Synopsis: “The Featherless Buzzards,” a short story by the Peruvian writer Julio Ramón Ribeyro, tells the story of two brothers, Efraín and Enrique, who live with their grandfather, Don Santos, and a pig called Pascual. The children are forced to collect garbage in the streets of Lima to feed the animal. The plot revolves around the brothers’ daily struggle to survive in an environment of extreme poverty and abuse at the hands of their grandfather. It is a story that reflects the harsh reality of the marginalized in an indifferent society.
The Featherless Buzzards
Julio Ramón Ribeyro
(Full story)
At six in the morning the city gets up on tiptoe and slowly begins to stir. A fine mist dissolves the contour of objects and creates an atmosphere of enchantment. People walking about the city at this hour seem to be made of another substance, to belong to a ghostly order of life. Devout women humbly shuffle along, finally disappearing in the doorways of churches. The night-wanderers, drubbed by the darkness, return home wrapped up in mufflers and melancholy. Garbage collectors begin their sinister stroll down Pardo Avenue, armed with brooms and carts. There are workers heading for the streetcars, policemen yawning next to trees, newspaper boys turning purple from the cold, and maids putting out trash cans. Finally, at this hour, as if responding to some mysterious password, the featherless buzzards appear.
At this hour old Don Santos fastens on his wooden leg, sits down on the mattress, and starts to bellow, “Efrain, Enrique! Get up! Now!”
The two boys run to the ditch inside the corral, rubbing their bleary eyes. The calm night has settled the water, making it transparent to reveal growing weeds and agile infusories sliding about. After washing their faces, each boy grabs his can and scurries toward the street. Meanwhile, Don Santos goes to the pigpen and whacks the pig on the back with his long stick as the animal wallows in filth.
“You still have a way to go, you dirty rascal! Just you wait; your time’s coming.”
Efrain and Enrique are lingering in the street, climbing trees to snatch berries or picking up stones, the tapered kind that cut through the air and sting the back. Still enjoying the celestial hour, they reach their domain, a long street lined with elegant houses leading to the levee.
They aren’t alone. In other corrals and in other suburbs someone has given a sound of alarm and many have gotten up. Some carry tin cans, others cardboard boxes, and sometimes just an old newspaper is enough. Unaware of each other, together they form a kind of clandestine organization that works the city. There are those who maraud through public buildings, others choose the parks or the dunghills. Even the dogs have acquired certain habits and schedules, wisely coached by poverty.
After Efrain and Enrique take a short rest, they begin their work. Each one chooses a side of the street. Garbage cans are lined up in front of the doors. They have to be completely emptied before the exploration begins. A garbage can is always like a box full of surprises. There are sardine cans, old shoes, pieces of bread, dead parakeets, and soiled cotton balls. The boys, however, are only interested in scraps of food. Although Pascual will eat anything thrown to him in his pen, his favorite food is partially decomposed vegetables. Each goes along filling up his small can with rotten tomatos, pieces of fat, exotic salsas that never show up in cookbooks. It’s not unusual, however, to make a real find. One day Efrain found some suspenders that he made into a slingshot. Another time he discovered an almost eatable pear that he devoured on the spot. Enrique, on the other hand, has a knack for finding small medicine boxes, brightly colored bottles, used toothbrushes, and similar things that he eagerly collects.
When they have rigorously sorted through everything, they dump the garbage back in the can and head for the next one. It doesn’t pay to take too long because the enemy is always lying in wait. Sometimes the maids catch them off guard and they have to flee, scattering their spoils behind them. But more often than not the sanitation department cart sneaks up on them and then the whole workday is lost.
When the sun peeks over the hills, the celestial hour comes to an end. The mist lifts, the devout women are immersed in ecstasy, the night nomads are asleep, the paper boys have delivered their papers, and the workers have mounted the platforms. Sunlight fades the magical world of dawn. The featherless buzzards have returned to their nest.
Don Santos had made coffee and was waiting for them.
“Let’s have it. What did you bring me today?”
He would sniff among the cans and if the grub was good he always made the same remark: “Pascual’s going to have a feast today.”
But most of the time he blurted out, “You idiots! What did you do today? You must have just played around! Pascual’s going to starve to death!”
The boys would run for the grape arbor, their ears still burning from the slaps, while the old man dragged himself over to the pigpen. From the far end of his fort the pig would start to grunt while Don Santos tossed him scraps of food.
“My poor Pascual! You’ll stay hungry today because of those loafers.
They don’t spoil you like I do. I’ll have to give them a good beating and teach them a lesson.”
