“Listen, I like what you tell. I’m going to tell you too. Maybe you will like.”
He drew him over near the gate to a damp wooden bench beneath a clump of bamboos.
“I was at sea, off Iguape, on a small coastwise tanker that supplies the harbors along here. It caught fire on board. Not by my fault! I know my job! No, just bad luck. We were able to launch the lifeboats. During the night, the sea got rough; it capsized the boat and I went down.
When I came up, I hit the boat with my head. I drifted. The night was dark, the waters are vast, and, besides, I don’t swim well; I was afraid. Just then I saw a light in the distance and recognized the church of the good Jesus in Iguape. So I told the good Jesus that at his procession I would carry a hundred-pound stone on my head if he saved me. You don’t have to believe me, but the waters became calm and my heart too. I swam slowly, I was happy, and I reached the shore. Tomorrow I’ll keep my promise.”
He looked at D’Arrast in a suddenly suspicious manner.
“You’re not laughing?”
“No, I’m not laughing. A man has to do what he has promised.”
The fellow clapped him on the back.
“Now, come to my brother’s, near the river. I’ll cook you some beans.”
“No,” D’Arrast said, “I have things to do. This evening, if you wish.”
“Good. But tonight there’s dancing and praying in the big hut. It’s the feast for Saint George.” D’Arrast asked him if he danced too. The cook’s face hardened suddenly; for the first time his eyes became shifty.
“No, no, I won’t dance. Tomorrow I must carry the stone. It is heavy. I’ll go this evening to celebrate the saint. And then I’ll leave early.”
“Does it last long?”
“All night and a little into the morning.”
He looked at D’Arrast with a vaguely shameful look.
“Come to the dance. You can take me home afterward. Otherwise, I’ll stay and dance. I probably won’t be able to keep from it.”
“You like to dance?”
“Oh, yes! I like. Besides, there are cigars, saints, women. You forget everything and you don’t obey any more.”
“There are women too? All the women of the town?”
“Not of the town, but of the huts.”
The ship’s cook resumed his smile. “Come. The Captain I’ll obey. And you will help me keep my promise tomorrow.”
D’Arrast felt slightly annoyed. What did that absurd promise mean to him? But he looked at the handsome frank face smiling trustingly at him, its dark skin gleaming with health and vitality.
“I’ll come,” he said. “Now I’ll walk along with you a little.”
Without knowing why, he had a vision at the same time of the black girl offering him the drink of welcome.
They went out of the garden, walked along several muddy streets, and reached the bumpy square, which looked even larger because of the low structures surrounding it. The humidity was now dripping down the plastered walls, although the rain had not increased. Through the spongy expanse of the sky, the sound of the river and of the trees reached them somewhat muted. They were walking in step, D’Arrast heavily and the cook with elastic tread.
From time to time the latter would raise his head and smile at his companion. They went in the direction of the church, which could be seen above the houses, reached the end of the square, walked along other muddy streets now filled with aggressive smells of cooking. From time to time a woman, holding a plate or kitchen utensil, would peer out inquisitively from one of the doors and then disappear at once. They passed in front of the church, plunged into an old section of similar low houses, and suddenly came out on the sound of the invisible river behind the area of the huts that D’Arrast recognized.
“Good. I’ll leave you. See you this evening,” he said.
“Yes, in front of the church.”
But the cook did not let go of D’Arrast’s hand. He hesitated. Finally he made up his mind.
“And you, have you never called out, made a promise?”
“Yes, once, I believe.”
“In a shipwreck?”
“If you wish.” And D’Arrast pulled his hand away roughly. But as he was about to turn on his heels, he met the cook’s eyes. He hesitated, and then smiled.
“I can tell you, although it was unimportant. Someone was about to die through my fault. It seems to me that I called out.”
“Did you promise?”
“No. I should have liked to promise.”
“Long ago?”
“Not long before coming here.”
The cook seized his beard with both hands. His eyes were shining.
