The Lost Steps by Alejo Carpentier

Author:Alejo Carpentier [Carpentier, Alejo]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780816638079
Google: PuleAAAAMAAJ
Amazon: 0816638071
Publisher: Knopf
Published: 1956-04-14T14:00:00+00:00

(Sunday, June 17)

XVII/ On my way back from the mine I chortled to myself as I thought of the shock in store for Mouche when she saw that the marvelous cave, aglitter with precious stones, the treasure-trove of Agamemnon which she undoubtedly expected it to be, was a riverbed, dug, furrowed, churned up, a mudhole in which shovels had probed, up and down, crosswise, returning twenty times to the spot of their first strike in the hope of having missed, by some deflection of the hand, by a margin of millimeters, the fabled Stone. The youngest of the diamond-diggers talked to me on the way of the hardships of the work, of the daily disappointments, and of the strange fatality that always makes the finder of one big stone return, poor and in debt, to the spot of his discovery. Hope revives each time a fine diamond emerges from the earth, and its water, which can be divined before cutting, blots out the view of jungle and mountains, firing the pulse of those who scrape the coating of mud from their bodies after a fruitless day.

I inquired about the women, and was told that they were bathing in a near-by stream whose pools concealed no venomous animals. Nevertheless, I heard shouts, shouts which, as they came nearer, brought me out of the cabin, startled by the violence of tone and the confusion of the cries.

My first thought was that someone had gone to spy out their nakedness from the bank or had made some insulting proposition. It was Mouche who appeared, her clothes dripping, calling for help, as though fleeing from some terror. Before I could take a step, I saw Rosario, partly covered by a coarse slip, rush over to my friend, throw her to the ground, and begin to beat her savagely with a stick. With her hair loose over her shoulders, vomiting insults, kicking her, beating her with the stick and her other hand, she was the image of such appalling ferocity that we all ran to hold her. She went on struggling and kicking with a fury that expressed itself in hoarse growls, unintelligible words. When I helped Mouche to her feet, she could hardly stand. Two of her teeth were broken, and blood was gushing from her nose. She was a mass of scratches and bruises.

Doctor Montsalvatje led her away to his hut to treat her. Meanwhile we surrounded Rosario, trying to find out what had happened. But now an obstinate silence had come over her, and she refused to say a word. Sitting on a stone, her head hanging, she repeated with exasperating stubbornness the gesture of refusal, which tossed her black hair from side to side over her face, still set in fury. I went to the hut. Mouche lay moaning in the Herbalist’s hammock. To my questions she replied that she knew no reason for the attack, that Rosario seemed to have gone crazy, and with this she burst into tears, saying

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