by B. TRAVEN
2
Now and then the doctor would say, “You know that little rain pool up there on the other side of the ridge, close to that patch of prairie? Well, there’s a primitive palm hut near by. It’s going to pieces now. I wonder who built it. I have all sorts of calculations about who might’ve set it up to live there all alone—maybe it was even somebody with a murder on his conscience. One afternoon I rode by there. I got off about thirty feet away and went the rest of the way on foot. I looked inside the opening that’s supposed to be a door, and I saw—I saw—I——”
Here the doctor would slow his words until they faded into a mumble. A few seconds later, this mumble, too, would trickle off—and yet I could clearly see that he was still telling his strange adventure, though he was telling it to himself alone.
I knew he thought I could hear his tale, and I refrained from telling him that I could not distinguish one word of what he was saying. One story, more or less, doesn’t count, as long as it isn’t a story you have lived yourself.
Again, on other occasions, he would start off, “… and … and … yes, as I was saying—there was the day when I happened to be in a very dense part of the bush. It was dark there in the thicket, but the bright sun was heavy upon the tops of the trees. You have to stop and wait in silence for half an hour or so before the bush will let you see or hear something of interest. I observed a tarantula cautiously crawling on the decaying trunk of an ebony tree.
“It was a dark-brown, very hairy little beast the size of my hand. On the ground and close to that same tree, two huge black scorpions moved more cautiously still, both apparently not seeing the tarantula—any more than the tarantula was aware of the two scorpions. I thought it strange for scorpions to be walking about in the daytime. They rarely do, you know. Now, the tarantula and the two scorpions moved in the same direction, the three having their eyes fixed on a—on a-a——”
At this point he fell into his customary mumble and soon his voice faded out.
Sometimes, when watching the doctor, I was under the impression that he was dead, that he had died many years ago and was kept alive for no other reason than that he had forgotten wholly that he was dead, since no one had noticed it and told him so. In such occasions I thought that if I could make a newspaper print a short note announcing his passing away, and showed him that note, he might actually fall dead at the same instant, and half an hour later wither away so rapidly that he would take on the appearance of a man buried fifty years ago.
I didn’t have these ideas often—only when I saw him sitting in his chair, silently, without moving, gazing down upon the gray ocean of the jungle with eyes that hardly blinked and seemed dead and empty.
Then again, on other days, I would find him very lively and active, given to easy talk of ordinary daily happenings at his place, even of such common affairs as the beating one of the men who worked for him had given his woman, with the result that the woman couldn’t see out of her blackened eyes.
Once, when he was in the mood for talking, I asked him if he’d ever written a book. It seemed to me that he had a way of telling things which would make him a great writer if he’d only take the pains.
“A book?” he said. “One book? One only? Fifteen, or—let me see—I think it must be eighteen. Yes … eighteen books. That’s what I’ve written. Eighteen books.”
“Published?”
“No. Never published. What for?”
“For people to read them!”
“Nonsense. For people to read them? There are thousands of books—great books—which they have never read. Why should I give them more if they don’t read the ones they already have?”
“You might’ve published the books to become famous, or to make a lot of money.”
“Money? Money for books I write? Don’t make me laugh. Besides, I’ve got enough money to lead the life I do. Why should I want more? What for? And as to fame—don’t be silly, Gales. Fame! What is fame, after all? It stinks to hell and heaven, fame does. Today I am famous. Today my name is printed on the front page of all the papers in the world. Tomorrow, perhaps fifty people can still spell my name correctly. Day after tomorrow I may starve to death and nobody cares. That’s what you call fame. You shouldn’t use such a word. Not you. Of course, there’s another fame—the glorious one, the fame that reaches you after you’re dead, and when nobody knows where your bones are bleaching. And what good does it do you to be famous after you’ve kicked off? It makes me sick even to speak about fame. It’s the bunk.”
“Okay, Doc. Let’s can it. Forget it. Anyway, I think a good book—the kind I reckon you’d write—is always welcome to readers who appreciate good books.”
“Provided the books reach the readers they’re meant for. This happens now and then, maybe, but very rarely.”
“Perhaps you’re right, Doc. I’ve never given that problem any special thought. By all means, though, I’d like to read the books you wrote. Can I have them? At least one or two of them?”
“If I still had them, I guess I wouldn’t want you to read them. But I don’t have them. They’ve gone back to where they came from. Eternity, you know. I got full satisfaction out of my books in writing them. In fact, I think I got far more satisfaction than any writer who has had his work published will ever get.”
“Sorry, Doc,” I said. “But I don’t see the point.”
“Not so difficult,” he answered. “It’s like this. Once a book is published, the writer’s satisfaction—if he is a true artist and not just a merchant—is marred by scores of things which have no connection with the pillars on which the universe rests. You see, I think of books as pillars of the universe. If a book is truly yours, it hurts your soul and heart to think of mailing it to a publisher. At least that’s the way I felt, and still feel.
