  “Let’s go back to our eating place, compadre,” the visitor suggested.

  Once more they sat down together. The Bone Man handed Macario the bottle. “This liquid in your bottle will make you the greatest doctor known in the present century. One drop of this fluid will cure any sickness, and I include any sickness known as a fatal and as an incurable one. But mind, and mind well, compadre, once the last drop is gone, there will be no more of that medicine and your curing power will exist no longer.”

  Macario was not at all excited over that great gift. “I don’t know if I should take that present from you. You see, compadre, I’ve been happy in my own way. True it is that I’ve been hungry always all though my life; always I’ve been tired, always been struggling with no end in view. Yet that’s the way with people in my position. We accept that life because it was given us. It’s for that reason that we feel happy in our way—because we always try making the best of something very bad and apparently hopeless. This turkey we ate together today has been the very peak of my life’s ambition. I never wanted to go up higher in all my desires than to have one roast turkey with all the trimmings and fillings all for myself, and be allowed to eat it in peace and all alone with no hungry children’s eyes counting every little bite going into my hungry stomach.”

  “That’s just why. You didn’t have your roast turkey all by yourself. You gave me half of it, and so your life’s ambition is still not accomplished.”

  “You know, compadre, that I had no choice in that matter.”

  “I suppose you are right. Anyway, whatever the reason, your one and only desire in this world has not yet been satisfied. You must admit that. So, if you wish to buy another turkey without waiting for it another fifteen or twenty years, you will have to cure somebody to get the money with which to buy that turkey.”

  “I never thought of that,” Macario muttered, as if speaking to himself. “I surely must have a whole roast turkey all for myself, come what may, or I’ll die a most unhappy man.”

  “Of course, compadre, there are a few more things which you ought to know before we part for a while.”

  “Yes, what is it, tell me.”

  “Wherever you are called to a patient you will see me there also.”

  On hearing that, unprepared as he was for the catch, Macario got the shivers.

  “Don’t get frightened, compadre, no one else will see me; and mind you well what I am going to tell you now. If you see me standing at your patient’s feet, just put one drop of your medicine into a cup or glass of fresh water, make him drink it, and before two days are gone he will be all right again, sane and sound for a good long time to come.”

  “I understand,” Macario nodded pensively.

  “But if,” the Bone Man continued, “you see me standing at your patient’s head, do not use the medicine; for if you see me standing thus, he will die no matter what you do and regardless of how many brilliant doctors attempt to snatch him away from me. In that case do not use the medicine I gave you because it will be wasted and be only a loss to you. You must realize, compadre, that this divine power to select the one that has to leave the world—while some other, be he old or a scoundrel, shall continue on earth—this power of selection I cannot transfer to a human being who may err or become corrupt. That’s why the final decision in each particular case must remain with me, and you must obey and respect my selection.”

  “I won’t forget that, sir,” Macario answered.

  “You had better not. Well, now, compadre, let us say good-bye. The dinner was excellent, exquisite I should call it, if you understand that word. I must admit, and I admit it with great pleasure, that I have had an enjoyable time in your company. By all means, that dinner you gave me will restore my strength for another hundred years. Would that when my need for another meal is as urgent as it was today, I may find as generous a host as you have been. Much obliged, compadre. A thousand thanks. Good-bye.”

  “Good-bye, compadre.”

  Macario spoke as though he were waking from a heavy dream, yet immediately he realized that he had not been dreaming.

  Before him on the ground were the well-picked bones of that half turkey which his guest had eaten with so much delight.

  Mechanically he cleaned up all the morsels which had dropped and stuffed them into his mouth, so that nothing should be wasted, all the while trying to find the meaning of the several adventures that were crammed into the limited space of his mind.

  The thing most difficult for him to understand was how it had been possible for him to talk so much and talk what he believed was very clever as, in his opinion, only a learned man could do. But then he knew that when in the woods he always had very clever thoughts; only at home in the presence of his wife and children he had no thoughts whatever and his mouth was as if glued and it cost him much labor to get out of it one full sentence.

