César Vallejo

Wandering aimlessly, Juncio and Analquer of the tribe of the Soras reached the valleys and high plains located on the edge of the Urubamba, where the first civilized towns of Peru are found.

In Piquillacta, a village on the banks of the great river, the two young savages stopped for a whole afternoon. They sat down on the mud wall alongside a laneway to watch the people pass by as they went in and out of the village. Later, they set off walking along the streets at random. They felt an ineffable contentment in the presence of the new and strange things that were revealed to them: the whitewashed houses with their barred windows and red roofs; the conversation between two women, who moved their hands arguing or scratched in the dirt with their toes, utterly absorbed in their chatter; an old man stooped over, warming himself in the sun, sitting in a doorway next to a huge white dog that opened its mouth, trying to catch flies… The two men’s hearts throbbed with a jubilant curiosity, captivated by the spectacle of the life of a town, for they had never seen one before. Juncio in particular experienced an unspeakable delight. Analquer was rather more stunned. As they entered the heart of the village he felt increasingly dazed, falling prey to a sense of astonishment that entirely overwhelmed him. The numerous streets, criss-crossing in various directions, made him lose his head. He didn’t know how to walk, this Analquer. He went right down the middle of the road and staggered all over, bumping into the walls and even into passers-by.

“What’s wrong with him?” the people exclaimed. “What foolish Indians. They look like a couple of animals.”

Analquer paid them no mind. He didn’t notice anything. He was completely beside himself. On reaching a corner, he always continued straight on, without stopping to choose the most suitable direction. Often he would stop before an open door, to stare at a shop or at what was happening on the patio of a house. Juncio called to him and shook him by the arm, bringing him back from his confusion and bewilderment. The people, shocked by their presence, came together in groups to watch them:

“Who are they?”

“They’re savages from the Amazon.”

“They’re a couple of criminals, escaped from a prison.”

“They’re witch doctors who cure sleeping sickness.”

“They’re a couple of sorcerers.”

“They’re descendants of the Incas.”

The children began to follow them.

“Mama,” said the little ones in amazement, “they have very strong arms and they’re always happy and laughing.”

Crossing the plaza, Juncio and Analquer entered the church, where a religious ceremony was taking place. The temple was lit up brightly and a large number of faithful filled the nave. The Soras and the children who followed them moved forward bareheaded, passing beside the basin of holy water, and stopping next to a plaster niche.
It was a funeral service. The high altar was covered with cloths and funeral veils sprinkled with notes, crosses and doleful silver images. In the centre of the nave was the priest, dressed in a chasuble of silver and black, with a large bald head only very slightly covered by his little skull-cap. Several acolytes surrounded him as he stood before an improvised altar, where he read with mystic unction the prayers for the dead from a tin-plated lectern. From an invisible choir, the chief cantor responded with a deep, low voice, monotonous and tearful.

The holy chant had just begun, filling the temple with confusing echoes, when Juncio, possessed by an irresistible jubilation, began to laugh. The children, who did not take their eyes off the Soras for an instant, gaped in astonishment. They felt a sudden aversion toward both of them, although Analquer wasn’t laughing at all; on the contrary, he was stupefied before that spectacle which touched the boundaries of wonder in his savage soul. But Juncio went on laughing. The sacred chant, the lights on the altars, the profound meditation of the faithful, the brightness of the sun penetrating the stained-glass windows and casting sparks, halos and colours upon the glass and upon the metal of the statues and effigies, all filled his senses with a delighted sense of grace, an enchantment so fresh and bewitching that it overwhelmed him with contentment, lifting him up and making him feel light, weightless and winged, shaking him, tickling him and awakening an uncontainable vibration in his nerves. The children, infected in the end by Juncio´s naive and radiant joy, also ended up laughing, without knowing why.

The sacristan came and, chasing them with a reed, cast them from the temple. A man of the town, outraged by the laughter of the children and the Soras, approached them in a fury.

“Imbeciles. What are you laughing at? Blasphemers. Hey,” he said to one of the little ones, “what are you laughing at, you little animal?”

The child did not know how to answer. The man took him by the arm and squeezed it brutally, gnashing his teeth in rage, until he made the child’s bones creak. At the door of the church, a popular tumult rose up against Juncio and Analquer.

“They laughed!” exclaimed the people furiously. “They laughed in the temple. That cannot be stood for. An unspeakable blasphemy…”

And then the gendarme came and took the two Soras off to jail.

Cesar Vallejo was born in the Andean town of Santiago de Chuco in 1892 to a large family of mixed Spanish and native blood. His compassionate and moving depictions of the hardships faced by indigenous people in Peru have had a huge influence on other writers of social conscience in Latin America.

Translated by Martin Boyd