Tierra del Fuego

by Francisco Coloane

  “I worked as a sheep shearer, a farmhand and a herder. Then, because I liked horses, I became a breaker. I earn good money breaking in colts, I’m quite free, but . . . apart from the whores I go down to visit from time to time in Río Gallegos or Santa Cruz, I have no idea what it’s like to have a woman . . . or a child . . . What’s the use of money if you don’t live the way God wants? Your heart becomes like those fields of peat—full of roots, but so twisted and black, not a single blade of green grass can grow in them . . . That must be why we don’t care much about this life, why we act as if it wasn’t worth anything . . . It’s all the same if you end up under the hooves of a horse or in a shooting match like this one we’ve gotten ourselves into . . . But you, you could just grab your horse and ride off to the Payne Mountains . . . Your wife and children are waiting for you on Lemuy.”

  “No, I can’t! . . . Shall I tell you something? I felt ashamed when none of the men going to the Payne Mountains decided to stay!”

  “A lot of them wanted to stay, but Facón Grande ­persuaded them to go. The fewer of us die, the better, he said, and I think he’s right . . . Oh, we could have beaten the Tenth Cavalry if it wasn’t for that scab Mata Negra!”

  “How did this all start?”

  “Hmm . . . Who knows? The thing that lit the fuse was what happened at the hotel in Huaraique, near the Pelque River . . . The troops attacked in force and killed all the comrades who were there . . . That got us riled up, and Facón Grande started organizing everyone to fight, herders, breakers, stockmen and a few shepherds who were good with horses . . . We were winning when that Mata Negra betrayed us, the son of a . . . He turned his back on us and offered his services to the ranch owners.”

  “I know most of that,” Otey said quietly in the darkness. “But what I wonder is why the devil things don’t get settled before it comes to shooting, because afterwards nothing ever gets settled.”

  “What do I know? Some say it’s the crisis caused by the Great War . . . Seems the ranch owners earned a lot of money in the war, but they squandered it, and now things have gotten bad they’re making us pay . . . And it was all because of the list of demands . . . We asked for a hundred pesos a month for the farmhands and a hundred twenty for the shepherds . . . I wasn’t even involved, because I get paid by the job . . . They also demanded candles and mate for the ranch hands, mats instead of sheepskins in the cabins, and to be allowed more than one horse in each man’s team . . . But it seems there were other things apart from those . . . In the Coyle, there were comrades who hadn’t been paid for years and demanded to keep the money they made hunting guanacos. They were shot and the manager pocketed the money. Others were paid with checks that bounced and were left wandering the streets in town. Colonel Varela knew all this and was on our side at first, but the big shots asked him to take charge, and the newspapers kept needling him, saying he was incompetent and even a coward. So he got angry and asked for a free hand to put down the uprising. They agreed, and he came back to Patagonia and started the offensive.” And there the breaker of colts concluded his version of the strike.

  At first light, a little jerky was shared out, and they took it in turns to go to the machine shed, where some of the men had used the boiler to heat water for mate. Above, on the upper floor of the wool baling press, a stockman sat watching the horizon and singing an old vidala in a low voice:

  More than a year away, vidalita . . .

  From this land of mine.

  Meeting you today, vidalita . . .

  You treated me with scorn.

  That is why I say, vidalita . . .

  I wish I’d never been born.

  The song was suddenly interrupted by a loud voice from another part of the upper floor, raising the alarm. The troops of the Tenth Cavalry were coming along the track that led to the ranch buildings.

  They all ran to their posts, while two squadrons of cavalry, of about a hundred men each, dismounted in the distance, and took up firing positions.

  Morning had only just broken when the first shots were fired on both sides. A machine gun began to stutter, shattering the window panes, and the troops began to close in on the shearing shed.

  With a single shot, one of the stockmen hit a soldier. As he was taking aim on another, he sang a verse from the dealer’s song in the game of truco:

  They put me on my mettle,

  Me and Salvador,

  There goes another petal,

  I can’t take it anymore!

  The battle continued inconclusively for the whole of that morning, bursts of machine-gun fire and volleys of rifle fire alternating with long periods of tense silence. Many soldiers had already fallen, but not a single bullet had yet penetrated the narrow gaps between the thick bales of wool. Grande’s men were still firmly entrenched behind the big doors of the shearing shed, a huge T-shaped building of wood and zinc, surrounded only by pens, narrow passages and drying rooms, all made of wooden planks and posts.

  It did not take long for both groups—the men inside the shed, well entrenched behind the bales, and the professional soldiers, advancing slowly but inexorably, familiar with the terrain—to realize that it would not be easy for either of them to gain the upper hand. The soldiers’ objective was to reach the wooden pens and take cover. But the men inside the shed knew what they were trying to do and made them pay dearly every time one of them ventured across the open ground toward this shelter. Each one ended up dead, and his courage served only as a warning to the others.

  Facón Grande had given orders not to shoot unless the target was clearly within their sights. His intention was to save bullets, cause the maximum number of casualties, and keep up the resistance as long as possible, in order to give the fugitives time to reach the slopes of the Payne Mountains, where they would be out of danger.

