The Carreta

by B. TRAVEN

  “Now what will you have for your supper, tujom ants?” he asked her.

  Her face went dark as he said this and she looked down in shame, for “tujom ants” means “beautiful lady,” and in the way he said it, and in his smile as he said it, there was not only admiration of her—but more. Then she raised her eyes and looked at him with a sidelong smile and half-shut eyes.

  “Well?” he asked again. “What will the little girl have for supper?”

  “Tibal,” she replied, “meat, real meat—I’m very hungry.”

  He ordered the enchiladas. While they watched them being prepared she said: “But I am not a little girl, you know. I am big now. I have been a woman for over a year. You can take my word for that, Binash Yutsil huinic.” She laughed.

  Andrés looked at her. She had taken off her jorongo—which is worn like a poncho and like it has a hole in the center for the head—and now stood before him in a mud-spattered shirt and skirt.

  The skirt was of coarse black wool, gathered into a thick tuck at the waistline because, following the Indian custom, it had to be wide enough to serve when the wearer was with child. It was torn, and smeared with dried mud. The cotton shirt, once white, was gray with dust and ingrained with dirt. It was embroidered along the border in lines and stars of red wool.

  She was barefoot. Her feet were very small, and the toes were spread out in their natural form. No shoe had ever hindered their growth. The dense mass of her hair, still matted in spite of the combing, hung down below her waist. She was small, and thin.

  8

  When the enchiladas were ready Andrés asked the girls for a little salt, which was given to him in a banana leaf. A small lemon was also added.

  Then he said: “We’ll go over to the church steps to eat them and later come back and have a cup of coffee.”

  “Hutsil,” she said laughing, “that will be fine.”

  “Aren’t you going to eat too?” she asked when they sat down on the steps and he handed her the enchiladas.

  “I’ve eaten already and I’m not hungry now,” he said.

  “Then you must just take a bite of each of my enchiladas or I won’t enjoy them and they won’t do me any good,” she said, holding one to his mouth.

  “What is your name, little girl?” he asked.

  “I have no name. My mother and father never called me anything but huntic—child—and the mistress of the finca, when she summoned me, said anstil vinic—girl. José, the master’s son, always called me mejayel.”

  “Why did he call you mejayel?” Andrés asked angrily. “What a horrible name for a little girl like you. What a swine he must be. Over there in that cantina every painted girl who serves the men with comiteco and sits on their knees and lets them handle her as they like for money—every one of those girls is a mejayel.”

  She did not understand what he meant. It was as incomprehensible to her as the fable of original sin is to any normal person, but she realized that a strange and unknown world was opening before her. She could see no sense in what went on in that world. So, at the first glance at least, she believed there was no sense to be seen. But when she took another look at the cantina, and watched from where they sat what went on there, and tried to see what connection it had with what Andrés had told her, she began to understand by degrees. Indeed, she began to get it straight in her mind much more quickly than Andrés expected; for, after thinking over what she saw, she recognized that what went on in the cantina was the same thing she had seen on the finca. It was only that in that cantina next to the cathedral the dresses and lighting were different—that was all.

  “José lied,” she said. “I know now what a mejayel is, and José lied. I am not a mejayel, but he wanted to make me one. I see it now, and it is why I ran away from the finca. I will tell you all about it, Binash Yutsil,” she said as she finished the last enchilada.

  “First we’ll go and drink coffee. You must be thirsty,” Andrés suggested.

  9

  After the coffee they sat down again on the church steps. The eternal murmur of praying women came through the doorway and every now and again the monotonous chanting.

  The shouts and cries of the merchants in the square died down. There were still plenty of people wandering to and fro, but no one was buying anything. Only at the gambling tables, at the shooting galleries, and at the lotería tables—there groups still collected either to play or look on.

  Mexican lotería—unlike lotto or bingo or keno, whatever they choose to call it where you live—is played with picture cards rather than numbered ones. The lotería tables were the noisiest in the square as everyone scrambled to match and cover the picture squares of their cards, in the hope of planting beans on four squares in a row—in which case they won a bunch of paper flowers or a brandy glass or a comb.

  You heard the cry of the man who turned up the cards: “El diablo!” And his assistant repeated: “El diablo!” “El globo!” ——“El globo!” … “El alacrán!”——“El alacrán!” … “La vaca!”——“La vaca!”—the devil, the globe, the scorpion, the cow they called out, among all the other species and objects portrayed on the cards. The callers liked to greet the names with spicy remarks which they thought witty.

  Many of the merchants were now covering their stalls with tarpaulins; others packed their wares away in boxes or simply spread rush matting over them. When that was done they lay down on a mat in the stall or alongside it and went to sleep.

  More and more of the lanterns and the lamps of oil-soaked cotton in tin cans were extinguished. The people who still wandered about among the stalls looked like ghostly shadows.

  But near the fountain the dancing was kept up merrily.

