The Berrybender Narratives

by Larry McMurtry

  “I can sometimes be a little bit happy when I’m with you and Petey and Monty,” Tasmin confessed.

  Petal’s stare turned icy. Why bring up Petey and Monty, minor players in this drama of affection?

  “I want you to be happy when I’m here,” Petal insisted. “When I’m here.”

  Tasmin was amused—she felt as pure a moment of amusement as had been hers since Pomp’s death.

  “Petey and Monty,” Tasmin repeated, or tried to repeat, for at once a small and not very clean hand was clapped over her mouth, muffling her efforts at repetition.

  “When I’m here!” Petal repeated. “All right, when you’re here, if you insist on strict accuracy,” Tasmin said. “Get your dirty paw off my mouth.”

  “Speak right!” Petal warned, and then started to drift away. Tasmin caught her.

  “You do want your mother to be happy, don’t you?” Tasmin asked. “You surely don’t wish me unhappier than I am.”

  Petal thought her position had been made perfectly clear.

  “Just be happy when I’m here,” she once more repeated.

  “But you aren’t always here, my love,” Tasmin told her. “If I’m only allowed to be happy when you’re here, then I shall have to languish in unhappiness a good bit of the time.”

  Petal ignored the comment—she had something else on her mind.

  “I don’t know how you die,” she told her mother. She had heard her aunts Buffum and Mary talking about death, the business that followed dying. Already an accomplished eavesdropper, Petal had got the sense that her mother was unhappy because somebody had died. But death was not an easy thing to puzzle out. It seemed to be rather like a long nap, and yet different in nature from a nap. It was obviously an important state, and yet the adults never made its nature very clear. Petal was very curious about death. She once asked Monty about it— Monty was older. Though often rude, Monty could be amusing. He didn’t like it when Petal held the dog Mopsy up by his tail; but when she wasn’t pestering the dog, Monty could be agreeable.

  “When you’re dead you don’t breathe,” Monty told her. “They put you in a hole and cover you with dirt.”

  “But I want to breathe,” Petal insisted. “Well, you can breathe if you go to heaven,” Monty concluded.

  “Is heaven over there?” she asked, pointing across the Plaza.

  Monty concluded that his sister was a very ignorant child.

  “Heaven is in the sky—it’s so high you can’t see it,” he told her.

  After that Petal kept a close watch on the sky, but except for an occasional bird, she saw nothing but clouds. Unable to gain a clear notion about death from her brother, she took the matter up with her mother.

  “I don’t know how to die,” she repeated. “Well, and a good thing too,” Tasmin told her. “You’ve certainly no business dying for at least the next eighty years.”

  “Monty says you don’t breathe when you die— but I like to breathe,” Petal confided.

  “It’s the accepted thing to do,” Tasmin allowed. Kate Berrybender came in at that time. Petal, never happy to be interrupted, did her best to ignore Kate—but Kate had little respect for the wishes of children, Petal particularly.

  “Cook is wondering about dinner—must it be goat again?” Kate asked.

  “Why not a pig? There are plenty of swine running around this town. Have Papa buy one,” Tasmin suggested.

  “I was talking about how you die,” Petal reminded her mother.

  “It’s too late to cook a pig today—I fear it will have to be goat,” Kate remarked. Petal was glaring at her.

  “My, such a dark look,” Tasmin said.

  Petal, her interview ruined, turned and marched out of the room. How one became deaded—the term she preferred—was still annoyingly obscure.

  “There’s going to be trouble with that child,” Kate observed.

  “There’s trouble with all children, as you’ll discover someday,” Tasmin told her. “But I agree. There’s likely to be rather more trouble than usual with that one.”

  8

  . . . a quick soldier caught his foot . . .

  THE EAR TAKER, the small dark man who had first been known to his people as Takes Bones, knew it was folly to return to Santa Fe. On his way back from the north the jack rabbits began to stare at him again, as they had before he left to explore the northern lands. That was certainly a bad sign. Then, in the space of three days he saw three owls, which was a worse sign. It was foolish to ignore such obvious signs, but the Ear Taker came back to the southwest anyway. He had not enjoyed the north. There were no Mexicans, only a scattering of whites, and Indian tribes which were so wary he could not approach them. Their camps were full of dogs, quick to pick up unfamiliar sounds or scents.

