TALE OF THE HOT LAND
At home the man remembered the submissive, yellow glance
of
the animal, and asked himself, "Was it a dog, was it a coyote,
was
it a man?" He decided to give up that road and take the one
near
it, although that meant going roundabout a great way before
reaching his house. To return by
this
road he had to begin his jour–
ney
much sooner, and in this way he arrived home very late.
Five years ago he had also abandoned the second road because
be
had heard a noise which he couldn't make out or explain to him–
Iill.
It was the sound of a cane striking against the road, as
if
a
man were approaching and leaning on it. Neither the cane nor the
man was visible, but the little sound persisted, and with the tapping
of
the wood against the ground came the sound of a little metal
knob which seemed to be stuck
in
the handle, loose and insecure. The
man stopped his horse and listened to the sound which went be–
fore
him, always before him and always near. In order to see better,
he
rose in the stirrups and cried out, "Hey, you with the cane!
Where are you?"
Both horse and rider waited uneasily. He had to give up that
mad
too, and although the one near it, the third, was only a path
and
much longer, from that day he used it to go home.
One day at a bend
in
the road he found a white heron that
spoke like a woman. On the first day the heron said:
The day will not come back,
Asleep or dead perhaps
On the distant glowing rocks.
Its mane bristling, the horse broke into a gallop. Thereafter
always
on returning by that road the man went along thinking of the
white heron, and although expecting it at every turn, he was always
IItonished when it appeared.
Four years ago he had given up that way. To find another
lOad
he had to start half an hour earlier, going northward from
the
market place. One day at that confused hour when the air before
~ming
quite black takes on the gray body of mist or smoke, he
Iwa
rabbit pass before him on the road.
It
was the same rabbit that
appeared in the face of the moon during the time of Quetzalcoatl.
The
rabbit repeated the words of the moon's lullaby without singing
I.
He took this as a bad sign and decided to return and look for the
