March to the Monteria

by B. TRAVEN

  32

  This day the caravan had to march nearly ten leguas. It was indeed a hard day.

  Around noon, they arrived at the Desempeño River, where the troop stopped for a short rest. The muchachos whom Don Gabriel had taught marching dropped as if shot. Don Ramón saw it, walked up to them and said: “If you start running like wild men, you’ll never reach the monterías.” From his morral in which he, like every Mexican horseman, kept the day’s ration, he took a tin of sardines, threw it to the panting men and said: “Divide it among you, and don’t drink so much water. That won’t do you any good.”

  Later he said to Don Gabriel: “Amigo, there’s something you’ll have to learn in this business. It isn’t enough to catch men. You have to deliver them to the monterías in good health and with plenty of strength. Otherwise you won’t get paid for them. No cash, you know.”

  “It won’t do them any harm if you shake them up once in a while,” replied Don Gabriel. “They’re like goats.”

  “As you like,” replied Don Ramón calmly. “I only wanted you to know. Throughout my life I’ve handled contract workers. In my younger years I recruited men for the silver, zinc and copper mines. All laborers, without any exception, have a definite limit to their strength, their efficiency and their good will. If you drive them beyond that, one of two things will happen: either they become dangerous or they become useless. Neither will do us any good.”

  Don Gabriel said: “Perhaps you are right, Don Ramón, but, you see, I wanted to get away from that terrible sight there-get away from it as far as possible and as fast as I could make it.”

  While he was saying that Don Alban came strolling along. “Señores,” he said, “I’m feeling terribly uneasy. It seems to me as if we are marching through the jungle eternally, as if we are running in a circle. Not once today did we have the open sky over us. Green and dark, and dark and green. And this broiling heat and this oppressive humidity. And the eternal whispering and chirping around us and that horrible yelling of the gritones which hammers at us day and night. If I don’t soon see a house, a table, a plate and, above all, a few different faces in front of my eyes, por la Santísima, I’ll go crazy. Why in the name of God did I have to stick my nose into trading in the monterías?”

  Don Ramón laughed and slapped him hard on his back. “Don’t talk so much rot, Don Alban. Everything will pass. And once you’ve sold everything you’re dragging along, with a one hundred, in some cases with a two hundred per cent profit, you’ll think differently of the jungle. Don’t brood. Whistle yourself a song. We also have no woman along, no more than you. That’s all that’s the matter with you. I’ve become accustomed to it. Well, señores, on our horses.”

  He pulled out his whistle and gave the signal to march.

  Around five o’clock in the afternoon the troop sensed the first signs of the great lake in the surrounding air. A soft wind carried the smell of rushes, of rotting lake grass, of muddy and swampy banks up to the steep slope from which the caravan was winding its way down toward the lake. At times, one saw the lake and the wide-open space above it blinking through a clearing in the jungle.

  The trail was broken and, at times, hardly more than two and a half feet wide. But even if one slipped, neither man nor beast could fall down the abyss, because the high, massive rocky mountain was densely covered with trees, shrubs and bushes.

  The caravan marched in a long file, man after man, animal after animal. None could stop. It would have held up the whole troop. Some of the animals slipped now and then. Without causing a halt they were immediately supported by the ever watchful arrieros who now pushed, now pulled them back onto the path.

  The nearer the caravan came to the lake, the faster the animals marched. The last quarter of an hour they even trotted, in spite of their packs, not minding their saddle-galled backs, oblivious to their fatigue.

  Notwithstanding the terrific noise made by the lake birds, there was about the lake itself and all around it a loneliness that was both mysterious and oppressive. There was no apparent reason for it, yet it weighed inexplicably upon man’s mind.

  Large grazing grounds to which oxen, working in the monterías, were sent every three months for a rest, encircled the lake. The mahogany workers labored in the monterías day in, day out, month after month, year after year until finally they were buried there except for the small number who survived their contracts. Yet never were they given a day’s vacation. The oxen lost weight and vitality, even died unless they were periodically rested in the pastures several days’ march away from the monterías of which they had become weary.