  Old Prickly Pear Woman had told the Ear Taker that if he walked north far enough he would come to the edge of the world and perhaps be able to catch a glimpse of the great snowy void where spirits were said to go; but that had turned out to be just an old woman’s lie. The Ear Taker walked north for many weeks, but instead of coming to the edge of the world he just came to a place that was extremely cold. If he had not been able to find a snug den that had once been used by a bear, he might have frozen. The bear’s smell was still strong in the den. He thought the bear might return and want his home, but no bear came. In his whole time in the north he had only taken two ears, one from a young white boy who had been traveling with some men who could fly in a basket and the other from an old trapper who was extremely drunk. He hated to give up on a place he had walked so far to see, so he stayed through another winter and learned to snare animals that made their lives in the snow. Food was never a problem—the northern ponds were covered with ducks and geese. Now and then he came across an old man or an old woman who had become too old to move with the tribe and so had been left to die. He liked to sit with such old ones, even though he didn’t know their tongue. Once he even ran into an old shaman who made his home in the bole of a big tree. Old Prickly Pear Woman had told the Ear Taker that there were shamans who could teach people to move in and out of time, so they could visit their ancestors, but the old man in the tree, though he mumbled constantly, didn’t know how to move in and out of time.

  The first thing the Ear Taker did, when he came back to the country of his people, was to pay a visit to old Prickly Pear Woman. He intended to point out to her that she had misled him badly in the matter of the edge of the world, which was not in the north, as she had insisted it was. But when he came to the vast field of prickly pears with the narrow tunnel underneath, the hole where she had lived showed no signs of recent habitation. Several rattlesnakes were using the hole as a den; they were irritable when the Ear Taker showed up. He killed one fat snake and ate it, but left the others alone. He remembered that the old woman had a hiding place nearby, under a flat rock; she kept the equipment she used in her spells there: dried-up toads, scorpions, dead mice. The Ear Taker found the large rock easily enough but the only thing there in the hole was some of the bitter cactus buds that the old woman sometimes chewed when she was seeking a vision. The buds he took for himself—now and then he would chew one and feel as if he were flying.

  Soon the Ear Taker began to take ears again, slicing ears off drunken drovers, just as he had before. His skills had eroded somewhat; several times he made bad cuts, once by accident even cutting a drover’s throat. Once again he became fired with his mission, which was to humiliate whites as the whites had humiliated the People they took captive after the big pueblo revolt many grandfathers back.

  The irritating thing, though, was that the jackrab-bits continued to stare at him in an unnatural way; also, he kept seeing owls. Once one flew directly over his head, a sure sign that his death was near. He was glad to be back in the country of red canyons and piñon trees, but the owls worried him. Before he could make up his mind to go farther off the now busy trails to Santa Fe, the thing that had been coming happened: a quick soldier caught his foot. He had the soldier
’s ear in his hand, having just sliced it off, but for some reason he hesitated a moment before springing away. He did not think any soldier could be as quick as this soldier was. The quick soldier hung on to his foot; the soldier yelled out and very soon the famous Ear Taker was caught and firmly tied with rawhide cords. Before they tied him he quickly crammed all the remaining cactus buds into his mouth and chewed them, hoping they would poison him and allow his spirit to float away before the torturers got busy; but he vomited up the buds while the excited soldiers were beating him and kicking him. From time to time, in the days of pain that followed, it seemed that his spirit might fly away, but the feeling didn’t free him from the pain entirely. The Mexicans were convinced that he had special powers—to make sure that he didn’t escape them, his feet were chopped off and the stumps seared with hot irons. Then they hung him on a gibbet in the center of the Plaza, where all who wished could observe his pain. At first he was hoisted off the ground with hooks through his ears, a fitting punishment for an Ear Taker, it was felt. But the weight of his body soon pulled the hooks through and he fell. Many soldiers, convinced that he was a devil, wanted him garroted right away, but the Governor refused to hurry. Any man who was missing an ear was allowed to come and give the Ear Taker twenty lashes: fourteen men took advantage of the offer. The Ear Taker was by then close to death, but he was not dead. Screws were driven into his skull through what remained of his ears; the screws would hold his weight whereas his ears wouldn’t. Thin rawhide cords were attached to the screws, and the Ear Taker, naked and bleeding, hung several feet off the ground, his facial muscles horribly distorted by the weight of his hanging body. Through it all the Ear Taker scarcely cried out. He sighed great sighs—but his sighs grew fainter as he weakened. The native people shuffled about the Plaza, doing their little bits of business. They kept well away from the gibbet. They did not need to see what was happening to this small man. Their memories were full of terrible stories about things the Spanish had done to the People.

