General from the Jungle

by B. TRAVEN

He unstrapped his revolver holster, threw the revolver to a woman nearby, and said, “I don’t need a revolver for work. Hey, you, muchacho!” he shouted to one of the men, “give me your machete and get yourself another. You’ve got enough bloody rags on you from yesterday’s fight, so you can stay here and guard the camp with a rusty machete.”

  He felt the edge of the machete the man had given him and said, “Not very sharp, is it? But all the better. Those goddamned swine will at least feel it when they’re being sawn apart, and they’ll have an extra couple of miserable seconds to consider how quickly one can get to Hell without falling out the window.”

  At about the same time, an hour before sundown, the banquet at Santa Cecilia was beginning. As at all festivities at which a victory is being celebrated, and where all the brave combatants are relaxed comfortably in the exhilarating knowledge that the enemy has not only been defeated but also rendered permanently harmless, things waxed noisy and hilarious.

  Why should the corporal and his three men forming the guard of honor for the night at the main gate be excluded from this victory feast? They had fought valiantly in the skirmish yesterday in which the rebel gang had been destroyed, and they regarded it as a well-earned right that they should attend the victory celebrations in person, like all the rest. They were certainly no defaulters, and certainly not deserters who had attempted to hide when for a few minutes things seemed too hot and the rebels loosed off all they had to shoot with. Besides, since there was no reason for an officer to come near the gate, it would be nothing short of idiocy for a corporal in the Federal Army to keep hanging about outside with his men, watching from afar how the other soldiers, police, capataces, and N.C.O.’s clutched at the breasts of the Indian girls carrying food past, and sometimes slapped them on the thighs in order to feel whether, later in the evening, they could try a little higher up without having their faces scratched.

  The officers, who sat at the table on chairs that, although very roughly carpentered, were nevertheless chairs, and who, in contrast to the soldiers and N.C.O.’s, ate with knives and forks, would have considered it a gross discourtesy to their hostess if they had gotten up, summoned the corporal, and given him a good dressing-down in front of everyone for having left his post. That could be dealt with next day, and the dressing-down would be emphatically reinforced with half a dozen slaps on the corporal’s face and a few well-placed slashes from a riding crop across the shoulders of the men. The colonel was not only an officer but also a gentleman. That he must never forget, and least of all when the wife of the finquero, her three grown daughters, two grown nieces, and the wives and daughters of neighboring landowners were also seated at the table.

  Besides, the main gate was of no great importance, since there were three machine guns in the patio. They were all packed up for departure and in no way ready for firing, but they were still machine guns, which fulfilled their purpose as a fearsome threat, even though they were entirely dismantled and lay in a corner, tightly corded up. Where each soldier’s rifle was not one of them knew after the banquet had been in progress for about an hour and a half. If one couldn’t relax as a human being now and again and yield to human pleasures, then the soldiering game held no attraction. The uniform itself provided this only by day; at night the buttons didn’t shine, and the gold-and-silver galloons looked like any other common braiding.

  In the course of the conversation at the table, the talk turned to the rebels who had escaped. One or two made guesses as to how many there might be who had not been caught. The smallest number, suggested by two finqueros, was three. The highest was put forward by a lieutenant who asserted that no fewer than eleven had succeeded in getting away, but he was convinced that all eleven were so severely wounded that they couldn’t have gotten far, and since they could hope for no assistance they would certainly hide in the bush and there perish miserably, for their terror was assuredly so great that they would never dare to come out. So they must still be hiding in the bush.

  “It’s remarkable,” interjected a captain of the Rurales, “that the caballeros who rode out with their major-domos to catch those escaping swine haven’t come back yet. Nothing can have happened to them.”

  “Don’t worry, Captain,” the finquero of Santa Cecilia reassured him. “It was not the intention of my neighbors to return here. Anyhow they had to take that way along the bush in order to reach their homes. And since they had the whole long day before them, it was their idea to rout out the muchachos and hang them there in the bush. They’ll have done that and then ridden on toward their fincas. They’ll spend the night at Santa Rosita. That’s where they are now, and they’re probably sorry they didn’t stay another day here to enjoy this banquet. But they came from Jovel, where they had business, and since they’ve been away from their fincas for more than three weeks, they were anxious to get home quickly. There’s nothing remarkable about that, Captain.”

  The meal was finally ended, and then began the process of swilling it down so the frijoles wouldn’t stick in one’s throat and also in order to wash away the green chilies from gums and tongues and thus stop the eyes from weeping.

  The gramophone was rusty, but it rattled around sufficiently to scratch out some twenty squeaky dance tunes from records that had already begun to grow moldy from the rains. In the finca there were two American accordions, a few guitars, and two equally mildewed violins. Half-a-dozen soldiers were able to perform on these. Even though they produced no recognizable melody, it sufficed to persuade people they were dancing as they leaped about in response to these musical efforts, and wriggled and swayed backward and forward as an excuse for pressing against the thighs of the señoras and señoritas until the limit was reached where it ceased to be dancing and had quite openly become barefaced, unmitigated indecency, in which soldiers are permitted to indulge, but not caballeros, whether they are officers or finqueros.