  The camp site was wide open. One could see the whole sky above. After so many days in the monotony of the dark green jungle thicket it seemed like the awakening from a nightmare. But three hours later the torment began—a torment so intense that one was ready to renounce all the beauties and enchantment of the lake and its picturesque surroundings. Because of the many oxen grazing here, the entire camp site was infested by millions and millions of garrapatas. Within one hour everybody had his clothes and his body so full of ticks that he gave up all resistance and let himself be bitten wherever it pleased the insects. Bathing in the lake unfortunately did not kill them but refreshed them just as it did men. Anyway it was next to impossible to take a swim. The banks, from about two hundred yards inward, were swampy and covered with dense rushes. Therefore, one was even deprived of a refreshing bath.

  The drinking water was not gotten from the lake but instead from two springs which gushed forth at the foot of high rocks situated close to the lake.

  In the evening, when they were squatting at the fire, Celso said to Andrés: “I foretold that El Camarón would meet with a little accident right at this rocky wall where we get such cool and clear water. But fate wouldn’t have it this way. You see, one can’t count on fate entirely and one should also never even try to improve on fate. Leave it alone. It acts in its own way.”

  “Did you hear,” asked Andrés, “what the boys who buried him said about the accident—that it couldn’t have been an accident, not with so smart a guy as that bastard was?”

  “If I were to listen to the rattle of those halfwits I would never have a thought of my own,” Celso replied. “After all, what do I care about such a dirty cabrón? But I tell you, one thing is sure like the sun, he and that other whoremonger El Zorro won’t hook another Indio and drag him away from his woman. All I can do is spit heartily when I think of those two crabs.”

  Next day the march led through a dense section of the jungle which was of an entirely different nature from the one the caravan had crossed during the previous days. Not for fifty paces did the trail lead over firm, sandy or stony ground. All was mud, swamp, march with not the slightest variation.

  Celso, marching besides Andrés, said: “Well, manito, now you can smell caoba all around you, even though you don’t yet see a single tree. But actually you’re already inside the caoba empire. Tonight you’ll see the first remains of a great abandoned montería and a few other things to reflect upon provided you haven’t lost the capacity to think and reflect.”

  The flora was changing completely. The change was so noticeable that not only the peons who walked through there for the first time observed it, but even the traders, who usually paid not much attention to plants and trees along the trail, looked up. To them, as a rule, a tree was a tree and a bush was a bush. Whether it was an ebony tree or a mango tree or a fraile was absolutely immaterial to them as long as none of the trees they saw bought any of their merchandise. There was no reason why they should be interested in the sight of a tree or in its value.

  The saddle horses and the pack mules slipped and sank into the deep, muddy soil at every step. Carefully feeling their way, they were permanently on the lookout for the driest spots where they could gain a firm foothold.

  It was always the rainy season in these regions. If you ask an old, experienced montería contractor to tell you when the rainy season begins and when the dry sea
son sets in, with a poker face he will answer: “Yes, señor, here our rainy season begins approximately on the fifteenth of June.” Then comes the unavoidable question: “And when does the rainy season end in this region?” And the reply, given with the same indifference: “Around midnight on the fourteenth of June.”

  This was true. Even if it did not rain during the early morning, there was such a heavy dew in the jungle that, whether one marched or rode on horseback, until noon one was constantly soaked to the skin by the water dropping from trees and bushes. About one o’clock or so it started to dry, and around two o’clock the tropical rain would begin to pour down, without interruption, for four to six hours. No wonder then that the trail here was like a plowed potato field after six weeks’ constant rain.

  Wherever one looked there were fan palms and bush palms. The feathery leaves sprouted from the palms right near the roots, so it seemed that these palms had no regular trunk. And because the feathery leaves did not grow high up along the trunk, but came right out of the soil, the jungle was so thick that one could rightly say, “You can’t see the jungle because of the palms.”