  The mournfully rising and falling flute notes of a marimba could be heard from a distant street. Sometimes it sounded like harps, sometimes like oboes of all sizes, sometimes like the singing of women’s contralto voices, sometimes like a soft peal of bells. Some citizen of the town was giving a private party in his house, or a lover serenading his mistress, or a family celebrating the saint’s day of one of its members.

  “Would you like to dance for a bit?” asked Andrés.

  “I’d like to, but I’m afraid,” said the girl.

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of, little girl,” he said, encouraging her. “There are no Ladinos dancing, but only Indians like you and me. Come along.”

  They joined the dancers. No one paid any attention to them. He looked like the other young fellows and she, in her jorongo, like many another Indian girl who had come to the fiesta.

  He gave her his colored handkerchief and they danced their Indian zapateado as happily and unconcernedly as the rest. They entirely forgot that they had met for the first time only two hours ago. And it did not worry them that neither knew the other’s name. It seemed to them that they had known each other ever since the world began.

  10

  It was very late. The musicians were weary. They had been playing day and night for three weeks, often right on until daybreak. They did not earn much; those who came to them to dance had little to spend. But they, Indians like the rest, seemed to find much of their reward in giving pleasure to others and enabling all who came along to forget their cares, if only for a few happy hours.

  “Now we’ll have another drink of coffee, and a cake with it,” Andrés proposed when the girl gave him back his handkerchief.

  “As you please, Binash Yutsil,” she said smiling. “Command and I obey.”

  He guided her by the elbow to the kitchen of the old Indian woman, who was now squatting half asleep by her stove. This woman kept open day and night cooking for the hungry Indians who patronized her. She too, like most of the stallkeepers and the gambling-table people, had already attended the fiesta at Sapaluta. It was a question whether she ever lay down to sleep at all. No doubt she had the gift of sleeping while squatting beside her stove.

  Her customers were never in a hurry; they never hustled her or made loud and angry complain
ts if their enchiladas were not ready quickly. And so she could have her forty winks while apparently seeing to her job. If there was no one waiting she pulled her rebozo over her head and was at once so fast asleep that she snored. But one of her daughters had only to say in a whisper: “Madrecita, dos con pollo, dos con res—two with chicken, two with beef, Mother dear,” and she was awake in an instant and automatically getting the enchiladas ready without ever once mixing up an order or the various salads and sauces.

  Her first act on being waked from sleep was to blow up the fire. The first thing any Indian woman does when she wakes is to blow up the embers which smolder either on the open ground or in a clay hearth; it is the same with the Indian boys who are on the road.

  11

  The air was now pretty sharp, and the hot coffee and the bizcochos put new life into them.

  “It is very late,” Andrés said tenderly. “How would you like to turn in and sleep? I’ll make you a fine warm bed in a carreta, where you can sleep as long as you like.”

  “If that is your command I must obey,” she replied without thinking.

  “Will you always obey me, little girl?” he asked softly.

  “Always,” she said simply, “always, because you are good to me.”

  They walked through the long silent streets. The further they left the plaza behind, the darker it became. The street lamps had been put out.

  They often stumbled. The municipal authorities were accustomed to spending the money set apart for repairing the streets on other items of more personal interest to themselves, and therefore the streets away from the center of the town were in a deplorable condition. Rough stones, deep holes into which you sank nearly to your knees, ruts full of slimy refuse and noisome mud, puddles and quagmires from overflowing drains, tree trunks, planks, carreta poles, roof wreckage, and tumble-down walls—this was what met you at every step on the outskirts of the town. There were gaping holes in the footbridges; some had broken-down railings, others none at all. By day it was bad enough; by night you risked a broken leg or immersion in stinking pits every ten steps you took.

  Andrés took some pine splinters from his pocket and lit them to throw light on the road. He had not yet managed to acquire a flashlight—one of the cherished ambitions of his life—nor could he see the remotest chance of his ever acquiring one.

  But he, and the girl too, were used to these splinters of pine. They had had no other light in their homes. Every carreta, certainly, had an oil lantern, but these lanterns were of so little use in practice that the carreteros used pine splinters if they needed a really good light. This relieved their masters of the cost of supplying oil for the lanterns.

  The town was very scattered, for every family had a house to itself and every house had a spacious patio. So it took a long time before the two reached the last houses. After this the road was safer, for the wide prairie stretched before them.

  12

  Andrés sat down on a bank.

  “Let’s rest a bit,” he said, “and smoke a cigarette. What do you say?”

  “Yes,” she said and sat down beside him.

  He rolled cigarettes and gave her one. The deep night sky was dense above their heads, but it did not weigh down and oppress them. It was a wide flood of thick darkness, reposeful and comforting. The crickets, and whatever else lived and took joy in the grass, fiddled and whirred and fluted from the prairie. Now and then from the distance came the deep lowing of cattle or the mournful trumpeting of a mule. The stars twinkled and sparkled with the tropical brilliance of little suns. The bats flitted by them, returning and circling around them, now close, now far.

  A few solitary lights glimmered from the town. Now and then belated fireworks sputtered over it, and here and there a rocket soared up to rouse San Caralampio once more. He surely did not wish to sleep on his birthday—that would not be right.

