The Pearl--Chapter 3--Costello

A town is a thing like a colonial animal.

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

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

He remembered the room he had lived in there as a great and luxurious place, and he remembered the hard-faced woman who had lived with him as a beautiful and kind girl, although she had been none of these three.

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 essence of pearl mixed with essence of men and a curious dark residue was precipitated.

Kino's pearl, and Kino's pearl went into the dreams, the speculations, the schemes, the plans, the futures, the wishes, the needs, the lusts, the hungers, of everyone, and only one person stood in the way and that was Kino, so that he became curiously every man's enemy.

And this is said in disparagement, whereas it is one of the greatest talents the species has and one that has made it superior to animals that are satisfied with what they have.

But Kino's face shone with prophecy.

They knew they should go to their own dinners, but they were reluctant to leave.

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.

Now Juana had the baby under her shawl, and she stared at it with anxiety and fear.

He wrapped the pearl in the rag, then went to the corner of the brush house and dug a little hole with his fingers in the dirt floor, and he put the pearl in the hole and covered it up and concealed the place.

The neighbors showed one another with their thumbs how big the pearl was, and they made little caressing gestures to show how lovely it was.

He was not good at dissembling and he was very well understood.

Kino's eyes were hooded now, his cheeks were drawn taut.

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.

"It is nothing," Kino said, but his eyes and his voice were hard and cold and a brooding hate was growing in him.

His dark eyes scowled into the little fire, and for the first time he knew that his knife was still in his hands, and he raised the blade and looked at it and saw a little line of blood on the steel.

He could see the little image of the consecrated candle reflected in the soft surface of the pearl, and he heard again in his ears the lovely music of the undersea, the tone of the diffused green light of the sea bottom.