March to the Monteria

by B. TRAVEN

  Finishing his simple prayer, he joined the tips of his index finger and thumb, touched them to his lips, and kissed his thumb several times. He had complied faithfully with every little detail his mother had told him to observe when he came back from the plantation. He had offered proper thanks for his safe return to the saints in the church in Jovel, the last town before reaching his native village.

  He had left his pack in care of the woman from whom he had bought the bananas. He went there, picked up the pack and headed for home.

  The last house in the outskirts of the town was a tienda, a small store where an Indian peasant could obtain everything he might need. However, very few wares were for sale. The limited goods stocked on the shaky shelves, dusty and with signs of not having been touched for ages, were not really destined for sale. They were merely a cover to prove to the controlling inspectors that legitimate merchandise actually was offered at the store. Of course every inspector knew that the merchandise was placed there only so that he could swear he had been under the impression that it was a legally established general store. It was not necessary to mention that he had been offered and accepted a so-called mordida, a bribe to make his report in accordance with the wishes of the store owner. Should a complaint ever be filed, which was not likely to happen, the judge, who ate from the same plate as did the inspector, as well as all the other officials, would be of a comprehending nature and benevolent enough not to ask inconvenient questions.

  Even had his wares been of good quality, the storekeeper, a gachupín, would not have been able to do much business. Nobody buys his supplies at the last or first house of a town unless he has previously examined prices and values of merchandise in the center of the market place where competition forces the merchants to keep the prices fair.

  The business transacted by this storekeeper was simple but lucrative. He sold contraband aguardiente. The profits on untaxed aguardiente are considerably higher than those obtained by selling the taxed kind. The vendor shared with the consumer the money which the government extracted from the distilling and sale of liquors. And as, in this particular case, the vendor was also the manufacturer of the booze, the profits doubled.

  The storekeeper had no license for the sale of alcoholic beverages. This would have been bothersome, because it surely would attract inspectors who would find the untaxed stuff and impose a fine of fifty times the tax. Nor did this vendor sell aguardiente in glasses. For that he would have needed an extra license for keeping a bar. Some owners of bars who paid their taxes honestly would have denounced him.

  This smart merchant sold the aguardiente by the bottle, yet not in sealed bottles. Patrons had to bring along their own bottles. But if they had no bottle, in that case the bottle was sold also and rebought after it had been emptied. One can sell more per bottle than per glass.

  Nobody was allowed to drink inside the store. That was strictly prohibited. The patrons drained their bottles outside, on the road, or back of the store, in the patio.

  By the sides of the house, back of the house and along the road which led to the Indian villages, men, women and youths lay in the sun, all dead drunk, many of them in rags, their hair matted and full of lice, the drunken women with their skirts up to their breasts. The drunken men were howling, yelling, swearing, snoring, dancing. A grotesque picture painted by a great artist from hell with sufficient irony to underscore that oily platitude: God made man after his own image.

  Every inhabitant of the town, every child knew that at this place moonshine was being sold to Indians. Every fiscal tax inspector knew it. Yet everybody pretended not to know anything. The owner of the prosperous tienda shared his earnings liberally with the tax and alcohol inspectors, with the mayor, with the judge and the chief of police. Therefore, he was powerful and feared all around.

  The country was so full of really good and wise laws that you couldn’t turn around without stepping into one law and stepping over at least three others. Few countries in the world have a finer constitution and better laws. And one of these really good laws strictly prohibits the sale of hard liquor to Indians. However, all these good laws seemed to have no other purpose but that senadores, diputados, state governors, labor leaders, mayors, secret service men, judges, chiefs of police, jail wardens and all those fortunate enough to grab some public office could by all imaginable means of extortion enrich themselves faster than the luckiest gambler at the stock exchange.

  On his way home Celso arrived at this store which, as it was only an adobe hut, without windows and roofed with clapboards, would have seemed to an American tourist as innocent as great grandmother’s little candy store in Sandy Creek.

  For a while he sat down on the grassy curb of the dusty dirt road, resting against his pack. His idea had been to buy several little things in Jovel to take home with him as presents: new huaraches for his father, a bright red woolen ribbon for his mother to be braided into her thick hair and a glittering pearl necklace for his girl.

  Now he was coming home without any gifts. His eyes fell upon drunken men and women who were groaning like lost cattle and lying around on the bare ground, dead to the world, and who had thrown away the last remnants of human dignity which they had preserved until then in spite of their poverty.

  Celso returned, not only without presents, but also without any money for his marriage. To rich Don Sixto seventy-six pesos and fifty centavos meant no more than a snap of his fingers. He gambled away twice as much in two hours at roulette at the plaza or playing dice or dominos in the cantina. To Celso these same seventy-six pesos meant fifteen children and everything he needed to build up a world of his own and give meaning to his life.

  Leaving his pack outside he entered the store where he pointed to a red woolen ribbon that hung by a thread from a peg. It was covered with dust to such a degree that its color appeared to be grey. The storekeeper had never for a moment thought of selling this ribbon, or for that matter anything else exposed in his store. It was, therefore, a matter of complete in difference to him whether the wares were covered with dust or faded or nibbled at by rats.

