March to the Monteria

by B. TRAVEN

  He cut a strip of dried meat and put it in the pan to roast. Then he asked for some water from the kettle of one of his camp fellows and placed his little tin coffeepot near the fire, moving the pan and the little pot from time to time. Frequently he blinked and pressed tears from his eyes because the smoke struck him in the face. Since he was a stranger conversation lagged.

  The coffee boiled over and he blew violently into the pot to keep the liquid down. Then he pulled the pot away from the fire but left it close to the ashes to keep it hot.

  The meat broiled in the fat poured into the pan from a tin flask. Adding some of the beans cooked the day before, he took a few green chile pods from a rag, cut them into small pieces and threw them into the beans to season them. The tortillas he had were still soft and fresh. He placed them on the hot ashes next to his coffee.

  “Any of you ever been in the monterías?” he asked casually, looking up. He had noticed already that all of them were newcomers, and that all they knew about the monterías was what they had been hearing. So he need not have asked. Their answer would not have interested him anyway. In fact, he only asked to show those who had built the fire and who, to a certain extent, were his hosts, that he was capable of speech. This question, though he put it a good while after he had squatted down near the fire, he considered as a sort of greeting. And as such it was accepted. The manner in which he had approached the fire and squatted down on his haunches without asking for permission, and the face he had put on, did not encourage any of the boys to start a quarrel with him. He looked as if he were waiting for a reason to knock somebody down. So the fellows, one after the other, said shortly: “No, manito, none of us has yet been in the monterías.”

  “But I was,” he said, watching his coffee, “for two full years. Returned only yesterday.”

  “And going back to the monterías with us?” asked one.

  “Yes, I’m going back with you.”

  “Then you’re going voluntarily this time.”

  “Exactly as voluntarily as you, nenitos.”

  As quietly as he had attended to his cooking, he was now eating. Although his entire food made up just about six large spoonfuls, it took him almost an hour to consume it.

  In the meanwhile two boys got up, left their packs in charge of a third one and wandered off toward the town where the noise of the festivities was getting louder, nearing its climax which came around seven in the evening.

  Celso collected his pans and pots, wiped them clean with a bit of tortilla, packed them back in his net and closed the pack after having taken out a few raw tobacco leaves.

  Ceremonially he rolled himself a thick, long cigar, lit it, slid two paces away from the fire, stretched out on the thin grass, drew his pack near him for a headrest and smoked, following with his eyes the slowly dissolving clouds of tobacco. He tried to follow some of the shreds of the smoke as far as he could see. When they vanished, he saw nothing but the open sky.

  He felt content, resting there with the assurance of being able to enjoy the sky, the sun, the stars and the green jungle during the coming months. He tossed around a few times on the hard soil and, facing the sky, he thought of the cárcel in which he would have had to spend endless months and months had not Don Gabriel bought him out. Thus quietly resting on the ground, carelessly smoking, his stomach warm from the chile pods, dried meat and beans and the scalding hot coffee, he felt gratitude toward his redeemer, Don Gabriel. Vaguely at first, then clearer and finally forcefully and emphatically, a thought stole into his mind: the thought of his girl and of the fifteen children he hoped to shove into the world with her help. He pulled the cigar from his mouth and sat up with a violent jerk of his body.

  “Damn it,” he said with a dry throat. “Damn it, God damn it! World of infamous cheating! Two years have passed. She can’t wait any longer. She’ll be getting old and nobody will want her. Her father can’t wait any longer. Not any more. He has given me two years. Two beautiful long years’ grace. She can’t wait any longer. She’ll be too old. She can’t wait any more.”

  By the repetition of his words he tried to understand the situation into which he had slid without once thinking of his girl. During the whole transaction he had only thought of the golden sun, the open sky and the green jungle—of that sky, that sun and that green in which, from the moment he was thrown into jail, the girl had formed part. It had been his all-embracing concept of what he considered happiness on earth. The girl and the fifteen children merged into his idea of happiness. But now, with a shock that took his breath away, he realized that the girl and the children had been torn from him, and what was worse, there existed no possibility for him to reweave the torn pieces into a single whole.

  When he returned after an additional two years he would find his girl married to another man. It would be hard for him to bear. But far harder would be to read in the faces of the girl and her father the bitter accusation that, for a second time, he had failed to meet his pledge. He had failed twice in his loyalty to the girl, which was equivalent to breaking a solemn marriage vow. In the eyes of his tribesmen, he was a scoundrel to be despised, not only by the girl and her father, but by all the men and women at home. Without their respect it would not be possible for him to live among his people. He would be a pariah, an outcast, a man who had lost his country forever.

  The idea of being despised by the members of his clan whom he honored and loved became so unbearable that he thought of dying.

  Thinking of death he hit upon a way out which, to him, seemed natural and the only one possible.

