Read Online The Pearl by John Steinbeck - Free Book Online Page A

his man. He scattered the old women like chickens. He took the baby and examined it and felt its head. “The poison it has worked,” he said. “I think I can defeat it. I will try my best.” He asked for water, and in the cup of it he put three drops of ammonia, and he pried open the baby’s mouth and poured it down. The baby spluttered and screeched underthe treatment, and Juana watched him with haunted eyes. The doctor spoke a little as he worked. “It is lucky that I know about the poison of the scorpion, otherwise—” and he shrugged to show what could have happened.
    But Kino was suspicious, and he could not take his eyes from the doctor’s open bag, and from the bottle of white powder there. Gradually the spasms subsided and the baby relaxed under the doctor’s hands. And then Coyotito sighed deeply and went to sleep, for he was very tired with vomiting.
    The doctor put the baby in Juana’s arms. “He will get well now,” he said. “I have won the fight.” And Juana looked at him with adoration.
    The doctor was closing his bag now. He said, “When do you think you can pay this bill?” He said it even kindly.
    “When I have sold my pearl I will pay you,” Kino said.
    “You have a pearl? A good pearl?” the doctor asked with interest.
    And then the chorus of the neighbors broke in. “He has found the Pearl of the World,” they cried, and they joined forefinger with thumb to show how great the pearl was.
    “Kino will be a rich man,” they clamored. “It is a pearl such as one has never seen.”
    The doctor looked surprised. “I had not heard of it. Do you keep this pearl in a safe place? Perhaps you would like me to put it in my safe?”
    Kino’s eyes were hooded now, his cheeks were drawn taut. “I have it secure,” he said. “Tomorrow I will sell it and then I will pay you.”
    The doctor shrugged, and his wet eyes never left Kino’s eyes. He knew the pearl would be buried in the house, and he thought Kino might look toward the place where it wasburied. “It would be a shame to have it stolen before you could sell it,” the doctor said, and he saw Kino’s eyes flick involuntarily to the floor near the side post of the brush house.
    When the doctor had gone and all the neighbors had reluctantly returned to their houses, Kino squatted beside the little glowing coals in the fire hole and listened to the night sound, the soft sweep of the little waves on the shore and the distant barking of dogs, the creeping of the breeze through the brush house roof and the soft speech of his neighbors in their houses in the village. For these people do not sleep soundly all night; they awaken at intervals and talk a little and then go to sleep again. And after a while Kino got up and went to the door of his house.
    He smelled the breeze and he listened for any foreign sound of secrecy or creeping, and his eyes searched the darkness, for the music of evil was sounding in his head and he was fierce and afraid. After he had probed the night with his senses he went to the place by the side post where the pearl was buried, and he dug it up and brought it to his sleeping mat, and under his sleeping mat he dug another little hole in the dirt floor and buried the pearl and covered it up again.
    And Juana, sitting by the fire hole, watched him with questioning eyes, and when he had buried his pearl she asked, “Who do you fear?”
    Kino searched for a true answer, and at last he said, “Everyone.” And he could feel a shell of hardness drawing over him.
    After a while they lay down together on the sleeping mat, and Juana did not put the baby in his box tonight, but cradled him in her arms and covered his face with her headshawl. And the last light went out of the embers in the fire hole.
    But Kino’s brain burned, even during his sleep, and he dreamed that Coyotito could read, that one of his own people could tell him the truth of things. And in his dream, Coyotito was reading from a book as large as a house,