  Soon he got tired and presently lay down under a tree to sleep the rest of the day, as he had promised himself that he would after his holiday dinner.

  No fuel did he bring back that nigh
t.

  His wife had not a red cent in the house with which to buy food the next day.

  Yet she did not reproach him for having been lazy, as in fact she never criticized anything he did or did not. The truth was that she felt immensely happy to be alive. For, during the day, and about noon, when she was busy in the yard washing the children’s rags, a strange golden ray which, so it appeared, came not from the sun, but from an unknown source, had touched her whole body, while at the same time she had heard inside her heart a sweet music as if played by a huge organ from far, far above the earth.

  From that moment on and all the whole day she had felt as though lifted from the ground, and her mind had been at peace as she could not remember having ever felt before. Nothing of this phenomenon did she tell her husband. She kept it to herself like a very sacred property all her own.

  When she served supper there was still some reflection of that golden ray visible on her face.

  Even her husband noted it on giving her a casual glance. But he said nothing, for he was still heavily occupied with his own fortunes of the day.

  Before he went to sleep that night, later than usual, for he had slept well during the day out in the woods, his wife asked him timidly: “How was the turkey, dear husband?”

  “What do you think was the matter with it since you ask me how it was? What do you mean? Was there something wrong with it? It was quite all right as far as I could judge, with the little experience I’ve had eating roast turkey.”

  With not a single word did he mention his visitors.

  When he had turned about to go to his cot, she looked at him, watching his face sidewise and thoughtfully. Something was new in him, something had come over him. Never before had he talked that much to her at one breath.

  Next day was a hungry one for the whole family. Their breakfast, including that of Macario’s, was always lean. Yet this morning his wife had to make it smaller still, for it had to be stretched into two more meals.

  Soon Marcario was through with the few mouthfuls of black beans seasoned with green chili and a pot of atole for a drink. Complain he did not because he realized that the blame was on him.

  He took up his machete, his ax and his ropes and stepped out into the misty morning.

  Considering the way he went about his usual hard task of chopping wood, he might as well have forgotten about the precious medicine and all that went with it.

  Only a few paces had he gone when his wife called after him: “Husband, your water bottle.”

  This reminded him like a flash that the whole adventure of the day before might after all not have been a dream but reality. Last night, on thinking of the happenings, he had reached the conclusion that it might have been but sort of an imagination caused by a stomach not used to being filled up with roast turkey.

  “It’s still full of water,” the wife said, bringing the guaje bottle out and shaking it. “Shall I pour the old water out and put in fresh water?” she asked, while playing with the cork cut from a corn cob.

  “Yes, I know, woman, it’s still full,” Macario answered, not a bit afraid that his wife might be too hasty and spill the miraculous liquid away. “Yesterday I drank from the little brook. Just give me the bottle full as it is. The water is good; I got it out there in the woods.”

  On his way to work and some fair distance away from his hut which was the last at this side of the village, he hid the bottle in dense bushes, partly covering it with soil.

  That night he brought home one of the biggest loads of heavy fine dry fuel such as he had not delivered for many months. It was sold at three bits, a price unheard of, and was sold that same night on the first call the older boy made. So the family felt like having come into a million.

  Next day Macario went about his job as usual.

  On the night before he had told his wife casually that he had broken his guaje bottle because a heavy trunk had dropped upon it, and she had to give him another one of the several they kept in the house. These bottles cost them nothing, for the older boys discovered them growing wild in the bush somewhere.

  Again he brought home that night a good load of chopped wood, yet this time he found his family in a pitiful distress.

  His wife, her face swollen, her eyes red from long crying, rushed at him the moment he came in. “Reginito is dying, my poor little baby, Regino, will be gone in a halfhour,” and she broke into heartbreaking lamentation, tears streaming down her face.

