The Night Visitor

by B. TRAVEN

  Seeing his partner shaking his head in disapproval, Macario remembered that only one drop would have sufficed for the cure. Yet, it was too late now, and the liquid could not be returned to the bottle, for it was already mixed with fresh water.

  Macario lifted the baby’s head, forced the little mouth open and let the drink trickle into it, taking care that nothing was spilled. To his great joy he noted that the baby, once his mouth had been moistened, started to swallow voluntarily. Soon he had taken the whole to its last drop.

  Hardly could the medicine have reached his stomach when the child began to breathe freely. Color returned slowly but visibly to his pale face, and he moved his head in search of better comfort.

  The father waited a few minutes longer, and seeing that the baby was recovering miraculously fast, he called in his wife.

  Only one look did the mother give her baby when she fell to her knees by the cot and cried out loud: “Glory be to God and the Holy Virgin. I thank you, Lord in Heaven; my little baby will live.”

  Hearing the mother’s excited outburst, all the women who had been waiting outdoors rushed in, and seeing what had happened while the father had been alone with his son they crossed themselves, gasped and stared at Macario as if noting his existence for the first time and as though he were a stranger in the house.

  One hour later the whole village was assembled at Macario’s to see with their own eyes whether it was true what the women, running about the village, were telling the people.

  The baby, his cheeks rosy, his little fists pressed close to his chin, was profoundly asleep, and anybody could see that all danger was past.

  Next morning Macario got up at his usual time, sat down at the table for his breakfast, looked for his machete, ax and ropes and, taciturn as always, left home to go out to the woods and there chop fuel for the villagers. The bottle with the medicine he took along with him and buried at the same spot from which he had taken it the night before.

  So he went about his job for the next six weeks when one night, on returning home, he found Ramiro waiting for him. Ramiro asked him, please, to come around to his place and see what he might do about his wife who had been sick for several days and was now sinking fast.

  Ramiro, the principal storekeeper and merchant of the whole community and the richest man in the municipality, explained that he had heard of Macario’s curing powers and that he would like him to try his talents on his young wife.

  “Fetch me a little bottle, a very little glass bottle from your store. I’ll wait for you here and think over what I perhaps could do for your wife.”

  Ramiro brought the bottle, an empty medicine flask.

  “What are you going to do with the bottle, Macario?”

  “Leave that to me, Ramiro. You just go home and wait for me. I have to see your wife first before I can say whether or not I can save her. She’ll hold on all right until I come, don’t worry over that. In the meantime, I will go out in the fields and look for some herbs which I know to be good medicine.”

  He went into the night, searched for his bottle, filled the little crystal flask half full with the precious liquid, buried the bottle again and walked to Ramiro’s who lived in one of the three one-story brick houses the village boasted.

  He found the woman rapidly nearing her end, and she was as close to it as had been his little son.

  Ramiro looked at Macario’s eyes. Macario shrugged for an answer. After a while he said: “You’d better go out now and leave me alone with your wife.”

  Ramiro obeyed. Yet, extremely jealous of his young and very pretty wife, pretty even now when near her death, he peeped through a hole in the door to watch Macario’s doings.

  Macario, already close to the door, turned abruptly with the intention to ask for a glass of fresh water.

  Ramiro, his eyes still pressed to the door, was not quick enough in getting away and so, when Macario, by a resolute pull, opened the door, Ramiro fell full length into the room.

  “Not very decent of you, Ramiro,” Macario said, comprehending what the jealous man had been about. “Just for that I should decline giving your young wife back to you. You don’t deserve her, you know that, don’t you?”

  He stopped in great surprise.

  He could not understand himself what had come over him this very minute. Why he, the poorest and humblest man in the village, a common woodchopper, had dared to speak to the haughtiest and richest man, the millionaire of the village, in a manner which the judge at the county court would hardly have risked. But seeing Ramiro, that mighty and powerful man, standing before him humiliated and with the gesture of a beggar trembling with fear that Macario might refuse to heal his wife, Macario had suddenly become aware that he had become a great power himself, a great doctor of whom that arrogant Ramiro expected miracles.

  Very humble now, Ramiro begged Macario’s forgiveness for having spied upon him, and in the most pitiful way he pleaded with him to save his wife, who was about to give him, in less than four months, his first child.

  “How much would you ask for giving her back to me sane and healthy like she was before?”

  “I do not sell my medicine for prices, I do not set prices. It’s you, Ramiro, who have to make the price. Only you can know what your wife is worth to you. So name the price yourself.”

  “Would ten doubloons do, my dear good Macario?”

  “That’s what your wife is worth to you? Only ten doubloons?”

  “Don’t take it that way, dear Macario. Of course she means far more to me than all my money. Money I can make again any day that God will allow me to live. But once my wife is gone, where would I find another one like her? Not in this world. I’ll make it one hundred doubloons then, only, please, save her.”

