The Cotton-Pickers

by B. TRAVEN

  ” ‘My shirt is in rags,’ he grumbled on. ‘My pants are rags. My sandals ― take a look at them, Antonio ― no soles, no nothing. In the end, after sweating like a work horse, there’s nothing left. If only it were forty pesos!’

  “Saying this, his face lit up.

  ” ‘With forty pesos I could manage. I could go to Mexico City, buy myself some decent clothes so that if I wanted to say buenas tardes to a girl she’d see me as a human being. And I’d still have a few pesos to tide me over for a few days.’

  ” `You’re right, Gonzalo,’ I said, `forty pesos is just the sum I need to buy the absolute necessities.’

  ” ‘Do you know what I’m thinking?’ Gonzalo went on. `Let’s play for the money. Neither of us can get anywhere with the few sickly coppers we’ve got. If you get my money or I get yours, then at least one of us can do something. As it is, we’re both bums. I’d drink away these few coppers at one sitting, just out of rage at having worked for nothing.’

  “Gonzalo’s idea wasn’t bad,” Antonio went on with his tale. “I too would have drunk up the little I had left. Once you get started on that goddamned tequila, you don’t stop until the last centavo’s gone. You go on drinking, drunk or sober; and what you don’t get down your gullet, your fellow boozers will swig for you. The café and flophouse keepers will cheat a drunk, and the miserable coins that are left are pinched from your pocket. You know all about it, Gales.”

  Didn’t I, though. I knew cheap tequila. You shudder after each copita and have to gulp down something for a chaser. The barkeeper, or cantinero, is always wise enough to keep a supply of pickled botanas on sticks, but they burn your throat. So you keep on guzzling tequila, drenching your gizzard with the stuff as if bewitched or as if the damned throat-stripper were some magic elixir which, for some mysterious reason, had to be shot down without touching the tongue. And when at last you think you’ve had enough, you’ve ceased to exist. Everything is wiped away ― trouble, sorrow, anger, passion. Only absolute nothingness remains. World and ego are dispersed.

  Antonio brooded for a while, as though searching his memory. Then he went on: “We had no cards and no dice. We drew sticks. But the same stake of one peso kept passing from one to the other. It was never more than five pesos that changed hands. Then we played heads or tails. Strange, it still was never more than a few pesos that passed from one pocket to the other. Sam played too, and his money didn’t change much either. Meanwhile it had got late ― ten or eleven o’clock by my judgment.

  “Then Gonzalo got wild and cursed like a madman. He’d had enough of this kid’s game, he said, and wanted to know for sure how he’d stand in the morning.

  ” ‘Well, Gonzalo, what do you say we ought to do?’

  ” ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘That’s just what makes me so mad.

  Here we are fooling around like half-witted kids and not getting anywhere-back and forth all the time. It’s enough to drive you up the pole.’

  “Then, after squatting by the fire for a while, staring into the embers, rolling himself one cigarette after another and throwing them into the fire half smoked, he jumped up suddenly and said, `I know what we’ll do. We’ll have an Aztec duel for the whole stake.’

  ” ‘An Aztec duel?’ I asked. `What’s that?’

  ” ‘What? You don’t know the Aztec duel?’ Gonzalo was, genuinely surprised.

  ” ‘No. How should I, Gonzalo? My family is of Spanish descent, even if we have been here for more than a hundred years. I’ve never heard of an Aztec duel.’

  ” ‘It’s quite simple, Antonio. We take two young, straight saplings, trim them clean, tie our knives securely to the tips, and then hurl them at each other, until one or the other of us gives up from exhaustion. One of us will tire before the other; the one who stays on his feet wins, and gets the money. That will decide the money.’

  “I thought it over for a few moments. It seemed a crazy idea to me.

  ” ‘You’re not scared by any chance, are you, Spaniard?’ laughed Gonzalo.

  “There was a funny sort of sneer in his voice and this made me flare up: ‘Scared of you? Of an Indian? A Spaniard is never scared! I’ll show you! Come on, let’s have your Aztec duel!’

  “We took a flaming stick from the fire and stumbled around in the bush until we’d found two suitable saplings. Sam had been directed to bring plenty of fuel and build up a good fire so that we could see where we were aiming. We stripped the saplings and tied our opened pocketknives firmly to their tips.