  Helplessly and stupidly he looked at her the way he always looked if something in the house happened which was out of the gloomy routine by which this home of his was run. When his wife stepped aside, he noted that there were present several neighbors, all women, partly standing, partly squatting close to the cot on which the child had been bedded.

  His was the poorest family in the village, yet they were among the best liked for their questions, their honesty, their modesty, and because of that unearned virtue that the poor are always liked better than the rich anywhere and by everybody.

  Those women, in their neighborly zeal to help the so very poor Macario, and on hearing of the child’s being sick, had brought with them all sorts of herbs, roots, bits of bark as used by the villagers in cases of sickness. The village had no doctor and no drug store and for that reason, perhaps, it also had no undertaker.

  Every woman had brought a different kind of medicinal herb or remedy. And every one of the women made a different suggestion as to what should be done to save the child. For hours that little creature had been tortured with scores of different treatments and had been given teas brewed from roots, herbs and ground snake bones mixed with a powder obtained from charred toads.

  “He ate too much,” one woman said, seeing his father coming to the child’s bed.

  “His bowels are all twisted up, there’s no help,” another one corrected the first one.

  “Wrong, compadre, it’s an infection of the stomach, he is done for.”

  The one next to her observed: “We’ve done everything possible, he can’t live another hour. One of our kids died the same way. I know it. I can see by his little shrunken face that he is winged already for his flight to heaven, little angel, poor little angel.” She broke into a loud sob.

  Not in the least minding the women’s chatter, Macario looked at his little son whom he seemed to love best of all as he was the youngest of the bunch. He liked his innocent smile and felt happy in his way when the little tyke would now and then sit on his lap for a few minutes and play with his tiny fingers upon the man’s face. Often it occurred to Macario that the only reason for being alive rested with the fact that there always would be a little baby around the house smiling at him innocently and beating his nose and cheeks with his little fists.

  The child was dying; no doubt of that. The mirror held by a woman before the baby’s mouth showed no mark of breath. His heartbeat could practically no longer be noted by one or the other woman who would press her ear upon the child’s chest.

  The father stood there and gazed at his baby without knowing whether he ought to step closer still and touch the little face or remain where he was, or say something to his wife or to one of the other women, or talk to the children who were timidly crowded into one corner of the room where they all sat as if they were guilty of the baby’s misfortune. They had had no dinner and they felt sure there would be no supper tonight as their mother was in a horrible state of mind.

  Macario turned slowly about, walked to the door and went out into the darkness of the night.

  Not knowing what to do or where to go since his home was all in a turmoil, tired as he was from his very hard day’s labor, and feeling as though he were to sink down on his knees, he took, as if automatically, the path which led to the woods—his realm where he was sure to find the quiet of which he was so badly in need.

  Arriving at the spot where, in the early morning, he had buried the guaje bottle, he stopped, searched for the exact place, took out the bottle, and quicker than he had moved in ma
ny years ran back to his hut.

  “Give me a cup filled with fresh clean water,” he ordered in a loud and determined voice on opening the door.

  His wife hurried as if given new hope, and in a few seconds she brought an earthen cup of water.

  “Now, folks, you leave the room. Get out of here, all of you, and leave me alone with that son of mine. I’ll see what I can do about it.”

  “No use, Macario, can’t you see he has only a few minutes left? You’d better kneel down and say the prayers with us while he is breathing his last, so that his soul may be saved,” one of the women told him.

  “You heard what I said and you do as you’ve been advised,” he said, sharply cutting off any further protest.

  Never before had his wife heard him speak in such a harsh, commanding manner. Almost afraid of him, she urged the women out of the hut.

  They were all gone.

  Macario closed the door behind them, turned to the cot, and when he looked up he saw his bony dinner guest standing opposite him, the cot with the child in it between the two.

  The visitor stared at him out of his deep dark holes he had for eyes, hesitated, shrugged, and slowly, as though still weighing his decision, moved toward the baby’s feet, remaining there for the next few seconds while the father poured a generous dose of the medicine into the cup filled with water.