  But the Mexicans watched: laborers, soldiers, women. The Governor’s wife, Doña Margareta, spent hours at her window, staring at the dying man whose practice had been to take ears. Watching the blood drip from his numerous wounds gave her an unexpected satisfaction. When two more one-eared men turned up and claimed their right to lash the Ear Taker, Doña Margareta watched every stroke. She even sent a manservant to search about the city and see if one or two more earless men could be found. When none turned up she persuaded her husband to allow some of his victims who had already lashed him to lash him again. What were lashes compared to the loss of an ear?

  While the Ear Taker was dying, a process that took four days, the Berrybenders all stayed away from the windows that looked out on the Plaza. Amboise d’Avigdor, who had lost an ear, declined to claim a turn with the lash. Lord Berrybender, leaving the Plaza on his hunts, turned his face from the spectacle.

  “Excessively cruel, I sometimes think, the Spanish race,” he said. The sight of the hanging man rather upset his digestion—once he even called off a hunt without firing a shot.

  It was Amboise who happened to notice the stranger, a thin bald man sitting well back in the shade, with a drawing board on his lap. The man was watching the Ear Taker’s suffering with an almost scientific interest—he looked down from time to time, sketching what he saw.

  “Why, where’d that fellow come from—I’d swear he’s English,” Lord Berrybender announced, when Amboise called his attention to the stranger.

  Then he looked more closely and drew back with a start.

  “My God, it’s Edgechurch,” he said. “Elliott Edgechurch. Met him in England more than once.”

  “Is he an artist, then?” Amboise asked. “He’s drawing this poor hanging man.”

  “I suppose he can draw but he’s not precisely an artist,” Lord Berrybender replied. “In London he’s called the Torture Man.”

  9

  . . . soup would be spilled and wineglasses knocked over.

  THAT MAN’S TOO SCABBY!” Petal announced, in what was, unfortunately, her most carrying voice—the remark embarrassed everyone at the table except the mild gentleman it described, Dr. Elliott Edgechurch, who peered at the little girl in a kindly way.

  “Oh damn, she’s escaped again,” Tasmin declared, setting down her fork. Before she could jump up and seize her impolitic child, Petal had darted under the table, amid a thicket of adult legs. She knew from experience that if she could just get right under the center of the wide table nobody would be able to reach her, though as various diners made the attempt, soup would be spilled and wine-glasses knocked over. Sometimes, if pressed, Petal might seek sanctuary in her grandfather’s lap. Lord Berrybender—though, to Vicky’s annoyance, quite indifferent to his own two young sons—could seldom resist Petal, even when she had just delivered an embarrassingly accurate description of their distinguished guest, a man who had been physician royal to several majesties and was generally thought to be England’s most eminent surgeon.

  “She won’t stay in the nursery—finds the dining room more exciting,” Tasmin explained. “If I had a dungeon I’d fling the brat into it, but I have no dungeon.”

  “Oh, it’s no matter, I am scabby at present,” Dr. Edgechurch admitted. “It’s the harsh American waters. I am from Wiltshire, where the waters are far softer. Even in London I am sometimes troubled with eczema. I generally carry various emollients and a very delicate soap that can only be obtained from France—not cheap, my soap, I assure you. But a vital piece of my kit bounced out of the wagon and the muleteers absolutely refused to go back and look for it, so here I am, entirely at the mercy of American waters. The young lady was being no more than truthful, as the young so often are. I am too scabby.”

