But I heard a dog and I heard footbeats crushing through the vines. I crawled off fast and got into a big tight bush wound like a ball of baling wire and curled up in the very center. This is where I have told you the sweet Junipero Perro come to touch me farewell with his warm tongue. I don know where Chupa went or how she hid herself; but don worry they didn’t find her. She could vanish under a flat rock, slide like a snake. A supreme disappearing act was my mother, the gypsy, the tramp, the runaway bitch left me behind long ago, just couldn’t stay with anybody or anything, not even her own, always had to leave something, even a piece of her own body, an artist of magical vanishment, now you saw her now you didn’t, not for half your lifetime you didn’t, not for half your lifetime. What were you afraid of, bitch mother, Chupa, mi madre, Madrequerida? I cried out to myself God deliver me of this rage on my mother! Oh I miss the Show and I may go back. I don know.
In a little while it was all quiet again, my hunters had gone, my darling Perrito had not ratted on me, and I emerged from the ball of weed my hiding place. No trace of mi madre. Gone again, I said. But in a moment more my eyes saw a dark figure and twas the woman herself. It was pitch midnight; no moonlight sparkled her. I swear to God she’d know how to turn off the moon if she had to, if moon shone on her and led somebody to find and catch her. She come to me. Lay down again, she said. My son. On your mother’s breast and sleep. Tell me what you’ve done, I sternly said. I wan no more sleep till I hear what you’ve done. They was looking for you, not your mother, she answered. Because I excaped. For you, I snarled. Tell me your story of what you did, where you’ve been, I demanded quietly. Or I’ll never lay on your breast again. What happened? Madre mia, mi madre.
6
The White Bible
BUT BEFORE I TELL you my mother Chupa’s story as she told it to me, I want to interrupt, or interfere, is that the word, something wonderful that come to me. I come upon a wondrous book with wondrous stories I keep tellin ever since I read them. Twas a little Mescan Bible fresh white when twas handed long ago to me as I sat in the gazing Show. A hand reached out to me and handed it to me. I could not see the face whose was that face that give the wondrous book to me—who was it oh who was it? In my glass jewel wagon I read the wondrous stories, of course tis yellowed now with the years and with handlin and from bein in the inside of my pocket where it rests to this day against my flesh when I’m not readin it, the little white Mescan Bible, I do not know the person who handed me the White Bible written in Mescan and never saw the face, who was it oh who was it; but the hand that reached out the white book to me handed me out my feelings of life, and my salvation, and many words, just the most wonderful stories in the whole world, though I had not read any other book ever in my life I know that this is so. But to tell the truth I never read a word until the hand handed me La Biblia Blanca, oh I could tell some palabras words that the women taught me in the China Boy but I never had much time to read even if I could, unless twas written on the flesh of a body. And I wrote ARCADIO my name. But to tell the truth I never read a word that twas not with the help of Eddy Gonzales the atheist Mescan Dwarft that did not believe in God. The nights in the chow tent and the nights in the glass wagon with the Dwarft areading me the stories was the starting of my life. I have not time to tell all the stories to you. I can tell you them almost as they was written down. Eddy was amazed that I could read em out almost exactly like they was written down and look up to the next page right on time, Dwarft said he was astounded. Guess I become a storyteller more than a reader.