  In fact, it was a wild, nightmarish matting of plants of prehistoric times. Many of the palm feathers were one hundred feet high. And there were thousands of ferns of equal height. One could not see the ground beside the trail, so heavily was it grown over with matting. Deep in one’s mind one perceived the merciless battle of the plants each fighting the other. All around, one beheld a ruthless rivalry, a relentless struggle for a piece of space as small as a child’s hand. Men’s strife for existence could hardly be waged more inflexibly than the battle among the plants in this wide area.

  This was the very earth which conceived caoba, gave birth to caoba and developed caoba to its full splendor, vitality and strength. For this aristocratic timber can attain its beauty, its full consistency and its hardness only where it has to fight cruelly and pitilessly for its existence and survival. Whatever is conceived here, and once conceived grows and survives, has to be of a truly heroic nature. Softness and timidity are stamped into the mud to rot. The one that loses the battle serves as fertilizer for the one of greater beauty, strength and nobility.

  “Look around, manito,” Celso said to Andrés, who was marching, as though in a dream, through this enchanted world which had struck his sensibility as something entirely new and absolutely unexpected. “Look around I say again. Here it begins, the vast, savage land of caoba. Perhaps for the first time now you’ll understand why man cannot harvest caoba like any odd crop in the fields of a finca. I’ve planted coffee in Soconusco, in some kind of selva, some sort of jungle. You see, coffee is planted like any other valuable crop, with special care, in this particular case under huge trees. Otherwise there isn’t much difference between maize, coffee, beans, oats, cacahuates, chiles or what have you. But now here, caoba, that’s something else again. And believe you me, now that I’m back here once more, smelling caoba, I honestly think that I really couldn’t live anywhere else. I almost believe that I was truly homesick for caoba.

  “After all, tell me, mano, what and where is the meaning of my life? The woman? The fifteen children? The wool, the chicken, the pigs, the maize, the fuel, the beans to be hauled to market? You can get goddamn sick and tired of that, too, so that you want to run away from it. I’m lost, I tell you, I’m lost. I belong here. To hell with the fifteen brats. And be careful, manito, that the same doesn’t happen to you someday.”

  33

  It went on for hours. It was as if an entirely new world had begun and the old, known world had sunk away. A new world had opened and this new world was nothing but a confused, intertwined, matted mass of something that grew. Grew and grew and grew. One lost the capacity of distinguishing the individual plants. Anything and everything around was green, thicket, abundance, confusion. Little golden dwarfs of sunlight were continually dancing from one feathery palm leaf to another. It was as though over this solid dense world of plants floated a call urging creation to beget a new planet, a fantastic one in which not man or beast would be the master but plants. One felt lonely and abandoned, separated from all the remaining world, in spite of the long file of peons and the grunting and snorting pack animals marching along mechanically. The marchers, men and animals, seemed to move without volition, almost dreamlike, into this world of plants to be swallowed up by it.

  Suddenly Andrés shouted: “Dios mío, what is—but that is—” With a sudden lurch he halted, dropping his pack.

  “But what is that?” he asked, panting.

  Unexpectedly the jungle had opened before his eyes, and so widely that in all directions new worlds extended toward the horizon. At the feet of the two young men, far below, there ran the river, the imposing, powerful, mysterious Ushumahcintla River, the giant without whose assistance no mahogany could be taken out of these wild regions and brought to the civilized world. It was the visible god responsible for the Indios who were devoured by caoba. Without this majestic river of the jungle, caoba would have been as valueless as a rotting pine stick in the forests of North Dakota. And since caoba would be valueless nobody would sell Indios for their debts to work in the monterías.

  Incomparable in its scope and its majesty was the view from this site, high over the banks, where the eye could follow the titanic river in its winding loops.

  It was still early. Hardly two o’clock in the afternoon. And yet the order was given to camp. From here the first distribution of the laborers was made for the various monterías which needed new hands.

  For several days the main troop would continue marching deeper into the jungle, yet remaining on this side of the river. Smaller troops were ferried across the river in canoes and taken to the monterías which were along the opposite bank.

