by Ilan Stavans
“Have you yourself seen a real Jew?” Their curiosity couldn’t be sated.
“Yes, I have.”
“Where?”
“There, in Europe.”
“What did he look like?”
“Just like me.”
“Really?!”
“Yes, indeed.”
“¡Si él lo dice, debe ser verdad!” “If he says it, it must be true.” The peasant women winked at each other, and their faces grew intensely serious, as if in a moment of great exaltation. Joseph fell silent, engrossed in his thoughts. He let the peasant women examine some sample gods. For now he simply took orders, which he filled by mail. In the meantime, he took stock of his situation, how much money he had in the bank, how much he was owed, and how many more thousands he would earn in the coming year if business improved by just 50 percent. “Who needs to worry?” A smile lit up his face as he felt these words in his heart: “I give thanks and praise to Thee, almighty God, who hast given Jesus unto the world.”
A new god peddler showed up in the same area. Day in and day out, he dragged himself from one village to the next, stopping at every home. He scraped the scalding sweat off his face and neck as he knocked, trembling, on the hospitable Cuban doors.
“¿Compran algo?” “Will you buy something?” he asked, gesturing broadly. Solidly built mothers and passionate, well-formed daughters looked at him with pity, comforting him and caressing him with the softness of the Spanish tongue and the gentleness of their big, velvety eyes. They gladly offered him a handout but shook their heads at his gods. “I’m sorry.” He got the same answer almost everywhere.
“¡Compra y no lamentes!” “Buy and don’t be sorry!”
“You’re right!” answered the women, with a slight smile. He stood with his distressed face and heavy heart, looking at the peasant women, unable to understand why they were so stubborn.
A few children gathered around him. They stared at his earnest face, carefully touched the frames of the unveiled images, and began playing with them. “Tell your mother to buy a santo,” he said, caressing one of the children. The child stopped laughing. His glance passed from the god merchant to his mother. It was hard for him to grasp what was happening.
“How sweet you are,” said the mother, affectionately embracing her now serious child.
“I have a child just like him in the old country,” said the god merchant, about to burst into tears.
“¡Mira, parece una mujer.” “He’s acting just like a woman!” The peasants were astonished to see the shiny tears forming in the corners of his eyes.
“Should a man cry?” “And he’s supposed to be the breadwinner for a wife and children!” “How funny!” A few girls, unable to restrain themselves, laughed in his face. Ashamed, he glanced at their widely smiling eyes, felt his own helplessness, and went away. His feet had grown heavier and his grasp of events slighter. Nonetheless, arming himself with courage, he went from village to village. He knocked on every door and humbly showed his wares: “¡Compren!” “Buy something! If you help me, God will help you. And I sell very cheap!”
But he seldom came across a customer interested in his low prices. Almost everyone was waiting for the santo, the holy peddler, who bore a great likeness to God Himself. They dismissed the new god merchant out of hand: “I don’t need any.” “I’m very sorry.” “We’ve already bought some from someone else.” He already knew all their answers by heart.
“Are gods the only thing to peddle?” Such was the bitter question he asked his fellow immigrants every day.
“Do you know of something better? Food isn’t about to fly into your mouth. And what are you going to do with the gods you’ve already bought?”
“¡Hay que trabajar!” “You’ve got to work!” exclaimed one of his countrymen, eager to show off his Spanish.
“But my work is in vain!”
“Right now your work is in vain, but it will pay off in time,” said his friends, trying to console him.
“In time, in time!” he muttered nervously, not knowing at whom.
It had grown dark in the middle of the day. The clear, tropical sky had suddenly clouded over. Waves of heat rose from the ground, and the air became closer and denser. At any moment buckets of rain could fall. Campesinos, riding into town, became uneasy lest the storm catch up with them. So they pushed back their gritty straw hats, their tijanas; fastened the palm-leaf baskets full of fowl on one side of their saddles; secured the cans of milk on the other side; and urged the horses on with all their might. “¡Pronto!” “Faster!” “¡Pronto!” “Soon there’ll be a deluge!” “You’ll get soaked with all your gods in the middle of the field.” The riders took pity on the poor foot traveler as they dug their spurs ever more deeply into the sides of their horses. But he scarcely moved his feet, hammering his steps out heavily. It was already past noon, and he hadn’t sold a single god.
