The Carreta

by B. TRAVEN

  Andrés, naturally, knew well enough what they were talking about, even though he had had no personal experience of the sort. He did not even know whether he hoped for such an experience with the girl or not. He was no more certain of his hopes than clear in his wishes. So far, he felt only the strength and warmth of his devotion to her as a comrade, but he also felt very clearly that this affection was not the same as he felt for his mother and sisters. If he had any convinced desire at all, it was that their relation might continue to be as it had been the night before and was that morning. He would be more than content with the situation as it was. If it came to more he would accept it with joy and gratitude, but to press for more had not even crossed his mind.

  And when this occurred to him he began to feel superior to his fellows. They would naturally have laid hands on the girl on the way out from the town, so as to know from experience whether it was worthwhile taking her any farther and looking after her.

  In this he was wrong, as he was surprised to discover later on; for he found out that Manuel, who now made such a show of going straight for what he wanted, could be held up by his hopes exactly as he himself was now. Manuel found a girl and behaved just as Andrés did. Andrés then saw the two of them together week after week on the road without ever actually becoming man and wife; until at last a night came when they rushed into each other’s arms, overwhelmed by a longing which they felt they could not resist for a moment longer.

  That was a good lesson for Andrés. It was an experience that taught him he had no right to feel superior to others because of feelings of which he thought himself alone capable, and which were denied to his fellows. He learned that it was only a matter of circumstance for any man to discover feelings in himself which till then he believed to be the privilege of the elect, who alone could have elevated thoughts and noble feelings.

  4

  The other men, all the more now that they knew the girl could not understand, were determined not to lose the chance of ribbing Andrés and amusing themselves at his expense.

  It was all in good fun, though they went at it without any disguise. If the girl had not been sitting there, they would have put on an act that would have been even clearer than their words.

  “You didn’t let her go thirsty all night, let’s hope, Andreucho?” asked José, laughing loudly.

  “What do you think?” said Andrés. “What do you take me for? You bet, Pepe, I squeezed the life out of her. I can tell you that.”

  “And how did it go?” asked Esteban.

  Andrés laughed knowingly. Out of his native Indian guile, he saw at once that if he accepted their imputations without more ado, he would quickly put an end to the banter.

  “How many times? That’s what we want to know,” put in Hilario.

  “Listen to me, you pollitos,” said Andrés, winking. “When I load up cases, I take care to count them; and when I get change for a peso in a cantina, I count it too. But in lots of things I don’t count. Do you follow me, hombres?”

  “That’s the way to talk,” Manuel threw in. “When you lose count, then you’ve something to talk about.” He shook the coffee grounds from his gourd into the fire and stood up and stretched himself. “Let’s get off now and cut those poles. This afternoon I’m off to the plaza again. Maybe I’ll strike it lucky and come back married myself. But I’ll want to see more flesh on her, I can tell you that.”

  They all got up, one after another. Those whom Andrés, on account of their thick heads, had written off for the job went out over the prairie to see after the oxen, and Manuel and two others picked up their machetes and got ready to go to the pine forest.

  The girl rinsed out her bowl and jarrita with water from a battered gasoline can and took them to the carreta where she had slept. Andrés followed her.

  He took three five-centavo coins out of his pocket and gave them to her as they stood together beside the carreta.

  “Tujom ants,” he said, “go to the town and buy yourself needles and black thread. Then come back and sew up the holes in your skirt.”

  “I will do that,” said the girl. “I will gladly do as you say.”

  “And then,” Andrés went on, “go down to the river—down there, look—and wash your face clean, and your arms and legs, and when you’ve done that, come back here and comb your hair till it shines.”

  She laughed. “I will do it all just as you say.”

  “If anyone asks you where you belong, say you belong to don Laureano’s carretas and that one of the carreteros is your marido—your husband. Then no one will harm you and the police won’t shut you up in jail, thinking you’ve no master and are a runaway. And if anyone asks where your na—your home—is and where you were tocvic—born—then say Chiapa. Do you understand all that, little girl?”

  “Yes, I understand all that,” she answered, “and I will say and do all you tell me to.”

  “Vicente, the boy, stays here with the carretas to keep an eye on them. If Vicente goes to fetch water, you keep an eye on them. No one here will harm you—you needn’t be afraid. Now I must go,” he said, turning to join the others who had already set off. “We have hard work ahead of us.”

  5

  Andrés knew what he was about in giving the girl these strange directions.

  The girl was no slave. No one had any right to lay hands on her. She was a Mexican citizen. All the same, if she were found alone in the town and could give no account of herself, a policeman would take her to the town hall, in the hope of earning a peso from a master she had run away from and to whom she was sure to owe money. There was not an Indian, male or female, apart from those in the independent communes, who was not in debt to some master. And if she had no master, all the more reason to arrest her. An excuse could never be lacking. She would be charged with being drunk, or with having stolen a button from a stall, or with being a vagabond with no family or home. Then the mayor or the chief of police or the political resident got a cheap maidservant. She would get a peso a month—since she was no slave; she would be beaten by an ill-tempered mistress and her ill-tempered daughters; and if the master or sons of the house took a fancy to her they would get her with child whether she liked or not, for she had to obey and do as she was told, whatever it might be.

