The Pearl: Chapters 3–4

And when it was made plain who Kino was, the doctor grew stern and judicious at the same time.

For there were not many buyers really—there was only one, and he kept these agents in separate offices to give a semblance of competition.

The news stirred up something infinitely black and evil in the town; the black distillate was like the scorpion, or like hunger in the smell of food, or like loneliness when love is withheld.

All of these things Kino saw in the lucent pearl and he said, “We will have new clothes.”

If these things came to pass, they would recount how Kino looked and what he said and how his eyes shone, and they would say, “He was a man transfigured. Some power was given to him, and there it started. You see what a great man he has become, starting from that moment. And I myself saw it.”

Kino stood in the door, filling it, and hatred raged and flamed in back of his eyes, and fear too, for the hundreds of years of subjugation were cut deep in him.

Then from the corner of the house came a sound so soft that it might have been simply a thought, a little furtive movement, a touch of a foot on earth, the almost inaudible purr of controlled breathing.

And the beauty of the pearl, winking and glimmering in the light of the little candle, cozened his brain with its beauty. So lovely it was, so soft, and its own music came from it—its music of promise and delight, its guarantee of the future, of comfort, of security.

Word of it crept in among the nuns; the beggars in front of the church spoke of it, for they would be there to take the tithe of the first fruits of the luck.

So important was this day that an old man came to see, riding on the stalwart shoulders of his nephew.

His face was fatherly and benign, and his eyes twinkled with friendship.

His door stood open to the morning, and he hummed under his breath while his right hand practiced legerdemain. He rolled a coin back and forth over his knuckles and made it appear and disappear, made it spin and sparkle.

The hand tossed the great pearl back in the tray, the forefinger poked and insulted it, and on the dealer’s face there came a sad and contemptuous smile.

Go to their offices and show your pearl—or better let them come here, so that you can see there is no collusion.

A lethargy had settled on him, and a little gray hopelessness.