Arriving at the next village, soaked to the bone, he caught sight of an open door leading into a home full of people. Sneaking in, he put down his pack of gods in a corner behind the door. As he started removing his wet clothes from his even wetter body, he heard a woman speaking: “Here’s five dollars; send me a San Antonio like that next week.” “And send me a Jesús by the Well.” “I’ll take a San Pablo. Take three dollars in the meantime, and I’ll pay the rest later.” “Make sure you don’t forget to send me a Santa María.” “And I want a Mother with the Son.” The women shouted over each other.
He could hardly believe his ears. He thought he was dreaming one of his sweet nightly dreams, in which he saw himself amid circles of peasant women ripping his godly wares out of his hands. He had believed that such good fortune was possible only in a dream, but here it was happening for real. “What can this be?” He wondered why he hadn’t yet looked into the opposite corner of the room, and he took a few steps toward it.
He stopped in his tracks, stupefied. All his limbs began to shake.
He tried to hide his surprise, for never had he seen a man who looked so much like Jesus. “So that’s it!” he murmured to himself as he watched Joseph rolling his eyes from time to time toward heaven, blessing the peasant women as a rebbe blesses his Hasidim. “Aha!” He was astonished at the reverence the village women bestowed on the stranger. “No, no, I could never become such a showman!” He stepped off to one side to keep Joseph from noticing him.
His last bit of hope had run out. “Y tú, ¿de dónde vienes?” “And where have you come from?” The peasant women were surprised to see the new god peddler after Joseph had left.
“From Santo Domingo.”
“You’ve just gotten here?”
“No, I’m just about to leave.”
“Did you see our Jesusito?”
“You mean the vendedor, the seller of the gods?”
“Yes. Doesn’t he look just like Jesús?” asked the peasant women, offended.
“Like Jesus? But he’s a judío, a Jew!” These words came flying out of his mouth with unusual force.
“¡Mentira! ¡Mentira!” “That’s a lie! A lie! You yourself are the judío, and a dirty one at that!” cried the peasant women in unison, pale with emotion.
“¡Palabra de honor!” “I give you my word of honor that he’s a judío!”
The new god peddler couldn’t restrain himself when he realized what a terrible impression the word judío made on them. But his claims were all in vain. The village women still didn’t believe him. He couldn’t make them understand. “¡No, no puede ser!” “No, it can’t be!” “¡Vamos, vete de aquí!” “Come on! Get out of here!” They couldn’t stand to hear his words any longer.
He fell silent and left the house but not the village. He sought out some young men and bought them a round of drinks. As he sipped black coffee by the white marble table, he told them that the god peddler with the face like Jesus’s, who overcharged their mothers for the pictures they bought from him, was a Jew, a descendant of the ones who had crucified Jesus.
“¡
No hable boberías!” “Don’t talk nonsense!” “¿Cómo es posible?” “How can that be?” “¡No me lo diga!” “Don’t tell me.” The young men didn’t want to believe him. As their stubbornness grew, so did his. Finally, he told them of the first Jewish commandment. He left twenty-five dollars with the owner of the café and swore that the money was theirs if he had been lying to them. The cash had the right effect. It was as though the young men had been touched by fire. The blood rushed to their faces, and they drank themselves into a stupor.
Joseph hadn’t yet arrived at the first house in the village when a lad ran across his path. “¡Oiga!” Listen, sir, my mother wants to buy something.” The boy breathed with difficulty, hardly able to utter these words.
“¡Bendito eres, hijito!” “Blessed art thou, my son!” Such was Joseph’s gentle answer.
“¡Por aquí es más cerca!” “This way is shorter!” said the little goy as he strode over the field, with Joseph trailing behind him.