I learned también from the tales outrageous that whores told, back in the China Boy. While other kids sat in school. A special one was a grand queen whore from Newark—said she was part Greek—and that her madre had been the principal of a school. Edna Pappas loved words more than anything. When she wasn’t on her back she was reading a book—and even while she was, sometimes; she would crook around her head and study her ceiling, even though it jumped sometimes when her customer john was abouncing. When she said to him easy mister it was because he was interfering with her reading. The johns didn’t know that she wrote on the ceiling over her bed the words that she was learning for that week, printed in grande letters. Every week she printed out a new list, her big ass up on a ladder while I held it. Oh we had fun. If a john shifted positions and looked up, what he might see if he held his eyes open would be a big word, like AD-MIR-ABLE or PRO-CRAS-TI-NATE. These are only a few of Edna Pappases words and some which I learned, among many others. Edna Pappas was improving herself for when she would one day get out of the China Boy. I wanted to do the same: the telling of tales fantásticos was what I wanted and the using of grande words, palabras. But for a long time I got off on the wrong track into a Show where I could not use my words but have to sit like a dumb ox, as you know, Oyente, but still—what I learned from Edna Pappas—I put my secret study words on a big boxtop down in front of me and nobody ever knew that I was learning them, I didn’t even move my lips when I practiced them; sometimes if I did mouth a word the gazers thought I was apraying or talking to myself like a crazy person, when all I was doing was saying a divided-up word like Edna Pappas showed me to, sílabas, syllables. In this way I was getting myself ready for the world, to tell tales, la grandeza is what I wanted, la extrañeza, la belleza, you wan hear? My teachers I will always thank, one taught me from the ceiling of a whorehouse, one from a Bible, and one to tell tales fantásticos with tongue of tin or silver. Once I excaped, as you well know, Oyente, I used what was taught to me, the telling of tales and the using of words. I have talked off my head—which is a peculiar espression, if you wan think about it, to talk off a head. Edna Pappases brother Silvestro Pappas came almost every day to have a beautiful poet’s conversation with his sister when she wasn’t on her back, Silvestro Pappas was a poet, full of some bullshit but his tongue was a silver angel’s tongue and a liar’s tin one, too, and a bitter one, and suave and mean—demonio—but he told tales fantásticos. I listened and I learned un poco how to speak like Silvestro Pappas and to get the rough Mejicano sound of my ancestors out of my mouth, I wanted to speak big habla, to be suave in my speaking like Silvestro Pappas and to have the words like his sister Edna. I will tell, he said, you cocksuckers, about the five trees in a hidden canyon of Montana which remain undisturbed summer and winter and whose leaves do not fall. Whoever sees them will not experience death. I, Arcadio, have memorized this, do you hear how good is my habla, Oyente, do you hear how good is my grande speaking, just as I have learned by my heart the stories to read in La Biblia Blanca. Edna Pappas said him you will take me there to those trees when I have one thousand dollars in my sock. Unless, said Silvestro to his sister, you will have grown so old. That’s why, answered Edna Pappas, I have to work very hard and with only rich johns. But Edna Pappas never got out of the China Boy to go to Montana to the hidden five trees, you wan hear? She waited too long. I used to tell her you better go now Edna Pappas and not PRO-CRAS-TI-NATE, but she kept waiting. I need one thousand dollars in my sock before I go, she said. But in a fight with her own brother she was stabbed by him under her tongue in her throat. Shut up! Silvestro yelled. Stop your goddamned words! Edna Pappases words was not stopped, though, but stayed on the ceiling because no one ever knew they was there but me. She was in the M’s at the time of her stabbing. This was the immortality of Edna Pappas—palabras grandiosas on the ceiling of the China Boy, in a house of whores on a whore wharf.
When the white book was handed to me I went with it to Eddy and said what is this book? The Bible said he. The word written down of God. Show me how to read it I said. Eddy was not courteous to do it and besides since he was un ateo atheist; but I said you are my friend how did you read who learned you how to read? And Eddy said what good did it do me? Por favor Eddy I says, for your mother’s sake. Her? said Eddy. Eddy was so bitter at everything. But he loved me and I give him the promise of tenderness, to touch me sometime because I knew how lonesome the pore Dwarft was and how he loved me, and bec
ause he could read. As a swap for reading out to me I let him handle me. Eddy was a hot little lonely Dwarft and I loved God and wanted to read his words. That was the bargain.
Our first lesson went sweet and I listened to the Dwarft read right out about the making of the world, of the moon and of the stars and waters. His little goose voice. He was surprising gentle when we studied reading together, surprising sweet and did have la paciencia. But he would not believe the stories of the book, he said. Why you hate God so much? I asked him. God is posiblemente a Dwarft, had you ever thought? Eddy Gonzales laughed so much and rolled like a clown and rocked his big head in his little hands and then stopped quiet and said, and maybe He is a half-man half-woman, and rolled and laughed and rocked his big head some more; and when he stopped I says, maybe. What’s so fuckin funny?
