Pages 52–53
Putting the beyond in bed bath and beyond
Previously, in the longest section yet which you can read for a mere $10 if you click here to subscribe, Juan Preciado chatted with an old, incestuous, and naked couple about how to leave Comala, and they convinced him it’d be best to wait until morning.
In a few posts, the decision might prove to be fatal.
Pages 52–53
Juan stirs in the middle of the night to see that the old couple has now left and that an even older woman has entered to take a trunk out from underneath the bed. She takes some sheets and leaves. Juan tries not to be noticed. The couple returns and offers Juan orange blossom water to soothe his nerves. Juan tries to tell they they might have just been robbed. The couple is not convinced Juan is the sane person here.
–Are you feeling sick?
–I don’t know. I see people and things I don’t think others can see. A woman was just here. You must’ve watched her leave.
–Let’s go –he told the woman–. Let him be. He must be a mystic. […] These people get themselves all worked up just for the attention. I met one of them over at the Media Luna who claimed to be a clairvoyant. What he failed to foresee was that he was gonna die soon as the patrón divined his deceit.
FATAL, I SAY!
That’s P Much It But Also:
It’s possible this will prove to be incorrect at any moment, but I think it’s kind of interesting that this couple, who posed the crucial “what exactly do you understand?” question that the translator finds so crucial to this entire book, might be the only other living people Juan Preciado has encountered so far? Consider:
They’ve given him two beverages. It’s unclear if he drank this one, but he did drink the coffee. It is also possible that this is not in violation of whatever Pedro Páramo’s ghost rules are – maybe ghosts can interact with the physical environment, I dunno – but that does seem like the opposite of Occam’s razor.
They didn’t see the old woman who came in and took their sheets. Maybe they can’t see ghosts like Juan can. Or maybe not all ghosts are visible to all living people at all times. I don’t know why any of this would be the case. But Juan Preciado does specifically discuss that he’s been “see[ing] people and things I don’t think others can see”, and that’d be a wild thing to include in the text at that moment if it didn’t mean something, man.
What does it matter if these two people are actually alive? The only living people just hunkering down in a ghost town for some reason until Juan showed up that day?
I don’t know. It’s just kind of neat.
tl;dr wtf happened in Pedro Páramo today
Either a very old lady robbed the old incest couple, or a ghost ghostily changed her bedsheets.