by B. TRAVEN
“That serves him right,” I said. “No decent person should ever help a bandolero.”
“You have medicine at your house, too, haven’t you?” my neighbor asked.
“Yes, a little for emergency cases. As we call it, First Aid.”
At that very moment one officer accompanied by three soldiers came out of the house opposite from where we stood and where they had searched for medicine. I had no liking for being searched and questioned by police, so I walked on, but the neighbor said: “Stay quietly where you are, señor, they won’t do anything to us.”
I also thought it best to stand still as the officer with his men approached me. Since I was completely innocent, never having attended wounded bandits, never having helped bandits to get away, I had no reason to feel embarrassed.
“Which of the huts over there is yours, señor?” the officer in charge asked.
“That one there, yes, that bungalow back there,” I said.
“Have you got any medicine in your jacal?” he asked.
“Yes, a little.”
“What kind?”
“A half-empty tube of mentholatum for colds, señor.”
“Can you cure shotgun wounds?”
“Has one of your men been shot?” I asked sympathetically.
“Yes,” said the officer.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, “but when I see blood I faint right away. It makes me awfully sick.”
“That’s exactly what you look like. You gringos, all of you, don’t have the healthy strong nerves we have got. We can see blood and plenty of it. Of course no offense meant. Excuse us for bothering you. We’re on duty here, you know. Adiós.” He shook hands with me.
My neighbor followed the officer into another hut.
While I was standing there contemplating whether to disappear or remain where I was, a boy ran toward me, shouting before he even reached me: “Mire, señor, here is the medicine I brought from town. The señor said everything is paid already.”
I took the package and put it into my pocket.
As soon as my corn was harvested and sold, I thought it wise to leave the neighborhood without waiting for any other thing to happen.
A few weeks later I was sitting in a train going to the capital. Railroad trips sometimes bring people together who have little in common and who under other circumstances would never speak to each other.
Two gentlemen, both natives, sat in front of me and asked whether I would like to play a game of Siete y Medio with them. I agreed. We played for beer which was served on the train and thus passed the time until we got tired of the game.
Now they wanted to talk, the kind of small-talk one indulges in on a train and, as always, the conversation very soon turned to Americans living in the Republic and, invariably, whenever a remark was dropped slightly offensive to an American, the gentlemen politely added: “You understand, señor, that was meant only in general, no intention of offending you or your compatriotas.”
Then they laughed and I also said something critical of the natives and grinning I would add that one says things like that only for the sake of conversation and that I like every one of them very much as if they were my own countrymen and that all of us have our good and bad sides regardless of what nation we are citizens of.
“And right you are, mister,” said one of the two. “We’ve got many Norte-Americanos down here who cause lots of mischief in our country.”
“That I know, señor, there are for instance the big oil magnates, and the mining companies, and the chicle and fruit companies and the big bankers who would like nothing better than to annex one Latin-American country after another.”
“Yes, of course, those too,” he said, “but fact is I did not think of that sort right now. I was thinking of another sort of gringos. Oh, excuse me, please, what I meant to say is that it seems to me that all the bums and gangsters, gamblers and drug peddlers and hoodlums for whom it gets too hot up there in the States come down here and try their nasty tricks on our honest people here.”
“Yes, there are that kind, too,” I admitted, “and they believe they are safe down here.”
“Not with me,” said the little fat gentleman, “no, not with me. With me they don’t get very far. In my district these godforsaken hoodlums don’t exist. They simply cannot stay alive. I am on their trail immediately. And when I catch them I give them plenty. And when I say plenty I mean plenty. They get deported and take their rap at home.”
“Seems you are an Attorney General?” I asked to please him.
“Not yet, but some day maybe, who knows? No, right now I’m only Chief of the Rural Police in the district of San Vicente Lagardilla. Do you know that district, señor? Ever been there?”
“Who? Me? Never in my life,” I said truthfully. One must always tell the truth to a Chief of Police, a Judge or a District Attorney. Only then and then only can one pass life pleasantly and happily. I got somehow suspicious of these two gentlemen because San Vicente Lagardilla happened to be the very district where I had rented and worked a small cotton farm and where I had been living in a shaky bungalow in a village among people, all of whom, without exception, looked innocent like freshly washed angels decorating a saint’s picture.
The Chief of course knew immediately that I had never been even near that neighborhood. That’s why he felt that he could talk freely to me.
“There, in my district, a fair amount of Norte-Americanos are living, some are shopkeepers, some cotton-planters, others farmers and cattle-raisers. They are decent and honest people who pay their taxes punctually and live strictly by the law. None of them causes me ever any trouble. People with education, industrious, money-saving, progressive. People we are proud of, señor; countrymen of yours toward whom I feel a deep respect and we would welcome them becoming citizens, you know.”
“Yes, I’ve met many such fine people from home. Too bad that they didn’t stay home,” I said with profound conviction.
