Don’t you Hear the Dogs?
Juan Rulfo
“You up there, Ignacio: can’t you hear something, can’t you see a light?”
“No, I can’t see anything.”
“We must be close now.”
“Yes, but I can’t hear a thing.”
“Look carefully.”
“Nothing.”
“You poor thing, Ignacio.”
The large, dark shadow continued down the slope, tripping on stones, contracting and expanding as it advanced across the edge of the clearing. A single, trembling shadow.
The moon rose from the earth like a round flame.
“We should be arriving at the village by now, Ignacio. You sitting up there with your ears in the air, can’t you hear the dogs barking? Remember they told us that Tonaya is just past the forest. And it was hours ago we left the forest. Remember, Ignacio?”
“Yes, but I can’t see anything.”
“I’m getting tired.”
“Put me down.”
The old man lowered himself until he found the wall and rested there, without taking the load from his shoulders. Though his legs were bowed by the weight, he did not sit down fully because he knew that afterwards he would not be able to lift his son’s body. Hours earlier they had helped load his son onto his back and the old man had been carrying him ever since.
“How do you feel?”
“Bad.”
His son spoke little. Less all the time. Sometimes he seemed to sleep. Sometimes he seemed to be cold. He trembled. The old man felt his son’s heels dig in like spurs. Later his son’s hands, which were on the back of his neck, squeezed his head.
Gritting his teeth so he wouldn’t bite his tongue, he asked:
“Does it hurt badly?”
“A bit,” came the answer.
At first his son had said:
“Leave me here. Go on alone. I will catch up with you tomorrow or as soon as I feel better.”
He had said it perhaps fifty times. Now he didn’t even say that.
There was the moon. In front of them. A huge, coloured moon that filled their eyes with light and that stretched and darkened their shadow on the earth.
“I can’t see where I’m going,” he said.
But nobody answered.
His son was there above him, illuminated by the moon, his face colourless, bloodless, reflecting opaque light. And he was here below.
“Did you hear me, Ignacio? I said I can’t see well.”
The other remained silent.
He continued walking, bumping into things. He grasped the body and straightened only to collide with something once more.
“This is not a pathway. They told us that Tonaya was behind the mountain. We’re behind the mountain. And Tonaya is nowhere to be seen, there isn’t even any noise to say that it’s close. Why won’t you tell me, sitting up there, what you see above us, Ignacio?”
“Put me down, father.”
“Do you feel bad?”
“Yes.”
“I will take you to Tonaya easy as you like. I’ll find someone to care for you. They say there’s a doctor. I’ll take you to him. I’ve carried you for hours and I’m not going to leave you lying here so that someone can finish you off.
He swayed a little. He gave two or three paces to one side and bent over again.
“I’ll take you to Tonaya.”
“Put me down.”
His son’s voice was muted, barely murmuring:
“I want to lie down for a while.”
“Sleep up there where you are. I have a good hold of you.”
The moon was rising, nearly green, against a clear sky. The old man’s face, damp with sweat, filled with light. He shielded his eyes so as not took look at it. He could no longer bow his head between his son’s hands.
“All I’m doingis not for you. I’m doing it for your mother. Because you were her son. She would have tanned my hide if I had left you lying there where I found you, if I hadn’t carried you somewhere to be cured as I’m doing. She’s the one that keeps me going, not you. Because from you I have had nothing but trouble, mortification, and shame.”
He sweated as he spoke. But the night wind dried him. And over the dry sweat, he sweated again.
“I’ll wear myself out, but I’ll carry you to Tonaya so they can treat the wounds you’ve been given. I’m sure as soon as you are better you’ll go back to your bad ways. That’s not important. You’ve gone so far I don’t even know you. So far you aren’t my son. I’ve cursed the blood of mine that’s in you. I’ve said: ‘Let the blood I gave him turn foul in his kidneys.’ I said that when I heard you were going about the road, living off robbery and killing people…Good people.Even my friend Tranquilino, who baptized you. Who gave you your name. Since then, I’ve said ‘this cannot be my son.’”
“Look ahead. Do you see anything yet? Do you hear anything? You who can do it sitting up there on top, because I feel deaf.
“I don’t see anything.”
“Worse for you, Ignacio.”
“I’m thirsty.”
“Hang on. We must be close. It must be that it’s so late they have turned out the lights in the village. But we should at least hear the dogs. Try to hear.”
“Give me water.”
“There’s no water here. There’s nothing but stones. Be patient. Even if there was water, I wouldn’t put you down to drink it. There’s nobody to help me lift you up again, and I can’t do it alone.”
“I’m very thirsty and very sleepy.”
“I remember when you were born. That’s what you were like then. You used to wake up hungry and eat to send yourself back to sleep. And your mother gave you water because you had finished all the milk she had in her. There was no filling you. And what a bad temper. I never thought your bad temper would take over your head… But that’s how it was. Your mother, may she rest in peace, wanted you to grow up strong. She thought when you grew up you’d provide for her. She didn’t have any other children. She killed the other one she was going to have. You would have killed your sister again, if she’d lived this long.”
He felt the man across his shoulders stop holding on with his knees, the feet beginning to swing from side to side. And it seemed that the head, up above, flopped forward as though sobbing.
Thick drops fell upon his hair, like tears.
“Are you crying, Ignacio? Is it your mother’s memory that makes you cry? You never did anything for her. You paid us badly. It seems like, instead of love, we filled you up with evil. And now look at you. Now they’ve hurt you. What happened to your friends? All of them were killed. But they had nobody. They could have said, ‘we have no one to make ashamed.’ But you, Ignacio?”
There was the village. The roofs glimmered in the moonlight. He had the sense that his son’s weight was crushing him as his legs bent with the last effort. Upon reaching the first building he rested against the wall and released the body, slack-limbed, as though they had taken out its stuffing.
With difficulty he separated his sons fingers from around his neck and, once he was free, he heard how the dogs barked all around him.
“And you didn’t hear them, Ignacio?” he said. “You wouldn’t even give me that hope.”
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