Linda told him to sit in the corner with the other children, while she went and helped the women. He played with the little boys for a long time. Suddenly people started talking very loud, and there were the women pushing Linda away, and Linda was crying. She went to the door and he ran after her. He asked her why they were angry. «Because I broke something,» she said. And then she got angry too. «How should I know how to do their beastly weaving?» she said. «Beastly savages.» He asked her what savages were. When they got back to their house, Popé was waiting at the door, and he came in with them. He had a big gourd full of stuff that looked like water; only it wasn’t water, but something with a bad smell that burnt your mouth and made you cough. Linda drank some and Popé drank some, and then Linda laughed a lot and talked very loud; and then she and Popé went into the other room. When Popé went away, he went into the room. Linda was in bed and so fast asleep that he couldn’t wake her.
Popé used to come often. He said the stuff in the gourd was called mescal; but Linda said it ought to be called soma; only it made you feel ill afterwards. He hated Popé. He hated them all-all the men who came to see Linda. One afternoon, when he had been playing with the other children-it was cold, he remembered, and there was snow on the mountains-he came back to the house and heard angry voices in the bedroom. They were women’s voices, and they said words he didn’t understand, but he knew they were dreadful words. Then suddenly, crash! something was upset; he heard people moving about quickly, and there was another crash and then a noise like hitting a mule, only not so bony; then Linda screamed. «Oh, don’t, don’t, don’t!» she said. He ran in. There were three women in dark blankets. Linda was on the bed. One of the women was holding her wrists.
Another was lying across her legs, so that she couldn’t kick. The third was hitting her with a whip. Once, twice, three times; and each time Linda screamed. Crying, he tugged at the fringe of the woman’s blanket. «Please, please.» With her free hand she held him away. The whip came down again, and again Linda screamed. He caught hold of the woman’s enormous brown hand between his own and bit it with all his might. She cried out, wrenched her hand free, and gave him such a push that he fell down. While he was lying on the ground she hit him three times with the whip. It hurt more than anything he had ever felt-like fire. The whip whistled again, fell. But this time it was Linda who screamed.
«But why did they want to hurt you, Linda?» he asked that night. He was crying, because the red marks of the whip on his back still hurt so terribly. But he was also crying because people were so beastly and unfair, and because he was only a little boy and couldn’t do anything against them. Linda was crying too. She was grown up, but she wasn’t big enough to fight against three of them. It wasn’t fair for her either. «Why did they want to hurt you, Linda?»
«I don’t know. How should I know?» It was difficult to hear what she said, because she was lying on her stomach and her face was in the pillow. «They say those men are their men,» she went on; and she did not seem to be talking to him at all; she seemed to be talking with some one inside herself. A long talk which she didn’t understand; and in the end she started crying louder than ever.
«Oh, don’t cry, Linda. Don’t cry.»
He pressed himself against her. He put his arm round her neck. Linda cried out.
«Oh, be careful. My shoulder! Oh!» and she pushed him away, hard. His head banged against the wall. «Little idiot!» she shouted; and then, suddenly, she began to slap him. Slap, slap…
«Linda,» he cried out. «Oh, mother, don’t!»
«I’m not your mother. I won’t be your mother.»
«But, Linda… Oh!» She slapped him on the cheek.
«Turned into a savage,» she shouted. «Having young ones like an animal… If it hadn’t been for you, I might have gone to the Inspector, I might have got away. But not with a baby. That would have been too shameful.» He saw that she was going to hit him again, and lifted his arm to guard his face.
«Oh, don’t, Linda, please don’t.»
«Little beast!» She pulled down his arm; his face was uncovered.
«Don’t, Linda.» He shut his eyes, expecting the blow. But she didn’t hit him. After a little time, he opened his eyes again and saw that she was looking at him. He tried to smile at her. Suddenly she put her arms round him and kissed him again and again.
Sometimes, for several days, Linda didn’t get up at all. She lay in bed and was sad. Or else she drank the stuff that Popé brought and laughed a great deal and went to sleep. Sometimes she was sick. Often she forgot to wash him, and there was nothing to eat except cold tortillas. He remembered the first time she found those little animals in his hair, how she screamed and screamed. The happiest times were when she told him ahout the Other Place. «And you really can go flying, whenever you like?»
«Whenever you like.» And she would tell him about the lovely music that came out of a box, and all the nice games you could play, and the delicious things to eat and drink, and the light that came when you pressed a little thing in the wall, asd the pictures that you could hear and feel and smell, as well as see, and another box for making nice smells, and the pink and green and blue and silver houses as high as mountains, and everybody happy and no one ever sad or angry, and every one belonging to every one else, and the boxes where you could see and hear what was happening at the other side of the world, and babies in lovely clean bottles-everything so clean, and no nasty smells, no dirt at all-and people never lonely, but living together and being so jolly and happy, like the summer dances here in Malpais, but much happier, and the happiness being there every day, every day… He listened by the hour.
And sometimes, when he and the other children were tired with too much playing, one of the old men of the pueblo would talk to them, in those other words, of the great Transformer of the World, and of the long fight between Right Hand and Left Hand, between Wet and Dry; of Awonawilona, who made a great fog by thinking in the night, and then made the whole world out of the fog; of Earth Mother and Sky Father; of Ahaiyuta and Marsailema, the twins of War and Chance; of Jesus and Pookong; of Mary and Etsanatlehi, the woman who makes herself young again; of the Black Stone at Laguna and the Great Eagle and Our Lady of Acoma. Strange stories, all the more wonderful to him for being told in the other words and so not fully understood. Lying in bed, he would think of Heaven and London and Our Lady of Acoma and the rows and rows of babies in clean bottles and Jesus flying up and Linda flying up and the great Director of World Hatcheries and Awonawilona.
Lots of men came to see Linda. The boys began to point their fingers at him. In the strange other words they said that Linda was bad; they called her names he did not understand, but that he knew were bad names. One day they sang a song about her, again and again. He threw stones at them. They threw back; a sharp stone cut his cheek. The blood woudn’t stop; he was covered with blood. Linda taught him to read. With a piece of charcoal she drew pictures on the wall-an animal sitting down, a baby inside a bottle; then she wrote letters. THE CAT IS ON
THE MAT. THE TOT IS IN THE POT. He learned quickly and easily. When he knew how to read all the words she wrote on the wall, Linda opened her big wooden box and pulled out from under those funny little red trousers she never wore a thin little book. He had often seen it before. «When you’re bigger,» she had said, «you can read it.» Well, now he was big enough. He was proud. «I’m afraid you won’t find it very exciting,» she said. «But it’s the only thing I have.» She sighed. «If only you could see the lovely reading machines we used to have in