The Chief seemed not to care much about my opinion; he wanted to talk and so I let him continue. The greatest pleasure one can give people is to let them talk all they want. One is respected much more if one lets people talk instead of talking himself. No one has the least interest in hearing somebody else’s opinion. So he continued to tell about a poor fellow who as it seemed had lived in his district and had given him a lot of headaches. He swore that said fellow was wanted for murder, theft, rape, forgery, smuggling of narcotics, selling worthless shares of a gold mine, and a few other felonies.
“I never knew how he managed to come to my district or what he actually did there. He pretended to farm or search for oil, but in reality he was sort of a tramp who scarcely had rags on his back. He never paid for the lease of his farm or the rent for the elegant house in which he lived.”
“Maybe the poor chap had no money,” I replied.
“Perhaps you are right there and I don’t hold that against him. Dios mío, any good man may have bad luck. But what irked me ferociously was what he did in my district. He was a quack. Not that I would have asked him for his license even if he operated on people’s bellies, but what I hated most was that he cured all the bandoleros we shot and that made me really mad. Without him we would’ve shot them all to pieces. But through his activities we never could get a single one of those monsters. He protected them, all of them. He knew every single jacal where they lived and hid out. Worse thing was he not only cured them but he supplied them with a sort of magic potion which made them nearly invisible so that they succeeded in all their attacks. He worked with radio transmitters and light signals, so that these outlaws knew many hours before when the soldiers would arrive at the village. And what money this man earned! The heaps of pesos that the bandoleros brought to his bungalow. That man earned ten times as much as I do being Chief of Police. On top of all that he taught all of them English so that they could attack and rob the American farmers in their own language, his own countrymen. Madre mía, how I chased that man! Four times I
was there with a whole company of soldiers to catch him. You being intelligent can imagine how much money all that has cost our government. You see, we can’t do anything without money. Everything costs money and a Chief of Police has to live, too. He cannot work for peanuts just out of love for his profession. I received many reproaches from the government and several times I was threatened with dismissal if I would not bring law and order into my district. I reported everything in a sixty-page typewritten report. Now the government finally realizes that I did all that was humanly possible and now they know very well that if those goddamn lawbreakers have a smart gringo backing them what can I with only one company of soldiers at my command do against bandoleros? You’re telling me, mister.”
“Didn’t you ever catch that gringo?”
“Never, no, never. He was so sly, so goddamn cunning we never could even lay an eye on him. Besides, being the doctor of the bandoleros, how could we get anywhere? They protected him because they needed him so very badly. The government knows all that by now. Some day they will get him. We’ve notified all the police departments in the Republic. Only trouble is we haven’t got a picture of him.”
“How much will he get, once he’s caught?”
“Oh, he will either be shot or sent up for thirty years to the Islas Marías.”
“Doesn’t that gorilla live in your district anymore?” broke in the other gentleman.
“No, he left one night. We had made it so terribly hot for him that he at last simply had to take to his heels. And believe you me, señor, since he’s gone, we’ve had no more attacks by bandoleros. The village is peaceful and quiet as it hasn’t been for many years. So you will see how one man low as only a gringo can be—oh, excuse me, mister, please—may corrupt a whole district populated by law-abiding citizens and good Catholics besides.”
When we arrived at San Juan del Rio, two deputies whom the Chief knew entered the train and right away they began a lengthy conversation with the other two gentlemen, now and then shooting a kind of investigating suspicious glance at me as if they had seen me before somewhere. So I thought it would be better for me to take advantage of their being engaged in lively conversation.
Knowing the ways and tricks of members of the police force, especially the plain-clothed ones, I got off the train as unnoticed as possible at the last stop before it reached the Central Station of the capital, and for convenience’ sake boarded a city-bound streetcar.
After all, how was I to know that my pupils wanted to learn English for no other reason than that they could make the cattle of American farmers obey and follow them in a language which the cows understood? And all I got out of my doctoring bandits was a jar of honey, two dozen eggs, a few pounds of beef and three pesos which I did not accept. This certainly was no just equivalent for a possible thirty-year stretch on the Islas Marías.
A New God Was Born
A few years after Hernando Cortes had conquered Mexico, he formed an expedition with the idea of discovering a seaway from the Atlantic to the Pacific. For in that period of history the Americas were believed to be huge islands and not one continental land mass extending from the Arctic to the Antarctic.
Cortes’ expedition marched south with the hope of coming upon a strait connecting the two great oceans. The farther south they marched the more difficult became their situation, and they were close to complete exhaustion when they arrived at the great Lake of Peten, situated in what is today the Republic of Guatemala.
On the islands of that lake and along the shores the expedition found many villages inhabited by Indians of the most hospitable and peaceful nature. They were the first human beings Cortes had met for weeks on his arduous march through the immense jungle, which stretched out for hundreds of miles to the west and to the east of the mighty Usumacinta River.
