A week went by, and still I had not the cold drinks I wanted. But the morning came when Maria, beaming, padded into my bedroom with the breakfast tray on her head. She deposited it carefully in my lap, propping up the pillows behind me. “Señora,” she almost sang, “today you will have as many cold drinks as you like. We have ice. A man came this morning bringing a fine large piece.”
“And what miracle finally brought him?” I inquired.
“I myself walked all the way to his house across the city and told him.”
“But why did you not telephone?”
I wondered what taboo in her Indian mind the telephone might represent.
Maria twisted her apron in her hands, hanging her head. Finally she said, in so low a voice that I could scarcely hear her words, “You see, neither Victoria nor I can read or write, Señora.”
I cursed my own stupidity. I should have realized that Indian servants seldom can, but I thought of Maria’s daily accounts that came out so perfectly. I also excused myself on the grounds that the combination of fever and the unholy amount of quinine and atabrine I’d taken had stupefied my mind. But cheered that day by the thought of a cool drink, I struggled downstairs earlier than usual. Propped up on the sofa with a tall, icy glass of pineapple juice that Maria had prepared from fresh fruit by putting it through the meat chopper, I felt as though life were returning. I felt so much better that I decided to try to read the Spanish newspaper.
Victoria looked for the paper, but a thorough search of the house produced nothing more than one ten days old. It seemed very mysterious to me, since I knew that a paper was delivered daily. But that afternoon the mystery was solved. I myself went to the kitchen just to see the beautiful big piece of ice. It had been carefully and lovingly wrapped to preserve it well—in the morning newspaper.
A few days before Lyn and Manuel were to arrive by plane, and while we were making plans for their homecoming, Maria came to me with an official-looking envelope and asked me to read it for her. It was from one of the well-known banking houses in Lima. It took me a little time to translate the unfamiliar terms, but it soon dawned on me that her savings account ran into so many thousands of soles that she was being asked if she did not want to invest some of it in bonds.
“Why, Maria,” I exclaimed, “you are a very rich woman. I wish I had as much money as you have.”
Maria looked out the window in the direction of the barren desert hills. Her face was impassive, and her dark Indian eyes saw things that a white person can’t imagine.
“It comes from my hacienda in the Sierra,” she said, “where I have herds of vicuñas, llamas, sheep, and cattle.” She was silent for a space, and then, saying, “But money doesn’t mean very much,” she left the room.
I was curious to know how she happened to be so rich. Maria was uncommunicative; but the day that Señor Juan da Silva came to call I told him of Maria, for by that time she seemed to have become my chief topic for conversation.
“Ah,” said Juan, “a compatriot of mine, a wealthy and eccentric doctor, left her a fortune. Maria took care of his paralytic wife for many years, and when she died, all the wife’s money went to Maria. She has one of the finest haciendas in the country and a good manager. But I know Maria—she’s social. She prefers to be a cook in Lima.”
It was, I believe, the night Maria had so carefully poached fresh tuna fish in dry white Santa Eulalia wine, that, after my first delicious bit of it, the malarial chills returned so violently my teeth chattered and my fork fell clattering to my plate. Maria and Victoria put me to bed, and a neighbor called the doctor.
“What does he say?” inquired Maria gravely after he had gone.
“That I must have a change of climate—that I’d better go north,” I told her despairingly. I talked quite at length to Maria, who sat on the edge of the bed. I told her that I didn’t want to go home yet, that I wanted to learn more of her fascinating country—and that it would be expensive to have to go north at this point.
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