Paso del Norte by Juan Rulfo

 

PASO DEL NORTE
by Juan Rulfo

“I’m going away, father; so I came to tell you.”

“And where’re you going, if one may know?”

“I’m goin’ to El Norte.”

“Why there? Don’t you have your business here? Aren’t you into selling pigs?”

Remember by Juan Rulfo

 

REMEMBER

by Juan Rulfo

Remember Urbano Gómez, Don Urbano’s son, Dimas’s grandson, the one who directed pastorelas, the Christmas plays, and who died reciting the “cursed angel complaint” during the time of influence. It’s been years since then, maybe fifteen. But you must remember him. Remember we used to call him “El Abuelo,” Grandfather, because his other son, Fidencio Gómez, had two very playful daughters: one dark and very short, who’d been given the mean nickname of “La Arremangada,” Stuck Up, and the other one who was towering and who had light blue eyes and who people even said wasn’t his and about whom you can’t say much more than she suffered from hiccups. Remember the commotion that broke out when we were in Mass and at the exact moment of the Elevation she had a hiccup attack, which sounded as if she were laughing and crying at the same time, until they took her outside and they gave her a bit of sugar water and then she calmed down. She ended up marrying Lucio Chico, the owner of the mescal bar that used to belong to Librado, up the river, where the Teóduloses’ linseed mill is.

Luvina by Juan Rulfo

 

Luvina

by Juan Rulfo 

Of all the high ranges in the south, the one in Luvina is the highest and rockiest. It’s full of that gray stone from which they make lime, but in Luvina they don’t make lime from it nor do they put it to any good use. They call it crude stone there, and the incline that rises toward Luvina is called Crude Stone Hill. The wind and sun have taken care of breaking it down, so the earth around there is white and shining, as if it were bedewed with morning dew; though all this is just words, because in Luvina the days are as cold as the nights and the dew grows thick in the sky before it manages to reach the earth.

Macario by Juan Rulfo

 