  On the other hand, if she had a marido to look after her, a policeman would think twice before he took her in. Carreteros had the same rights as an Indian girl—but one day or another the policeman or the mayor would be sure to have to ride to another town, and it might easily happen—indeed, was sure to happen—that there were carreteros on the road. And quite inevitably that very carretero, whose girl had been arrested and taken away from him by that officer’s authority, would be among them. That officer would never return home. No one would know where he had got to or ever discover the mound beneath which his carcass rotted, and a dozen detectives would never find the culprit—bribe, imprison, and torture as they might. And as all officials, from the jefe político down to the barefooted policemen, knew that well, and not only by hearsay, the wife of a carretero was as inviolable as the chieftain of an independent Indian commune when he had his staff of office in his hand.

  The carreteros had no brotherhoods or unions, but they were respected throughout the state. They had only themselves to rely on; yet the measures they took were ruthless ones from which there was no escape.

  They were wretchedly paid, wretchedly fed. Their life was one of merciless hardship. All that, they accepted without question as a destiny to which they were born. They were ordered about and exploited to the last drop of blood in their veins. Yet they could only be ordered about and exploited successfully when those who gave them orders and exploited them knew how far they could go and where to draw the line. And the transport contractor who knew this best had the best carreteros and made the highest profit on them.

  The carreteros, like so many of the working class in Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, and Venezuela, did not turn a hair if they were hanged or shot. Hence they wer
e beyond the law, and particularly beyond all laws which did not correspond with their own sense of justice.

  6

  The men returned to the camp early in the afternoon. Next day they would take the oxen along to haul the poles and yokes they had hewn. The fellows who had been sent to look after the animals had not yet come back. “They’ve been having a lie-down somewhere out there,” said Andrés, “and they’re still asleep.”

  The girl showed Andrés with pride her mended skirt. It was as clumsily stitched up as could be, but at least it showed her good will; and in any case it looked a little better than before—a little. To have made a good job of it would have required some patches, and Andrés promised to see about getting some scraps for her.

  Her arms and legs were well washed—hands and face too. But the best was her hair. Hours of thorough combing had transformed the tangled mop into long gleaming rich black waves of hair in which the upper half of her body could be entirely enveloped.

  Andrés saw her for the first time in the full light of day, and with the dirt and dust and caked mud well removed, which had made it difficult to guess what there might be beneath. He saw with wonder and delight that she was a pretty girl, with white teeth, gleaming black eyes, short straight nose, rounded chin, and smooth deep-bronze skin.

  She laughed and asked: “Have I done everything as you told me to?”

  “Yes, indeed you have, little girl,” he said, taking hold of her by both her arms.

  “And are you pleased with me?” she asked, drawing closer to him.

  “I am,” he replied.

  He turned her round and looked at her from all sides. She was nothing but a barefoot girl in a worn shirt and bedraggled woolen skirt. That was all. The embroidered shirt and the mended black skirt and the jorongo were all she had more than a beast of the jungle. But there was nothing to suggest that she wanted more to make her happy; for she showed without a care how glad she was just to be near him.

  “Later, after we’ve had something to eat,” he said, “we’ll go out on the prairie, you and I, and sit in the open field and tell each other about ourselves.”

  “Yes, we’ll do that,” she agreed. “You know such wonderful things. Everything you say, Binash Yutsil, is beautiful. I could listen forever when you talk.”

  “I will never say anything to you but what is beautiful,” he said softly.

  “Then I shall always be happy,” she answered.

  7

  The men washed their hands and threw themselves wearily on the ground to pass the time until their food was ready. Vicente had put the beans on the fire in good time and they were now nearly soft.

  Then two of the fellows who had been sent out in the morning to see to the oxen came up. They told Andrés they had not been able to find them.

  “I guess not,” said Andrés. “Your eyes are still closed. You’ve been asleep down there by the stream.”

  “Are we under your orders, pollito?” one of them asked in a temper.

  “You know well enough you’re not,” said Andrés. “And I won’t give you any orders either. But if we have to scout after the oxen for three days and the carretas are not ready to start when the comerciantes want to go, it’s I who’ll get it in the neck from the patrón, while you stand and grin.”

  Manuel, who was lying full length and tired out on the ground, sat up and said to the two: “Andrés is right. It’s him the viejo—the old man—will come down on if we’re not off in time. And it’ll be your fault. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, you sinvergüenzas, parranderos, léperos, borrachos, cabrones!”

  A perfect hail of curses descended on their heads, while Manuel only grew the more incensed the more he cursed, until at last he leaped to his feet and went for them, head down and fists clenched. “You should have more shame, you droppings of the damned—get out with you and find the oxen or I’ll cut you to ribbons.”

