The Black Pearl by Scott O'Dell

Author:Scott O'Dell [O'Dell, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

9

THERE ARE FOUR PEARL DEALERS in our town of La Paz, as I have said, not counting Salazar and Son. There are many others of course who sell a few small pearls on the street, like the woman at the calabozo. But these are the four who buy and sell the fine pearls that come from the Vermilion Sea.

About a week after my father had cut the pearl, the four men came to our home. At first my father had talked about taking the great pearl to Mexico City, but he had done this once before with a rare pearl and the long trip had been a failure because the dealers there are very smart. So we decided to sell the Pearl of Heaven to the dealers in La Paz. Not any one of them could afford the price, nor two nor three, but the four together could raise the money we would ask.

They came early in the afternoon, dressed in their best black suits and carrying a scale and calipers and their money in a crocodile bag. The excitement in the town had died after a couple of days, but when word got around that the dealers were going to the Salazars to buy the great black pearl a crowd followed them and stood outside our gate.

My mother and my two sisters had come back from Loreto, for they too had heard the news of the pearl, and so the fountain in the patio was turned on and the parlor was fixed up with flowers and all the furniture shone.

The four men wore serious faces and they put their calipers and scales on the parlor table and their brown crocodile bag. They sat down and folded their hands and said nothing.

Then my father said, "The bag is very small, gentlemen. I doubt that it holds enough money to buy the great Pearl of Heaven."

The four dealers did not like this. One of them, named Arturo Martin, was big and shaped like a barrel and had small white hands.

"I have heard that the pearl is the size of a grapefruit," he said. "In which case we have more money than we need. For as you know the large ones are of little value."

"They do not live long, these monsters," said Miguel Palomares, who was as fat as Martin and had a bald head that glistened. "They often die or become dull before a year passes."

"And so do many of the small ones," my father said. "Like the pink one Señor Palomares sold us last month."

Señor Palomares shrugged his shoulders.

"Before I show the Pearl of Heaven," my father said, "I will tell you the price. It is twenty thousand pesos, no more and no less."

The four men looked at each other and smiled thin smiles, as if to say that they had made up their minds already about what they would pay.

My father went out of the room and came back with the pearl wrapped in a piece of white velvet. He laid it on the table in front of the four dealers.

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