  Another night fell, and darkness intervened. Both took advantage of it to give themselves a little breathing space, and in the early hours of the morning the stubborn duel resumed.

  On that second day, something unusual happened. One of the soldiers, perhaps crazed by the nervous tension of this prolonged combat, ran straight at the shed, his bayonet fixed. Curiously, the men inside did not fire at him, but opened the big doors and let him in. Then they threw his body out the window, to dissuade the others from doing the same.

  But the tactics they were using were an indication to Colonel Varela that they did not have many bullets, or may even have run out. It was as he had expected, and he was waiting anxiously for the moment to give the order to attack, hoping to put an end to this stubborn duel, in which a third of his men had already fallen.

  The sound of a bugle rang out, like a raucous neighing—the signal that the time had come. The machine guns began their rattle, covering the final advance. The men inside had not a single bullet left, or any weapons other than their facones and flaying knives with which to face this final assault. In the ­heroic hand-to-hand combat that followed, the death of Facón Grande, the ringleader, finally brought the long battle to a close. There were still more than twenty stockmen alive, since very few had fallen in the various exchanges of fire and those that had had perished only in the final assault.

  That same afternoon, the rest were shot on the cement floor of the drying room. They took them in groups of five, and Varela himself ordered that no more than one bullet should be used for each of the prisoners—his ammunition was almost gone, too.

  Gabriel Rivera, the breaker of colts, Bernardo Otey, and three other stockmen were the last to be led in front of the firing squad.

  It was mid-afternoon, but the sky was so low and overcast that it seemed like an endless early morning, ashen and cold. As they walked onto the flagstones of the drying room, they saw the heaped corpses of their comrades, ready to be doused with kerosene and burned—the best grave that Varela could think of for his victims, unless he left them as food for the foxes and vultures. Among these corpses, Facón Grande’s stood out, as the colonel had had it placed on top. He had wanted to s
ee with his own eyes the body of this ringleader, the only one in the revolt who, if he had not been betrayed by Mata Negra, could well have finished him off with all his regiment.

  It was bitterly cold. A snowstorm was on its way. When the last five men were placed in front of the firing squad, which had its orders—one man, one bullet—the sergeant in command went up to them and started pinning white cardboard discs on their hearts, to give the soldiers something to aim at. Once he had done this, he moved to one side and, taking up a position an equal distance from the two groups, unsheathed his curved saber and held it in a horizontal position at the height of his head. He was about to lower the sword to give the signal to fire, when Bernardo Otey slapped his heart, tore off the white disc, flung it at the firing squad and cried, “Learn to shoot, you bastards!”

  The members of the firing squad were confused at first. But then they aimed the muzzles of their five rifles at a single body—Bernardo Otey’s. The man doubled up and fell, mown down by the five bullets that had replied as one to his last curse.

  At that moment, taking advantage of the firing squad’s reaction, the other four men leaped forward and broke into a run while the soldiers were reloading.

  “After them!” the sergeant yelled.

  While three of the men ran toward the track, the fourth man, the breaker of colts, leaped over a wire fence, came down astride one of the soldiers’ horses and sped out of the camp, hugging the animal’s neck.

  The sergeant fired off a few shots at him with his revolver, then grabbed a rifle from one of the soldiers, went down on one knee in a firing position, and continued shooting at the horse and at the rider stretched on its back as they sped away, until they were swallowed up by a gully.

  The other three fugitives, still on foot, were all hit, and fell to the ground, dead.

  The interminable early morning grew ever gloomier, and thick snow started falling on the fields, concealing the fugitive beneath its protecting wings.

  It was well into the night when the breaker Rivera at last managed to give his horse some rest. When he dismounted, both horse and man stood there for a moment, surrounded by threatening storm clouds, snow and darkness. In spite of everything, the night seemed to be opening its heart a little in the slight gleam of the falling snowflakes.

  His own heart, too, taking advantage of this hidden place, paused for breath. He remembered an Indian superstition that said that the eagle of the pampas must be hunted before it can cry out, because when it does, the storm comes to its aid . . . But he wasn’t sure if he remembered it correctly. He got back on his horse and galloped on, still beneath those protecting wings.

  In a radiant dawn such as often follows snowstorms, the breaker of colts caught up with the main body of the strikers when they had already taken shelter on one of the wooded slopes of the Payne Mountains. They were all safe and sound. Seeing them, the horse stopped of its own accord, and the men gathered around the breaker, forming a human ring, as they had on the Turba Plateau.

  The animal had stopped with its legs spread wide, and, when a little trickle of blood ran from its nostrils and into its mouth, its lips quivered and its whole body started shaking.

  As an experienced breaker, Rivera knew that an exhausted horse obeys neither spurs nor whip, but that it will not fall while it still feels its rider on its back. That was why he kept his story very short. No sooner had he finished it than he got off his horse and the noble beast collapsed.

  Under the snow, the whole of Patagonia was like a large white poncho climbing the slopes of the Payne Mountains to its high towers, which pointed somberly at the sky like three colossal fingers.