After its tedious march through tropical areas, where the trail had to be hacked out by Indian auxiliaries brought from Tlaxcala, the Cortes army was suffering from hunger and from all kinds of fevers and jungle diseases. The soldiers’ bodies were covered with infected wounds caused by bites and stings of reptiles and insects. The expedition was considered even by its most optimistic officers to be a total loss. In its helpless condition, had it not come upon the hospitable natives of Peten, the so gloriously initiated enterprise would have ended in a huge disaster with no hope for any member of it ever to return to Mexico. Those Indians, had they been a warlike tribe, could have cornered and massacred the whole Cortes army.
(The expedition, by the way, was looked upon as a complete failure when it returned. It added little knowledge to what was known already. Its only achievement was its proof that, as far as it had ventured, there was no navigable strait between the Atlantic and the Pacific.)
The natives of Peten fed Cortes’ men as they hadn’t been fed since leaving the last populated region in Mexico many weeks before. They cured the sick and wounded, and they gave Cortes plenty of provisions so that the army could march without fear of hunger for the next few weeks.
In their fervor to please their uninvited guests even more and make them happier still, the Indian natives cheerfully agreed to be baptized by the visiting army. And so it was that all of them became good Christians.
The monks who accompanied the expedition saw to it that everything was done properly, according to the established rules. The peaceful natives appeared to have no objection to the destruction of their gods and images, to the cleansing of the Indian temples and the installing of new images brought by the strangers—images of the Holy Virgin, of Santiago, of San Antonio, and half a dozen more.
Because the monks hadn’t time enough to baptize each native individually, they used another method. The baptismal ceremony was turned into a great fiesta, and all the natives of that region were directed to meet on a vast plain where their foreign guests would offer them a show such as they had never before witnessed.
They came, a thousand or so of them. They were asked to kneel down. Then the monks, with hands raised up as if in prayer, bestowed upon them the benediction and declared them Christians, good and true Catholics, who must obey their superiors in Rome.
Those kneeling near the monks, who had been touched personally upon their heads, were ordered to confer that touch upon any man or woman they were to meet.
Now the real show commenced. And what a show! Bugles and trumpets blared. Cannons and muskets were fired. Horsemen performed tournament feats, as knights used to do centuries ago.
These natives of Peten had never seen or heard cannons fired or trumpets sounded. Nor had they ever seen a horse before. So it was only natural that they believed every rider to be physically united to the steed he straddled. The fiesta was an awesome display of powers and happenings strange to the Indians. Of course they were confused. They saw the whole expedition army on their knees singing the Te Deum, the monks chanting and performing strange rites, the trumpets and bugles raised up and blaring, cannons and muskets spitting fire and thundering, and horsemen jousting and riding wildly upon the plain.
That whole show was such that even today anywhere on earth it would attract huge crowds and satisfy their craving for excitement. The natives received an impression which would live forever in their memories.
It was part of the clever policy of the conquistadores to impress natives with their power and make them believe that the white men of the expedition were gods of a kind. It was for that reason that it had been possible for such a ridiculously small number of Spanish soldiers to march on and on, leaving their rear unprotected, because the Indians whom they met on the way would never dare to raise arms against such divine beings.
Fortunately, those peaceful natives of Peten owned no jewelry of gold or silver, possessions which would have made the Spaniards believe the natives knew of gold or silver mines. To discover such mines and deposits had been the second reason—and for most members the first and only reason—that this costly expedition was undertaken. Nor did the Indians have pearls or precious stones. Not even
the surrounding land was tempting to the Spaniards, who could lay their hands on better, more fertile properties in Mexico. The lake was the principal source of native income, an income which couldn’t be earned just by loafing on the shore and looking dreamily across the water.
It was natural for Cortes to leave that unfertile area as soon as his army was well and on its feet again.
For all the services the Spaniards had received from the natives they paid nothing. Cortes considered them well rewarded in that their sins (of whose existence the Indians formerly had known nothing) had been cleansed by the monks and all obstacles to their admission into heaven had been cleared away. In fact, Cortes left these people in a state of poverty such as they hadn’t known for generations. He took full advantage of the Indians’ natural generosity. All their stock of fruit, dried fish, dried meat, salt, medicinal herbs and roots, corn, chili, and cocoa beans (which served them for money) was carried off by the army for provisions.
On the day of his departure, however, Cortes decided to show the natives of Peten his gratitude by leaving them a royal gift. He presented them with a horse—which, as he well knew, would be accepted by them as the most precious payment they might have hoped to receive. The horse was of no further use to Cortes, since one leg was so badly injured and swollen that the poor animal would only have been a burden to the soldiers if taken on the return march. So it is a fact that this single sign of gratitude and generosity on the part of Cortes was given exclusively in his own interest.
The natives received the horse with all the excitement which such a kingly gift merited. Then the strange visitors disappeared as mysteriously as they had arrived. Had it not been for the horse they now possessed, and the vanished stock of food and supplies they no longer possessed, the peaceful hosts might have believed the whole adventure was a sort of mass hallucination.
