The Pearl (Centennial Edition)

In the cool dark before dawn, Kino awakens to the Song of the Family. It is a music woven from the gentle splash of waves on the beach, the sizzle of corn cakes on the fire, and the soft breathing of his wife, Juana, and their infant son, Coyotito, sleeping in his hanging box. Their life in the brush hut is a perfect, ancient rhythm, a whole and simple thing. But the song shatters when a scorpion, its tail glistening, drops from the ceiling and strikes the baby. A new music enters Kino's head, the savage and secret melody of evil. As Coyotito's tiny body begins to swell with poison, Juana's voice is sharp with a mother's terror: “The doctor.”

The procession to the city is a slow, soft-footed march of shame. The town's beggars watch with knowing eyes as Kino and Juana approach the great gate of the doctor, a man of a different race, one that has beaten and starved their people for four hundred years. Kino feels the familiar rage and fear rise in him as he strikes the iron knocker. The servant, contemptuous and cool, returns with the doctor's refusal. They have no money, only eight ugly seed pearls. The gate shuts in their faces. Humiliated, Kino smashes his fist against the iron, his knuckles splitting open. There is no hope, except for the sea. Out on the water, as Juana makes the magic of prayer in the canoe, Kino dives, hoping for a miracle to pay the man who has scorned them.

And then he sees it. An oyster, larger than any he has known, lying alone. Inside, a ghostly gleam. His heart pounds as he surfaces, and with Juana watching, he pries it open. There it lies, the great pearl, perfect as the moon, as large as a sea-gull's egg. It is the Pearl of the World. As he stares into its silver incandescence, the swelling on Coyotito's shoulder begins to recede. The gods have answered. Kino puts back his head and howls, a cry of triumph that carries across the water, and the other canoes race toward him.

The news of the pearl sweeps through the town like a fever, a thing with a life of its own. The town is a colonial animal, and its nerves vibrate with the poison of greed. The priest thinks of church repairs, the shopkeepers of unsold clothes, and the doctor of a life he once lived in Paris. Suddenly, every person has a claim on Kino's pearl, and he becomes every man's enemy. In his hut, surrounded by neighbors, Kino sees his future in the pearl's surface. “We will be married - in the church,” he says. He sees new clothes, a harpoon, and then a thing he barely dares to dream of: a rifle. But the greatest vision is for his son. “My son will go to school,” he proclaims. “He will read and open the books… and these things will make us free.” But as he speaks, the music of evil returns, faint and threatening.

The dream begins to curdle. The doctor arrives, claiming the scorpion's poison has a delayed effect, and treats Coyotito with a suspicious white powder that first sickens the boy and then seems to cure him. That night, a dark figure slips into the hut to steal the pearl, and Kino fights him off, receiving a bloody gash on his forehead. Juana, her eyes alive with fear, sees the truth. “This thing is evil,” she cries. “This pearl is like a sin! It will destroy us. Throw it away, Kino.” But his will is set. “I am a man,” he tells her, his face hard. He will not be cheated of his son's future. The next day, he goes to the pearl buyers, who have already conspired against him. They mock his treasure, calling it a monstrosity, a curiosity, offering him a pittance. Blind with rage, Kino declares he will go to the capital to sell it.

That night, the violence finds him again. He is attacked in the darkness outside his hut and left bleeding in the path. Juana knows the pearl is a curse that must be cast out. Before dawn, she steals away with it, intending to throw it back into the sea. But Kino catches her, his face a mask of rage. He strikes her down and snatches the pearl away, only to be ambushed by other dark figures. In the desperate struggle, his knife finds a man's throat. As Juana drags herself to her feet, she finds Kino dazed and a dead man in the path. The old life is gone forever. They must flee. But their escape is cut off before it begins; their canoe is smashed, and their brush house erupts in flames.

They run, hunted animals in a hostile land, with trackers on their trail. They climb into the high, bare mountains, seeking refuge in the stone. Kino finds a shallow cave near a small spring where they can hide. From the entrance, he watches the trackers arrive below, their figures thin and menacing in the twilight. He knows they will be found by morning. As the moon rises, he strips off his white clothes, his brown skin a better camouflage, and slips like a lizard down the rock face, his great knife ready.

A cry from Coyotito in the cave above alerts the men. One of the trackers mistakes the sound for a coyote pup. “If it's a coyote, this will stop it,” he says, raising his rifle. The gun crashes in the same instant that Kino leaps. He is a terrible machine of vengeance, his knife swinging, the rifle now in his hands. He kills all three men with cold, deadly precision. And then, as the ringing in his ears subsides, he hears it - the keening, hysterical cry of death from the cave.

They return to La Paz not as they left, but side by side, like ghosts walking out of a legend. Kino carries the rifle, and Juana carries a small, limp bundle in her shawl, crusted with dried blood. The townspeople fall back in silence, sensing the two have passed through a terrible fire and come out the other side, removed from all human experience. They walk past the ashes of their home and down to the shore. Kino holds out the great pearl one last time. Its surface is gray and ulcerous. In it, he sees the face of the man he killed in the pool and the small, broken body of his son. He offers the pearl to Juana, but she looks into his eyes and says softly, “No, you.” With all his might, Kino hurls it back into the Gulf. They watch the small splash in the distance, and the music of the pearl, distorted and insane, drifts to a whisper and is gone.