Pedro Páramo

by Juan Rulfo

They say many of those who die there and go to Hell come back to fetch their blankets.

—That’s strange. We were still young back then, of course. And she was just married. But we loved each other a lot. Your mother was so pretty, or rather so sweet, that it was a pleasure to love her. You couldn’t help but love her. So, she beat me to it, huh? But you can be sure I’ll catch up to her. No one knows better than I do just how far we are from Heaven, but I also know a shortcut. God willing, it’s about dying at a time of your own choosing rather than according to His time. Or, you might say, it’s about forcing His hand a bit early. Forgive me for speaking to you as family, it’s because I consider you my son. Yes, I often said: “Dolores’s boy should’ve been mine.” Later I’ll tell you why. For now, let’s just say I’m going to catch up to your mother on one of the roads that lead to eternity.

“I love this place because of you, but I hate it because of everything else, even for having been born here.”

slumber. Hands tug at the blankets and draw them close while beneath their warmth a body hides from the world in search of peace.

—They’ve killed your father. —And you, Mother? Who killed you?

«THERE’S WIND, AND SUN, and clouds. Above us a blue sky and beyond that perhaps there’s singing, maybe in voices sweeter than our own … In a word, there’s hope. There’s hope for us, a hope set against our suffering.

They took advantage of her hospitality by appealing to a kind disposition that never wanted to offend or cause a rift with others.

Why did her gaze seem to gain courage in this moment of resignation? What would it cost him to grant forgiveness, when it is so easy to say a word or two, or even a hundred if that were needed to save a soul? What did he know of Heaven and Hell? Even so, hidden away in this town of little consequence, he knew quite well who the people were who deserved God’s Glory.

earth. So don’t be frightened, Juan Preciado, if you hear echoes that are more recent.»

—Hope? You pay dearly for that. It was that type of illusion that made me live longer than I should have. That’s the price I paid for hoping to find my son, who, as it turns out, was nothing more than a longing, since I never really had a son. Now that I’m dead, I’ve had time to think and to understand everything.

I got to Heaven and looked around to see if I might recognize my child’s countenance among the angels. But nothing. All the faces were the same, cast from the same mold. So I asked. One of those saints came over and, without saying a word, buried one of his hands in my gut as if he had buried it in a ball of wax. When he pulled it out, he showed me something that looked a bit like a nutshell. “Take this as proof of what you are being shown.”

—And what about your soul? Where do you think it’s disappeared to? —I suspect it’s wandering the earth like so many others, searching for anyone still alive who’ll pray for it. It’s possible it despises me for the way I treated it, but I no longer care. I’ve broken free of its obsessive need for remorse. It turned bitter what little food I was able to eat, and it made my nights unbearable by filling them with terrifying visions of the damned and that sort of thing.

I felt it when the delicate thread of blood that still joined it to my heart dropped into my hands.

—I’m beginning to pay. Better to start early, to finish sooner. He felt no grief.

tell those women to stop making such a fuss, it’s too much racket for a death that belongs to me. If it’d been one of their own, I’m sure they wouldn’t be bawling with so much enthusiasm.

I’m in this place now, laid out on my back, remembering that moment in the past as a way of forgetting my loneliness.

What would happen if her life were to be snuffed out along with the light of the delicate flame that allowed him to watch over her?

FIRST LIGHT WAS STILL a long way off. The sky was filled with stars, fat ones, swollen by the long night. The moon had come out for a short while, before disappearing again. It was one of those sorrowful moons that no one gazes at, no one notices. It had hung there for a time, disfigured, giving off no light, before rushing to hide behind the hills.

If someone in that house dies just imagine what’ll happen to all the work we’ve put in the past several days getting the church ready for the Nativity. Given how important don Pedro is, our celebration would be called off in a heartbeat.

The sight of God. The gentle light of His infinite Heaven. The jubilation of the cherubim and the song of the seraphim. The happiness in God’s eyes, the last fleeting image seen by those condemned to eternal suffering. On top of that, an endless torment added to our earthly sorrow. The marrow of our bones turned to hot ash and the veins that carry our blood to strings of fire, forcing us to wallow in an immense pain that never subsides and is stoked by the wrath of God.

He was alone, and had been for perhaps the last three hours. He couldn’t sleep. He had forgotten what sleep was, forgotten the very passage of time: “We old folks don’t sleep much, almost never. We doze off every now and then, but we never stop thinking. It’s the only thing I have left to do.” Then he added out loud: “It won’t be long now. Not long at all.”

The sun began to cascade over all the things covering the earth, giving them back their shape. The land spread out before him, empty and in ruins. The heat warmed his body. His eyes barely moved, but they jumped from one memory to another, obscuring the present. Suddenly his heart stopped, and it seemed as if time as well had come to an end. And the breath of life with it.