  Neither now nor ever would he return to his native soil. He would send no news even should there be an opportunity to do so. At home they would believe him dead or lost in the monterías. This way he would preserve what he esteemed highest: the respect of his clan. Voluntarily he would count himself among the dead, among the hundreds of dead working in the monterías. Some day he would die in fact. Perhaps shot by a furious contratista or killed by a fellow worker, or whipped to death by a drunken capataz, or burned up by malaria, or crushed by a prematurely falling trunk of a mahogany tree, or poisoned by the fangs of a snake, or torn to pieces by a jaguar, or drowned when floating trunks or—there are a hundred natural ways to die in a montería. Fate would not deny him this way out to save his honor.

  From now on he would no longer care about anything. He would forget the girl, forget her father, forget his fifteen children. He belonged to the dead and so was free to do as he pleased. He could get drunk every day as long as his money lasted. He could lie down with some of the diseased scum back of the church, or under one of the crumbling arches of the old monastery. He could run away, but then he would surely be caught. To avoid the one hundred lashes for desertion he would have to attack his captor and get shot down like a mad dog. He could pick a quarrel with the capataz, talk back and let himself be cut to pieces with a machete. It all came to the same end. He was dead and a man can die only once. Since he had become indifferent to everything he might as well start to make use of the limited freedom which the devil grants the dead.

  Not bothering about his pack, which he left unguarded near the fire, he went to the plaza and bought a bottle of aguardiente. Booze is always cheaper by the bottle than by the glass.

  He took a heavy gulp, emptying nearly a quarter of the bottle, then offered it to some of the boys lounging around the tienda where he had bought the aguardiente. He took another good mouthful of the fiery stuff.

  One hour later he felt like killing someone. He still had enough sense not to seek out Don Gabriel but, with his senses dulled and his judgment limited, he did look for the two hyenas who had delivered him. He would have been satisfied to catch the reptile who had sworn before the police judge that Celso had knifed him in the leg. There was not the slightest doubt that had Celso met those three he would have killed them. But he met none of them. They were either hunting other victims or they had seen Celso very drunk and with a bellicose mien and therefore kept out of his way. He
was so hellishly drunk that he could not decide where to go and what to do. So he stumbled, automatically, back to the camp. There he squatted near the fire, talked nonsense, dug stones out of the ground and threw them at the sparse brush nearby.

  Then a newcomer arrived at the fire. It was Andrés, who had also been bought by Don Gabriel for the monterías and who now was searching the plain for the groups which belonged to Don Gabriel’s enganche. Though Andrés carried a heavy pack Indian fashion, he differed in clothing and hatwear from the Indians who were camping, waiting for their marching orders.

  Celso had not been able to cool off his fury by killing his captors. But the newly arrived Andrés looked like a capataz might look. This was the last opportunity for Celso to fight with a capataz and take revenge for everything capataces had done to him and would do in the future. Once on the march it would be too late. Then he would be subject to the cruel law of the montería discipline. But here, on the camping plains, it would be nothing more than an ordinary brawl. The police would sock him a fine of a hundred pesos. And that didn’t matter to him. Whether they imposed a fine of ten pesos or of ten thousand pesos would not alter his fate. Don Gabriel would have to pay the fine or lose him. It would be the best punishment that Celso could inflict upon Don Gabriel. And because Celso counted himself among the dead, it was absolutely indifferent to him whether he was to spend two years in the monterías or two hundred years. He had no intention of returning to the living. Therefore, no fine could hurt him, however exorbitant.

  He immediately insulted Andrés in the dirtiest way possible and attacked him so violently that, for a moment, it seemed as if Andrés would be finished off for good.

  But Andrés was accustomed to hard work just as much as Celso and, although he was dead tired from the long march across the high mountains carrying an unusually heavy pack on his back, he was completely sober while Celso, being almost senselessly drunk, could hardly keep on his feet.

  Celso did not last long. The end came quickly and painfully. He called it a draw and stumbled, his face battered, toward the brook, there to act as his own doctor and nurse.

  14

  It was late in the evening. The Candelaria fair had reached the climax of its splendor. Now it would begin to fade out rapidly. People started to sober up, not only from drinking, but also from all the merriment, the noise, the shouting, the bartering and the confusing upheaval. The residents of the usually quiet and sleepy town were getting tired of the wild antics of the visitors, the merchants and the mere pleasure seekers. Longing for their comfortable sobriety, they had by now become bored with buying and lazily strolling among the counters, stands and booths. Even the merchants themselves began to yawn and welcomed the official declaration of the mayor that the fair would terminate on the following evening.

  Most of them began to pack their wares and make ready to leave.

  Now the labor agents set about to organize their troops for the long, tough march through the jungle. The last contracts were hurriedly confirmed and stamped at the mayor’s office. Don Gabriel displayed still greater zeal in catching a few more men during the last hours, paying the fines imposed upon them for drunkenness, scandalizing and disturbing the peace, so that these unfortunates could be incorporated into the little army of contracted caoba workers before the march began.

  There were always a score or so of lost sheep who were remnants of such a wild and crowded festivity—youths who, shamelessly drunk, had gotten into serious trouble or gambled away their last centavo and who now out of desperation ran after the agents begging them to be recruited because nothing mattered to them any more except to make a fast getaway.

  So the number of workers increased considerably.

  Among these latecomers were many who three days earlier would have been terrified at the mere thought of being hooked for the monterías.