MACARIO
by Juan Rulfo

Juan Rulfo / Macario

I’m sitting by the sewer waiting for the frogs to come out. Last night, while we were having dinner, they started kicking up a huge ruckus and didn’t stop singing until dawn. That’s what my godmother says, too: the frogs’ shouting scared her sleep away. And she’d like to sleep now. That’s why she told me to sit here, near the sewer, waiting with a board in my hand so that I can smash to smithereens any frog that hops out . . . Frogs are green all over, except for their bellies. Toads are black. My godmother’s eyes are black, too. Frogs are good to eat. You shouldn’t eat toads; but I’ve eaten them, too, though you’re not supposed to, and they taste the same as frogs. Felipa is the one who says it’s bad to eat toads. Felipa has green eyes, like a cat’s. She’s the one who feeds me in the kitchen when it’s time for me to eat. She doesn’t like me to hurt frogs. But, for the most part, it’s my godmother who orders me around . . . I love Felipa more than my godmother. But it’s my godmother who takes money out of her purse so Felipa can buy all the stuff we eat. The only thing Felipa does is stay in the kitchen and fix food for the three of us. Since I’ve known her, she hasn’t done anything else. It’s up to me to wash the dishes. Bringing in wood for the stove is my job, too. Then it’s my godmother who hands out the food. After she eats, she makes two little piles, one for Felipa, the other for me. But sometimes Felipa doesn’t feel like eating, so then the two piles are for me. That’s why I love Felipa, because I’m always hungry and never full, not even after I eat her food. Even if people say you should be full after eating, I know I never get full, even if I eat everything they give me. And Felipa knows this, too . . . On the street, people say I’m crazy because I’m always hungry. My godmother has heard people saying this. I haven’t heard it. My godmother won’t let me go out alone on the street. When she takes me out for a walk, it’s to go to church to hear Mass. She puts me right next to her and ties my hands together with the fringe of her shawl. I don’t know why she ties my hands; she says it’s because I might do something crazy. One day people came up with the idea that I was choking someone; I was wringing some lady’s neck just for the heck of it. I don’t remember. But, with all this, it’s my godmother who says I do these things, and she never tells a lie. When she calls me to eat, it’s to give me my part of the food, and not like other people who invite me to eat with them, and then when I get near them, they throw rocks at me until I run away with no food or anything. No, my godmother treats me well. That’s why I’m happy in her house. Besides, Felipa lives here. Felipa is very good to me. That’s why I love her . . . Felipa’s milk is sweet like hibiscus flowers. I’ve drunk goat’s milk and milk from a sow that had recently given birth; but no, it isn’t as good as Felipa’s milk . . . It’s been a long time since she let me suck those mounds she has where we just have ribs, and where better milk than what my godmother gives us for lunch on Sundays comes out of her, if you know how to get it out of her . . . Every night Felipa would come to the room I sleep in, and would snuggle up to me, lying on top of me or a little to the side. Then she would take them out so I could suck that sweet and warm milk that would come out in streams on my tongue . . . I’ve eaten hibiscus flowers many times in order to take care of the hunger. And Felipa’s milk had the same flavor. I just liked it better because, while she was passing those mouthfuls on to me, Felipa would tickle me all over. Then what happened is that she would always fall asleep next to me, until daybreak. And that helped me a lot; because then I didn’t care about the cold or about any fear of being condemned to Hell if I died alone there on one of those nights . . . Sometimes I’m not so afraid of Hell. But sometimes I am. Then I like to give myself a good scare with the idea that I’ll go to Hell one of these days, for being such a hard head and for banging it against the first thing that comes my way. But Felipa comes and scares away my fears. She tickles me with her hands like she knows how to and she blocks that fear I have of dying. And for a little while I forget about it . . . Felipa says, when she feels like being with me, that she will tell the Lord all about my sins. That she’ll go to Heaven very soon and talk to Him, asking Him to forgive me for all the great wickedness that fills my body from top to bottom. She’ll ask him to pardon me, so I don’t have to worry anymore. That’s why she goes to confession every day. Not because she’s bad, but because I’m filled with demons inside me, and she has to drive those little devils out of my body by going to confession for me. Every day. Every afternoon of every day. She’ll do me that favor for life. That’s what Felipa says. That’s why I love her so much . . . But the thing about having such a hard head is the big thing. I bang it against the pillars in the corridor for hours on end and nothing happens to it, it can stand all that banging without even breaking. And I bang it against the floor; first slowly, then harder and it sounds like a drum. Just like the drum that goes with the chirimía, when the chirimía is brought to the Lord’s church service. And then I’m in church, tied to my godmother, hearing the boom boom of the drum outside . . . And my godmother says that if there are bedbugs and cockroaches and scorpions in my room it’s because I’m going to burn in Hell if I go on banging my head against the floor. But what I love is to listen to the drum. That’s what she should know. To listen to it, like when I’m in church, waiting to go out to see how you can hear the drum from so far away, to the very far end of the church and over the priest’s condemnations . . . “The road to good things is filled with light. The road to bad things is dark.” That’s what the priest says . . . I get up and leave my room while it’s still dark. I sweep the street and get back to my room before daylight catches me. Things happen on the street. Like people can split open your head from throwing stones. It rains big, sharp stones from everywhere. And then you have to mend your shirt and wait several days for the cuts on your face and knees to heal. And then again put up with having your hands tied, or they’ll right away pull off the scabs and a stream of blood will come out again. Even though blood tastes good, it doesn’t taste like Felipa’s milk . . . That’s why I always stay in the house, so they don’t throw stones at me. As soon as I’m fed, I lock myself in my room and bar the door so sins don’t find me when they see it’s dark. And I don’t even light the torch to see where the cockroaches are climbing on me. Now I stay still. I lie down on my sacks, and as soon as I feel a cockroach crawling up my neck with its scratchy feet, I smash it to smithereens with my hand. But I don’t light the torch. I’m not going to let my sins catch me off guard with the torch lit up looking for all the cockroaches that get under my blanket . . . Cockroaches pop like firecrackers when you mash them. I don’t know if crickets pop. I never kill crickets. Felipa says crickets make a sound all the time, without even stopping to breathe, so the screams of souls suffering in Purgatory can’t be heard. The day crickets disappear, the world will be filled with the screams of holy souls and all of us will start running scared out of our wits. Besides, I like to keep an ear out to listen to the noise of the crickets. There are many in my room. Perhaps there are more crickets than cockroaches in the folds of the sacks where I sleep. There are scorpions, too. They fall from the ceiling every so often and you have to wait, holding your breath while they make their way across you until they reach the ground. Because if your arm moves or your bones start shaking, you feel the burn of the sting right away. That hurts. Once Felipa got stung in her behind by one of them. She started moaning and screaming quiet screams to the Virgen Santisima so her behind wouldn’t be ruined. I rubbed spit on her. I spent the whole night rubbing spit on her and praying with her, and for a while, when I saw my remedy wasn’t making her any better, I used my eyes as much as I could to help her cry . . . Anyway, I’m more comfortable in my room than outside, where people who like to beat on people can notice me. Nobody does anything to me here. My godmother doesn’t yell at me if she sees me eating her hibiscus flowers, or her myrtles, or her pomegranates. She knows how much I want to eat all the time. She knows my hunger never ends. She knows that no food is enough to fill my gut, even though I go about snitching things here and there all the time. She knows I gobble up the chickpea slop I feed the fat hogs with and the dry corn I feed the skinny pigs with. So she already knows how hungry I am from dawn to dusk. And as long as I find things to eat in this house, I’ll stay here. Because I think the day I stop eating I’m going to die, and then I will surely go straight to Hell. And no one will get me out of there, not even Felipa, even though she’s so good to me, nor the escapulario my godmother gave me that I wear hung around my neck . . . Now I’m next to the sewer waiting for the frogs to come out. And not one has come out in all this time I’ve been talking. If they take any longer to come out, I’ll probably fall asleep, and then there’ll be no way to kill them, and my godmother won’t be able to sleep if she hears them singing, and she’ll get really angry. And she’ll ask one in the row of saints she has in her room to send devils after me, so they can drag me straight to eternal damnation, without even stopping in Purgatory, and I won’t be able to see either my papa or my mama, which is where they are . . . I better go on talking . . . What I want the most is to try a few mouthfuls of Felipa’s milk again, good and sweet milk like the honey that comes from under the hibiscus flowers . . .

