The Cotton-Pickers

by B. TRAVEN

  Señor Doux was always to be seen in shirt and trousers, and only when he went to the market did he put on a hat. He wore black trousers only, secured with a narrow leather belt, and a white shirt with a black bow tie. His belly stuck out in front of him like a balloon. The Señora too had a protruding paunch, but it was hidden in part by the loose negligee. Alas, what she had too much of in front she lacked behind. That isn’t to say that there wasn’t plenty behind, but the proportions in relation to her stomach were not generous enough to give her whole figure a harmony. All in all Doux could hardly complain, for he had in her something solid to hold on to, and was in no danger of chafing himself on protruding bones.

  “You must have been off your head ever to have come to this crazy country,” she was yelling at him.

  “Me? Wasn’t it you who kept telling me every day that millions were lying on the streets waiting to be shoveled up?”

  “You dirty liar, you!” she howled. “You filthy Marseilles pimp! Didn’t you draw out all my money and tell me that it’d earn a thousand percent in two years?”

  “Well, wasn’t I right? We came here with nothing — or how much was it? Eight hundred pesos? And I’ve already been offered sixty-eight thousand for the house and café. And why don’t I sell? Because I know it’s worth much more.”

  “Worth more?” she blazed. “Why, it’s not worth a handful of horse shit! How can it be worth anything when it’s closed? No one would give you the price of the bricks in it. And I told you that when the new government came in, that — what’s-hisname? — that pig, one-armed general, that Obregon — yes, that’s his name! He finished us off for good.”

  “How could I know this Revolution would change everything, even the value of the money, labor conditions, laws that affect property and all and everything that goes with it? But it’s only since the new government that we’ve really begun to get anywhere. You wouldn’t say that it was before then, eh? — when we had to grease everybody’s palm with one hundred pesos, one after the other, for permission to breathe, even. Everybody was holding out a hand then.”

  “And now,” she fired back at him, “is it any different? Now it’s the working people who are holding out their hands. First in the kitchen, then the waiters, and you’ll see, next will be the bakehouse. And when that comes, we might as well pack up and go home like beggars.”

  “Shut up, confound you!” he shrieked in full fury. “You spoil everything with your greed and your damned miserliness.”

  “Me, miserly? Miserly? If I didn’t keep a hold on the money it would all go on you and your whores. And you call me miserly?”

  Now we were hearing some fine family secrets. I could hardly believe the Señora was right; how could he have possibly found time for escapades? But of course their little dispute was really a conjugal dialogue, for they actually lived together in complete harmony which was disturbed only by the fact that the workers were waking up and taking an interest in their masters’ profits. Similar displays of interest have been known to shake kings and to rock empires. So it wasn’t surprising that the striking waiters gave the Douxs’ domestic bliss a bit of a shaking.

  The conjugal dialogues became not only more violent during the following days but also more frequent. They filled the days, and extended through the nights as the Douxs lay side by side in bed. We who were working there overheard the complete life history of each of them, from the day they were born to the moment when they came to blows with table lamp, wash basin, and chamber pot.

  When they reached the stage where she was going around with the idea of putting rat poison into his coffee, and he was dreaming nightly of the razor with which he was going to slit her throat, he proved the superiority of man.

  He went to the Superintendent of Police and asked what could be done to get the two months’ closing order revoked and the waiters back into his café. The Superintendent told him that he himself could do nothing in this case. It was a matter of coming to terms with the union; the café couldn’t be operated until the dispute between the two was settled.

  “Then I’m bankrupt,” said Doux. “And the waiters will be thrown out of work.”

  “Don’t worry about them, señor,” the Superintendent replied. “As long as people want to sit in a café and spoon up strawberry ice, they’ll want waiters to serve them. You can see that from the Moderna, which is always full now. All your old customers go there, of course. But I can’t do anything about it. Your premises are closed, and they’ll stay closed for the two-month period. My advice is, go to the union and arrange things with them.”

  On the afternoon of the same day Doux met Morales, whom he approached with all humility.

  “Listen, Morales,” he said, “I’ll agree to everything. Could you see to it that the waiters return to my place?”

  Morales eyed him coolly from head to foot and said: “Do I know you? Oh, yes, you’re Doux of La Aurora. But we waiters have nothing to do with you; we walked out remember? If you want anything with us, you must go to the union. Adios.”

  Doux wrote a letter to the union saying that he would like an interview with the Secretary; he ventured to ask the Secretary to call on him to discuss the situation of the waiters’ strike.

  On the following day he received his reply. It was just one sharp sentence: “If you want anything from the union, the address of the office is: Calle Madero No. 18, Second Floor. The Secretary hadn’t even considered it necessary to sign his name.

  For Señor Doux there was no alternative but to go, for the razor was haunting him day and night, so that even when he was eating he had the feeling that his table knife was a razor.

  “Take a seat in the waiting room,” said a worker in the union office. “There’s a conference on, but it won’t last long.”