  In utter boredom he picked his teeth, lazily turned around in such a way as not to lose for an instant the comfortable support of the counter as an armrest, dimly looked at the ribbon, turned his eyes back just as lazily, pulled down one corner of his mouth, winked with one eye and said: “Bueno, joven, where are you from? Oh, well, from Ishtacolcot. You don’t look like a Chamula. Must have come from the monterías, eh? Am I right, am I?”

  “How much for that ribbon?” Celso asked again.

  “Well, now look! Look there,” said the gachupín highly astonished. “Seems you got stout and fat. Bien gordo, I’d say. Plenty of time to take it easy. Ishtacolcot won’t run away. Ain’t you going to have a drink? Have it on me.”

  Celso turned around, ready to leave.

  “Hey, you,” the merchant yelled, slightly disturbed in his laziness, “don’t run away. You can have the ribbon. It will cost you eight reales.”

  The price in town would have been two reales.

  Celso opened his sash a bit. No need to take it off again to reach the remains of his fortune. From a pleat of his untwisted sash he took the money that remained and counted it. When he noticed that the storekeeper was watching him, he became distrustful and turned around. He still had forty-seven centavos left.

  “Can you let me have the ribbon for forty-seven fierros?” he asked. This was still nearly twice the money at which he could have had the ribbon in town.

  “No, that I cannot do by the Santísima and by San José, I can’t let you have it for that price. I’d go broke.” The toothpick in the storekeeper’s mouth wandered by itself from one corner to the other. Placing his fat hands on the counter he said: “I’ll tell you what I’ll do for you. A pint bottle costs fifty centavos. For you, I’ll let it go for forty-seven. So you see that if I can sell something for less I’m willing to do it to please my customers.”

  Celso arrived at home without gifts, w
ithout money for his marriage and without his pack, which he had lost somewhere along the road. He stumbled into the house and into the lap of his mother who was sitting on her haunches on the earthen floor in front of the fire, cooking the evening meal.

  3

  On the following day, when it was possible to talk to Celso again as a human being, his father asked him what had become of the money earned during the two years.

  “Don Sixto took it away from me.”

  “That is right,” said the father, “that I owe Don Sixto the money for the two oxen. But there’s no truth about my promising him the balance for the oxen from your wages. We had agreed that I was going to discuss the purchase with you, when you came home from the coffee finca, because you were to see and appraise the oxen first. I was going to give you those oxen when your first child was born. And if you did not like the oxen, I was free to return them to Don Sixto and he would have given me back what payment I had made, or credit it to my account for a mule. We had agreed that I was to give Don Sixto six pesos every two months until the oxen were paid for in full, and that we would legalize the bill of sale with the authorities in Jovel after you returned. That was the agreement.”

  Here, in his father’s house, where under the shade of the palm-thatched roof his mother, squatting before the metate, was grinding the masa for the noon meal, everything seemed so simple. Everything sounded so clear and without double meaning here in his village, surrounded by a thick double fence of magueyes, where dogs barked out of boredom, where donkeys brayed lazily, where turkeys gobbled, chickens cackled, children shouted and where everything was peaceful, harmonious and in perfect accord with the surroundings—all was downright straightforward, pure, sincere, guileless, direct.

  How different words had sounded in the gruff mouth of Don Sixto, who did not discuss, but gave short orders instead. All had been utterly different at the plaza in Jovel, with Celso standing in front of the two haughty caballeros sitting on the bench, and with his back to the menacing, massive building with the large, almost threatening letters Presidencia Municipal, and in thick black letters over the doors, which seemed like entrances to so many caves, Juez Penal, Tesorería, Jefe de Policía, Cárcel. What could Celso do under these oppressive influences and caught in such surroundings? He would have handed over all his money even if Don Sixto had handled the deal with less astuteness. Neither Celso nor his father thought of going to Jovel and demanding their money back from Don Sixto. It would have been in vain. And if they were to get excited and give Don Sixto just one single nasty word, both would be thrown in jail. Francisco Flores, father of Celso, had two oxen, and Don Sixto, who had sold him the two oxen, had duly received the money and extended a legally valid receipt. He had even been liberal enough to pay for the tax stamps out of his pocket. It would have taken days for Celso and his father with their limited knowledge of Spanish to make the authorities understand that some shady action had crept into the deal, which, for Celso, had shattered more future dreams than could ever be made good by the best oxen in the world and the most perfect, most legal, tax-stamped receipt.

  Later the same day Celso went to search for his pack. He found it. Since only Indians came along the way he had come, nobody had touched his belongings.

  He was ashamed to look up his girl.

  But when he had been home for more than a week, working every day with his father in the milpa, the cornfield, training the young oxen how to pull the plow and had been seen by all the people in the village, one afternoon, shortly before sundown, the father of the girl came to Francisco Flores’ jacal.

  Behind the father, at a certain distance, the daughter walked along.

  The girl’s father, Manuel Laso, entered the yard, greeted them with a few short words and sat down on a low bench.