THE END

They Have Given Us The Land By Juan Rulfo

 

Photo by Juan Rulfo

They Have Given Us The Land

by Juan Rulfo

BIOGRAPHY

Translated by IIan Stavans with Harold Augenbraum

Juan Rulfo / Nos han dado la tierra

Juan Rulfo / It´s Because We're So Poor

Juan Rulfo / No Dogs Bark

After walking for so many hours without coming upon even the shadow of a tree, not even the seed of a tree, not even a root of anything, you can hear dogs barking.

You might sometimes think, in the middle of this edgeless road, that there would be nothing after it; that you would find nothing on the other side, at the end of this plain split with cracks and dried arroyos. But yes, there’s something. There’s a village. You can hear the dogs barking and feel the smoke in the air, and relish the smell of people as if it were a hope. But the village is still far away. It’s the wind that brings it closer. We’ve been walking since dawn. Right now it’s around four in the afternoon. Someone looks up at the sky, stretches his eyes toward where the sun is hanging, and says:

“It’s about four o’clock.”

Juan Rulfo / It´s Because We're So Poor

It’s Because We’re So Poor

by Juan Rulfo

BIOGRAPHY

translated from the Spanish by Ilan Stavans

Juan Rulfo / Es que somos muy pobres

They Have Given Us The Land By Juan Rulfo

Juan Rulfo / No Dogs Bark

Everything’s going from bad to worse here. Last week Aunt Jacinta died, and on Saturday, after we buried her and the sadness began to fade away, it started raining like crazy. This upset my father since the entire barley harvest was drying in the sun shed. The downpour started suddenly, in great waves of water, giving us no time to stow even a handful; the only thing everyone who was at home at the time could do was to huddle under the shed and watch as the cold water fell from the sky and burned the yellow barley we had just harvested.

And just yesterday, my sister Tacha’s twelfth birthday, we found out that the cow my father had given her for her saint’s day had been swept down the river.

The river started to rise three nights ago in the middle of the night. Even though I was fast asleep, the thunderous noise woke me up. I jumped to my feet with the covers still in my hand, as though I thought the roof was caving in. Then I fell asleep again, because I realized it was only the sound of the river and because the sound lulled me to sleep.