  It lasted over half an hour, and while he was waiting Doux had time to digest the slogans displayed on the walls. Those slogans made him angry at first. But the longer he studied them, the more he came to fear what lay in store for him behind the Secretary’s door, through which he could hear the tapping of a typewriter.

  At last a worker appeared. “The Secretary will see you now, Señor,” he said.

  Doux swallowed nervously as he stepped into the small room that was the Secretary’s office. He had intended to look the Secretary straight in the eye, but he found that he couldn’t; again, his gaze was drawn to the walls, for behind the Secretary’s desk the entire wall was covered with a red and black flag, while above the flag in bold letters screamed the slogan: PROLETARIOS DEL MUNDO, UNIOS!

  This put Doux quite off his stride. His voice, which he had wanted to sound firm and resolute, faltered timidly as he said: “Good day. I am Señor Doux of the Café Aurora.”

  “Right,” said the Secretary. “Sit down. And what do you want?”

  “I’d like to know if you can arrange for my café to be reopened.”

  “Yes, that can be arranged,” the Secretary replied, “provided you fulfill certain conditions.”

  “Oh, I’m ready to agree to everything that the waiters are demanding.”

  The Secretary took up a sheet of paper, glanced at it, and said: “The waiters’ demands are no longer the same as those put forward when they first spoke with you.”

  “Not the same?” gulped Doux, frightened.

  “No, it’s fifteen pesos a week now,” said the Secretary in the manner of a businessman.

  “But they were asking twelve.”

  “That may be. But then they went on strike. You don’t suppose the men are going to strike for nothing, do you? Now it’s fifteen. If you’d agreed at once it’d have been twelve.”

  “All right,” said Doux, straightening up, “I agree to fifteen.”

  “Friday is pay day, for the whole week. Irregular or postponed pay days can no longer be permitted,” continued the Secretary.

  “But I can’t pay just like that. It has been our practice to pay when we had available cash.”

  The Secretary looked up. “What
always has been your practice is neither here nor there. We are deciding what you must do from now on. We are at last putting a stop to abuses that have gone on here for hundreds of years. There is the work, here are the wages. And you must pay the wages just as punctually as you expect the men to do their work.”

  “But that’s going to be difficult,” said Doux, defensively, “because if I pay out the wages like that I might find myself without sufficient cash to do the buying on Saturday.”

  “That’s nothing to do with us. Wages must come first, or the workers will find themselves without sufficient cash to do their buying. And, in our view, it’s better for you to be short of cash than the workers.”

  Doux was breathing heavily. “But the work week doesn’t end until Saturday. Why should I pay the wages on Friday?”

  “Why? Why? You mean you don’t understand?” The Secretary affected surprise. “The worker gives you five days’ credit. He gives you his output for five whole days while you do business with the capital of his labor. Why should the worker be called upon to lend you his five days’ output? Actually, you should pay for the whole week in advance, on

  Monday morning; that would be the proper thing to do. But we don’t want to go that far.”

  “All right, then, I’ll agree to that, too. And to one full meal and rolls and coffee at another hour. So then, everything’s in order?” Doux got up.

  “Sit down for a moment,” invited the Secretary. “There are still one or two minor points to settle. You must pay for the strike days.”

  “Me? Pay for the strike days? Am I to pay for idleness too?”

  “Striking is not idling,” said the Secretary firmly, “and if your men go on strike, you must pay their full wages. Otherwise, all you hotel and café proprietors could force us into a long strike and so whittle away our funds that we could never strike again. Oh, no, Señor, we’re not having anything like that. The strike is financed by us. We act as a kind of loan office for the workers, but you are the one who must pay for the strike. You had ample time to make up your mind whether or not to let it come to a strike. The cost of war must be borne by the party who needs peace in order to get on with his business.”

  “This is the greatest injustice I’ve ever met,” exclaimed Doux.

  “Well, if you like, I’ll enumerate the injustices that you and your kind have been perpetrating for years.”

  “Obviously, I have no alternative but to pay for it all,” Doux admitted, dejectedly.

  “And preferably today,” declared the Secretary, “for tomorrow it will cost you another day.”

  “Then I’ll come back here before five o’clock and settle the whole business,” said Doux, and he got up for the second time.

  “Bring a little extra with you,” the Secretary advised as he also got to his feet.

  “Still more?” exclaimed Doux.

  “Yes, I thought you wanted the café reopened now, not in two months’ time.”

  “Isn’t that part of the bargain, if I agree to everything?” Doux was getting jumpy.

  “By no means,” answered the Secretary. “The closing of the café was for reasons apart from the waiters’ strike. You know that as well as I do. You asked Inspector Lamas to give the pickets a beating.”

  “I certainly did not!” insisted Doux.

  “Obviously we don’t agree on that. In any case, it happened on your premises and so you must be held responsible for it. You might easily have prevented it.”

  “Come on, then, tell me what else I’ve got to do,” urged Doux.

  “You must pay ten thousand pesos into the funds of our union as compensation. As soon as you’ve paid it, we shall take over the guarantee to the Governor on your behalf. And then the café can be reopened.”

