The Delicate Prey

by Paul Bowles

  After a meal of fruit and maize cakes, the pastor felt better. The hut was filled with wood smoke from the fire in the corner. He lay back in a low hammock which little Marta, casually pulling on a string from time to time, kept in gentle motion. He was overcome with a desire to sleep, but his host seemed to be in a communicative mood, and he wanted to profit by it. As he was about to speak, Nicolás approached, carrying a rusty tin biscuit box. Squatting beside the hammock he said in a low voice: “I will show you my things.” The pastor was delighted; this bespoke a high degree of friendliness. Nicolás opened the box and took out some sample-size squares of printed cloth, an old vial of quinine tablets, a torn strip of newspaper, and four copper coins. He gave the pastor time to examine each carefully. At the bottom of the box were a good many orange and blue feathers which Nicolás did not bother to take out. The pastor realized that he was seeing the treasures of the household, that these items were rare objects of art. He looked at each thing with great seriousness handing it back with a verbal expression of admiration. Finally he said: “Thank you,” and fell back into the hammock. Nicolás returned the box to the women sitting in the corner. When he came back over to the pastor he said: “Now we sleep.”

  “Nicolás,” asked the pastor, “is Metzabok bad?”

  “Bai, señor. Sometimes very bad. Like a small child. When he does not get what he wants right away, he makes fires, fever, wars. He can be very good, too, when he is happy. You should speak with him every day. Then you will know him.”

  “But you never speak with him.”

  “Bai, we do. Many do, when they are sick or unhappy. They ask him to take away the trouble. I never speak with him,” Nicolas looked pleased, “Because Hachakyum is my good friend and I do not need Metzabok. Besides, Metzabok’s home is far—three hours’ walk. I can speak with Hachakyum here.” The pastor knew he meant the little altar outside. He nodded and fell asleep.

  The village in the early morning was a chaos of shrill sounds: dogs, parrots and cockatoos, babies, turkeys. The pastor lay still in his hammock awhile listening, before he was officially wakened by Nicolás. “We must go now, señor,” he said. “Everyone is waiting for you.”

  The pastor sat up, a little bit alarmed. “Where?” he cried.

  “You speak and make music today.”

  “Yes, yes.” He had quite forgotten it was Sunday.

  The pastor was silent, walking beside Nicolás up the road to the mission. The weather had changed, and the early sun was very bright. “I have been fortified by my experience,” he was thinking. His head was clear; he felt amazingly healthy. The unaccustomed sensation of vigor gave him a strange nostalgia for the days of his youth. “I must always have felt like this then. I remember it,” he thought.

  At the mission there was a great crowd—many more people than he had ever seen attend a sermon at Tacaté. They were chatting quietly, but when he and Nicolas appeared there was an immediate hush. Mateo was standing in the pavilion waiting for him, with the phonograph open. With a pang the pastor realized he had not prepared a sermon for his flock. He went into the house for a moment, and returned to seat himself at the table in the pavilion, where he picked up his Bible. He had left his few notes in the book, so that it opened to the seventy-eighth Psalm. “I shall read them that,” he decided. He turned to Mateo. “Play the disco,” he said. Mateo put on “Crazy Rhythm.” The pastor quickly made a few pencil alterations in the text of the psalm, substituting the names of minor local deities, like Usukun and Sibanaa for such names as Jacob and Ephraim, and local place names for Israel and Egypt. And he wrote the word Hachakyum each time the word God or the Lord appeared. He had not finished when the record stopped. “Play it again,” he commanded. The audience was delighted, even though the sound was abominably scratchy. When the music was over for the second time, he stood and began to paraphrase the psalm in a clear voice. “The children of Sibanaa, carrying bows to shoot, ran into the forest to hide when the enemy came. They did not keep their promises to Hachakyum, and they would not live as He told them to live.” The audience was electrified. As he spoke, he looked down and saw the child Marta staring up at him. She had let go of her baby alligator, and it was crawling with a surprising speed toward the table where he sat. Quintina, Mateo, and the two maids were piling up the bars of salt on the ground to one side. They kept returning to the kitchen for more. He realized that what he was saying doubtless made no sense in terms of his listeners’ religion, but it was a story of the unleashing of divine displeasure upon an unholy people, and they were enjoying it vastly. The alligator, trailing its rags, had crawled to within a few inches of The pastor’s feet, where it remained quiet, content to be out of Marta’s arms.