  Petal remained under the table, just out of reach of various grabbing hands. She didn’t really object to the scabby man—what she objected to was being left in the nursery with the five boys while, downstairs, the adults were eating exciting meals. Sometimes Kate would mind the nursery, but usually that chore was left to Little Onion, the more easily eluded of the two. All that was necessary was to pinch a little boy hard enough for the boy to raise a howl. While Little Onion soothed the injured male Petal could often sneak out and slip down the big staircase; by the time Little Onion realized that a miscreant was missing, Petal could be under the table or in her grandfather’s lap. It was an exciting game, one Petal didn’t always win. Sometimes Little Onion ran her down before she could reach the stairway.

  “Leave her be, the brat,” Tasmin said. The tall doctor with the scabby skin seemed kindly, on the whole. He also seemed to know everyone in Europe, including the French doctor who had taught Father Geoffrin anatomy. When he discovered that Amboise d’Avigdor had lost an ear to the Ear Taker he examined Amboise’s head carefully and took some arcane measurements.

  “The fellow was a specialist, and a sound one,” he announced. “He knew how to remove an ear, but I doubt he knows much else. The appendix would stump him, I imagine, or even a joint.”

  Lord Berrybender was uneasy. Somehow he couldn’t quite like this kindly surgeon, though he was certainly vigorous in pursuit of his goals. He had arrived in Santa Fe from California, where he landed after making a long and thorough examination of the elaborate tortures practiced in China and Japan. All the way to China just for torture? It seemed to Lord Berrybender that there was something slightly unwholesome about it, but the Governor’s wife, Doña Margareta, found Dr. Edgechurch fascinating—she couldn’t get enough of hearing about the many severe cruelties the famous doctor had witnessed. It annoyed her that the little Berrybender girl had distracted Dr. Edgechurch from an elaborate description of how the Ottoman sultans punished women who failed to please them: by tying them up in sacks with wildcats and flinging them off a cliff, or else crushing their breasts with viselike instruments designed solely for that purpose. Doña Margareta meant to encourage her husband to try to keep Dr. Edgechurch in Santa Fe—then she could draw the man out
at length. Santa Fe was filled with criminals—it was her opinion that better tortures needed to be devised, in order to subdue this element.

  “How much longer do you think that little Ear Taker will hold out?” Lord Berrybender inquired. “Rather puts us off our feed, having him hanging there. My cook is even reluctant to go to market. The sight of him preys on the mind, you know.”

  “Two more days will finish him,” Dr. Edgechurch assured them. “He has no very serious injuries, but it’s a strain on the heart, having the muscles pulled out of shape as they are. It’s the mistake most torturers make: they don’t understand that the nerves grow fatigued. Pain exhausts before it destroys. The Japanese understand this well. They allow their victims regular respites.”

  Tasmin found that she disliked Doña Margareta intensely. About the English doctor she wasn’t sure. He was a surgeon; he cut people for their own good. Torture, of an approved sort, must be all in a day’s work for him. While recognizing that humans must sometimes be cut open to remove diseased organs, Tasmin still felt that it must take a curious sort of human being to choose cutting as a profession.

  “What drew your attention to torture, Doctor?” Piet Van Wely asked. He saw in Doctor Edgechurch a fellow scientist. But to his dismay, the question drew a frown from the great man.

  “I am not drawn to torture—as a humanist I strictly oppose it,” he replied. “If a criminal must be put to death I advocate doing it humanely, with a bullet or a noose.”

  He took a long swallow of wine. “What draws me to the torture chambers—and I’ve inspected more than one hundred, most of them quite bloodily active—is not torture but nerves,” Dr. Edgechurch said. “The human nervous system is as yet poorly understood. I am even now attempting a comprehensive atlas of nerves, but my atlas is far from complete. Nerves are not easily traced. They mainly reveal themselves under extreme conditions—such as torture. There’s more to be learned about nerves in torture chambers than in anatomy classes.”