  The two shirkers knew that Manuel was not a pleasant enemy. He did not do things by halves once he saw fit to begin. They turned about and made for the prairie again.

  But Andrés called to them: “Better eat and have your sleep. It’s late. We’ll all go out first thing in the morning and look for the beasts. We want them to haul the poles and yokes and they have to have their feed of maize tomorrow too. Oye, listen, Vicente, are the frijoles soft yet? Bueno. Bring the tortillas along.”

  8

  After they had eaten and taken a nap the men washed up and got ready to go to the town again. The fireworks could be heard popping once more.

  Hundreds of thousands of the poorer classes in Mexico have neither a whole shirt nor a whole pair of trousers and have never so much as thought of a pair of shoes. But they always have money for fireworks in any quantity whenever they attend the frequent sacred festivals of the Church, and thus the money they bitterly need for the sheer necessities of life goes up in the air—and this in honor of a Church which never thinks of advising them to make better use of their money, any more than it would ever advise them not to spend their last peso on candles to illuminate the altars of the saints. In their own homes these people have no illumination but splinters of pinewood. Yet it is precisely upon these multitudes of the poor that the saints rely for most of their candles and fireworks. The saints could very well do without these things, for they are long since dead. The worker is still alive and needs a shirt and a pair of trousers far more urgently than a saint needs a candle or a firecracker. But the Church takes and goes on taking, caring nothing whether those on whom it lays the burden of gifts and offerings as the price of getting one day to heaven are without the bare necessities of life. It matters nothing to the Church that through its teachings and its promises of eternal joy in a paradise no one has ever seen or knows anything about, poverty is increased and spread abroad like a wasting disease.

  The more poor and hunger-stricken people there are in the world the greater is the profit of all those who know how to exploit their poverty and grow rich on their labors. An empty belly and a torn shirt produce the willing worker, who neither winces nor jibs; for his belly cries aloud and his body craves warmth and clothing. It is the Church that prospers, and with it all those whose rule is: Keep the people religious, for religion is our best safeguard.

  It may well happen that, if paradise really exists and if the proletarian finally gets there, he will find the very same persons seated at the table as have already skimmed the cream from life on earth. They don’t often come off second best. And if the eye of the needle is too narrow for the camel to pass through, they widen it and there’s no further trouble.

  Andrés could not have been expected to have any such thoughts when he heard the fireworks popping off in honor of San Caralampio. He knew nothing of a paradise in the life hereafter, but neither did he know of any paradise here on earth. Like other carreteros he was so closely identified as a living person with his lot on earth that it would have seemed paradise enough if he had had twenty-five centavos more a day, if he had found meat in his beans, if his debt to the patrón did not increase at such a rate that nothing he could ever hope to earn by his labor would enable him to reduce, let alone cancel it.

  The sum of what he actually possessed on this earth and all that he could hope to enjoy if he ever found the time was his bare existence.

  And that was something.

  One day when he was still a child on the finca where he was born, a peon answered the finquero back in a dispute about the price of a pig which the peon had reared. A dealer had offered eight pesos for the pig. The finquero offered only five. As a peon he was bound to sell the pig to the finquero for five because the finquero had the right of pre-emption on all animals reared on his property, never mind who reared them, and even though they were fed on maize which the peon had cultivated with his own hands on his plot of ground. When the finquero had had enough of the dispute he lost his temper and gave the peon a blow on the head with his machete. The peon fell to the ground and, while the blood poured from him, he whi
spered: “Mercy, patroncito, mercy—kill me, patroncito.” The patrón gave him a kick in the ribs. “You can be glad, you filthy pig of an Indian, that you have your life. What more do you want?”

  Andrés had his life. What more did he want? But the Church, this great savior of souls, had never taught him, or other Indians who lived in independent communes, the first lesson that saviors of souls and liberators ought to teach: Make the best of your own life first, before you bother about anything else.

  14

  “Do you want to go to the town—to the plaza?” Andrés asked the girl.

  “No—or not unless you want to,” she replied. “I would rather, as we said, go out on the prairie and sit with you, to look at the wide-open world and listen to what you have to tell me.”

  So they walked through the prairie, and then over to the pine forest. There they sat down on the fringe of it, from where they could look right over the prairie. Behind them trees, sixty and eighty meters high, stood like the pillars of a mighty hall. Ferns a meter high grew in the forest, and in many places there was deep grass. Pine cones as big as melons were scattered about the ground.

  “You’ve only been in the upland country?” he asked her.

  “Yes, that’s all.”

  “Then you’ve never seen palms and jungle and tropical plants?”

  She shook her head.

  “I’m very glad,” he said, looking at her.

  “Why?”

  “Because I can show it all to you and you will see it all for the first time with me. Then your memory of it will be forever bound up with your memory of me.”