The Pearl

The Pearl Summary | Chapter 1 Summary

The introduction speaks of the story of a pearl, how it was found and lost again. It speaks of Kino the fisherman, his wife Juana and their baby Coyotito. In addition, like all stories told many times, it only has good and bad, black and white and good and evil, nothing in between.

Kino -a young pearl fisherman- wakes to a new day before the sun rises. First, he hears the roosters singing, the pigs looking for food and the birds among the cactus. Then he opens his eyes and sees the light at the door, the box suspended from the ceiling holding his infant child Coyotito and his wife Juana lying beside him, eyes open. Then he listens to the music inside his head. His people were once great song creators, and this one, sweet and clear he calls the Song of the Family. He watches his wife get up in silence, check on Coyotito and rekindle the fire, gets up and goes outside to watch the sunrise in the Gulf. He hears the sound of the batter and cooking of the tortillas, the Song of the Family now behind him, watches an ant, plays with a dog, looks at the neighboring huts, similar but different. He feels the morning is perfect, and that what he sees and hears is all there is.

Kino goes back into the hut and Juana gets up from beside the fire, puts the baby back in the box and braids her hair with two green ribbons. Then Kino eats his tortillas and drinks some pulque, content with the pleasant routine, always without words.

As a line of light goes through a crack in the wall and hits the hanging box, Kino and Juana freeze. They notice that a scorpion descends from the roof to the baby's box, tail pointing up. After a tense moment, Kino senses a new sound in his head: the Song of Evil, wild, secret and dangerous. He starts to move very slowly, eyes fixed in the animal and then stands still waiting for it to move. At that moment, the baby rattles the rope and the scorpion falls. Kino catches the scorpion and crushes it, but not before it stings the baby in the shoulder. Juana reacts immediately. She gets the screaming baby, bares the wound, suctions the poison and spits it.

Coyotito's cries attract the neighbors, led by Kino's brother Juan Tomás, his fat wife Apolonia and their four children. They pile on the entrance, the ones up front informing the rest. When Juana stops suctioning, the red swollen zone is bigger, a hard bump. Everybody knows the effects of a scorpion sting: the swollen wound, the fever, the dryness of the throat, the stomach cramps and then possibly death.

Many times before Kino has wondered at Juana´s iron temper, that makes her bear fatigue and hunger even better than him, but now she does something even more surprising; an old determination in her voice, she asks for the village physician. The neighbors, surprised, point out that the doctor wouldn't come to a brush house in the outskirts when he has more work than he can do with the rich people in the stone and plaster village. Then Juana arranges her shawl to carry the baby and sets out to go to the doctor. Kino follows her, followed in turn by his brother and sister in law and the rest of the fishermen village's inhabitants. The small procession gets to the end of the brush houses and enters the stone and plaster village, of bright outer walls and fresh inner gardens. It goes through the square and in front of the church, growing all the time, the newcomers informed matter-of-factly that the baby was stung by an scorpion and his mother and father are taking him to the doctor. The four church portal beggars join after a swift analysis of Kino and Juana´s clothes, eager to see the drama. They know everything about the village and know the physician, his ignorance, cruelty, hungers and sins. They want to see how would the fat, lazy physician react to an indigent baby stuck by a scorpion.

The procession reaches the big door, and Kino hesitates for a moment. The physician is of a different race, one that during four hundred years beat, stole and terrorized his own, and he knocks on the door with a mixture of rage and fear, the Song of the Enemy ringing in his head. The door is opened by an Indian servant who refuses to speak the tongue of the ancients and bolts it again to go find his master. He finds him in his high bed, drinking chocolate surrounded by big dark furniture and religious pictures and in bad humor. The physician protests at having to cure an insect bite on an Indian baby and sends the servant back to the door, to find out if Kino has enough money to pay for the treatment.

The servant opens again the door and in the ancient tongue asks for the money. Kino gives him a small piece of folded paper holding eight miserable deformed pearls. Once again the door is closed but not for long. Finally, it closes on Kino, as the servant, full of shame, tells him the doctor is out of the house. The also ashamed multitude disperses, the beggars back to the church portal and the neighbors not to see Kino's public humiliation. Kino, his silent wife and baby by him, strikes the door once, with such force as to make his hand bleed.