  Presently, while he was still speaking, Mateo began to hand out the salt, and soon they all were running their tongues rhythmically over the large rough cakes, but continuing to pay strict attention to his words. When he was about to finish, he motioned to Mateo to be ready to start the record again the minute he finished; on the last word he lowered his arm as a signal, and “Crazy Rhythm” sounded once more. The alligator began to crawl hastily toward the far end of the pavilion. Pastor Dowe bent down and picked it up. As he stepped forward to hand it to Mateo, Nicolás rose from the ground, and taking Marta by the hand, walked over into the pavilion with her.

  “Señor,” he said, “Marta will live with you. I give her to you.”

  “What do you mean?” cried the pastor in a voice which cracked a little. The alligator squirmed in his hand.

  “She is your wife. She will live here.”

  Pastor Dowe’s eyes grew very wide. He was unable to say anything for a moment. He shook his hands in the air and finally he said: “No” several times.

  Nicolás’ face grew unpleasant. “You do not like Marta?”

  “Very much. She is beautiful.” The pastor sat down slowly on his chair. “But she is a little child.”

  Nicolás frowned with impatience. “She is already large.”

  “No, Nicolás. No. No.”

  Nicolás pushed his daughter forward and stepped back several paces, leaving her there by the table. “It is done,” he said sternly. “She is your wife. I have given her to you.”

  Pastor Dowe looked out over the assembly and saw the unspoken approval in all the faces. “Crazy Rhythm” ceased to play. There was silence. Under the mango tree he saw a woman toying with a small, shiny object. Suddenly he recognized his glasses case; the woman was stripping the leatheroid fabric from it. The bare aluminum with its dents flashed in the sun. For some reason even in the middle of this situation he found himself thinking: “So I was wrong. It is not dead. She will keep it, the way Nicolás has kept the quinine tablets.”

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

  Again he began to protest. “Nicolás,” 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.

  Nicolás 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 Nicolás with great feeling. “You cannot send her away. You must keep her.”

  “Diga que sí,” Mateo was whispering. “Say yes, señor.”

  “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 ter
rible. Wit h 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?”

  “Sí, señor.”

  “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 Nicolás,” 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, señor. 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. Wit h 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 Tacaté. 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 Corazón

  “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 written: “Recipe for dissolving the impression of hideousness made by a thing: Fix the attention upon the given object or situation so that the various elements, all familiar, will regroup themselves. Frightfulness is never more than an unfamiliar pattern.”

  He lit a cigarette and watched the women’s hopeless attempts to launder the ragged garments. Then he threw the burning stub at the nearest crab, and carefully wrote: “More than anything else, woman requires strict ritualistic observance of the traditions of sexual behavior. That is her definition of love.” He thought of the derision that would be called forth should he make such a statement to the girl back on the ship. After looking at his watch, he wrote hurriedly: “Modem, that is, intellectual education, having been devised by males for males, inhibits and confuses her. She avenges . . .”

  Two naked children, coming up from their play in the river, ran screaming past him, scattering drops of water over the paper. He called out to them, but they continued their chase without noticing him. He put his pencil and notebook into his pocket, smiling, and watched them patter after one another through the dust.

  When he arrived back at the ship, the thunder was rolling down from the mountains around the harbor. The storm reached the height of its hysteria just as they got under way.

  She was sitting on her bunk, looking through the o
pen port-hole. The shrill crashes of thunder echoed from one side of the bay to the other as they steamed toward the open sea. He lay doubled up on his bunk opposite, reading.

  “Don’t lean your head against that metal wall,” he advised. “It’s a perfect conductor.”

  She jumped down to the floor and went to the washstand,

  “Where are those two quarts of Whit e Horse we got yesterday?”

  He gestured. “In the rack on your side. Ate you going to drink?”

  “I’m going to have a drink, yes.”

  “In this heat? Why don’t you wait until it clears, and have it on deck?”

  “I want it now. When it clears I won’t need it.”

  She poured the whisky and added water from the carafe in the wall bracket over the washbowl.

  “You realize what you’re doing, of course.”

  She glared at him. “What am I doing?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing, except just giving in to a passing emotional state. You could read, or lie down and doze.”

  Holding her glass in one hand, she pulled open the door into the passageway with the other, and went out. The noise of the slamming door startled the monkey, perched on a suitcase. It hesitated a second, and hurried under its master’s bunk. He made a few kissing sounds to entice it out, and returned to his book. Soon he began to imagine her alone and unhappy on the deck, and the thought cut into the pleasure of his reading. He forced himself to lie still a few minutes, the open book face down across his chest. The boat was moving at full speed now, and the sound of the motors was louder than the storm in the sky.

  Soon he rose and went on deck. The land behind was already hidden by the falling rain, and the air smelled of deep water. She was standing alone by the rail, looking down at the waves, with the empty glass in her hand. Pity seized him as he watched, but he could not walk across to her and put into consoling words the emotion he felt.