When I got up, the morning sky was full of huge clouds and everything looked as if it had been raining nonstop. The noise from the river was louder than ever and had drawn closer. You could smell it the way you can smell a fire, the rotten smell of roiling water.

By the time I went outside, the river had already spilled over its  banks and was slowly approaching the main street. It was quickly making its way into the house of the woman people call La Tambora. You could hear water splashing as it ran into the corral and as it exited through the gate in wide rivulets. La Tambora was walking back and forth in what had by then become a part of the river, tossing her hens into the street so they could hide someplace where the current wouldn’t reach them.

On the other side, by the bend, the river must have washed away, who knows when, the tamarind tree that had been in Aunt Jacinta’s sun shed, because there’s no tamarind tree there now. It was the only one in town, and that’s why people think that this is the highest the river has crested in years.

My sister and I went back in the afternoon to see the cascade of water that is steadily growing thicker and darker and is already beyond the level where the bridge is supposed to be. We stayed there for hours and hours without getting bored with the whole thing. Later on we climbed up the ravine because we wanted to hear what people were saying, since down there, near the river, it’s so loud you can only see mouths opening and closing as if they want to say something; but you can’t hear a word. So we climbed up the ravine where people were looking at the river and assessing the damage. That’s where we found out that the river had taken La Serpentina away, my sister Tacha’s cow, because my father gave my sister the cow as a birthday present and it had one white ear and one red one and very beautiful eyes.

I don’t quite know why La Serpentina decided to cross that river when she knew quite well that it wasn’t the same river she was used to every day. La Serpentina wasn’t that dumb. To let herself be killed like that she had to be sleepwalking. Most of the time it was up to me to wake her when I opened the corral door to let her out. If not, she might have spent the entire day there with her eyes closed, very still and sighing, the way cows sigh when they’re asleep.

Something must have happened that kept her asleep. Maybe it happened that she woke up when she felt the heaviness of the water lapping at her flanks. Maybe that frightened her and she tried to go back, but when she turned around she was stuck and unable to move in that hard, black, mucky water. Maybe she roared asking for help. She roared like only God knows.

I asked a man who saw the cow being dragged downstream if he hadn’t seen the calf that was with her. But the man said he didn’t know if he had seen that. All he said was that the spotted cow went by with her legs in the air very close to where he was and that then she flipped over and you couldn’t see the horns or the legs or any sign of the cow at all. There were plenty of tree trunks floating on the river, with their roots, and he was very busy trying to gather firewood, so he wasn’t able to see if it was animals or tree trunks being carried away.

So we don’t know if the calf is alive or if he followed his mother down the river. If he went with her, God help them both.

The problem at home is what is going to happen now that my sister Tacha is left with nothing. It took a lot for my father to get La Serpentina in the first place, from the time she was a calf, so my sister could have a bit of capital and wouldn’t run away to become a whore the way my two older sisters had.

The way my father tells it, they both took the wrong road because our family was so poor and incorrigible. They sassed him from the time they were little. And as soon as they grew up, they started hanging out with the worst sort of men who taught them all types of awful things. They learned quickly and understood a man’s whistling at all hours of the night. They would stay out till dawn. Sometimes when they were supposed to fetch water from the river, instead all of sudden they were right there in the corral, writhing on the floor, naked, each of them with a man on top of her.

Finally my father threw them out. He had stood as much as he could and when he couldn’t take it anymore he showed them the door. They left for Ayutla or I don’t know where, and now they are whores.

That’s why my father is terrified that Tacha will end up like her two sisters, that she may feel the poverty of not having the cow and realize she no longer has anything to support her while she’s still growing up and can still marry a decent man who will love her always. That’s going to be difficult now. When she had the cow it was different. There surely would be someone with the spunk to marry her, if only to have that very beautiful cow.

Our only hope is that the calf is still alive. Perhaps he didn’t think of crossing the river behind his mother. Because if he did, my sister Tacha is just this far away from becoming a whore. And mother doesn’t want that.