  Macario knew Ramiro well, only too well did he know him. Both had been born and raised in that village. Ramiro was the son of the richest merchant of the village as he himself was the richest man today—whereas Macario was the son of the poorest day laborer in the community as he himself was now the poorest woodchopper with the biggest family of the whole village to support. And as he knew Ramiro so very well, nobody would have to tell him that, once the merchant’s wife was cured, her husband would try to chisel down on the one hundred doubloons as much as he possibly could, and if Macario did not yield there would be a long and nasty fight between the two men for many years to come.

  Realizing all that, Macario now said: “I’ll take the ten doubloons which you offered me first.”

  “Oh, thank you, Macario, I thank you, indeed I do, and not for cutting down on the price but that you’re willing to cure her. I shall never forget what you have done for us, I’m sure, I shall never forget it. I only hope that the unborn will be safe also.”

  “It surely will,” Macario said, assured of his success since he had seen his bony dinner companion standing where he liked best to see him.

  “Now, bring me a glass of fresh water,” he told Ramiro.

  The water was brought and Macario counselled the merchant: “Don’t you dare peep in again for, mind you, if you do I might fail and it will be all your fault. So remember, no spying, no peeping. Now, leave me alone with the patient.”

  This time Macario was extremely careful in not spending more than exactly one drop of the valuable liquid. As hard as he could he even tried to cut that one drop into two halves. By his talk with Ramiro he had suddenly understood how much his medicine was really worth if such a proud and rich man as Ramiro would humble himself before the woodchopper for no other reason than that his wife might be cured by the poor woodman’s medicine.

  In realizing that, he visioned what his future might be like if he would forget about his woodchopping and stick by his medicine exclusively. Naturally enough, the quintessence of that future was an unlimited supply of roast turkeys any time he wanted them.

  His one-time dinner guest, seeing him cutting the one drop in half, nodded approvingly when Macario looked at him for advice.

  Two days after Ram
iro’s wife had recovered fully, she told her husband that she was positively sure that the baby had not been hurt in the least by her sickness, as she could feel him all right.

  Ramiro in his great joy handed Macario the ten gold pieces, not only without prattling over that high price but with a hundred thanks thrown in. He invited the whole Macario family to his store where everyone, husband, wife, and all the children, was allowed to take as much home as everybody could carry in his arms. Then he threw a splendid dinner to which the Macarios were invited as his guests of honor.

  Macario built a real house now for his family, bought some pieces of good land and began cultivating them, because Ramiro had loaned him one hundred doubloons at very low interest.

  Ramiro had done so not solely out of gratitude. He was too shrewd a businessman to loan out money without thinking of fat gains. He realized that Macario had a great future ahead of him, and that it would be a very sound investment to keep Macario in the village and make people come here to see him, rather than have him take up his residence in a city. The more visitors the village would have on account of Macario’s fame, the more important would grow Ramiro’s business. In expectation of this development in the village’s future, Ramiro added to his various lines in business that of banking.

  He gambled fast on Macario and he won. He won far beyond his most fantastic dreams.

  It was he who did all the advertising and all the propaganda to draw attention to Macario’s great gift. Hardly had he sent out a few letters to business friends in the city, than sick people flocked to the village in the hope of being cured of their maladies, many having been declared uncurable by learned physicians.

  Soon Macario could build himself a mansion. He bought up all the land around and converted it into gardens and parks. His children were sent to schools and universities as far as Paris and Salamanca.

  As his one-time dinner guest had promised him, so it came to pass, Macario’s half turkey was paid for a millionfold.

  Regardless of his riches and his fame, Macario remained honest and uncorrupted. Anyone who wanted to be cured was asked how much his health was worth to him. And as Macario had done in his first case, so he did ever after in all other cases—that is, the patients or their relatives would decide the price.

  A poor man or woman who had no more to offer than one silver peso or a pig or a rooster, he would heal just as well as the rich who, in many instances, had made prices as high as twenty thousand doubloons. He cured men and women of the highest nobility, many of whom had crossed the ocean and had come from Spain, Italy, Portugal, France and other countries and who had come for no other reason than to see him and consult him.

  Whoever came to consult him would be told frankly that he could do nothing to save him, if Macario saw the Bone Man stand at the patient’s head. Nothing did he charge for that consultation.

  People, whoever they were, accepted his final verdict without discussion. No longer would they try arguing with him, once he had told them that they were beyond help.

  More or less half the people consulting him were saved; the other half were claimed by his partner. It happened often for weeks at a time that he would not meet one patient whom he could cure, because his dinner guest would decide differently. Such weeks the people in the land called “his low-power periods.”

  While at the beginning of his practice he was able to cut a drop of his precious medicine into two, he soon learned to cut each drop into eight. He acquired all devices known then by which a drop might be divided up into practically an infinite number of mites. Yet, no matter how much he cut and divided, regardless of how cleverly he administered each dose to make it as small as possible and yet retain its effectiveness, the medicine had frightfully fast become scarcer and scarcer.