At the beginning of winter the pig had turned into an insatiable monster. He couldn’t get enough to eat and Don Santos took out the animal’s hunger on his grandsons. He made them get up earlier to search unfamiliar areas for more scraps. Finally he forced them to go as far as the garbage dump along the ocean’s edge.
“You’ll find more stuff there. It’ll be easier, too, because everything will be together.”
One Sunday Efrain and Enrique reached the edge. The sanitation department carts were following tracks on a dirt road, unloading trash on a rocky slope. Viewed from the levee, the dump formed a dark, smoky bluff of sorts where buzzards and dogs gathered like ants. From a distance the boys threw stones to scare off their competition. A dog backed off yelping. When the boys reached the dump, they were overcome by a nauseating smell that seeped into their lungs. Their feet sank into a pile of feathers, excrement, and decayed or charred matter. Burying their hands in it, they began their search. Sometimes they would discover a half-eaten carrion under a yellowed newspaper. On the nearby bluffs the buzzards impatiently spied on them; some approached, jumping from one rock to another as though they were trying to corner the boys. Efrain tried to intimidate them by shouting; and his cries echoed in the gorge, shaking loose some large pebbles that rolled toward the sea. After working for an hour they returned to the corral with their cans filled.
“Bravo!” Don Santos exclaimed. “We’ll have to do this two or three times a week.”
From then on, Efrain and Enrique made their trek to the sea on Wednesdays and Sundays. Soon they became part of the strange fauna of those places and the buzzards, accustomed to their presence, worked at their side, cawing, flapping their wings, scarping with their yellow beaks as if helping them to uncover the layer of precious filth.
One day when Efrain came back from one of his excursions, he felt a sore on the bottom of his foot. A piece of glass had made a small wound. The next day his foot was swollen, but he continued his work. By the time they returned he could hardly walk, but Don Santos was with a visitor and didn’t notice him. He was observing the pigpen, accompanied by a fat man with blood-stained hands.
“In twenty or thirty days I’ll come back,” the man said. “By then I think he’ll be just about ready.”
When he left, sparks shot from Don Santos’ eyes.
“Get to work! Get to work! From now on we’ve got to see that Pascual gets more to eat! We’re going to pull this deal off.”
The next morning, however, when Don Santos woke his grandsons, Efrain couldn’t get up.
“His foot’s sore,” Enrique explained. “He cut himself on a piece of glass yesterday.”
Don Santos examined his grandson’s foot. Infection had set in.
“Nonsense! Have him wash his foot in the ditch and wrap a rag around it.”
“But it’s really hurting him!” Enrique added. “He can’t walk right.”
Don Santos thought a moment. Pascual could be heard still grunting in his pen.
“And what about me?” he asked, slapping his wooden leg. “You think my leg doesn’t hurt? I’m seventy years old and I work … so just stop your whining!”
Efrain left for the street with his can, leaning on his brother’s shoulder. Half an hour later they returned with their cans almost empty.
“He couldn’t go on!” Enrique told his grandpa. “Efrain’s halfcrippled.”
Don Santos looked at his grandsons as if he were passing sentence on them.
“Okay, okay,” he said scratching his thin beard and grabbing Efrain by the scruff of the neck he pushed him toward the one-room shack. “The sick go to bed! Lay there and rot! Enrique, you’ll do your brother’s work. Get out of here! Go to the dump!”
Around noon Enrique came back with both cans filled. A strange visitor was following him: a squalid, mangy dog. “I found him at the dump,” Enrique explained, “and he kept following me.”
Don Santos picked up the stick. “One more mouth to feed!”
Enrique grabbed the dog and, clutching him close to his chest, ran toward the door. “Don’t you hurt him, Grandpa! I’ll give him some of my food.”
Don Santos walked toward him, his wooden leg sinking into the mud. “No dogs here! I already have enough trouble with you boys!”
Enrique opened the door leading to the street. “If he goes, I go, too.”
The grandfather paused. Enrique took advantage of the moment and persisted: “He hardly eats anything; look how skinny he is. Besides, since
Efrain’s sick, he’ll be a help to me. He knows the dump real well and he’s got a good nose for scraps.”
Don Santos looked up at the dreary sky, gray with drizzle, and thought a moment. Without a word he threw down the stick, picked up the cans, and limped off toward the pigsty.
Enrique smiled with delight and clasping his friend to his heart, he ran to see his brother.
“Pascual, Pascual. . . Pascualito!” the grandfather was chanting.
“We’ll name you Pedro,” Enrique said, petting the dog’s head as he went in the room where Efrain was lying.
His joy suddenly vanished when he saw Efrain writhing in pain on the mattress and drenched in sweat. His swollen foot looked as though it was made of rubber and pumped with air. His toes had almost lost their shape.