At night when the Show was through and I was alone in my wagon with Junipero Perro the sweet white Mescan jumping dog, I told out from my Biblia Blanca as if I was areading it. I got más y más astounded, more and more. Junipero Perro was a very quiet oyente listener. God may be a white Mescan jumping dog, I says to him. And as the Show rode all day on the road toward another town, I told out from the white book like Eddy had read it to me. Sometimes I read out from it to my friends Eddy and Josie Ella in the chow tent, but of course not the old Shanks. Sometimes they intently listened, sometimes they was restless. I told them they could never set still like I had to in the Show. You jump and roll all over, I told Eddy the Dwarft, you don know about staying still; and you, I said, Josie Ella, you thrash and fling at your xylophone. I have to stay still, in the gazing stillness. Now let me read out and let me make some sound from my throat, for God’s sake, I am not a mudo I have a tongue and can speak. But Eddy the Dwarft answered to me tell it in church I am an atheist why would I want to believe in a God that made a Dwarft with one of his hands like the fin of a fuckin fish? Well I says this is God’s world and he hath made it, this white book has told me so and in Mescan so He made the Mescans too and He made the combinations and mixtures, mestizos of a dark and secret kind. Why not the Dwarfts? You got a better thing, said Eddy. Of course you can praise God and read out of the Bible. I drag my butt on the ground when I walk and have a fish’s fin for a goddam hand. And my friend Josie Ella was igualmente not interested. She was a plain woman—when she took off the silvery wig—that sewed at night in the kitchen tent after the Show, drinking black coffee. She did not want to go to sleep for fear that her hands would harden. Besides she said Flora the lady cook that shared her wagon smelt of Irish potatoes. But once when she put too much brandy in the black coffee she told me that the reason she would not sleep was because she was afraid to die. She slept in cat sleeps in the kitchen sittin up. As long as I knew Josie Ella she had not finished somethin she was sewing on, she made so many mistakes and had to unravel. But she told us that she had to keep her hands movin all the time could not let them harden, for the xylophone of the Show; yet she made many a mistake and Shanks cursed at her and said twas because of all the black coffee and no sleep on her back, pore Josie Ella had her problems, too, like the rest of all of us.
Some of the wondrous things that I read out was about the big lions standing back from Daniel and did not bite or eat him, can you believe it, amigo? God sent an angel that shut the lions’ mouths. The feroz lions was so impressed with the angel that they looked upon him with gentleness. Look there in the book and you will read it, Oyente, listener, you will see. La Biblia dice que sí. I said this to Emperor Colombo the “Lion Tamer” (ha! I have to laugh) that worked in the Show with old Heracles I told this wondrous story to him and Emperor Colombo said I don’t give a shit. And oh of the proud King that ate grass for seven years. Says that his body was wet with dew of the grass and his hair grew long as eagle’s feathers and his nails, the King’s nails, was like birds’ claws. El rey orgulloso, the proud King become a beast of the field and ate grass with the oxen, for his nasty pride. If you don believe me look in there, in La Biblia and you’ll see it, what I’m tellin, you’ll read it, amigo, La Biblia dice que sí. The Bible says so. Pero some do not believe. Unless, they say, I can see in his hands the print of the nails, I will not believe, see los manos perforados con clavos and put my finger into the print of the nails, I will not believe, and thrust my hand into his side, into el costado perforado con lanzas, with the swords his side was cut open, I will not believe (John 20:24). Well, then, behold my hands, says Jesucristo; reach out your finger and touch my hands; and reach hither thy hand and thrust it into my side, he said in the book. Because you’ve seen me, now you believe. But blessed are they that have not seen and yet believe, Mire los manos perforados con clavos, mire los pies perforados con clavos, mire el costado perforado con lanzas, mire el frente perforado con espinas. Mire el cuerpo de Jesucristo. Here is the body of Jesus Christ.