  Don Ramón Velasques was the principal promoter, the capitalist of the contracting business which bore his name. He was fairly decent in his dealings as far as decency goes in that rugged enterprise.

  Don Gabriel on the other hand knew no limits. Through his stepped-up activity, using uncountable astute tricks, dirty transactions with finqueros, with town clerks, chiefs of police, with judges, with jailers, with wily and alluring promises of the many joys and pleasures presumably found in the monterías, with aguardiente and unasked-for loans of money, he had been able to hook twice as many men as Don Ramón. Nevertheless he was merely Don Ramón’s business partner. But now, even before collecting the profit of his hard work, he was resolved to sever his partnership with Don Ramón and to carry on the business for his own account. True, he had a contract with Don Ramón. But what are contracts and agreements if one can grab a better advantage by breaking them? Don Gabriel had already gone so far ahead in his ideas of separating from Don Ramón that he would not have ventured to vouch before the Holy Virgin for the safety of Don Ramón’s person. Patiently he was waiting for fate to provide a set of circumstances which would allow him to say to himself that destiny had taken its course or that it had been God’s will or that it had just been a stroke of luck. Hundreds of accidents entirely unforeseen and unthinkable can happen on a long march through the tropical jungle.

  Already during the previous year Don Gabriel had, as Don Ramón’s partner, recruited labor for the monterías, collected them at the Candelaria fair and signed them on in an officially confirmed contract before the authorities in Hucutsin. The situation was generally like this: if a worker under contract did not appear during the Candelaria fair to start his contract, the monterías did not suffer any losses; the agents, the enganchadores, themselves took the responsibility that the laborers contracted would be present at their place of work on a given day. On the other hand, if the monterías ordered their own capataces to take charge of the workers in Hucutsin and march them to the caoba camps, it fell to the monterías to get the men to their jobs. The men who escaped or disappeared or died during the march had to be set down in the books of the monterías as losses, because the recruiting commission had been paid in Hucutsin and the agent had only accepted the risk of handing over the workers in that town during the Candelaria fair.

  Although the capataces of the monterías were not exactly shepherds, but rather pretty good executioners and hangmen for the company that employed them, if they lost a man on the march through flight or negligence, the manager of the montería yelled his head off and threatened to deduct the loss of the commission from their salary. But that, of course, was rarely done. After much swearing, hollering and shouting, the case was considered closed and that same evening the capataces would sit peacefully in the company’s mess and drink with the other employees of the company. The loss of the missing man would simply be put down in the books of the company as an item of the daily routine.

  But if the agent lost men on the march, it was quite a different matter. The company did not pay for those losses. They came out of the agent’s pocket. Sometimes a single man would cost the agent two hundred and, not infrequently, three hundred pesos. These were the ransoms, debts and fines paid by the agent to get the man out of jail and hook him. Since the loss of men came out of the agent’s pocket, a troop of workers led to the monterías by an agent must not be compared with a smart veterans’ parade.

  Don Gabriel probably would have severed his partnership with Don Ramón or simply torn up the contract during that same year and devoted himself to the excellent business of recruiting labor to his personal advantage, but he did not know the jungle. He would have been unable to get ten men through unless they went voluntarily. Years ago, when he was younger, he had dealt in cattle and knew how to drive cattle and hogs to market. True, the masses of laborers were driven to the monterías exactly like cattle, but to keep the troop together, one had to know more tricks than those employed in the transportation of animals. Whether the agent liked it or not, occasionally some Indians made use of their human intelligence and disappeared during the march. That some of the more intellige
nt might instigate mutiny among their fellow workers never occurred to the agent. Whatever the men undertook or thought of undertaking was done individually, everyone for himself and everyone in his own personal way. It would sometimes happen that two would break away in two different directions, and that all the capataces had to ride after the two deserters to catch them. In such a case the troop was practically without supervision. All of them had their chance to run away. The confusion would grow to such an extent that the agents and their drivers would have to catch the men in their native villages with the aid of the police and the rurales. Strange as it may seem, the men seldom took advantage of such confusion. When two or three men broke away and the troop remained without guards, they simply pitched camp where they happened to be, prepared their food and slept until the drivers returned. Not one man more would be missing.

  To complete the schooling which Don Gabriel needed to run the business by himself, he still needed the experience of taking a transport of workers to the monterías. Once he had led a transport with as experienced an agent as Don Ramón, he would not need him any longer and would be fully independent in this sort of enterprise. This was the reason why he had so zealously insisted that he and Don Ramón should not deliver the hired men in Hucutsin, but take them instead straight to the monterías themselves. Since it was a matter of a considerably higher profit, Don Ramón was easily persuaded. As a rule, Don Ramón preferred to deliver the workers into the hands of the representative of the monterías in Hucutsin. With the years he had lost some of his former vigor and now disliked the fatigue of such a long march.

  15

  The march of large groups of workers through the jungle was not at all like the march of a conquering army through unknown territory. This march was shorter, its objectives were known and the road, however poor, could more or less easily be followed by those who knew it. The leader of the transport knew how many days it would take, and he knew all his possibilities of getting supplies or not getting any.