by B. TRAVEN
The whole episode was ridiculous.
With that thought in mind, I closed my book and went to bed.
11
While standing on the porch next morning, I noticed three hogs roaming about the place. Two of them were black and one was yellow. It occurred to me that I had seen these same three hogs before, without taking any special interest in them.
But this time I actually stared at them—for all of a sudden they reminded me of my visitor of the previous night.
Hadn’t he said something about hogs and how horrible they were? Somehow I couldn’t see any connection between my visitor and those hogs. Not at that moment, at least.
The hogs must be the property of an Indian family living somewhere in the bush. Perhaps they were foraging for the food which the jungle offered them in abundance. As a rule, Indian peasants let their hogs go free to look out for themselves. Only during the last few weeks before they are sold or butchered are hogs tied to a tree and given plenty of corn.
If those hogs were the property of the man who had visited me last night, and if he didn’t want them running away from his place—well, it was his business, not mine. I thought it rather peculiar that he should bother me so late at night for such a trifle.
Still, I might do a little for him. I threw stones at the animals to chase them off. It helped. After trotting a hundred yards or so, they turned to their right and went into the bush, making for a mound covered with weeds and underbrush.
It looked as if they had found food near the mound, because I saw them moving about, digging their snouts here and there in the shrubs, apparently plowing the ground for sweet roots.
I gathered the eggs in the chicken coop and cooked my breakfast. I forgot all about the hogs.
12
Three days later, about eleven o’clock at night, I was once again absorbed in my books. And once again I had the same strange sensation which had overcome me the night the Indian visitor had entered the bungalow, unseen and unheard.
Casting a look sidewise, away from the book, I felt an ice-cold shiver running up and down my spine when I saw the same Indian. He was watching me silently.
The shiver I had felt left me at once. It angered me to see him there again without having asked for permission to come in.
I yelled at him. “Just what do you mean by sneaking in here in the middle of the night? This is no saloon and no cantina either. This is a private home, strictly private. And I want you to respect that privacy. What the devil do you want, anyway? If you’re looking for your hogs, get them away from this place and tie them up. I don’t like hogs around here. In fact, I hate them. Do you understand? I despise hogs.”
He looked at me, and his eyes had a pronounced emptiness, as though he had to interpret carefully what I had said to him. Then, in a heavy voice, he said, “So do I, sir. So do I, believe me, I, too, despise hogs. More, I am afraid of hogs. Hogs are the terror of the universe.”
“That’s none of my business,” I said. “If you don’t like them, butcher them and have done with them. Or sell them. What do I care? Only, for heaven’s sake, leave me in peace.”
I looked straight at his face. His eyes were so very sad that all my violent outburst subsided into nothing. I began to feel immense compassion for him. He seemed to be suffering.
He kept his eyes fixed on mine for long minutes. Then he said, “Look here, señor. Please look at that.” He pointed at the calf of his left leg.
About six inches above the ankle there was a repulsive wound.
“This,” he explained, “has been done by the hogs.”
There was a twang in his voice that nearly made me break into tears. My overtired brain was beginning to tell on me. This singular desire to weep, sure, was a warning of nature that I’d better be more careful about my unceasing occupation with the books. I would not go that soft unless there was something wrong with my nerves.
He continued. “Oh, sir, it is ever so horrible. How can I make you understand? To know that I am so utterly helpless and without any means for defense against the gruesome attacks of those ugly beasts. Pray, señor, pray to all the powers of providence that never in all eternity may befall you so great a misfortune as the one I am suffering. It will not be long now before those loathsome monsters will gnaw at my heart. They will suck my eyes out of my head. And then there will come the day of all days of horror when they come to eat my brain. Oh, sir, by all that is sacred to you, please do something for me. Help me in my pains so bitter that I have no power in my words to describe them to you. I suffer a thousand times more than any human can bear. What else, pray, can I say so that you may be convinced of how horribly I suffer?”
At last I knew what he had come for. He believed me to be the doctor. It was known in the whole region that the doctor did not practice medicine any longer, but as the next nearest doctor lived some seventy miles away, Doctor Cranwell helped out in urgent cases for the sake of kindness. For such emergency cases he kept a well-equipped medicine chest on hand.
I took out bandages, cotton, a disinfectant, and an ointment. When I approached the man to apply the disinfectant, he stepped back one pace and said, “This, señor, is useless. Quite useless in my case, I assure you. It is the hogs which make me suffer. I do not mind the wound. The wound is only a warning for me of what is going to happen in the future if I cannot be helped against the hogs.”
I ignored his refusal to be treated, and grasped him firmly by the leg.
But I grasped empty space.
Looking up, I saw that he had stepped back another pace. How ridiculous, I thought, to be deceived that easily. I could have sworn that my grasping hand had been exactly at the very place where his leg had been at the very moment I reached out for it.
I rose and did nothing about the wound.