My mother doesn’t know why God has punished her by giving her such daughters, since in her family, from my grandmother on, there have never been bad people. Everybody was raised with the fear of God, and very obedient, and didn’t offend anyone. Everyone was that way. Who knows where her two daughters learned such bad behavior? She can’t figure it out. She wracks her brain and it isn’t clear where she went wrong or what sin she committed to have given birth to one bad daughter after another. She can’t figure it out. And every time she thinks of them, she weeps and says: “God help them.”

My father says there’s nothing to be done at this point. The one at risk is the daughter who is still here, Tacha, who keeps on growing and growing and whose breasts are already beginning to show, and which promise to be like her sisters’: pointy and high and pert and attention-getting.

“Yes,” he says, “they’ll stare at her wherever she goes. It will all end badly; I can already see it will all end badly.”

That’s why my father is terrified.

Tacha cries when she thinks her cow won’t come back because the river has killed it. She’s right here at my side, in her pink dress, looking at the river from the top of the ravine, unable to stop crying. Streams of dirty water run down her face, as if the river were inside her.

I put my arms around her, trying to comfort her, but she doesn’t understand. She cries even more. A sound similar to the one sweeping along the riverbanks emerges from her lips, making her shiver, and she trembles all over. The crest rises. the rotten smell from below speckles Tacha’s wet face. Her two little breasts bob up and down, continually, as if they had suddenly begun to swell, bringing her ever closer to perdition.

Juan Rulfo (1917–1986) was one of Mexico’s most important twentieth-century writers. Taciturn in his dealings with others and frugal in his literature, he published only two books: the novel Pedro Páramo (1955) and the collection of stories El llano en llamas (1953), which includes the story translated here by Ilan Stavans. Rulfo’s influence in the Spanish world is enormous.

Ilan Stavans is the author of The Hispanic Condition (1995), On Borrowed Words: A Memoir of Language (2001), Spanglish (2003), and Dictionary Days (2005). He edited The Poetry of Pablo Neruda (2003), the three-volume Isaac Bashevis Singer: Collected Stories (2004), and Becoming Americans: Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing (2009). Stavans is the Lewis-Sebring Professor of Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. 

Juan Rulfo / No Dogs Bark



Perro de luna
Rufino Tamayo

NO DOGS BARK
by Juan Rulfo

BIOGRAPHY

Translated by George D. Schade

Juan Rulfo / No oyes ladrar los perros

It´s Because We're So Poor by Juan Rulfo

They Have Given Us The Land By Juan Rulfo

"You up there, Ignacio! Don't you hear something or see a light somewhere?"

"I can't see a thing."

"We ought to be near now."

"Yes, but I can't hear a thing."

"Look hard."

" I can't see a thing."

"Poor Ignacio."

The long black shadow of the men kept moving up and down, climbing over rocks, diminishing and increasing as it advanced along the edge of the arroyo. It was a single reeling shadow.

The moon came out of the earth like a round flare.

"We should be getting to that town, Ignacio. Your ears are uncovered, so try to see if you can't hear dogs barking. Remember they told us Tonaya was right behind the mountain. And we left the mountain hours ago. Remember, Ignacio?"

"Yes, but I don't see a sign of anything."

"I'm getting tired."

"Put me down."

The old man backed up to a thick wall and shifted his load but didn't let it down from his shoulders. Though his legs were buckling on him, he didn't want to sit down, because then he would be unable to lift his son's body, which they had helped to sling on his back hours ago. He had carried him all this way.

"How do you feel?"

"Bad."

Ignacio didn't talk much. Less and less all the time. Now and then he seemed to sleep. At times he seemed to be cold. He trembled. When the trembling seized him, his feet dug into his father's flanks like spurs. Then his hands, clasped around his father's neck, clutched at the head and shook it as if it were a rattle.

The father gritted his teeth so he wouldn't bite his tongue, and when the shaking was over he asked, "Does it hurt a lot?"

"Some," Ignacio answered.

First Ignacio had said, "Put me down here-- Leave me here-- You go on alone. I'll catch up with you tomorrow, or as soon as I get a little better." He'd said this some fifty times. Now he didn't say it.

There was the moon. Facing them. A large red moon that filled their eyes with light and stretched and darkened its shadow over the earth.

"I can't see where I'm going any more," the father said.

But nobody answered him.

The other up there was illumined by the moon. His face, discolored, bloodless, reflected the opaque light. And he here below.

