It happened that I suddenly saw that man who was starving me to death standing over our chest,moving the loaves of bread from one side to the other,counting and recounting them.I pretended not to notice,and silently I was praying,hoping,and begging,"Saint John,blind him!"After he had stood there quite a while,counting the days and the loaves on his fingers,he said,"If I weren't so careful about keeping this chest closed,I'd swear that someone had taken some of the loaves of bread.But from now on,just to close the door on all suspicion,I'm going to keep close track of them.There are nine and a half in there now."
"May God send you nine pieces of bad news,too,"I said under my breath.It seemed to me that what he said went into my heart like a hunter's arrow,and my stomach began to rumble when it saw that it would be going back to its old diet.Then he left the house.To console myself I opened the chest,and when I saw the bread I began to worship it--but I was afraid to "take any in remembrance of Him."Then I counted the loaves to see if the old miser had made a mistake,but he had counted them much better than I'd have liked.The best I could do was to kiss them over and over,and as delicately as I could,I peeled a little off the half-loaf on the side where it was already cut.And so I got through that day but not as happily as the one before.
But my hunger kept growing,mainly because my stomach had gotten used to more bread during those previous two or three days.I was dying a slow death,and finally I got to the point that when I was alone the only thing I did was open and close the chest and look at the face of God inside (or at least that's how children put it).But God Himself--who aids the afflicted--seeing me in such straits,put a little thought into my head that would help me.Thinking to myself,I said:This chest is big and old,and it's got some holes in it,although they're small.But he might be led to believe that mice are getting into it and are eating the bread.It wouldn't do to take out a whole loaf:he'd notice that it was missing right away,since he hardly gives me any food at all to live on.But he'll believe this all right.
And I began to break off crumbs over some cheap tablecloths he had there.I would pick up one loaf and put another one down,so that I broke a few little pieces off of three or four of them.Then I ate those up just as if they were bonbons,and I felt a little better.But when he came home to eat and opened the chest,he saw the mess.And he really thought that mice had done the damage because I'd done my job to perfection,and it looked just like the work of mice.He looked the chest over from top to bottom,and he saw the holes where he suspected they'd gotten in.Then he called me over and said,"Lazaro,look!Look at what a terrible thing happened to our bread this evening!"
And I put on a very astonished face and asked him what it could have been.
"What else,"he said,"but mice?They get into everything."
We began to eat,and--thank God--I came out all right in this,too.I got more bread than the miserable little bit he usually gave me because he sliced off the parts he thought the mice had chewed on,and said,"Eat this.The mouse is a very clean animal."
So that day,with the extra that I got by the work of my hands--or of my fingernails,to be exact--we finished our meal,although I never really got started.
And then I got another shock:I saw him walking around carefully,pulling nails out of the walls and looking for little pieces of wood.And he used these to board up all the holes in the old chest.
"Oh,Lord!"I said then."What a life full of misery,trials,and bad luck we're born into!How short the pleasures of this hard life of ours are!Here I was,thinking that this pitiful little cure of mine would get me through this miserable situation,and I was happy,thinking I was doing pretty well.Then along came my bad luck and woke up this miser of a master of mine and made him even more careful than usual (and misers are hardly ever not careful).Now,by closing up the holes in the chest,he's closing the door to my happiness,too,and opening the one to my troubles."
That's what I kept sighing while my conscientious carpenter finished up his job with nails and little boards,and said,"Now,my dear treacherous mice,you'd better think about changing your ways.You won't get anywhere in this house."
As soon as he left,I went to see his work.And I found that he didn't leave a hole where even a mosquito could get into the sorry old chest.I opened it up with my useless key,without a hope of getting anything.And there I saw the two or three loaves that I'd started to eat and that my master thought the mice had chewed on,and I still got a little bit off of them by touching them very lightly like an expert swordsman.
Since necessity is the father of invention and I always had so much of it,day and night I kept thinking about how I was going to keep myself alive.And I think that hunger lit up my path to these black solutions:they say that hunger sharpens your wits and that stuffing yourself dulls them,and that's just the way it worked with me.
Well,while I was lying awake one night thinking about this--how I could manage to start using the chest again--I saw that my master was asleep:it was obvious from the snoring and loud wheezing he always made while he slept.I got up very,very quietly,and since during the day I had planned out what I would do and had left an old knife lying where I'd find it,I went over to the sorry-looking chest,and in the place where it looked most defenseless,I attacked it with the knife,using it like a boring tool.
It was really an old chest,and it had been around for so many years that it didn't have any strength or backbone left.It was so soft and worm-eaten that it gave in to me right away and let me put a good-sized hole in its side so I could relieve my own suffering.When I finished this,I opened the slashed-up chest very quietly,and feeling around and finding the cut-up loaf,I did the usual thing--what you've seen before.