I put the medicaments on the table, and stood there a moment, wondering what else I might do. Then, as if by some impulse, I turned around and looked him over.
“Those are beautiful ornaments you’re wearing,” I said, pointing to his bracelets, his anklets and his rich necklace. “They’re wonderful. Where did you get them?”
“My nephew gave them to me when I had to leave him and all the others.”
“They seem to be very old. They look like Aztec or Toltec craftsmanship of ancient times.”
He nodded slightly. “They are very old, indeed. They were part of the house treasure of my royal family.”
I smiled indulgently.
He was too polite, though, to take notice of my grin.
However, in this silence, I realized that I was again confusing the present with the past of which I had been reading so much lately.
Strange, I thought to myself. Hadn’t he said, “My nephew gave them to me”? Why, this was the custom with the ancient Aztecs, as it was with the Chichimecs and many other ancient Indian peoples. After the death of the king, not the son but the nephew of the king became the ruler of the people, a continuance which proved the Indians of old had a great knowledge of the natural laws of heredity of which we know so little. Even their calendar made more sense than ours of today. This man had a right to be proud of his ancestry.
“With your kind permission, I must go now,” he said. “Only, sir, please do not forget my plight. It is the hogs that make my pains so horrible. Perhaps two or three big stones well fixed and cemented might do. I feel profoundly ashamed of myself because I have to beg for help, señor. But you see, I am unable to defend myself. I am so utterly helpless and powerless. I am very much in need of a friend alive. Oh, but that I could make you understand.”
Tears were slowly rolling down his cheeks although he had obviously tried hard to keep them back.
As if in a solemn ceremony, he now raised his right arm, touched his lips with his open hand, and brought his hand slightly above his head. For a few seconds he kept the palm of his raised hand turned toward me.
I noted that his hand was of a very noble shape, and in the same instant I thought that I had see
n such a hand somewhere before, and not so very long ago, either. However, I could not clearly remember where and when it had been. It must have been in a dream, I decided. And now I noted that he had a beard, which was like a silken web. Never before had I seen such a thin, silky beard—at least not that I could recall at the moment. Yet that beard reminded me of stories of fights which Indians seemed to have been forced into by their oppressors a long time back. A mental picture appeared before me of hundreds of Indians hanging lifeless from trees and of Indian children running madly toward the huge mountains.
I tortured my memory, but I could not place precisely where I had heard or read such things. If only I could remember whether I had read about them in one of the books, and in which book, I would feel relieved.
I decided to ask him where he was living, a question which seemed to me, at this moment, the most important problem in the world.
I looked up.
To my surprise, I saw that he had left while I had been dreaming with my eyes open.
I leaped to the door.
He strides like a king, I thought, as I watched him walking along the path.
He must have sensed that I was watching him, because, after he had gone about a hundred yards, he stopped, turned around, and with his outstretched arm pointed toward that mound to which the hogs had waddled after I stoned them away from the house. Then he continued on his way.
After another few paces, he left the path, hesitated a moment, then moved along in the direction of the mound. He ascended the mound slowly, as if his feet had become very heavy. Then he was swallowed by the high brushwood, and I could see him no longer.
13
Right after sunrise next morning I took a machete and cut my way through to that mound. I carefully investigated the ground and the shrubs near it to find the trail by which the Indian had left the night before. My astonishment was great when I saw that there was no trace of any trail whatever. Not even a branch or twig was broken to show where he had gone after having passed the mound.
It was by no means as easy to follow him on his way as I had thought it would be. I wanted to find him because I wished to trade for some of his ornaments. I could offer, in exchange, things which might be of real use to him, such as leather for new huaraches, a pair of new pants, a shirt, or whatever he might prefer, money not excluded.
I looked more closely at the mound, and I made a curious discovery.
The mound was not, as I had imagined, a natural little hill or rock. It was, instead, a man-made mound, built of hewn stones perfectly joined together with some sort of mortar as hard as the best cement. Thorny shrubs and brushes had taken root in crevices and cracks, covering the little monument, or whatever it was, so densely that it could not be told from a natural elevation of the ground.
This strange find made me forget about following the Indian on his trail of last night.
After I cut down the weeds and shrubs, I made another discovery. Stone steps led up to the top of the mound, from west to east.
The height of the mound was twelve feet, more or less. Thirteen steps led to the top. This was of great interest to me, for with the Indians of old, thirteen meant a definite cycle of years. Four of these cycles, or fifty-two years, had the same significance to them as has a century to us, and served as the means by which they recorded their history.
After all the shrubs and weeds had been cleared away, the mound stood out like a sort of pyramid with a flat top, each side of which was about six feet long. Close to its base, one side of the mound had been broken in. From the appearance of mortar and pieces of stone strewn over weeds which were still green, I judged that this breaking-in must have occurred only a few days ago. I was positive that the hogs must have caused it the other day when I stoned them away and they had crossed over to the site.