“I brought you this present, look,” he said, showing him the dog. “His name’s Pedro; he’s yours, to keep you company. When I go to the dump I’ll leave him with you and you can play all day long. You can probably teach him to fetch rocks for you.”
“What about Grandpa?” Efrain asked, stretching his hand toward the dog.
“Grandpa has nothing to say about it,” Enrique sighed.
They both looked toward the door. The drizzle had begun to fall and they could hear their grandfather’s voice calling, “Pascual, Pascual . . . Pascualito!”
That same night there was a full moon. The boys felt uneasy because that was when their grandfather became unbearable. Since late afternoon they had seen him roaming about the corral, talking to himself, swinging away at the grape arbor with his stick. Now and then he would come near the room, scan the interior, and seeing that his grandsons were silent, he would spit on the floor with rage. Pedro was scared of him and every time he saw him he would huddle up and not move a muscle.
“Trash, nothing but trash!” the old man kept repeating all night long as he looked at the moon.
The next morning Enrique woke up with chills. Although the old man had heard him sneeze earlier that morning, he said nothing. Deep down, however, he could sense disaster. If Enrique was sick, what would become of Pascual? The pig’s appetite grew more voracious as he got fatter. In the afternoons he would bury his snout in mud and grunt. Nemesio had even come over from his corral a block away to complain.
On the second day the inevitable happened: Enrique couldn’t get up. He had coughed throughout the night and by morning he was shivering, burning with fever.
“You, too?” the grandfather asked.
Enrique pointed to his congested, croupy chest. The grandfather stormed out of the room. Five minutes later he returned.
“It’s mean to trick me this way!” he whined. “You abuse me because I can’t walk. You know damn well that I’m old and crippled. If I could I’d send you both to hell and I’d see to Pascual myself!”
Efrain woke up whimpering and Enrique began to cough.
“The hell with it! I’ll take care of him myself. You’re trash, nothing but trash! A couple of pitiful buzzards without feathers! You’ll see how I get along. Your grandpa’s still tough. But one thing’s for sure, no food for you today. You won’t get any till you can get up and do your work!”
Through the doorway they saw him unsteadily lift the cans in the air and stumble out to the street. Half an hour later he came back licked. He wasn’t as quick as his grandsons and the sanitation department cart had gotten there first. Not only that, the dogs had tried to bite him.
“Filthy trash! I warn you, no food till you work!”
The following day he tried to repeat the whole process, but finally had to give up. His leg with the wooden peg was no longer used to the asphalt pavement and the hard sidewalks; a sharp pain stabbed him in the groin every time he took a step. At the celestial hour on the third day, he collapsed on the mattress with only enough energy to cuss.
“If he starves to death,” he shouted, “it’ll be your fault!”
That was the beginning of several agonizing, interminable days. The three spent the day cooped up in the room together, silently suffering a kind of forced seclusion. Efrain constantly tossed and turned, Enrique coughed, Pedro got up and after taking a run out in the corral, returned with a rock in his mouth which he deposited in his master’s hand. Don Santos, propped up on the mattress, was playing with his wooden leg and hurling ferocious looks at the boys. At noon he dragged himself to the corner of the lot where some vegetables were growing and prepared himself some lunch that he devoured in secret. Occasionally he would toss a piece of lettuce or a raw carrot at his grandsons’ bed with the intention of whetting their appetite, and thereby giving his punishment a touch of refinement.
Efrain didn’t even have the strength to complain. Enrique was the one who felt invaded by a strange sense of fear because when he looked into
his grandfather’s eyes, they didn’t look familiar. It was as though they had lost their human expression. Every night when the moon came up, he would hold Pedro in his arms and squeeze him so affectionately that he made him whimper. That’s when the pig would begin to grunt and the old man wailed as if he were being hanged. Sometimes he would fasten on his wooden leg and go out to the corral. In the moonlight Enrique saw him make ten trips back and forth from the pigpen to the garden, raising his fists and knocking over anything that got in his way. Finally he would come back to the room and glare at them, as if he wanted to blame them for Pascual’s hunger.
The last night of the full moon no one could sleep. Pascual’s grunts were intolerable. Enrique had heard when pigs are hungry they go crazy like people. The grandfather remained vigilant and didn’t even put out the lantern. This time he didn’t go out to the corral, nor did he cuss under his breath. Sunk down in his mattress, he stared at the door. A deep- seated anger seemed to be welling up in him and he appeared to be toying with it, making ready to unleash it all at once. When the sky began to lighten over the hills, he opened his mouth, and keeping that dark hole turned toward his grandsons he suddenly bellowed, “Up, up, up!” as he pelted them with blows. “Get up you lazy bums! How long is this going to go on? No more. On your feet!”