Soon they were far, very far, from the village. The boy had already pointed out that “right over there” was their house. Although Joseph saw no house “over there,” he still suspected nothing, assuming that his eyes were not as keen as the little goy’s.
“Oiga, santo, ¿tú eres judío?” “Listen, Your Holiness, are you a Jew?” The earth had suddenly brought forth, before Joseph’s eyes, a robust young Cuban. Joseph gazed in surprise. For once his quick tongue failed him. When he finally could say something, it was too late. He was already splayed on the ground, with several goyim pinning down his legs; one held his head and two his arms. He screamed bloody murder, thrashed with his feet, pulled with all his might, but to no avail. They were stronger and did what they had to.
When they found out that he was indeed a Jew, they left him lying there, half-naked in the middle of the field. Every one of them spat in his face, hollered “Judío!” and ran to the village to tell of this wondrous thing.
The village women refused to believe even their own children. And for a long, long time they wouldn’t patronize the new god merchant, for they hoped that Jesús would come back. But Joseph never returned.
GUATEMALA
Kindergarten
VICTOR PERERA (1934–2003)
When Rites: A Guatemalan Boyhood first appeared in 1986, critics immediately celebrated its engaging lyricism and touching honesty. This story from that collection, originally written in English, is reminiscent of Isaac Babel’s “The Story of My Dovecot.” The autobiographical narrator describes in an openly unsentimental fashion a child’s first encounter with anti-Semitism. The plot involves two apparently unconnected murders: that of Jesus Christ and another of the narrator’s favorite maid. Perera died in Santa Cruz, California. He was also the author of The Cross and the Pear Tree (1995), among other works.
MY EARLIEST IMAGES are geometrical: the narrow bars of the bedstead that I amazed everyone by squeezing through one windy night when I was frightened by a sheet flapping on a clothesline and wanted my mother; the perfect rectangle of Parque Central, with its octagonal tiled benches, encircled fountains, checkered flagstones. And across the way the twin towers of the cathedral, housing a dark mystery of candles and painted idols that would forever be barred to me.
In my pedal car, I explored the limits of my universe, always certain that beyond our doorstep and the park’s four borders lay unnamed terrors. I was especially fond of a wooded labyrinth in the park’s northern end, a dark, sinuous place where I could act out my heroic reveries unseen by Chata, the Indian girl with long braids and sweet-smelling skirts who looked after me. To my five-year-old’s eyes, Chata seemed a rare beauty; she dressed in the vivid, handwoven huipil blouse and skirt of her region and had unusually fine olive skin. Chata was a spirited and mischievous young woman who let me eat forbidden sweets from street vendors and who would gently tease me into fondling her firm round breasts under the thin blouse.
I made friends in Parque Central, the year before my second branding. The first I can recall was Jorge, an idiot boy with gray drooping eyes that did not disguise his sunny nature. I liked Jorge because he was affectionate—indeed, he was little else—and disarmed my budding defenses by hugging me uninhibitedly and stroking my face. Jorge taught me to touch another without shame or ulterior motive, and for this I am forever indebted to him. I grew to love Jorge and had begun to interpret his grunts and noises into a modest vocabulary when he stopped coming to the park. Chata found out from his china that Jorge had been placed in a home.
That year I acquired my first heroes, the platoon of uniformed guards who marched past every afternoon on their way to the palacio. I would follow them the length of the park, beating my hands to the beat of the drum, pumping my legs as high as I could to their stride. At the curb I would stop and mark time until they turned the corner and disappeared.
Chata had an admirer, a tall Indian laborer named Ramiro, who courted her in the afternoons and on weekends, when Chata would take me to the park. Ramiro wore a straw hat and leather shoes and used to flash a gold tooth when he smiled or smirked. Chata kept Ramiro on tenterhooks, encouraging his advances and then rebuffing him with a toss of her head, or mocking his confusion with a whinnying giggle that appeared to goad and arouse him. He looked at her at times with a cold, hungering menace that I recognized even then as lust. I disliked and feared Ramiro, but I never dared to intrude on their lovers’ play or their frequent spats in the park. Instead, I would retaliate by making Chata admit, when she tucked me into bed at night, that I was her favorite.