  He had drained the guaje bottle during the first month of his practice, once he had observed the true value of the liquid. He knew that a guaje bottle will not only soak into its walls a certain amount of any fluid it may hold, but worse, the liquid will evaporate, and rather fast, through the bottle’s walls. It is for that reason that water kept in a guaje bottle of the kind natives use will stay always cool even should the day be very hot.

  So he had taken out the medicine and poured it into bottles of dark glass, tightly sealed.

  The last little bottle had been opened months ago, and one day Macario noted to his horror that there were only about two drops left. Consequently, he decided to make it known that he would retire from practice and cure nobody any longer.

  By now he had become really old and felt that he had a right to spend the last few years of his life in peace.

  These last two drops he meant to keep for members of his family exclusively, and especially for his beloved wife, whom he had had to cure already two times during the last ten years and whom he was afraid he might lose—a loss which would be very difficult for him to bear.

  Just about that same time it so happened that the eight-year-old son of the viceroy, don Juan Marquez de Casafuerte, the highest personage of New Spain, fell sick.

  The best doctors were called for help. None could do anything for the boy. The doctors admitted frankly that this boy had been stricken by a sickness not known to medical science.

  The viceroy had heard of Macario. Who hadn’t? But he owed it to his dignity, education and high social and political position to consider Macario a quack, the more so since he was called thus by every doctor who had a title from an accredited university.

  The child’s mother, however, less given to dignity when the life of her son was at stake, made life for the viceroy so miserable that finally he saw no other way out of his dilemma than to send for Macario.

  Macario disliked traveling and rarely left his village, and then only for short trips. Yet, an order given by the viceroy himself had to be obeyed under penalty of death.

  So he had to go.

  Brought before the viceroy he was told what was expected of him.

  The viceroy, still not believing in the so-called miracles which Macario was said to have performed, spoke to him in the same way as he would have spoken to any native woodchopper.

  “It was not I who called you, understand that, my good man. Her Highness, la Marquesa, insisted on bringing you here to save our son whom, so it appears, no learned medico can cure. I make it quite clear to you that in case you actually save our child, one-fourth of the fortune which I hold here in New Spain shall be yours. Besides, you may ask anything you see here in my palace, whatever it is that catches your fancy and whatever its value. That shall be yours also. Apart from all that, I personally shall hand you a license which will entitle you to practice medicine anywhere in New Spain with the same rights and privileges as any learned medico, and you shall be given a special letter with my seal on it which will give you immunity for life against any arrest by police or soldiers, and which will safeguard you against any unjustified court action. I believe, my good man, that this is a royal payment for your service.”

  Macario nodded, yet said nothing.

  The viceroy went on: “What I promised you in the case that you save our son follows exactly the suggestion made by Her Highness, la Marquesa, my wife, and what I promise I always keep.”

  The Marquez stopped for a few seconds, as if waiting for Macario to say something.

  Macario, however, said nothing and made no gesture.

  “But now, listen to my own suggestions,” the viceroy continued. “If you should fail to save our son, I shall hand you over to the High Court of the Inquisition, charging you with the practice of witchcraft under pact with the Devil, and you shall be burned alive at the stake on the Alameda and in public.”

  Again the viceroy stopped to see what expression his threat had made upon Macario.

  Macario paled, but still said nothing.

  “Have you understood in full what I have said?”

  “I have, Your Highness,” Macario said briefly, trembling slightly as he attempted to make an awkward bow.

 
“Now, I personally shall show you to our sick child. Follow me.”

  They entered the boy’s room where two nurses were in attendance, merely watching the child’s slow decline, unable to do anything save keep him comfortable. His mother was not present. She had, by the doctor’s order, been confined to her room as she was close to a complete breakdown.

  The boy was resting in a bed becoming his age, a light bed made of fine wood, though not rich looking.

  Macario went close and looked around for a sign of his dinner guest.

  Slightly, so as not to make his gesture seem suspicious, he touched a special little pocket in his trousers to be sure he had the crystal flask with the last two drops of medicine about him.

  Now he said: “Will you, Your Highness, I pray, leave this room for one hour, and will Your Highness, please, give orders that everybody else will leave, too, so that I may remain alone with the young patient?”

  The Marquez hesitated, evidently being afraid that this ignorant peasant might do his son some harm if left alone with him.

  Macario, noting that expression of uneasiness shown by the viceroy, recalled, at this very instant, his first cure of a patient not of his own family, that is, Ramiro’s young wife in his native village. Ramiro had hesitated in a similar way when told to leave the room and let Macario alone with the young woman in bed.

  These two cases of hesitation had been the only ones he had ever experienced during his long practice. And Macario wondered whether that might carry some significance in his destiny, that perhaps today, with only two little drops of his medicine left, he beheld the same expression of hesitancy in a person who wanted a great service done but did not trust the man who was the only one who could render that service.

  He was now alone with the boy.

  And suddenly there appeared his partner, taking his stand at the boy’s head.

  The two, Macario and the Bone Man, had never again spoken one to the other since they had had a turkey dinner together. Whenever they would meet in a sickroom, they would only look at each other, yet not speak.