  The girl remained outside, close to the fence. She was barefooted, wore the usual rough black woolen skirt reaching down to her knees, and she was adorned with a necklace of green glass beads. Her thick black hair was in plaits interwoven with a red woolen ribbon and neatly set up on top of her head in the form of a crown. She held her hands crossed over her bosom and hid her face in them. But she was looking interestedly through her fingers and everybody could see, and obviously was meant to see, that nothing of what took place in the hut or in the yard escaped her.

  Celso’s mother got up from the fire, came out of the hut, made a short curtsy before the guest, held the tips of her fingers out to him, which he touched lightly, and then walked up to the fence to invite the girl to come in.

  As though she had committed some serious offense the girl passed like a shadow by the side of the woman and disappeared into the hut, where she sat down near the fire next to the woman and both began to chat.

  Celso had been working back of the house, hacking out a harness for the oxen.

  He now came into the front yard and greeted the girl’s father as casually as if it did not matter to him whether he was there or not. He did not bother to greet the girl. He did not even look at her and he avoided entering the hut. However he could not stand it for long. He stepped to the door of the hut and asked his mother whether she had seen his knife. He, of course, knew where it was. It had been stuck into a pole of the hut, and to get it, he had to cross the whole floor. He went to the pole with straight eyes, never glancing at the girl who was squatting on her haunches.

  At the moment he entered, the girl hid her face in the high front part of her skirt. But sideways and from underneath she followed the youth’s every movement. Though she had little to say in the selection of her husband, because this was a matter of the two fathers and of the marriageable young man, she was nevertheless curious to get a good look at the man who, for the last two years, had been promised to her. She was now fifteen years old and it was time for her and for her parents to think seriously of the future. At twenty-one she would be a dust-covered, hopeless old maid. At that age only by being a widow would she have a chance to get a mate.

  When Celso came out of the hut Manuel Laso shouted at him across the yard: “Hey, you, muchacho, why haven’t you come over to me to say good day and how do you do? I’ve been expecting you.”

  “I haven’t had the time, Don Manuel. Now since we have got the young oxen I want to break them in for my father before I leave again.”

  “Before you leave again?” asked Manuel Laso.

  “Leave again for where, boy?” asked Celso’s father. It had come to him just as unexpectedly as it had to Manuel Laso.

  “To earn the money for my marriage,” said Celso, as though he was surprised that they did not know it already.

  Manuel Laso frowned and grumbled: “I thought you’d brought the money for getting married from the cafetal. You’ve been working hard there for two years, I understand.”

  “But, Don Manuel, I haven’t got the money and that’s why I’ve got to leave again.”

  Celso did not mention that he had paid the money for the oxen. Nor did his father disclose it. It was against certain unwritten rules. What had become of the money was actually of no consequence. All that mattered was that Celso produce the various presents the girl’s father had to be given before he would agree to accept Celso as his son-in-law. It was a matter of principle. More likely than not Manuel Laso had an idea that the money in question might have something to do with Francisco Flores’ recently acquired oxen. But it was not his business to stick his nose into the matter. Not in the least did it alter the plain fact that Celso did not have the money he needed to pay the girl’s father according to established custom.

  Francisco Flores said: “I’ve promised my son Celso that team of oxen when his first child is born. But you know, Don Manuel, I’d be quite willing to give Celso the team right now,”

  “The team of oxen is not important in the deal which I have with Celso, Don Pancho,” replied Manuel Laso. “You told me some time ago that you would give Celso those oxen when he was blessed with his first child. I must say that is very good of you. But it has nothing to
do with my deal which I have with Celso. He must earn the money for his marriage by himself and without your help. I must know if that vagabond is capable of earning money. You can’t expect me to give my daughter to a golfo, to a good-for-nothing, unable to earn money when it’s needed. Celso is all right with me, and the chamaca has told my old woman that Celso is quite all right with her also. But that won’t last long. What counts in the long run is the capacity to work and to make ends meet. So, now, I’ll say my last word in this matter: Celso, you will have to earn the money, you and not your father. You it is who wants my daughter, not your father. I’ll give you another two years. That girl of mine could have any boy if I consented. But I’d like to have you for a son, and the chamaca likes you. And so I’ll grant you another two years to get the money. But more than two years my daughter can’t wait. She’s too old for that.”

  Manuel Laso got up, held out his hand to Francisco Flores and called toward the door of the hut: “I’m leaving.”

  Celso’s mother came to the door and said: “Adiosito, Don Manuel.”

  “Hasta luego,” replied Don Manuel, “until later.”

  He went on his way.

  Like a scared little dog the girl approached Francisco Flores, her father-in-law to be, bowed and kissed his hand.

  He placed his other hand on the girl’s head and said: “Vete con Dios, God be with you, chiquita mía.”

  Without looking up and with her body bent, in the same attitude in which she had taken leave of Don Francisco, she turned rapidly and ran with fast, short steps after her father. Once outside the fence, she straightened up a bit and glanced over her shoulder into the yard, first covering her face with both hands.