“You are a captain,” he said. “My house is yours. Besides, you are going to help me keep my promise, and it’s as if you had made it yourself. That will help you too.”
D’Arrast smiled, saying: “I don’t think so.”
“You are proud, Captain.”
“I used to be proud; now I’m alone. But just tell me: has your good Jesus always answered you?”
“Always . . . no, Captain!”
“Well, then?”
The cook burst out with a gay, childlike laugh.
“Well,” he said, “he’s free, isn’t he?”
At the club, where D’Arrast lunched with the leading citizens, the Mayor told him he must sign the town’s guest-book so that some trace would remain of the great event of his coming to Iguape. The Judge found two or three new expressions to praise, besides their guest’s virtues and talents, the simplicity with which he represented among them the great country to which he had the honor to belong. D’Arrast simply said that it was indeed an honor to him and an advantage to his firm to have been awarded the allocation of this long construction job.
Whereupon the Judge expressed his admiration for such humility. “By the way,” he asked, “have you thought of what should be done to the Chief of Police?” D’Arrast smiled at him and said: “Yes, I have a solution.” He would consider it a personal favor and an exceptional grace if the foolish man could be forgiven in his name so that his stay here in Iguape, where he so much enjoyed knowing the beautiful town and generous inhabitants, could begin in a climate of peace and friendship. The Judge, attentive and smiling, nodded his head.
For a moment he meditated on the wording as an expert, then called on those present to applaud the magnanimous traditions of the great French nation and, turning again toward D’Arrast, declared himself satisfied. “Since that’s the way it is,” he concluded, “we shall dine this evening with the Chief.” But D’Arrast said that he was invited by friends to the ceremony of the dances in the huts. “Ah, yes!” said the Judge. “I am glad you are going. You’ll see, one can’t resist loving our people.”
That evening, D’Arrast, the ship’s cook, and his brother were seated around the ashes of a fire in the center of the hut the engineer had already visited in the morning. The brother had not seemed surprised to see him return. He spoke Spanish hardly at all and most of the time merely nodded his head.
As for the cook, he had shown interest in cathedrals and then had expatiated at length on the black bean soup. Now night had almost fallen and, although D’Arrast could still see the cook and his brother, he could scarcely make out in the back of the hut the squatting figures of an old woman and of the same girl who had served him. Down below, he could hear the monotonous river.
The cook rose, saying: “It’s time.” They got up, but the women did not stir. The men went out alone. D’Arrast hesitated, then joined the others. Night had now fallen and the rain had stopped. The pale-black sky still seemed liquid. In its transparent dark water, stars began to light up, low on the horizon. Almost at once they flickered out, falling one by one into the river as if the last lights were trickling from the sky. The heavy air smelled of water and smoke.
Near by the sound of the huge forest could be heard too, though it was motionless. Suddenly drums and singing broke out in the distance, at first muffled and then distinct, approaching closer and closer and finally stopping. Soon after, one could see a procession of black girls wearing low-waisted white dresses of coarse silk. In a tight-fitting red jacket adorned with a necklace of varicolored teeth, a tall Negro followed them and, behind him, a disorderly crowd of men in white pajamas and musicians carrying triangles and broad, short drums. The cook said they should follow the men.
The hut, which they reached by following the river a few hundred yards beyond the last huts, was large, empty, and relatively comfortable, with plastered walls. It had a dirt floor, a roof of thatch and reeds supported by a central pole, and bare walls. On a little palm-clad altar at the end, covered with candles that scarcely lighted half the hall, there was a magnificent colored print in which Saint George, with alluring grace, was getting the better of a bewhiskered dragon.
Under the altar a sort of niche decorated with rococo paper sheltered a little statue of red-painted clay representing a horned god, standing between a candle and a bowl of water. With a fierce look the god was brandishing an oversized knife made of silver paper.
The cook led D’Arrast to a corner, where they stood against the wall near the door. “This way,” he whispered, “we can leave without disturbing.” Indeed, the hut was packed tight with men and women. Already the
