The Indian looked round him. He found himself in a small prison-like court, paved with big flagstones, with not a blade of grass anywhere. A wall lower than the outer one divided the court from the rest of the estate. At the gateway in the inner wall stood a large-windowed whitewashed building. Near it squatted a group of Indians-men, women and children.
Some of the children were playing jackstones with shells, others were wrestling in silence. The old Black saw to it that they did not disturb the peace of the place.
The old man eased himself down submissively in the shade of the building and started blowing into the child’s bluish inert face. An old Indian woman squatting down beside him threw a glance at the pair.
“Daughter?” she asked.
“Granddaughter,” the Indian replied.
“It’s the bog spirit as entered your child. But he’s stronger’n any evil spirit, he is. Hell bring the poor thing back to health.”
The Indian nodded.
The white-smocked Black, who was making a round of the sick, stopped in front of the Indian and beckoned to him to go in.
The room that the Indian entered was big and bare, except for a long narrow table, covered with a white sheet, standing in the centre of the flagged floor. A second, frost-glass panelled door was opened and in strode Dr. Salvator, a tall, broad-shouldered, dark-complexioned man wearing a white smock. The black eyelashes and eyebrows were the only hair on his head. He must have taken to shaving his head long ago, for it wore as good a coat of tan as his face. An aquiline nose, a jutting chin and tightly compressed lips lent to his face a cruel, one might say, predatory expression. The cold look of his brown eyes sent little shivers down the Indian’s spine.
The Indian made a low bow and stretched his arms with the girl in them towards the doctor. With quick, sure and yet careful hands Salvator took the sick girl from the Indian’s arms, unwound the rags with which she was swathed and tossed them very neatly into a receptacle in the corner. The Indian made to retrieve them but was stopped in his tracks by a peremptory “Leave them where they are”.
Then Salvator laid the little girl on the table and bent over her. In profile now, he seemed to the Indian a bird of prey poised to strike. Salvator was examining the tumour with his fingers. These too struck the Indian’s imagination. They were long and amazingly supple and seemed to be able to bend not only downwards, but from side to side and even upwards. The Indian, normally a plucky man, tried to fight down the feeling of fear the extraordinary doctor had aroused in him.
“Excellent, splendid,” Salvator was saying, as if in admiration of what he saw. The examination over, Salvator turned to the Indian.
“Come in a month’s time, when the moon’s new again, and you’ll have your little girl back-healthy.”
And he took the girl behind the frost-glass door.
Meanwhile the Black had led in the next patient, the old woman with a swollen leg.
The Indian made a low bow in the direction of the frost-glass door and went out.
In exactly twenty-eight days the frost-glass door was opened again.
The little girl, sporting a new dress, lively and apple-cheeked, appeared in the doorway. There was alarm in her eyes as she caught sight of her granddad. The Indian lunged forward, picked the girl up, smacked her a kiss and examined her throat. The tumour was gone. There was only a tiny reddish scar where the girl had been operated upon.
The child kept pushing her granddad away with her hands and had even cried out when, kissing her, he pricked her with his stubbly chin. He had to let her down. Salvator came in. There was a flicker of a smile on his face as he patted the child’s head and said:
“Here, take your child. You were only just in time bringing her. Another few hours and even I would not have been able to recall her to life.”
The lips in the Indian’s crinkled face quivered and tears came into his eyes. He gave the little girl another hug, then fell on his knees before Salvator.
“You saved my granddaughter’s life,” he said in a stifled voice. “A poor Indian has nothing but his own life to repay you with.”
“What do I want with your life?” wondered Salvator.
“I may be old but there’s strength in my arms yet,” the Indian went on, not rising from his knees. “I’ll take the little one to her mother-my daughter-and then come back. My life is now yours-for what you’ve done for me. I will serve you like a dog. Please don’t say no, I beg you.”
Salvator pondered.
He was chary of taking new servants. Not that he didn’t need any. There was much work to do. Help Jim with the gardening, for instance. Come to think of it, he did need a servant. He would have preferred a Black, to be sure, but this Indian fellow seemed all right…
“You make me a gift of your life. Very well. I accept it. When can you come?”
“I’ll be back before the first quarter’s over,” said the Indian, kissing the hem of Salvator’s smock.
“What is your name?”
“Cristobal, Cristo for short.”
“Go, Cristo. Ill be waiting for you.”
“Come on, my girlie,” Cristo said to the child and picked her up again. She started to cry. Cristo hurried away.
An Orchardful of Miracles
When Cristo turned up again a week later Dr. Salvator greeted him with a searching glance and said:
“Now then, Cristo, pay attention to what I’m going to tell you. I’m taking you on. You'll have good pay and board – ”
Cristo waved his hands.
“I don’t want anything so long as you let me serve you.”
“Be silent and listen,” Salvator cut him short. “You’U have everything as I said you would. But there’s one condition: keep your mouth shut about everything you see here.”
“I’d sooner cut my tongue out with my own hands and throw it to the dogs than breathe a single word to anybody.”
“See you don’t have to do that,” came Salvator’s warning. With that he summoned in the white-smocked Black and ordered him to take Cristo into the orchard and place him in Jim’s charge.
Bowing silently, the Black took the Indian outside and across the courtyard to the iron gate in the inner wall.
In response to the Black’s knock a barking of dogs came from behind the wall, then the gate creaked and opened slowly. The Black gave Cristo a light push, shouted something in throaty tones to the Black who stood inside the gate, and went away.
Cristo backed against the wall in fright. Charging at him were a pack of beasts with tawny black-spotted fur. Had they been in the pampas Cristo would not have hesitated in calling them jaguars. But these barked like dogs. Anyhow there was no time to puzzle it out. Cristo sprinted for the nearest tree and was up it with an agility surprising in a man of his age. The Black hissed at them, for all the world like an angry cobra, at once bringing them to. The beasts stopped their thunderous baying, lay down and put their muzzles on their forepaws, slanting their eyes up at their master.
The Black hissed again, this time to Cristo, and beckoned him to climb down.
“What’re you hissing there like a snake for? Swallowed your tongue,eh?”
The Black only gave an angry inarticulate sound. He must be dumb, Cristo thought and remembered Salvator’s warning. Does Salvator really cut out the tongues of those who betray his secrets? This poor blighter might be one of them. Sudden fear almost made Cristo lose his grip on the tree-trunk. He wished to God he were on the right side of the great wall again. With his eyes he measured the distance between his tree and the wall but saw he couldn’t make it. Meanwhile the Black had approached the tree, got hold of Cristo’s foot and was tugging at it impatiently.