I was some weeks short of five, and small for my age, the first time Chata took me to school and abandoned me in the hands of a tall, gaunt woman with hard eyes and a pursed mouth. Her name was Miss Hale, and I detected from her accent that she was foreign.
“Aren’t we a little small to be starting school?” she said, in slow, badly slurred Spanish. I understood this to be a taunt, which, on top of my desertion by Chata, brought tears to my eyes. I feared and distrusted Miss Hale all the more when I realized that this was the exact reaction she wanted and that my tears had placated her.
The room she led me into was musty and dim. I was presented to my classmates, most of whom seemed strange to me, and very large. Even their names, Octavio, Gunter, Michel, Loretta, had a foreign ring. From my earliest consciousness I had known I was a foreigner in this strange place, Guatemala.
Now, in the kindergarten room of the English-American School, I felt an alien among aliens.
“My mother says you are a Jew.” It was Arturo, a dark, thickset boy with hooded eyes and hairy legs below his short trousers. Within a week, he and Gunter, a tall blond boy with smudged knees who made in his pants, established themselves as the class bullies. We were at recess, which meant I could play with my new friends, plump-cheeked Grace Samayoa and Michel Montcrassi, who was French and wore sandals on his stockinged feet and a round blue cap. There was a fountain in the patio with goldfish in it and a rising nymph with mossy green feet who poured water from her pitcher. In each corner of the patio (Mother said the school had once been a convent) was a large red flowerpot, with pink and white geraniums. I sensed the question was critical and I must reply with care.
“Yes,” I said.
“My mother says the Jews killed Christ.”
Now this was a trickier question. Who was Christ? “They did not,” I said, but all I could be certain of was that I, at least, had not killed Christ—whoever he was—because I had never killed anyone, at least not knowingly.
Then I remembered stepping on a cockroach once and stomping on ants in the kitchen. Maybe I had killed Christ by accident.
“Prove it,” Octavio said.
I told him I would ask Father about it and give him a reply the next day.
That night I asked Father why I was a Jew. He hoisted me up by the armpits, sat me on his knee, and told me a long and complicated story about God, the Bible, and a Jew named Moses. When I asked if it was true that the Jews had killed Christ, he frowned
and said the Romans had done it. He said I should pay no attention to Arturo.
When Arturo approached me next day, Father’s story had gone clear out of my head. All I remembered was that the Romans had done it.
“The Romans killed Christ,” I said.
“Who are the Romans?” Arturo asked.
I said I wasn’t sure but would ask Father and let him know.
When I asked Father in the evening, he was reading a newspaper. He said the Romans did it and that was that, and I was to pay no heed to Arturo. Father was not in a talkative mood, and I did not press the matter. But I was confused, and I feared my next encounter with Arturo.
Several days passed, and Arturo did not mention the Jews and Christ. I dared hope the whole subject had been forgotten. In the meantime, my friendship with Michel grew. He let me call him Coco, which was his nickname, because his head was round and hard like a coconut; even his curly blond hair resembled a coconut husk. Coco was as much a foreigner in the school as I was. He was Protestant, and the bigger boys mocked his French accent and played catch with his cap.
Grace Samayoa was a little shy of me, although she liked me to tell her stories I’d made up in the labyrinth. Now and again she gave me an approving smile when I answered Miss Hale’s questions correctly—and once she let me stroke her hair. Grace Samayoa was the most attractive female I knew next to Chata and my mother. But Grace was also my own size, which made her a challenge. I longed to hug her.
One afternoon Chata failed to pick me up at school. That morning Ramiro had followed us to school, as usual, although they had quarreled in the park the day before, when he had caught her flirting with a young chauffeur.
“He’s following us. Don’t turn around,” I recall Chata saying, glancing behind her without turning her head. They were the last words of Chata’s I would ever hear.