  And so it was that the memory of how the chilote Otey died was preserved.

  FIVE SAILORS AND A GREEN COFFIN

  One day in early winter, a ship arrived at Punta Arenas so light on ballast that more than half of one if its propeller blades was out of the water. The surface of the gray hull was flaking—the result either of bad weather or of the difficulties of painting on the high seas—and streaked with large patches of red lead looking like wounds that had not yet healed.

  On their long voyages, these wanderers of the sea pass through the Straits of Magellan, but only put in at the port if there is some faulty equipment to be repaired, or a major breakdown to be dealt with.

  This particular ship asked the harbormaster’s office for permission to land, but together with the pennant signaling that request, it hoisted on the foremast a flag of large black and yellow cloths, which meant “dead man on board.”

  And so, no sooner had the maritime authority’s launch left the ship’s side than a small boat was lowered, and five men got in—four to row and one in charge—and headed for the quay.

  The boat docked by the jetty, which, as it was low tide, was some way above sea level.

  Two of its crewmembers clambered up the posts to the landing stage, and the men below threw them two ropes, which they began to pull on carefully. The thing they were dragging from deep in the boat, as if pulling it up from the bottom of the sea, was a curious box, painted green, which, although crudely made, had the unmistakable shape of a coffin.

  It was carefully placed on the edge of the quay, and, after the boat had been securely moored, the other three sailors climbed out, took away the ropes and lifted the coffin into the air. Four of the men took it on their shoulders, and, with the fifth man as the only person in the cortege, they went in search of the harbor exit. The streets were covered in snow, and the sailors had to tread carefully, which gave a certain swaying motion to their shoulders and to the coffin, which, being green, looked like a piece of the sea held up by four sailors.

  At the end of the quay, they asked a guard the way to the cemetery, and set off at a measured pace in the direction indicated. It was around noon, and in the deserted white streets they met only the odd passerby in a hurry to get to his lunch—though not in so much of a hurry that he did not take off his hat as a mark of respect for the dead, or turn his head several times and stop to look at the unusual spectacle of four sailors with a green coffin on their shoulders.

  Turning a corner, they ran into a short, tough-looking individual, who took off his hat, revealing a piggy face with a snub nose, and who, strangely, began walking along with the coffin, with his eyes down and a clear look of regret on his face, as if he were a relative. This was Mike, the baker’s idiot son, who had the morbid habit of accompanying every funeral procession he came across, looking utterly grief-stricken . . . But he must have found something odd in this group, because after walking along with them for a while he put his hat back on, abandoned the cortege, and resumed his crazy wandering.

  As they reached the outskirts of town, a blizzard started to lash the men carrying the coffin, and they had to shield their faces and change shoulders more often in order to take shelter on the side of the coffin least hit by the gale. They still took turns at walking behind.

  On one of these changeovers, the man whose turn it was to walk in back was a fairly old crewmember with graying hair. He stopped to rest and passed his handkerchief over his face, which was wet not only because of the blizzard but because he had been sweating profusely. His name was Foster, and he had been the closest friend of Martín, the ship’s helmsman and the man they were about to bury. They had shared the same cabin on the Gastelu. Why was he sweating so much? . . . Perhaps the coffin weighed more on his shoulders than on those of the dead helmsman’s other shipmates . . .

  But suddenly, he saw a sign above the door of a building, which said, in blue and red letters, Bar Hamburg. He cast a timorous glance at his companions, who were pressing on in the teeth of the storm without even noticing that he had fallen behind. He turned back to look at the sign, and quickly walked to the bar and went in.

  At the counter, he asked the barman for a double gin, which he knocked back in one go, then passed the back of his hand over his lips, and sucked his mustache with delight. The reason he was so relieved was not because the coffin ha
d weighed more on him than on the other men, but because Martín, the helmsman and his cabin companion, had looked at him in the last moments of his life, and that look had bored into his eyes and penetrated his soul—a soul carrying a burden of greed that he had tried in vain to shake off.

  It was he who had suggested burying him on land and not at sea, scared by an old sailor’s superstition saying that men buried at sea often return to their houses or the places where they lived, taking multiple revenge on those who have done them harm. And in the case of a murder or something similar, the legend said that the soul of the victim took over that of the murderer, making him sick and even killing him . . . Superstitions, of course, old wives’ tales, but they could be as real as the St. Elmo’s Fire that lights up the mast tops and crosstrees just before a ship goes down in a storm!

  Before they had passed Cape Froward, the southernmost point on the South American continent, he, Foster, had taken a saw and a hammer and hastened to make a rough pine box, which he’d had to paint green because it was the only paint on board apart from pitch, which was impossible to use because of the time it took to dry. He had been in a hurry, and had insisted to the pilot that Martín’s body should not be thrown into the sea, but instead should rest in peace under the earth, and perhaps let him rest, too . . . because while he was on the surface or wandering the depths of the sea, the weight cast on his soul by the helmsman’s last look would not lift, however many glasses of gin he drank in his lifetime.