  ” ‘We don’t let the whole blade stick out,’ said Gonzalo. ‘We don’t want to murder each other. It’s only a game. The blade needn’t stick out more than an inch. There, that’s right!’ he said, looking at my spear.

  ‘Now we must bind a piece of heavy wood near the blade end to give the spear its proper shaft weight; otherwise it’ll wobble and won’t fly straight.’

  “Then we padded our left arms with grass and wrapped them round with a coarse convas sack. `This is important,’ Gonzalo explained. `That’s where the fun comes in, catching and parrying the spear. The well-padded arm serves as a shield did in ancient times. You know, the old Aztec warriors also used shields. You must understand, in this duel we are fighting, that we don’t want to kill one another, only exhaust the other partner. Keep all this in mind; it is supposed to be only a game;

  “When we’d got everything ready, Sam said: `What about me? Am I supposed to stand by and watch? I want to be in on it too.’

  “The Chink was right. He had to have something for his trouble as stakeholder and witness. You know what devils the Chinese are for gambling, don’t you, Gales? They’d gamble away the price of their own funeral if given the chance.

  ” ‘Now see here, Sam,’ Gonzalo said to the Chink, ‘you can bet on one of us.’

  ” ‘Good,’ Sam said. ‘I’ll bet on you, Gonzalo, five pesos. You give me five pesos if you win. If you lose, you get five pesos flom me. It’s not in youl intelest to lose, because that would mean good-bye to youl twenty pesos.’

  “We each deposited our twenty pesos, which Sam placed before him on a stone; then he added his own stake of five pesos. Sam paced off twenty-five steps from either side of the fire, and we each placed a wooden pole on the marks. If either duelist overstepped his mark he would forfeit five pesos to the other.

  “Then we started throwing the spears at each other, parrying each spear with our grass-girded arm as it came to us, and then returning it. With the fire flickering and smoking as it was I could see Gonzalo only in uncertain outline. I could hardly see the spear as it flew toward me, the night was so pitch dark. At the second throw I got a stab in my right shoulder. You can still see the wound, Gales.”

  He pulled his shirt from his shoulder and I saw the stab wound, still not healed.

  “Gradually, we got into our stride, or, rather, we got worked up. After a few more exchanges I got another stab which went through my trousers and into my leg. But I was a long way from finished.

  “How long we kept on throwing, I don’t know. As neither of us would give in, the tempo became more and more wild.

  An element of savagery entered into the match, and anybody watching us then never would have believed that it was only a game.

  “Perhaps we threw for half an hour, perhaps for an hour; I don’t know. Neither did I know if I’d hit Gonzalo at all seri ously. But I knew that I was beginning to tire. The spear began to feel as if it weighed twenty pounds, and my throwing slowed down. Before long I found myself hardly able to bend down to pick up the spear, and once when I was bending I almost collapsed. But I knew that I mustn’t allow myself to sink to the ground; if I did I would certainly be unable to get on my feet again.

  “I couldn’t see Gonzalo now. I couldn’t see anything at all. I kept throwing the spears in the direction where I figured he must be. I no longer cared whether I hit him or not. All that worried me was that I shouldn’t be the first to stop. So, as the spears kept coming from the other side, I kept
throwing them back.

  “Suddenly, as the fire flared up for an instant, I saw Gonzalo turning around to look for the spear, which evidently had missed him widely. He went back a few steps, found it, picked it up, and then, as he turned toward me to throw it, fell on his knees as heavily as if someone had knocked him down with a terrific blow.

  “I didn’t throw the spear which I had in my hand because I was only too glad to stand it upright and lean on it; otherwise I’d have dropped to the ground. If Gonzalo had gotten to his feet and thrown his spear, I couldn’t have lifted my arm to ward it off or to throw it back.

  “But Gonzalo remained on his knees. Sam ran to him and called out: ‘Thel’, now, I’ve lost my five pesos. Antonio, you’ve won. Gonzalo’s given up.’

