The Delicate Prey Read Online Free PDF Page A

silently in the background. The pastor glanced at his wrist watch and spoke to Nicolás, who had been pointed out to him as one of the most intelligent and influential men in the village, asking him to come up and stand beside him.
    Once Nicolás was next to him, he decided to test him with a few questions. “Nicolás,” he said in his dry, small voice, “what did I tell you today?”
    Nicolas coughed and looked over the heads of the assembly to where an enormous sow was rooting in the mud under a mango tree. Then he said: “Don Jesucristo.”
    â€œYes,” agreed Pastor Dowe encouragingly. “Bai, and Don Jesucristo what?”
    â€œA good man,” answered Nicolás with indifference.
    â€œYes, yes, but what more?” Pastor Dowe was impatient; his voice rose in pitch.
    Nicolás was silent. Finally he said, “Now I go,” and stepped carefully down from the platform. The others again began to gather up their belongings and move off. For a moment Pastor Dowe was furious. Then he took his notebook and his Bible and went into the house.
    At lunch Mateo, who waited on table, and whom he had brought with him from Ocosingo, stood leaning against the wall smiling.
    â€œSeñor,” he said, “Nicolás says they will not come again to hear you without music.”
    â€œMusic!” cried Pastor Dowe, setting his fork on the table. “Ridiculous! What music? We have no music.”
    â€œHe says the father at Yalactín used to sing.”
    â€œRidiculous!” said the pastor again. “In the first place I can’t sing, and in any case it’s unheard of! Inaudito!”
    â€œSí, verdad?” agreed Mateo.
    The pastor’s tiny bedroom was breathlessly hot, even at night. However, it was the only room in the little house with a window on the outside; he could shut the door onto the noisy patio where by day the servants invariably gathered for their work and their conversations. He lay under the closed canopy of his mosquito net, listening to the barking of the dogs in the village below. He was thinking about Nicolás. Apparently Nicolás had chosen for himself the role of envoy from the village to the mission. The pastor’s thin lips moved. “A troublemaker,” he whispered to himself. “I’ll speak with him tomorrow.”
    Early the next morning he stood outside Nicolás’s hut. Each house in Tacaté had its own small temple: a few tree trunks holding up some thatch to shelter the offerings of fruit and cooked food. The pastor took care not to go near the one that stood near by; he already felt enough like a pariah, and Dr. Ramos had warned him against meddling of that sort. H e called out.
    A little girl about seven years old appeared in the doorway of the house. She looked at him wildly a moment with huge round eyes before she squealed and disappeared back into the darkness. The pastor waited and called again. Presently a man came around the hut from the back and told him that Nicolás would return. The pastor sat down on a stump. Soon the little girl stood again in the doorway; this time she smiled coyly. The pastor looked at her severely. It seemed to him she was too old to run about naked. He turned his head away and examined the thick red petals of a banana blossom hanging nearby. When he looked back she had come out and was standing near him, still smiling. He got up and walked toward the road, his head down, as if deep in thought. Nicolás entered through the gate at that moment, and the pastor, colliding with him, apologized.
    â€œGood,” grunted Nicolás. “What?”
    His visitor was not sure how he ought to begin. He decided to be pleasant.
    â€œI am a good man,” he smiled.
    â€œYes,” said Nicolás. “Don Jesucristo is a good man.”
    â€œNo, no, no!” cried Pastor Dowe.
    Nicolás looked politely confused, but said nothing.
    Feeling that his command of