Efrain broke into tears. Enrique got up, flattening himself against the wall. He was so mesmerized by the old man’s eyes that he felt numb to the pain. He saw the stick come down on his head and for a moment it seemed as though it were made of cardboard instead of wood. Finally he was able to speak. “Not Efrain! It’s not his fault! Let me go, I’ll go, I’ll go to the dump!”
The grandfather stepped back, panting. It took him awhile to catch his breath.
“Right now … to the dump . . . take two cans, four cans . . .” Enrique stepped back, picked up the cans and took off running.
The fatigue from hunger and convalescence made him stumble. When he opened the corral door, Pedro tried to go with him.
“You can’t come. Stay here and take care of Efrain.”
He took off toward the street, deeply breathing the morning air. On the way he ate some grass and was on the verge of chewing dirt. He was seeing everything through a magical mist. His weakened condition made him light-headed and giddy: he was almost like a bird in flight. At the dump he felt like one more buzzard among many. As soon as the cans were overflowing he started back. The devout, the night-wanderers, the barefoot paper boys, and all the other secretions of early dawn began to scatter over the city. Enrique, once again in his world, contentedly walked among them in his world of dogs and ghosts, bewitched by the celestial hour.
As he came into the corral he felt an overpowering, oppressive air that made him stop in his tracks. It was as if there in the doorway his world ended and another made of mud, grunts, and absurd penitence began. It was surprising, therefore, that this time a calm filled with a sense of doom pervaded the corral, as if all the pent-up violence lay in wait, poised and ready to strike. The grandfather was standing alongside the pigpen, gazing at the far end. He looked like a tree growing out of his wooden leg. Enrique made a noise but the old man didn’t move.
“Here are the cans!”
Don Santos turned his back on him and stood still. Enrique, full of curiosity, let go of the cans and ran toward the room. As soon as Efrain saw him, he began to whimper, “Pedro . . . Pedro.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Pedro bit Grandpa . . . and he grabbed the stick . . . then I heard him yelp-”
Enrique left the room. “Pedro, here boy! Pedro, where are you?”
There was no response. The grandfather still didn’t move and kept looking at the mud wall. Enrique had a sick feeling. He leaped toward the old man. “Where’s Pedro?”
His gaze fell on the pigpen. Pascual was devouring something in the mud. Only the dog’s legs and tail were left.
“No!” Enrique shouted, covering his eyes. “No, no!” Through his teary eyes he searched his grandfather’s face. The old man avoided him, clumsily turning on his wooden leg. Enrique began to dance around him, pulling at his shirt, screaming, kicking, searching his face for an answer. “Why did you do it? Why?”
The grandfather didn’t answer. Finally, his patience snapped and he slapped the boy so hard that he knocked him off his feet. From the ground Enrique observed the old man standing erect like a giant, his eyes fixed on Pascual’s feast. Enrique reached for the blood-stained stick, quietly got up and closed in on the old man. “Turn around!” he shouted. “Turn around!”
When Don Santos turned, he saw the stick cutting the air above him, then felt the blow to his cheek.
“Take that!” Enrique screamed in a shrill voice, again raising his hand. Suddenly he stopped, horrified by what he was doing, threw down the stick, and gave the grandfather an almost apologetic look. The old man, holding his face, stepped back on his wooden leg, slipped, and with a loud cry he fell backward into the pigpen.
Enrique took a few steps back. At first he listened closely, but didn’t hear a sound. Little by little he again drew near. His grandfather was lying on his back in the muck with his wooden peg broken. His mouth was gaping open and his eyes were searching for Pascual, who had taken refuge in a corner of the pen and was suspiciously sniffing the mud.
Enrique started backing away as stealthily as he had come. His grandfather barely saw him because as Enrique ran toward the room he thought he heard him calling his name with a tone of tenderness in his voice that he had never heard before. “Come back, Enrique, come back! . . .”
“Hurry!” Enrique cried, running up to his brother. “Come on, Efrain! The old man has fallen into the pigpen. Let’s get out of here!”
“Where?” Efrain asked.
“Wherever, to the dump, anywhere we can get something to eat, where the buzzards go!”
“I can’t stand up!”
Enrique picked up his brother with both hands and pressed him against his chest. They clung to each other so tightly, it almost seemed as if one person was slowly making his way across the corral. When they opened the gate to the street, they realized that the celestial hour had ended and that the city, awake and vigilant, was opening before them its gigantic jaws.
Sounds of a struggle were coming from the pigpen.
THE END
Paris, 1954