  “I dragged myself to a box near the fire, but hadn’t the strength to sit down on it. I dropped to the ground by the side of it. Sam dragged Gonzalo to the fire and gave him some water, which he gulped down.

  “I now saw that his chest was covered with blood. But I was past being interested in anything around me. My head dropped, and as I opened my eyes I saw that my chest was as streaked with blood as Gonzalo’s. But I didn’t care. Nothing seemed to matter.

  “Sam brought me the forty pesos and stuffed them into my pocket. I saw him also put five pesos into Gonzalo’s pocket. I had the feeling that all this was happening a long way off.

  “We stayed like this for a good half hour, maybe a whole hour. The fire died down.

  “Then Sam said, `I’m going to lie down and get some lest.’

  “I echoed these words, as they were my own: `Yes, I’m going to lie down and get some rest.’

  “I saw Gonzalo get up, too, and staggering and clutching like me, he clambered up the ladder and into the house.

  “When I’d dropped to the floor and just as I was dozing off, I heard Gonzalo say: `If you leave early in the morning and I’m not up, don’t bother to wake me. I want to get a good long sleep. I’m beat. Anyway, I can’t travel with you on the train; I haven’t got the fare.’

  “Before dawn, Sam gave me a nudge. It was time to be off. We had to be at the station by eight o’clock that evening; otherwise we’d lose two days. It was still pitch dark. I could see nothing in the hut, not even Gonzalo. We didn’t wake him but let him sleep undisturbed, and, picking up our bundles, were off just as dawn was breaking.

  “A short distance from the house we met the Indian who wanted to buy Abraham’s chickens.

  “Well, there you are, Gales, that’s the story, the true story.” “Antonio, you’d never have gotten Gonzalo to wake up that morning,” I said.

  “I’ve told you the true story, Gales. We can go and check it with Sam right now. He knows the truth.”

  “It’s not necessary to check it, Antonio. Let’s leave it at that. I believe you. I know the truth when I hear it.”

  The music in the band-shell started up.

  I closed my eyes. I wanted to shut out the harsh electric lights. I saw Gonzalo lying on the floor, banished from the world of the living and the hopeful, his hand clasping to his breast a ball of raw, blood-blackened cotton.

  Cotton.

  Antonio evidently had been watching me without my being aware of it.

  “Why are you weeping, Gales?”

  “Shut up! You … you must be seeing things. You do get some crazy ideas into your head.”

  He was silent.

  “This damned funeral music, Antonio! Why can’t they play `The Merry Widow’ or `Yes, we have no bananas’! Life is fun! Funeral marches are for corpses, comic opera for the living. Come on, Antonio. It’s nearly ten. What did that son-of-a-bitch say? `Be to work on time,’ he said, for one peso twenty-five the day!”

  Book Two

  11

  The owner of the Aurora Bakery, Señor Doux, always looked miserable, as if he were suffering from chronic malaria. He was off-color and went about his business like someone mortally sick. But in truth he was an active, hearty man; he could at one sitting eat enough for twelve strong men. He got up at four in the morning and breakfasted on a quart of milk and six fried eggs with ham. Then he had a good-sized glass of brandy and went off to the market for the day’s supplies. Apart from the bakery and pastry shop he had a flourishing café, where, in addition to the usual iced drinks, soda pop, ice creams, wine, and beer, you could get breakfast, the comida lunch of the day, and supper. The bakery and café were on the ground floor of Doux’s two-story building. Above them there was also a hotel, but it was not run by Doux; he sublet it, and every day he had some stimulating conversation with his tenant. You only had to overhear this conversation to understand why Doux always looked so very yellowish green in the jowls.

  The usual subject of the argument was water. In the tropics water is not only one of the most precious of all things, it is also the object of continual strife. Nature fights for water as a matter of life and death; animals tear each other to pieces for water, or so forbear on its account that the jaguar will not harm the doe at the water’s edge but lies in wait at a respectful distance for its return.

  The struggle of plants and trees for water has a gentleness. But when human beings fight over water they outdo in cunning savagery all other earthly creatures.

  Doux’s building was constructed, in the Latin-American colonial style, around a quadrangle, in which lush tropical plants grew, some of them to a height above that of the upper floor. The café occupied the front portion of the ground floor; the right wing contained the kitchen and storerooms; the left housed the bakery and pastry shop, as well as the dormitory of the bakery workers. The rear section was the proprietor’s residence.

