by B. TRAVEN
So it was entirely out of consideration for his own interests that don Leonardo was induced to give the boy a little schooling. If he ever turned it to his own account in a way that was of no advantage to don Leonardo, don Leonardo was fully prepared to call him a thankless wretch, who repaid the kindness of a master who had made him what he was with black ingratitude; he should have known better and left the boy in his lousy Indian village and taken care not to spend good money on getting him taught anything.
8
The good money don Leonardo shelled out did not amount to very much. It was only sixty centavos a month. But don Leonardo made the most of it.
He had the right to; for he was certainly the only person in the whole town who sent an Indian boy in his employment to school and paid for it into the bargain. It never entered the head of any other Mexican in the place who had Indian servants to give them the slightest chance of bettering themselves. Girls or boys, they worked from five in the morning till ten at night. It was not always hard work, but they were never off their feet and had to be on the spot whenever they were called. They couldn’t be spared for a single hour of the day; so, at least, their masters and mistresses believed. And to send them to school was not only a folly but a sin. It was a folly because the Indian might turn out to have more knowledge and ability than his master’s own son—who, as far as schooling went, was left very much to his own devices; it was enough if he could just read and write. And it was a sin because the Church was not in favor of Indian children going to school. The Church wished the Indian children left in their innocence and ignorance, because of such is the Kingdom of Heaven; whereas once an Indian was educated you could not say where it might end. The case of the Indian Benito Juárez was very recent in those days and the memory of it is still fresh today. This Indian of Oaxaca, who had remained in blissful ignorance till his twelfth year, got the opportunity of being educated; and when at last by hard work he became an educated man he confiscated the wealth of the Church for the benefit of the people, and played havoc in a way that no one had ever dared to do before with the divine rights which God Himself conferred on the Catholic Church. No wonder, then, that the Church looked askance on education for the Indians.
Those sixty centavos that don Leonardo paid for Andrés’s schooling were not so great an expense as they seemed—for Andrés received no wages. Who would dream of paying an Indian boy wages! He could believe himself lucky to have the honor of being allowed to work at all—that was wage enough. And the employer ought to be thanked for giving him something to do.
Andrés got his food. It was plentiful, certainly; but it was seldom anything but dry pancakes of corn flour, black beans, and hot peppers, or, to give them their names, tortillas, frijoles, and chiles. If the boy was not on the spot when he was wanted, or if he did anything amiss, he was told that he did not even earn his keep and that his master was losing on him every day.
He was also given his clothing. It consisted of one pair of white cotton trousers, a white cotton shirt, and a bast hat. He had neither boots nor shoes—not even huaraches, that is, the native sandals. He went barefoot, as he had all his life. He was used to it and knew no better.
Then on the day of the fiesta, the festival of the patron saint of Tenejapa, he was given five centavos, or even, if his master was in a generous mood, two reales (twenty-five centavos), with which to buy himself candies. This was once a year, because the fiesta came only once a year. On his día del santo, the day of his own patron saint, he received ten centavos and perhaps a new cinturón rojo de lana, a red woolen belt—or sash, rather—which served to hold up his white cotton trousers.
He had no bed, and he was not accustomed to one. He slept on a petate, a mat of bast, which he spread out in a corner of the kitchen or of the portico. He had brought this mat from home with him.
As he had never had wages during his service in his master’s house on the finca and had never there possessed so much as a centavo, he had no idea what wages were. So now when he was given a few centavos twice a year he felt he had made a great stride forward in life. Such a system is enough to make any employer of labor burst with envy.
9
The schoolteacher was glad enough to give the boy his lessons for sixty centavos a month. His salary was twenty-five pesos a month. It was the lowest paid to any state employee. Public prosecutors and police chiefs were paid twenty times as much; and the reason why they were paid twenty times as much and held in a hundred times higher honor is because it is their duty to come down hard on the shortcomings of their neighbors. This task is laid upon them by the State for its own preservation and to remind people that respect for the law is a sign of civilization.
The jefe político, the district governor, received six hundred pesos a month, without counting the bribery and extortion by which he made a great deal more than that. The schoolteacher could not practice extortion. He had no right or power to do so. And it was to no one’s interest to bribe him; for it was a matter of no importance, either to them or their parents, whether his pupils passed an examination or not.
The schoolteacher’s only means of adding to his income was an evening school for grown-up people, or children who could not come to school during the day. Most of the children of the place and all the children of Indian parents had to work during the day, some in the fields, others in various home industries—molding candles, making cigarettes, casting pottery, weaving blankets, working leather, making sweets, plaiting hats.
The schoolteacher charged a peso a month for each student, whether grown up or not. Many families could not pay it, and so their children went without education. Don Leonardo, good man of business as he was, contrived to knock forty centavos off the peso he owed the schoolteacher for Andrés.
Andrés was supposed to attend the school every evening from seven to nine or half-past nine; and he would have liked to go every evening for the pleasure of learning. But if his master needed him in the store he was not permitted to go. The store came first.
