he told her the story for the hundredth time, Don Martín’s black eyes twinkled and rolled like a little boy relating a secret.
“Long ages ago when the world was young, before Jesus was born of the blessed Virgin, there was a handsome prince in our land. His skin was golden, and his hair and eyes were as black as the night but glistened with light like the stars and the moon. He loved the forests, the animals and the flowers and the butterflies, but he especially loved the birds. He found the feathers from the tail of the great blue and green quetzal on the forest floor, and his sisters wove them into beautiful robes for him. Then the quetzal had no red breast.” Don Martín paused. It had been a long, wearying day. “He began to trap the quetzals . . .”
“No, no, Don Martín. Tell about the little boys. You’re leaving that part of it out.”
“¡Como no! (As you say!) Those were evil days when men killed each other in war. Their priests came and told them that the king must choose a child, a male child, a beloved son, the most beautiful boy of the tribe and kill him. Every year a little boy had to be killed, so that the warriors would have success in war. The prince did not have to worry about the evil priests or about war while he was young. He played in the forest with his friends, the animals and the birds. He gathered flowers, and he brought the beautiful feathers of the birds and butterflies that had died and put them with his flowers in the temple. The priests laughed at the feathers and flowers and dead butterflies that he stuck in cracks of the temple walls, but he was the prince and just a little boy, and they didn’t scold him. No one ever scolded him, and he grew up thinking that he could do whatever he wanted to do, because he was the prince. He became spoiled and vain, but his heart was good, deep inside. He did no work and walked around in his robe of gleaming green feathers like a proud bird.”
“Would they have killed me if I had lived back then, so they would win the war?”
“Of course not. You are a little girl. They never sacrificed little girls, only little boys.”
“I think Pablo is like the little prince, because nobody ever scolds him or makes him do anything he does not want to do.”
“Maybe. Maybe so. Once the little prince captured five quetzals and put them in a cage; but within a week they had died, for as you know the quetzal cannot live in captivity. He took the feathers from the dead birds and asked his sisters to make him a new robe, more beautiful than any of the others. And then his luck began to change, perhaps because the sacred birds had died and lost their plumes, perhaps because he had grown older and could no longer play in the forest and do as he pleased in the temple with the flowers and feathers and butterflies. He swore that he would never cause anything beautiful to die again. Then his father, the old king, died, and the young prince became the king. He was no longer a boy. Now he was a young man. The time for the great feast of war arrived, and the priests came to the young king and told him that he must choose the most handsome male child in the tribe and cut out his heart and offer it to the gods. He did not believe that the gods who had made the flowers and the butterflies and the birds would want a child’s heart cut out of his body. After the quetzals died he had promised not to kill anything beautiful. He refused to choose a little boy to be sacrificed, but the priests told him that he must do what they commanded.”
Martín paused, as he always did at this point in the story and looked down at Sarah’s expectant, impatient face that reflected how she was annoyed by the delay. “Go on. What happened then?”
“You finish the story today. I am tired. You tell the rest of it. You know it as well as I do.”
“I do not want to. It is not the same as hearing you tell it. Even Daddy is not able to tell it like you do. When he speaks in English, it does not seem real. It seems like it really happened when you talk in Spanish.”
“Very well. The day of the festival arrived. The young king was very unhappy. Somehow he knew that one life must be given for another. It is something people have always understood, but this was a long time before Jesus came to tell people about a loving God. He was very confused and sad. He could not decide whether to obey the priests or to keep his oath never to kill anything beautiful. When the hour for the festival arrived, the young king had been persuaded to choose a boy from the tribe. He chose a child—how old are you now?”
“You know very well that I am almost ten years old, and I am in the fourth grade at the American School.”
“The young king chose a ten year old boy, but they did not have schools then, so he was not in the fourth grade, and the priests brought the boy up to the high altar at the temple. A sword was standing beside the altar with its sharp tip pointing up to the sky. The priests planned to take the sword and cut out the heart of the little boy. He cried and screamed when they pulled him toward the altar. It took three strong men to hold him.”
“Just like Pablo.”
“Then, just as they placed him on top of the altar and were reaching to pick up the sword, the young king rushed forward and threw himself onto its point. It pierced his heart, and the red blood ran out all over the golden skin of his chest, but none of the blood touched the green-feathered robe. Not even a year had passed when people began to see the red breasts on the quetzals. No one was allowed to kill a quetzal or a boy again. Now the quetzals are the sacred birds of the forest that guide people into all truth.”
Martín stood and picked up his machete. Sarah hopped up from the edge of the patio like a bird herself and hugged the peasant laborer around his waist and put her cheek against his naked, sweaty, brown belly. “I love your stories. Thank you, Don Martín. I really do love you.”
A couple of months later when Mary Rutledge asked her daughter what she wanted for her birthday, Sarah said she wanted her bedroom floor strewn with orchids.
“Really, Sarah, how foolish! They’d just wilt in a few hours. Think what a waste it would be!” Mary spoke in her Southern-lady tone of voice. “I’ve never heard of anything so silly and impractical. It’s outrageous!”
But Martín had overheard her; and when Sarah came home from school the afternoon of her birthday, tiny mountain orchids were scattered across the floor of her bedroom. “Mother! The orchids! How beautiful! Where did they come from?”
“Martín gathered them in the forest for you. Who else would humor you with such foolishness!”
“Oh, I should have guessed. I should have known Don Martín would pick them for me if I’d asked him to.” Sarah paused, afraid her mother had misunderstood. “I didn’t ask him to, but he must have overheard me talking to you. He understands us when we speak in English, I think, even though he won’t say a word to us except in Spanish.”
“Martín overhears everything we say in this house. It’s impossible to keep anything private.” Mary Rutledge pursed her mouth as she often did when she was annoyed.
Somehow Sarah knew that Don Martín had gathered the orchids for her as a compensation for refusing to let her wear the quetzal crown to the Epiphany party at the church. She put the orchids in a round fishbowl on her dresser, and they didn’t wilt for almost a week, which went to show how much Don Martín knew about beautiful things that lived in the forest and how little her mother knew.
After Sarah’s birthday George Rutledge told his daughter that she could no longer ask Don Martín to ride piggyback around the house and garden. “It’s too hard for him to carry you, now that you’re a big girl, and you’re too old for that sort of thing.”
Sarah believed that Don Martín would still be glad to give her rides on his back. He seemed to enjoy them as much as she