  13

  “Whenever I see the stars spread so far over the deep blackness of the sky—which all the same is so clear,” said the girl, “and sparkling as if they were trying to speak, I can’t help thinking of my dear mother. Perhaps she is living on one of those stars now. She loved the stars more than anything else in all nature. She could sit for hours at night watching the stars and rejoicing in them, with me on her lap or between her knees. One of those nights when the finquero had sent my father off for a few days driving cattle, my mother told me a story about the stars. I have never forgotten it. It is always in my heart. That is why I am never afraid at night, however black it is. I have never told the story to anyone, because it is sacred to me as the most beautiful and lovely thing my mother could have left me. But, Binash Yutsil, I will tell you the story. For you are good to me, good as only my mother was good, and no one else in the whole world, not even my father, was so good to me. He was always tired out with his work and always covered with cuts and bruises from his labors in the bush.”

  After a long pause and while she leaned against him for shelter from the cool wind that had risen, he said softly and tenderly: “This story is the most beautiful present you could give me, and I will listen to it as well and closely as though your mother were telling it to me. I do believe indeed that she lives on one of the stars and looks down on you and protects you from all that could harm you.”

  She nestled closer to him and he took her in his arms and wrapped her well in his serape.

  14

  In a voice almost as low as his she began her story:

  “It is the story of the god who made the sun.

  “The evil spirits who wanted to destroy mankind, because the good gods had made it, conquered the good gods and killed them all. That done they put out the sun with snow and ice and blizzards.

  “And then began an endless night on the earth. Everything was covered with ice. Men froze to death. Scarcely any maize grew, and on this mankind existed in great wretchedness. Many, many people starved and died.

  “No trees with sweet fruits grew any more. No flowers bloomed. No birds sang. Crickets and grasshoppers ceased to fiddle and flute. All the animals of the forests and prairies died, so that men could not hunt them any more for food for their wives and children or clothe them in warm skins.

  “When man’s wretchedness got worse and worse, all the chiefs and kings of the Indian people summoned a great council to decide how a new sun could be made.

  “The only light in the sky came from the bright stars. The bad gods had not been able to put them out. On the stars lived the spirits of departed men who had been able to defend themselves. Strength had been given them by the good gods because it was their task to keep the stars alight forever.

  “The great council of kings lasted many weeks, but nobody knew of a way to make a new sun. Then the kings sent for a man of great wisdom, who was more than three hundred years old and had learned all the secrets of nature. And he said:

  “ ‘There is certainly a way of making a new sun. A young man of strength and great courage must go to the stars. There he must beg the spirits of the departed to give him a little piece of each of the stars. He must fasten each piece to his shield and carry it with him higher and still higher, adding new pieces of stars, until he has reached the center of the vault of the sky. There, when all the little pieces are at last on his shield, his shield will turn into a large hot shining sun.

  “ ‘I would gladly go and do it myself, but I am old and feeble. I cannot leap as I once did. So I cannot leap from star to star. Also, I am no longer strong and nimble enough to wield spear and shield and fight with the bad gods, who will try to prevent a new sun’s being made.’

  “When the wise man had spoken, all the kings and chiefs and great warriors who sat in council leaped up and cried: ‘We are ready to go!’

  “Whereupon the wise man said: ‘It is greatly to your honor that you wish to go. But only one can go, and this one must go alone with his shield, because only one sun may be made. Too many suns would burn up the earth.

  “ ‘That one who goes must make
the greatest sacrifice a man can make. He must leave his wife, his children, his father and his mother, his friends and his people. He can never again return to the earth. He must forever wander in the vault of the sky with his shield on his left arm; and he must hold himself forever in readiness to fight the bad gods, who will never rest until they have again put out the sun. He will see the earth and his people, but he will never return to them. He will be forever alone in space. Let each man ponder this before he volunteers.’

  “When the kings heard this they were deeply dismayed. Not one of them wished to be parted forever from his wife and his children, from his friends and people. Each one of them preferred to die then and there and to rest in his own earth among his own people.

  “So there was a long silence in the council. But then at last one of the youngest chieftains spoke:

  “ ‘I wish to say something, O brave men. I am young and strong and handy with weapons. I have a young and beautiful wife whom I love more than myself. And I have a fine boy who is like my heart’s blood to me. And I have a good and dear mother whose defense and hope I am. And I have many beloved friends. And I love my people among whom I was born and of whom I am an inseparable part.

  “ ‘But, more than my wife, more than my boy, more than my mother, my friends and my people, I love mankind. I cannot be content as long as I see mankind suffer. Men need a sun. Without a sun mankind must perish. I am ready to go and restore a sun to men whatever my lot and my fate may be.’

  “It was Chicovaneg who said this.

  “He took leave of his wife, his boy, his mother, his friends and his people. Following the counsel of the wise man, he went to arm himself.

  “He made himself a strong shield of tiger skin and snake skin. He made himself a helmet of a mighty eagle. And he made himself strong shoes of the claws of a mighty tiger, which he slew in the jungle.