  The hotel section, all of the upper floor, extended in a rectangle over the courtyard, with all rooms opening onto a continuous balcony looking into the greenery. The rooms on the street side of the hotel opened also onto a second balcony that ran along the whole front of the building.

  On the roof were two large water tanks, each served by a separate well. One was for the lower floor, the other for the upper. Each had its own motor-driven pump. When the dry season came, the well for the bakery and café ran dry, but the hotel well had ample water. The café and bakery couldn’t operate without water, and that was where the fun started. Señor Doux wanted to pump the water from the hotel tank into his tank, maintaining that, after all, he was the owner of both wells. His tenant, however, didn’t concede this; it was in his contract that the hotel tank was at his exclusive disposal. He was afraid that if he let the café take water from his tank, he might some day find himself without water, and thus be obliged to deny his guests the privilege of baths. A hotel-keeper in the tropics who has to refuse baths might just as well close up his hotel.

  Both tanks were covered and padlocked; the tenant had a key for his, and Señor Doux had a key for the café tank. Doux therefore had no alternative but to force the lock of his tenant’s tank at night, lower a hose into the tank, connect the hose to his own pump, and start it running. The tenant was usually awakened by the sound of the pump, and so pandemonium broke out in the middle of the night. The hotel guests joined in; so did the café clients, who were often flushed with drink and ready to pick a fight and take sides. Bottles, chairs, loaves of bread, chunks of ice, and horrible curses and maledictions came flying through the air. Meanwhile, the pump was neutral and indifferent to the uproar as it went to work and filled Señor Doux’s tank. At that point, Doux shut off the pump, retracted the hose, and peace reigned once more ― until morning, when the tenant would take measures to secure the hotel tank for the night. These measures were always in some way undone by Señor Doux.

  One morning the hotel tenant sent for a carpenter and instructed him to barricade the tank. Now Señor Doux ran to the police, for the building was his property and it was against the law for the tenant to build barricades on Doux’s roof. So during the night the tank was forced again, because Señor Doux’s establishment just had to have water.

  There were, therefore, good a
nd sufficient reasons for Señor Doux’s ghastly appearance and tremendous appetite. His first breakfast was followed by a better one at six, when he returned from his marketing. Now he had fish, roast beef, a half bottle of wine, and three or four slices of cake.

  Meanwhile the first customers of the day were coming in; suppliers had to be bargained with and their accounts settled; the mail arrived. Then came the buyers for the baked goods, each making up his selection of bread, rolls, cakes, pastries, biscuits, and candied fruits.

  At half past eight Señor Doux had what he called a regular breakfast, at which his wife joined him. This time there was an egg dish, two meat dishes, beer, and a large dessert, followed by coffee, with plenty of cream of course.

  Señora Doux had the features of a pretty woman, but was more than plump. In contradiction to the idea that fat people are always jolly, Señora Doux was perpetually bad tempered. When exceptionally heavy orders for cakes and pastries came in, a faint smile appeared on her face, but it lasted for only a few seconds. The café might be full to the bursting point and customers fighting for seats, but Señora Doux would wear her sour expression and look at every new arrival as if he had done her a personal injury that increased the misery of her life. She never wore shoes, but always soft, felt slippers. She never went out — that is, I never saw her go out — for she was afraid that one of the waiters might steal money or food in her absence. Her eyes went everywhere; nothing happened in the place that she didn’t know about, or over which she had no control.

  The thing she regretted most (actually she regretted everything) was that people, or at any rate she herself, had to sleep; for while she slept, something might happen that she couldn’t know about. For this reason she regarded no one with greater mistrust than the workers in the bakery. They worked during the night hours when Señora Doux just had to get some sleep in order to be able to supervise the café throughout the day and evening. Even so, she stayed up late into the night.

  Señora Doux also took care of the cash till. Even if she could have brought herself to hire a Señorita for the job, no cashier would have worked with her for long. The Señorita might be as honest as the archangel with the sword, but Señora Doux still would have accused her several times a day of embezzling a few pesos.