Dr. Parra has written both in poetry and prose. Most of what he writes is in scientific lines. Even in poetry he is a scientist, and in a volume of his poems, we find odes to the mathematics and to medicine, a sonnet to a skull, and poems on the Death of Pasteur, Night, Water. Of very great importance is his Nueva Sistema de Logica, inductiva y deductiva (New System of Logic, Inductive and Deductive). He has written one novel, Pacotillas, in which the life of the medical student is depicted. It is from this work that we have drawn our selections.
López (Santa Anna), Robles (El Chango—“the monkey”), Albarez (Patillitas) and Tellez (Pacotillas), are fellow-students in the School of Medicine. They are friends but present four quite different types of character. Santa Anna figures least in the story and attends most strictly to business; Patillitas is a dandy, anxious to make feminine conquests; El Chango drops out of school before he has completed his course, toadies in politics, rapidly rising to importance as the private secretary of a departmental minister, and marries great wealth. Pacotillas, the hero, is an astonishing combination of strong and weak qualities. Of lofty ideals, of great firmness in announcing and supporting them, and of brilliant intellectual powers, he is cold, morose, lacking in initiative, easily depressed, and procrastinating. He smokes constantly and excessively and readily yields to drink. He loves a beautiful and amiable girl and lives with her without marriage; though he realizes the injustice this is to her, the injustice—excused at the time by poverty—is never atoned for in his days of comparative prosperity. Pacotillas and his beautiful Amalia suffer enormous trials of poverty; Paco finally secures a position on the force of an opposition paper. He antagonizes the government, is arrested and thrown in jail, where he dies of typhus. The book is an interesting picture of Mexican life, but it is a particularly difficult task to make brief selections from it for translation.
EXTRACTS FROM PACOTILLAS.
The next day the vigilant argus, accompanied by a faithful friend, was at his post from nine o’clock in the morning. He was not on beat but he warned his fellow policeman to pay no attention to what was about to take place at the house, since it concerned a personage of consequence, closely connected with the official world, whose plans it were best not to disturb; that the gentleman did not ask something for nothing and would not fail to reward him; that everything would go on behind closed doors, and was really no more than a joke; that it concerned a private matter, with no political bearings; that the woman living in the house badly repaid him who supported her, and that he merely wished to scare her and put her to shame.
The policeman on the beat permitted himself to be convinced by Pablo’s diplomatic arguments; he demanded, indeed, a guarantee that nothing serious should take place, that there should be no fight, wounds, shots, or other scandal.
No, comrade, answered Pablo, it only concerns giving a thrashing to a young fellow who is accustomed to enjoy women, whom other men support. Put yourself in the place of the deceived man; what would you do? What would any other decent man do, in such a case? Just what he is going to do. I shall not compromise you. You see that I am also one of the police-force. Further, this may help you, the gentleman we are helping is in with the government, and he does not expect service for nothing.
Completely convinced, the policeman agreed that, at a signal from Pablo, he would walk slowly toward the Plazuela del Carmen, to see what was going on there.
The astute Pablo had arranged for two stout fellows of evil mien to meet him at the corner pulqueria; they arrived at the place appointed at half-past-nine carrying heavy cudgels as walking sticks.
A little before ten the servant of Mercedes left the house; Pablo, who had already made her acquaintance, overtook her and said:
“Where are you going so fast, my dear?”