  The sons of Mexico who were canoed over to the opposite bank entered a foreign country without knowing it. They were swept under the sovereignty of another government without being consulted. The mahogany companies recognized neither nationalities nor citizens’ rights, nor were they reluctant about kidnaping citizens of any country or trespassing on national borders. They only acknowledged the powerful Empire of the Caoba, which had no nationality. Where caoba ruled was the land where they reigned and where only those laws were respected which they themselves made and where they exercised the power to enforce their laws as they saw fit. They did not bother about concessions and their clauses. They did not worry about national frontiers, presidents of republics or dictators. All that was far away, infinitely far away. All that had vanished from the earth. They were separated from all that by two weeks of seemingly endless marches through the jungle. Whoever arrived here became small and insignificant. He simply had, without being asked, invaded the sacred land where caoba was the dictator, the supreme law.

  None of Celso’s group thought of lighting a fire. There was plenty of time for that. The day would last for many hours. They just squatted there, comfortable and satisfied that they could rest.

  They had chosen a place apart from the main troop, farther down on an elevation from where one could have a clear view of the river and of its high banks.

  “How beautiful, how impressive that great river is,” said Celso suddenly. “This in itself is worth the march to the monterías even if only to rot there. See those pretty sandy beaches? Later, shortly before sunset, let’s go down for a swim. It will do us good.”

  “What are those huts over there on the opposite bank?” asked Andrés.

  “That’s a montería,” Celso said. “What you see there is the administration building and the jacalitos for the employees and some artisans. The montería proper is deep in the jungle. You can’t see it from here.”

  He looked around and saw the main troop getting busy pitching camp. “Well,” he said musingly while rolling himself a long and very thick cigar, “the soldiers have finally arrived. Here is where the battlefields begin. Right here at this site there also used to be a montería in times gone by. Why!” he interrupted his speech, “
I just remembered, do you want to see something awfully interesting? Hey you, greenies,” he shouted to a bigger group nearby, “you, too, come along with me and get an eyeful.”

  He led them a short way downstream, turned to the left, passing with some difficulty through a thicket of brush, and there, before their eyes, was spread out a wide field of little mounds, many of them marked by crudely made crosses. Wiry grass and thorny shrubs were growing all over the place. However, one hundred and fifty, if not more, of those little mounds could still be fairly well distinguished. The great majority of crosses had rotted away and the rest crumbled. Most of the mounds were eroded or had leveled out. From their look one could see that they had been scratched open by hungry wild hogs or other animals of the jungle.

  “What’s this here?” Santiago asked, perplexed and frightened at the same time. “It looks like a—like a—but then here in this lonely place? How come?”

  “Yes, here in this lonely place where nearby a montería used to be,” said Celso impassively. “Yes, here is where the fallen caoba men of that now almost forgotten montería found their last paraje. You’ll march deeper into caoba land, into the caoba empire, and you will have other surprises, real surprises which will make you gasp for breath. One thing I can tell you. Unless you become like caoba, hard as steel, and get dark red blood into your veins, you also will soon find your last paraje near one or another montería. Here you have to fight tooth and claw against capataces, against whippings and hangings, and above all against the jungle that wants to devour you.” He paused. “Aw, damn it! Forget it! Stop thinking about it. Makes no sense standing here gazing at those bones you see lying about. The men to whom they belonged won’t cough again.”

  For a few seconds his eyes rested on a particular little mound which by its appearance seemed less old than most of the others. He lifted his arm as though he intended to point at this singular heap of sand and perhaps say something about it. But he merely bit hard on his lip, turned abruptly away and shouted: “Say, cuates, let’s cook our beans and have them well mixed with chile verde y muchas yerbas. And you”—now addressing a small group of youngsters standing around with their mouths wide open—“don’t you greenhorns dream of home or any such nonsense. No good for you. I’m telling you. It’s poison and you should know it. Forget it. Better fetch some fuel and build a lusty fire.”