  “Am I expected to pay ten thousand pesos?” Doux dropped into the chair again, breaking out in a cold sweat.

  “You need not pay it; we’re not forcing you. But then the café will stay closed for two months,” the Secretary continued matter-of-factly. “And of course at the end of the two months you would have to pay the waiters retroactively. They must live. And we can’t allow them to take on any other work, since they must be ready to go to work for you as soon as you reopen your café. It would be too bad if you had no waiters on your reopening day.

  “To make the situation clear to you, once and for all: It isn’t our intention to destroy business or even interfere with it, certainly not. It is, however, our intention and purpose to see to it that the worker gets not only a fair share of what he produces, but the share which is due him up to the maximum that the business can afford. And this maximum is much higher than you imagine. At present we’re conducting a thorough inquiry into the capacity of every branch of industry, and those branches which can’t bring a decent living wage to the worker must go to the wall. And we’ll see to it that they do. If such industries are important to the community, then we’ll see to it that the community guarantees the worker a decent living standard. For example, I wouldn’t swear to it that your café is indispensable to the community; but it’s there. And as long as you operate it to increase your own fortune, it must bring in enough to pay decent wages to the workers there. If the time comes when you can’t make a profit from it, you’ll close it down of your own accord.

  “Well, Señor Doux, I’ve told you all this so that you won’t think we’re just a bunch of blackmailers. No, all we want is that the men who are making a fortune for you receive the share to which they’re entitled; and there’ll still be enough left over for you.”

  Doux had only half understood what the Secretary was saying. He sat there, dazed. His head swam with the thought of laying out ten thousand pesos. He didn’t dare say yes for fear of his Señora, for he didn’t know what she’d prefer to do. Every day’s delay cost money. Yet, it would cost him more than the ten thousand pesos if the business had to remain closed for two months, with back pay on top of that. He kept juggling the figures in his head until he thought he’d go mad.

  At last he got up. “I’ll think it over,” he said.

  He left the office, went down the stairs, and stepped out into the street. He wiped the sweat from his face and gasped for air. Then he started walking home. The walk cooled him down, so that he calmly began to consider the matter. He sat on a park bench to make various calculations on a piece of paper and eventually reached the conclusion that it would be cheaper to pay up everything at once. But what about Señora Doux? If he went home first, there would be a scrap. If he said yes outright, she’d say, “Why don’t you say no?” And if he said no, she’d say, “Why don’t you say yes?”

  Whatever he did would be wrong, for it would cost money, and a great deal of money; and anything that cost money and didn’t bring in double always caused a row with the Señora. At last, however, Doux was seized by a proud and manly courage which urged him, for once, to enforce his own independent will without consulting his wife. And he thought that he could best do this by shouldering the decision that was most likely to throw her into a rage: to go to the bank, draw out all the necessary money, and, without a word to his wife, go to the union office and settle everything without further ado.

  Half an hour later he had paid up every peso that was demanded.

  “You may reopen your café at seven this evening,” said the Secretary. “I’ll see to it that the revocation order is in your hands by that time.”

  Doux folded the receipts, each one duly affixed with the legal stamps. “Señor Secretary, there’s one small point I’d like to make.”

  “Well?”

  “Must I really pay the wages for the whole week on Fridays?”

  “You had better, Señor Doux.”

  “What happens then if a man is paid on Friday and doesn’t show up on Saturday? He’d have rooked me out of a whole day’s pay.”

  “My, my,” said the Secretary, smiling, “but you’re good at figures. I’d never have expected it of you. You’ve held back the men’s wages for as much as six we
eks, not one day, remember, but six weeks.”

  “But the men always got their wages in the long run. They knew they were safe, anyhow,” and Doux puffed out his chest.

  “Whether you’re as solid as all that is still very much open to question. You could sell out secretly and make off with the wages due; some employers have done that. But that probably wouldn’t happen in your case. What has happened is that you’ve always held onto the wages for a few weeks and made use of money that belonged to the waiters without paying them any interest. Why should the workers be expected to lend you their wages free of charge? This must stop. You can count yourself very lucky that we haven’t required the whole week’s wages to be paid on Wednesdays, so that the risk would be equally divided. We’ll leave it at Friday. If you treat the men decently, none of them will run off with that one day’s pay. But if a worker should do it once in a while it won’t ruin you. Well, that answers your question. You’d better run along now, so that you can be ready for your customers at seven o’clock.”

  Doux left the office and made his way home.

  14

  “That’s quite sensible, what you’ve done,” said Señora Doux, to Doux’s complete surprise. “But if things had been done my way in the first place, we could have saved ourselves all this trouble.”

  “Your way?” asked Señor Doux. “Everything was always done your way. It was you who were always telling me to fire the waiters, that waiters were two for a penny, anyway.”

  “Well, that was true, wasn’t it? They were falling over themselves to get work, then. I never thought there’d come a day when all we could get would be two tramps. That was where my calculations went wrong. Don’t worry, we’ll soon recover the money. The bakery and pastry shop will have to make up for it. They’re a better lot of workers than the waiters; at least they’re not bolshies.”