And says that there was once upon a time a stranger that nobody knew come into a rich town and nobody would give him any hospitalidad, closed their door on him when he knocked and asked for hospitality. Finalmente some poor people that were thrown out by the rich and selfish town that would not give welcome to strange visitors, por ultimo these poor outcasts of the barrio took him in and give him shelter. And in the middle of the night twas a terrible earthquake and storm of fire and when the poor people run to where the strange guest was sleeping they saw that he was a beautiful angel and the angel said do not have fear but follow me out of this damned town of inhospitalidad which is going to be blown up and burned down because of its sin of inhospitalidad. And they followed out the angel from the town to the top of a hill and heard a great esplosion and turned and looked down upon the town burnin and blowin up to destruction. If you do not believe this story, look there, in the Bible, and you’ll see it, what I’m tellin you, you’ll read it. Be kind to strangers and take them in and do not turn away strangers who knock on your door and give them somethin to eat if they ask for it and give them shelter, they may be a very angel. La Biblia, La Biblia Blanca dice que sí. So compadre, Oyente, if anybody does not welcome you, turn and go away from them and shake the dust of their house and of their town and of them off your feet and go on your path to where you are agoin. This is what the Bible tells us.
And if I could tell one more, about the pool of water that the angel troubled and then it cured the affliction of the afflicted; but that a paralyzed man laid there by the pool for thirty-eight years waiting for this angel to move the waters, waitin for the movin of the water. Because he had no one to help him into the waters when they moved and others pushed in front of him, this paralyzed man never could get into the healing waters. When Jesucristo come and heard this man’s story he told him to just forget trying to get into the water and just to get up and take his cot and walk and not wait on the water. The man did this and walked off with his cot, to his amazement. But the policía of the town arrested him for carrying his bed in the street on the Sabbath and then the man said but I’ve been paralyzed on this cot for thirty-eight years and today a man come and healed me up on my feet from this very damned cot. Who is this man? the policía asked, and the man said I don know, he left. Tell it to the judge, the policía said and led the once-paralyzed man on off, awalking, towards the judge. But then they saw a man acomin and it was the man and the once-paralyzed man said yonder he is that’s the one, and when the policía asked the man if he was the one and he said yes and they said what is your name the man said Jesucristo, this man has been forgiven of his sins and now walks, let him alone. And to the man he said go on, now, you are free, and be of help to others. And finally to la policía he said the spirit heals but the letter killeth. I do not know esactly what that means but I get the gist. But you can read it in the book I’m tellin you about, this is what the Bible says, La Biblia dice que sí, that Eddy Gonzales the Mescan Dwarft learned me to tell out of, almost as if I was areading it.
7
My Mother Chupa’s Song, Interrupted by a Little of Mine
NOW TO GET BACK TO where I left off, to tell m
y mother’s story as twas told by her to me on the night of my excape. Chupa said that she run away from my father Hombre crazy from his drunkenness and his mean violence on her. One night said she just run crazy out the door into the night, didn’t know where, didn’t care. My father tore her dress off her back trying to keep her but my mother Chupa run on. She run down the dark road and stopped by a pond and climbed up into a tree and curled in there to hide in the deep tree, and said she heard all night the terrible sobbing of the bullfrogs in the pond. Because she loved my papá Hombre, she said, and always would. He was a man nobody could ever leave, just get away from. I’ve never let him go in my heart but had to get away, big sonafobitch cabrón tearing me to pieces and biting at my neck like a big snake. I felt like a big snake had a hold of me, she told me. I ought to know what kind of a snake he was, I said. Maybe I’ll tell you my story of him. Lived with him longer than you did. What else could I do? Chupa asked me from so deep in her throat I couldn’t almost hear her. Su padre era un hombre bárbaro, made you on me when was loco from uppers and beer. Where was it? I wanted to know. The room was in a Texas river town in a rayroad boardinghouse, I was a bride. That’s where your father Hombre made you on me. Loco on me, a wonder I didn’t get you in my throat. That’s all he wanted from me, I begun soon to see that. Five years he punched babies into me and I didn’t hold them in me, three babies I didn’t hold from him before I run away. But you stayed, I kept you inside me. A lotta good it did me, I said, that you kept me inside of you, you left me, you didn’t take me with you, I scowled her. Wished you didn’t hold me like those other three you didn’t keep inside you that was the way I felt a long long time mi madre but now I’ve changed, where have you been in all the long meantime since you kept me inside of you? Said she was in lots of towns, New Orleans, Shrevesport, El Paso, Memphis, Napa, California. I don wan hear the towns, I said. But what would two have done on the roads and in the towns if one could hardly make it—and one of them a little kid of five? Mi madre esplained to me. How would I know? I shrugged.
Arcadio Page 3