Don Leonardo did not buy him any books. If he went so far as to give him a soiled notebook from his stock or a broken pencil or a bottle of stale ink, he made a great song of it and put on a wry face. But Andrés might take any old paper which could be used no longer for wrapping parcels, and when he was in the street he kept his eye open for stumps of pencils which had been lost or thrown away.
Rudimentary as this sort of schooling was, he learned a good deal. The most important thing he learned was the value of education; for until you can read and write you do not understand what the value of reading and writing is.
2
When Andrés was fifteen he still went barefoot and still slept on a petate, which he spread out on the kitchen floor or in a dry corner of the portico and rolled up in the morning and put away beneath the rafters. The petate was not the one he had brought with him from home; nor was the woolen serape which covered him the same one. They had worn out at last, but don Leonardo had not given him new ones; for a petate of the kind don Leonardo sold cost one peso twenty-five centavos and a serape as much as five.
During this time doña Emilia had twice been to visit her father at the finca to let him see and marvel at the two children she had brought into the world. Andrés accompanied her on these journeys. He was by now a grown youth to whom don Leonardo could safely entrust his wife and children.
So Andrés saw his father and mother and his sisters and all his relatives again. And his father gave him a new petate and a new serape when he saw how worn out they both looked. He had to buy the serape from the master’s warehouse—the patrón’s bodega. It cost nine pesos, for it was a good one, made by the Indians of Chamula. He had to buy the petate from the patrón also, and this cost him one peso seventy-five; for everything in the finquero’s bodega was fifty and even one hundred per cent higher than at a store in the town.
Criserio could not, of course, pay for them, because he got no wages; so he had to have them on credit and entered to his accoun
t.
Don Arnulfo said: “The serape is nine pesos.”
“That is very dear, patrón,” Criserio answered. “I can buy a serape at Simojovel for five.”
“So you can, Criserio, if you have the money.”
“But I haven’t any money, patroncito,” said Criserio.
“You’ve no obligation to buy it, Criserio, if it is too dear,” said don Arnulfo, picking up the serape to put it back on the shelf.
“But I must have the serape for my hijito—my little son, he’s frozen to death,” said Criserio without moving a muscle of his face.
“The serape costs nine pesos, Criserio. I can’t let you have it any cheaper. If it is too dear and you can get one cheaper somewhere else, you are free to do as you please. You’re not forced to buy the serape from me. Do you think I want you to run up debts? I don’t, I assure you. I would far rather my muchachos owed me nothing; then there’s no bother and my boys are free and can go when they like. There is no slavery here.”
“I know that, señor,” said Criserio. “We are no esclavos. We are free and can go when we like and where we like.”
“As long as you don’t owe me anything, that is. You know that.”
“I know that, patrón. As long as we don’t owe the patrón anything.” Criserio said all this by rote, exactly as a parrot might. He did not think of what it meant. The meaning was too remote.
Don Arnulfo, however, brought matters to a head. He had no time to discuss the relation between freedom and freedom from debts with one of his peons. Such questions did not bother him any more than they did any other finquero. They were matters of hard fact. The State, the army, and the police stood behind his rights as a true son of the Church.
“Well,” he said, “do you want the serape or not? If you do, say so; if you don’t, you can go. The serape is nine pesos. You’re not forced to take it if you don’t want to run up a debt.”
“I’ll take the serape, and the petate too,” Criserio said.
“Very well. Then I’ll enter it against you in the book.”
“Yes, señor, put it down. I want the serape and the petate for my boy, now he’s so far away from home where it is very cold at night because of the mountains.” Criserio picked up the articles and put them under his arm.
Don Arnulfo opened the heavy ledger with a bang and turned to Criserio Ugalde’s account. “Now wait till we get this straight.”
“Yes, patroncito, I’ll wait.”
Don Arnulfo scratched about with the pen to make the ink flow and made his calculations aloud: “The serape is nine pesos. Is that right, Criserio?”
“Yes, patrón, that is right. Nine pesos.”
Don Arnulfo wrote it down and then said: “The petate is one seventy-five.”
“Patrón,” Criserio broke in, “but that is very dear. You can buy a good petate in Yajalón for seven reales.”
“Por el diablo, the devil take it, do you want the petate or not? Make up your mind what you want and what you don’t want. I’ve no time to waste.”
Don Arnulfo was getting angry, and for fear of putting him in a still worse temper, Criserio said: “Yes, indeed, I’ll take the petate—for my boy, Andrés.”
“Bueno, all right, then that’s one seventy-five. Is that right, Criserio?”
“That is right, señor.”
“Muy bien, very well,” said don Arnulfo as he wrote. “Then both together that is eleven pesos. Is that right, Criserio?”
“That is right, patrón.”
“Eleven pesos, then; and as you can’t pay me the eleven pesos, that makes another eleven pesos—twenty-two in all: eleven for the serape and the petate and eleven because you owe for them and can’t pay. Is that right, Criserio?”
