I'm Not Stiller by Max Frisch Read Free Book Online Page A

gives the poor picker on the plantation; for these lower leaves are tougher than the upper ones, grey with dust, sandy, and brittle, so that they are all too liable to break. But the picker is only paid for absolutely faultless goods. These lower leaves are used to wrap the fine cigars. Only the perfect article can be employed...
    'Yes, yes,' said my counsel. 'No doubt, but what has that to do with my question?'
    I smoked. I described my work on the Uruapan tobacco plantation. A hard time. On my knees from morning to evening. You can't pick the lower leaves any other way: even on your knees you have to bend to find the best leaves. Once, I shall never forget it, I was crawling along from shrub to shrub, a Mexican straw hat on my head, without catching a glimpse of the other pickers. I waited in vain for the overseer's whistle. Despite my economic position I simply couldn't stand the heat any longer, wages or no wages. The stench of sulphur was getting stronger and stronger. I yelled out, suddenly seized with terror. From the grey earth just behind me a little cloud of yellow smoke billowed forth. In vain I shouted to the other labourers, mostly Indians; they had already fled. My feet, too, could bear the heat no longer, and I ran, but where to? The air was full of smoke like a stag party where everyone is smoking cigars, and I could see fissures opening up in the earth around me, soundless fissures from which came the stench of sulphur. I ran on at random until I was panting so hard that I could run no further. Then I looked back at our plantation and saw it rise and arch itself and become a small hill. A thrilling spectacle, but heat and smoke drove me on. I cried out the news in the village. The women gathered together their children and sobbed; the men decided to send a telegram to the owner of the plantation that was turning into a volcano. After a few days and nights, during which the village lived in a continual state of alarm, it had developed into a not inconsiderable mountain enveloped in yellow and greenish smoke. The village could neither work nor sleep; the sun shone as always, but it stank of sulphur, poisonous and hot, so that one would have liked to stop breathing; and the moon shone out of a cloudless night sky, but there was thunder. The little church was filled to overflowing, the bells rang without pause, occasionally drowned by the thunderous eruptions of the mountain.
    No answer came to the telegram, so we had to take steps to save ourselves. Fire glowed through the smoke that clouded the moon. And then came the lava, slowly, but irresistibly, cooling and setting in the air, a black broth giving off swirling white steam; only during the night could you see the glow inside the stone broth that came nearer and nearer, as high as a house, nearer and nearer—thirty yards a day. Birds flitted about in bewilderment because they could not find their nests, and forests disappeared under the red hot lava, mile by mile. The village was evacuated. I don't believe a single human life was lost. Carrying their weeping children in their arms or on their backs, laden with bundles containing little of value, they drove their distracted beasts in front of them, the donkeys braying and becoming more stubborn the more despairingly they were beaten. The lava flowed casually between the houses, filling them and swallowing them up. Being one of those who had no animal to save, I stood on a hill and watched the lava advancing: it hissed like a snake, turning every drop of water it came upon into steam, and it had a skin like certain snakes, a metallic grey skin, crusty over a soft, hot, and mobile interior. Finally it reached the church; the first tower fell to its knees and was swallowed up with all its hurtling debris; the other stood fast and is still standing today, a tower with a little Spanish dome, the only thing left out of the whole village...
    'The village was called Paricutin. Now that is the name of the new