“Whenever I had finished a book, I read it, revised it, made changes which I thought essential to make it perfect—as nearly perfect as I could ever make it—and when this was done I felt happy and satisfied beyond measure. As soon as I had that satisfaction, I destroyed the book.”
“You did what, Doc?” I blared out. “You don’t mean——”
“Yep, I meant it. That’s exactly what I did. Sometimes I think that the trouble with people today is that we don’t destroy enough of the things and systems which we believe perfect … and by destroying them make room for absolutely new and different things and systems infinitely more perfect than the ones we destroyed. Have you ever destroyed something which you loved, or which you thought the finest and most perfect object under heaven? Have you?”
“No, Doc—at least not that I know of.” I felt cold along my spine.
“If you haven’t, try it some day. Try it once or more than once. If you’re the right kind of man, one who can do it without remorse, you’ll see for yourself how great a satisfaction you’ll get out of it and how happy it will make you. You’ll feel like you’re newly born. Be like God, who destroys with His left hand what He created with His right.”
“Who wants to be like God?” I said. “Not me.”
“Depends. Frequently I think how different our art, our writings, our techniques, our architectures, our achievements would be if, let’s say, at the year sixteen-hundred-fifty, everything which man had made so far would have been destroyed, destroyed so thoroughly that no human would have been able to remember what a cart wheel had looked like, and whether the Venus de Milo had been a painting or a poem or a ship’s keel, and whether democracies and monarchies had meant something to eat or were church bells. As far as I’m concerned, I am convinced that the world would likely be a hundred times better place to live in today if mankind had a chance now and then to discard all tradition and history and start fresh with no worn-out ideas, platitudes, and opinions to hamper the birth of an entirely new world.”
3
One morning when I went to see the doctor, he said, “Very good, Gales. I’m glad you came in. I was just going to send for you. I have to go back to the States today. G
ot to attend to a certain affair which has been pending for quite some time. Of course, I might skip it altogether. Fact is, I’m not much interested in the outcome, anyway. But there’s a score of books, of very rare books, which I’ve been after for years. Seems that now, owing to a change in circumstances, I’ve got a good chance to get them at last. So, I can combine both matters on the same occasion. I’m positive I can be back inside of eight weeks. Still, I’m thinking about the place. It isn’t that these Indians really steal—it’s just that they think you’ve left everything to the jungle, or to them, or to whoever comes along and takes the trouble to pick it up. Well, how about it? Will you mind the place while I’m away?”
“All right by me, Doc,” I said. “Guess I can put in eight weeks easily. What is time here, anyway? It goes as fast as it comes. Sure, I’ll stay here and keep tigers and lions off the porch.”
“It’s the dry season,” he said, “so there isn’t much you can do at your place, except cleaning out two or three acres. And that can wait without hurting you much. I’ll tell Ambrosio to take two mules and go with you, and bring your things up here. Nobody will steal your roof.”
He chuckled. His farm hands must have told him that the roof I had made was safe from marauders. Any Indian would be ashamed to have such a roof on his jacal.
“Of course,” he went on, “I ought to tell you that you’ll be all alone here while I’m away. The two families working for me are going to visit their relatives, to celebrate a few weddings and a dozen baptizings as I understand. They won’t be back for ten weeks. There isn’t any important work to do around here on account of the season. So I let them have their vacation now. They would go anyway, permission or no permission. You won’t have much trouble with the animals. They look out for themselves. Let them have some maize three or four mornings every week. Examine them occasionally for open wounds to see that no worms are growing in them. You’ll find two gallons of creoline and some other things in that shed over there, if you need anything to cure them with.”
“Don’t worry, Doc, I’ll feel just fine here. And I can do swell without any neighbors around here, anyhow. The animals will be okay. Don’t I know what farm life is like? Don’t you worry a bit. Leave everything to its own ways and leave all the rest to me.”
When I returned with my tools, kettles, pans, blankets, mosquito bar, cot, and what I had on, the doctor was all set to leave.
“Make use of whatever you find in the house,” he said. “Whenever you need something, just look in the boxes, cases, drawers and on the shelves. Help yourself to whatever you find. You’ll have plenty of milk, and more eggs than you can eat.”
He didn’t have much baggage. Just two lean suitcases. He loaded them on a mule and then mounted his horse. The horse and mule were to be left with one of the American farmers by the depot.
“Well, hasta luego,” he called, and rode off.
4
I sat on the porch for an hour or so, gazing down upon the jungle sea, following in my mind the doctor’s ride to the depot. Late in the afternoon I would see a thin smoke ribbon creeping over the surface of the jungle close to the horizon, which would indicate the train in which the doctor was going home.
Home …?
Aw, the hell with it. Forget it. Home is where I was, and nowhere else.
For the first time since I’d known the doctor, I went inside his house. We’d always had our coffee or tea on the porch, and I’d never gone beyond it.
He was well stocked with canned food. There were enough groceries to hold out for half a year if necessary. During the rainy season the nearest general store often could not be reached for a period of as long as two months. Neither man nor mule could pass the muddy and swampy stretches without sinking into them up to his knees, and sometimes even deeper.