Criserio had no knowledge of figures. In any case, he could not have reckoned so quickly. And because he could not follow them, the figures only made him confused, and he did not want to question and make his master angry; and his master said all the figures in Spanish, and though he understood them well enough in Spanish he could not grasp them in his head. So it was very natural that he said: “That is right, patrón.”
It must be right if the master said so; for he was a proud and rich gentleman who would never make money by cheating a poor Indian.
“Correcto, Criserio?”
“Correcto, patrón.”
Don Arnulfo did not allow Criserio to disfigure the page by putting his clumsy cross to it. He would only have blotted this fine clear ledger which had “In the name of God” on its first page. There was no need, in any case; for if there was a dispute (as never in fact happened) the cross would never be required as evidence. It would have no value whatever, since neither Criserio nor any other peon on the finca could read what he had put his cross to. So it did not matter whether the cross was there or not. Don Arnulfo had asked “Correcto, Criserio?” and Criserio had answered “Correcto, patrón, that is right.” Every judge in the Republic would accept this verbal confirmation between a finquero and a peon as binding. The peon had confirmed the transaction by word of mouth, and so he was responsible for the debt he had acknowledged.
Don Arnulfo was a decent, honorable man. He treated his peons better than many other finqueros of his acquaintance. Other landowners were a good deal less softhearted with their peons.
“The shirt is five pesos. Right? Very well. And as you can’t pay for it, that’s five pesos. And as you remain in my debt for the five pesos, that’s five pesos. And as I shall never have the money from you, that’s five pesos. So that makes five and five and five and five. That’s twenty pesos. Agreed?”
“Yes, patrón, agreed.”
The peon can buy a shirt nowhere else when he needs one. He can get credit nowhere but from his master, for whom he works and from whom he can never get away as long as he owes him a centavo.
2
It did not occur to Criserio to consider whether all this was just or not. It was altogether beyond his mental capacity to grasp the meaning of transactions of this kind. If anyone had tried to explain to him that he had been shamefully swindled, he would never have seen it however often it had been explained to him. He would have listened and listened and at the end he would have said: “The patrón is right. The patrón is an honest man and he would not deceive a poor Indian. And he reckoned it quite right, for I owe him eleven pesos and then that makes twenty-two. It’s quite right.”
Don Arnulfo might, of course, have gone about it another way to arrive at the twenty-two pesos. He might simply have said that the serape and the petate together came to twenty-two pesos and that Criserio could take them or leave them; but then Criserio would have known that the price was exorbitant. He would have refused to buy and would have found something else to serve his needs, such as animal skins, which he could get on his own. For he could understand the prices of things. He understood, too, that all goods were dearer on the finca than at the market in the town, for the finquero had the cost of transport, and there was no knowing what he had paid for them. The peon could get as far as the mere price of a thing; what defeated him was the finquero’s rapid calculations and jugglery with figures.
Indeed, the peon had no comprehension whatever of figures beyond five. Fifteen or twenty-two or sixty-five pesos were all the same to him. Figures like that were so confusing to him that he fell into a kind of hypnosis, and this hypnosis would only become more profound if it ever actually came to an investigation of the finquero’s accounts by a judge or any other official in order to ascertain whether an injustice had been done to the Indian peasants. They knew only one person in the whole world to whom they could bring a complaint, and that was their own master.
3
Criserio was delighted to be able to give his son the serape and the petate. He told him they had cost eleven pesos, but he did not say that he had on their account contracted a debt of twenty-two pesos.
It did not appear to him in that way. The articles cost him eleven pesos. That was correct. But it had nothing to d
o with them if he owed twenty-two, which was only because he could not pay the eleven pesos in cash. For this reason he did not consider it necessary to say anything to his son about the other eleven pesos.
But Andrés was very well aware what even eleven pesos meant to his father; for he knew how a peon lived on a finca. Perhaps he had not known this, or understood its economic significance, when he left home; but now he was older, and during his two visits to the finca he had heard these matters spoken about in his parents’ hut and in the huts of other peons.
They were never discussed in any critical spirit. Things were taken for what they were. They were regarded as an immutable decree of fate which no human power could alter—any more than water can flow uphill instead of down. The patrón was the patrón and the peon the peon. So it always was; so it will continue to be. The peon’s son will be a peon in his turn; and if the patrón hands over the finca to his son or sells it, the name of the patrón changes, but everything else remains the same. If there was any criticism among them it was only because the land allotted to one or other of them by the patrón was poor or stony or hilly, or that he would have liked a little bit more, or that the price paid for pigs by the dealers ought to have been twenty-five or fifty centavos more—two-eighty for a well-grown pig was really too low.
Not a voice was raised against the patrón’s right to purchase all pigs, goats, or sheep his peons had for sale, and to decide on the price of the pigs he chose to buy from his peons so as to sell them again, and to give or withhold his permission if they wanted to sell their animals to a passing dealer, and to take fifty or seventy-five centavos or even a peso out of the money the peons got for them. For all this was his right as patrón, and always had been. The pigs, sheep, and goats had been reared on his finca, even if the peons had had to buy them as sucklings and feed them on maize they themselves cultivated.