On looking closer, I found that the hogs had managed to work through the construction so as to reach the interior of that little pyramid—a job which would not be difficult to accomplish, considering that the masonry at this part of the mound had begun to decay.
I had the idea that, right here, at least part of the solution to the two night visits I had been honored with lately might be found.
I hurried back to the house to get a pick-ax and a spade.
I broke off stone after stone, lump after lump of hard mortar from the broken side of the pyramid, which because of its state of deterioration was easiest to work on.
The job was tough. The concrete proved far more resistant than I had thought it might be. Whoever built the little monument had certainly known how to do a good, lasting job.
After more than two hours’ work, I had opened a hole just large enough so that I could squeeze myself through it.
Once inside, I struck a match.
I had no sooner lighted it than I dropped it. I was out of that cave so quickly that my bare arms and shoulders, and my ears and neck, were covered with bleeding scratches caused by the glass-like edges of the broken mortar and rocks.
I sat on the ground, breathing heavily. Sitting there under the clear sun, I tried to catch my breath and I thought of how little a man can trust his eyes. I was certain that my eyes had played a trick on me.
My first intention was to leave the mound exactly as I had found it, save that I would close the hole I had broken in. Yet now, after having been inside and seeing its ghastly contents, I had no choice. No longer could I afford to leave everything inside as I had seen it. It would haunt me for the next twenty-years. It might disturb the quiet of my mind forever. Most surely it would keep me awake for hundreds of nights and bring me to the verge of insanity. I would now be afraid to go into a dark room or sleep with all the lights out.
There was nothing else left for me to do but clear up the whole thing—if only to make absolutely certain whether I was already mad, or only on the road to madness, with a faint chance of being cured in time.
I decided to get at it immediately, lest I spend a terrible night.
14
Mindless of the blazing sun thundering down upon me, I started breaking through the thick concrete layer of the top which separated me from the interior. I had to have light-light, and still more light.
It was almost noon when I had laid the top open and the inside of the little edifice was fully exposed to the bright sunlight.
I was neither out of my mind nor dreaming. The painful bruises on my hands told me better than anything else that I was wholly awake.
In the now wide-open pit, built so strong and fine as if meant to keep its contents safe until the last day of the world, squatted that same man who had visited me at night on two occasions.
His elbows rested upon his knees. His head was bent down and his face was partly hidden in the palms of his hands. He sat as if in deep meditation or as if asleep.
He had been buried with utmost care, and in a way which told better than a tombstone in what high esteem he must have been kept by his people, and how much he must have been loved by his friends and kin.
Next to him there had been a few vessels made of clay which originally might have contained some food and drink to be used by him on his journey to the beyond. Unfortunately, these very fragile and richly painted dishes had been smashed by a lump of mortar which I could not prevent from dropping down when it came loose.
I knew that the tomb had been absolutely airtight until quite recently, when the hogs had succeeded in breaking through the masonry. They could not have done so had not vigorous tropical shrubs and parasitic vines, for long centuries, driven their roots deeper and deeper into the concrete, finally cracking it partly open, and thereby starting its decay. Once that decay had occurred, it was easy for the hogs to widen the cracks and push their snouts through. After a certain length of time—probably only three days ago—they had found it possible to crawl inside.
The appearance of the body was not that of an Egyptian mummy. It was not bandaged. The body looked exactly as though the man had died only the day before yesterday, if n
ot last night when I had seen him go to this mound.
The rags in which the body was clothed looked far more costly in the bright light of the sun than they had at night. The fabric was of the finest texture, a silk-like goods such as the ancient Aztecs and Toltecs are known to have manufactured from the fibers of specially cultivated maguey and henequen plants. That texture was interwoven with strong threads of cotton to give the whole a very durable appearance. The colors had faded, but it could be clearly seen that at least six or seven different dyes had been used.
I saw that the calf of his left leg had been gnawed deeply at exactly the same spot which he had shown me last night. However, there was no blood, either fresh or dry, although the hogs had reached the bone.
It seemed strange that the hogs should have chewed off his calf, because I observed that the flesh of his breast, face, arms, legs, and yes, that of the whole body, was thoroughly hardened. I touched it. It felt like wood. In my opinion, the body could have no food value whatever. But then hogs, perhaps, think differently.
It was easy to explain how the body had kept its life-like appearance for such a long time. In the first place, it must have been embalmed. This was a custom with the ancient civilized Indians, and it was applied mainly to priests, kings, and nobles. Their embalmings were probably superior to those in vogue in ancient Egypt because, as in this case, they had proved more effective. In the second place, the tomb in which the body had been buried was thoroughly airtight, a fact which also helped to preserve the body in such excellent condition. And, perhaps, the soil which covered and surrounded the whole structure possessed certain chemicals which aided a great deal in protecting the structure and the body from disintegration.
The body was so strikingly life-like that I almost expected at any moment to see it move, raise its head from its hands, stand up, and talk to me.