The doc had told me to look around so that I’d know where to find things. I began with the table in the corner. I pulled out the drawer, hoping to find old magazines. There weren’t any. Just some bills and other papers in which I had no interest.
I stepped out on the porch again and pushed the rocking chair close to the farthest corner. There I sat down and looked over that greenish-gray sea of jungle. I could think of nothing. My mind came to rest. A wonderful feeling of tranquillity took possession of my soul and body. I forgot earth, and heaven.
The eternal singing of the jungle, so soothing to the nerves once you have become used to it, lulled me into slumber, and I did not awaken until I heard the pitiful, harsh shriek of an animal caught by its enemy in the depths of the jungle.
5
It was during the next forenoon that I came upon the doctor’s library.
The books were carefully kept in bookcases, which were lined with tin sheets to protect them from tropical insects and from dampness and mildew during the rainy seasons. Apparently Doc had discovered the secret of how to keep books well preserved in the tropics. The books were in excellent condition.
The collection was a treasure. Most of the books were about ancient Indian civilizations which used to exist in Mexico, Central America, Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia. They treated of Indian history, traditions, religion, language, arts, craftsmanship and architecture. Many were on the so-called archaic culture of the early inhabitants of the Americas.
Some of the books were richly illustrated with ancient Indian hieroglyphs and with old Indian paintings. There were books and manuscripts dating as far back as the first half of the sixteenth century.
As far as I could judge, practically all the books were first editions. Only a few of them might have been other than firsts, and perhaps there had been no more than fifty copies printed of some of them. In early times, certain books of a scientific or historic nature were printed by order of book lovers who paid for the entire limited edition in advance.
Some of the manuscripts, documents, and parchments might easily have been the only ones still in existence. The value of that library could never be estimated in money.
As I learned later from other persons, the doctor had built up this unique library by hunting books and documents all over the Republic—in monasteries, convents, old churches, in haciendas, and in out-of-the-way ranches. He had bought them from old families and from Indian peasants, from priests and from teachers in little country schools, and from soldiers and officers who had come into possession of books and manuscripts during the long revolution when convents, churches, and haciendas had been plundered.
He must have spent many, many years in collecting so many rare books. It seemed that when he’d obtained all the books he wanted or ever hoped to get he’d buried himself in that jungle region to be alone with his treasure and enjoy it in peaceful surroundings.
That he had left me alone with that priceless treasure without even mentioning it proved how much confidence he had in me.
I had not seen a single book in more than a year. I had hungered for them as a man living in a great city may hunger for green woods, blue lakes, murmuring creeks and cloudless days. And now I was standing before the very books I’d so much desired to read ever since that day I first heard of the great, mysterious civilization which existed and flourished to the south long before Columbus ever thought of sailing to what he came to believe was a new world.
6
I was soon completely under the spell of the histories and mythologies. I forgot the present. I forgot to cook my meals. I felt no physical hunger. I milked the cows as if I were in a dream, and I drank the milk and swallowed the eggs right where I gathered them in order not to lose a single precious hour. I read from sunrise until midnight, day in and day out. The lamp I had was just an ordinary kitchen lamp which didn’t give much light. I did not mind. I put the lamp as close to the pages as possible.
It was so hot that the days seemed to be wrapped in flames, and when at times I took notice of the tropics and heard the eternal singing of the bush I considered all this not as something real but rather as a part of the histories and narratives which I was reading
. Everything that I read about had happened in the same country or nearby, under the same blazing sun, with the same insects and the same singing of the jungle.
Stories, time, tropical sun, the singing bush, the bites and stings of mosquitoes, the constant whirring of multitudes of moths around the lamp, an occasional glance over the dream-gray jungle ocean now and then—all that melted into a unit. Often I was not quite sure whether I had read a certain episode or description or had seen it or dreamed it. I didn’t know whether the fiery tropical sun was actually shining upon the corrugated iron roof of the bungalow or whether I was only reading about it in connection with a battle which the Aztecs fought against the Chichimecs.
Sometimes it happened that I didn’t realize when day had gone and night fallen. I had been reading by the light of the little lamp, yet I could not remember that I had lit the lamp. I could not recall when and how I had brought the lamp in, set it on the table before me, filled it up with kerosene and put a match to its wick. But there was the lamp right by my side and it had been there for a certain length of time.
I had done these things unconsciously, while my mind was fully concentrated on the great events of the Tarascans, the Otomis, the Toltecs, the Totonacas, or whatever the people were about whom I was reading.
My only fear was that the doctor might return before I had finished with the books. Although he had left the treasure with me without saying one word about it, I felt positive that he would not let me have one book once he was home again. I knew he would be jealous and nervous, and fear that he might lose a book if he lent it.
I was reading constantly, marveling that such various cultures and great civilizations had existed in the Americas at a time when the Romans were still semi-savages and the Britons ate the brains of the bravest of their enemies slain in battle.