"Did you hear me, Ignacio? I tell you I can't see you very well."

And the other stayed in silence.

Falteringly, the father continued. He hunched his body over, then straightened up to stumble on again.

"This is no road. They told us Tonaya was behind the hill. We've passed the hill. And you can't see Tonaya, or hear any sound that would tell us it is close. Why won't you tell me what you see up there, Ignacio?"

"Put me down, Father."

"Do you feel bad?"

"Yes."

"I'll get you to Tonaya no matter what. There I'll find somebody to take care of you. They say there's a doctor in the town. I'll take you to him. I've already carried you for hours, and I'm not going to leave you lying here now for somebody to finish off."

He staggered a little. He took two or three steps to the side, then straightened up again.

"I'll get you to Tonaya."

"Let me down."

His voice was faint, scarcely a murmur. " I want to sleep a little."

"Sleep up there. After all, I've got a good hold on you."

The moon was rising, almost blue, in a clear sky. Now the old man's face, drenched with sweat, was flooded with light. He lowered his eyes so he wouldn't have to look straight ahead, since he couldn't bend his head, tightly gripped in his son's hands.

"I'm not doing all this for you. I'm doing it for your dead mother. Because you were her son. That's why I'm doing it. She would've haunted me if I'd left you lying where I found you and hadn't picked you up and carried you to be cured as I'm doing. She's the one who gives me courage, not you. From the first you've caused me nothing but trouble, humiliation, and shame."

He sweated as he talked. But the night wind dried his sweat. And over the dry sweat, he sweated again.

"I'll break my back, but I'll get to Tonaya with you, so they can ease those wounds you got. I'm sure as soon as you feel well you'll go back to your bad ways. But that doesn't matter to me any more. As long as you go far away, where I won't hear anything more of you. As long as you do that… Because as far as I'm concerned, you aren't my son any more. I've cursed the blood you got from me. My part of it I've cursed. I said, 'Let the blood I gave him rot in his kidneys: I said it when I heard you'd taken to the roads, robbing and killing people… Good people. My old friend Tranquilino, for instance. The one who baptized you. The one who gave you your name. Even he had the bad luck to run into you. From that time on I said, 'That one cannot be my son.'

"See if you can't see something now. Or hear something. You'll have to do it from up there because I feel deaf."

"I don't see anything."

"Too bad for you, Ignacio."

"I'm thirsty."

"You'll have to stand it. We must be near now. Because it's now very late at night they must've turned out the lights in the town. But at least you should hear dogs barking. Try to hear."

"Give me some water."

"There's no water here. Just stones. You'll have to stand it. Even if there was water, I wouldn't let you down to drink. There's nobody to help me lift you up again, and I can't do it alone."

"I'm awfully thirsty and sleepy."

"I remember when you were born. You were that way then. You woke up hungry and ate and went back to sleep. Your mother had to give you water, because you'd finished all her milk. You couldn't be filled up. And you were always mad and yelling. I never thought that in time this madness would go to your head… But it did. Your mother, may she rest in peace, wanted you to grow up strong. She thought when you grew up you'd look after her. She only had you. The other child she tried to give birth to killed her. And you would've killed her again, if she'd lived till now."

The man on his back stopped gouging with his knees. His feet began to swing loosely from side to side. And it seemed to the father that Ignacio's head, up there, was shaking as if he were sobbing.

On his hair he felt thick drops fall, like tears.

"Are you crying, Ignacio? The memory of your mother makes you cry, doesn't it? But you never did anything for her. You always repaid us badly. Somehow your body got filled with evil instead of affection. And now you see? They've wounded it. What happened to your friends? They were all killed. Only they didn't have anybody. They might well have said, 'We have nobody to be concerned about.' But you, Ignacio?

At last, the town. He saw roofs shining in the moonlight. He felt his son's weight crushing him as the back of his knees buckled in a final effort. When he reached the first dwelling, he leaned against the wall by the sidewalk. He slipped the body off, dangling, as if it had been wrenched from him.

With difficulty he unpried his son's fingers from around his neck. When he was free, he heard the dogs barking everywhere. "And you didn't hear them, Ignacio?" he said. "You didn't even help me listen."