  But after half an hour of dancing on the hard, gritty paving stones, with heavy revolvers dangling and banging against posteriors, flesh began to melt away from bones and the beautiful uniform trousers were in danger of being split through; whereupon the officers and finqueros found it more comfortable to unstrap their revolvers and belts and hang them over the balcony rails.

  The ladies certainly did not enjoy dancing with caballeros who had firearms buckled around them; indeed, they considered it all the more impolite when the serpentine, sideways movements of the pleasure-seeking dancers caused the revolvers to produce blue bruises on feminine legs, thus mercilessly destroying the sweet dreams induced by dancing and turning them to an all-too-hard reality.

  The colonel, in order not to let his dignity seem impaired, had longest resisted the desire for greater comfort and had delayed removing his artillery. When, however, the señorita with whom he happened to be dancing said suddenly, “Perdóneme, Colonel, but your pistol is rather too hard against my ribs, and I would prefer to sit out,” what could the colonel do? Only his duty as a gentleman.

  Thus, toward eight o’clock, all revolvers were hanging over the balcony rails or on nails on posts, or lying peacefully across saddles in the patio or under the camp beds on which the guests were sleeping.

  Revolutionaries who take things seriously should not rely on luck or favorable chances, or upon a growing understanding or awakening sense of justice on the side of their opponents. Regular soldiers may better count on the stupidity of the enemy and persuade themselves that fortune is always on the side of the brave fighter. Revolutionaries must never depend on dreams, and in no circumstances may they believe in news which has no support but their desire that the news be really true.

  When the muchachos were discussing the plans of attack, Gabino had said, “Perhaps they’re all so drunk they’re sleeping like dead dogs.”

  To which General had replied, “Perhaps! Perhaps doesn’t help us in the least. Depend on nothing. That’s my advice to you all. Assume for certain that not a soul is sleeping, not one drunk, that every man has his rifle or revolver in hi
s hand, that they’re all alert and lying in wait, and that somehow our plans have been betrayed to them. Don’t rely on luck. Never. Always assume that the enemy can do more, knows more, and is stronger than you; is more on the alert than you hope, and has learned or guessed all your plans. For what we’ve thought out on our side can be just as easily thought out by others. The only real advantage that we have is that they don’t know that we have more than four hundred men squatting here in the bush. And even that may somehow have become known to them. If I were to rely on good luck and on their being drunk, we wouldn’t even need a plan or to be divided into groups. But because I’m not counting on luck, there’s only one thing that can defeat our attack, and that is if there is a full regiment in the neighborhood of Santa Cecilia, unknown to us, which can attack us in the rear as soon as we have reached the outside of the walls. But that’s what we have our superintendents of illuminations for. If nothing goes up in flames, then something is wrong; but once the place is lit up, we shall be upon them, irrespective of who and what may be at our backs.”

  General, accompanied by Celso, had crept up close to the finca while his army lay scarcely a mile away, hidden in the grass. The finca was already completely surrounded, so that each of the four attacking groups was roughly equidistant from the walls. The one gap in the encirclement was caused by the peons’ village. The plan of the two groups, which here formed an angle to each other, was to cut off the village from the finca in the course of the attack, a small party being detailed to guard the village so that the peons could not reach the finca in case, driven by fear, they attempted to flee there.

  Naturally, those muchachos who had been entrusted with the task were not able to lure away all the hounds in the finca and the village. Several still barked here and there. Even these were all quickly silenced by each man whom they approached too closely, or at least they were reduced to a miserable whimpering by cracking a stone on their skulls.

  In the darkest corner of the wide courtyard, where not even the faintest glimmer from the patio bonfire shone, General clambered up onto the wall. When he noted to what extent all the men were engrossed in either drinking or dancing, and that not one had his revolver strapped on, he thought for a moment of giving his incendiaries, whom he had visited at their posts only a few moments before, the order to ignite and thus flash the signal for attack.

  Celso, too, had climbed onto the wall in order to survey the battlefield. When they were both down again on the ground, General said, “It wouldn’t be at all bad just to sweep into them right away. But I don’t think it’s decent to attack people when they’re dancing and laughing.”

  “Maybe,” whispered Celso. “But perhaps it will be no more decent and polite to disturb them later. Don’t imagine that after this evening, with all that good eating, drinking, dancing, and thigh-squeezing, they’ll settle down to praying.”

  “Well said. And what you say convinces me all the more that the signal mustn’t be given prematurely; we mustn’t change the plan; we must still attack about an hour after the last candle has gone out, as I’ve fixed. Then it’ll be quicker, and it may even be that we won’t lose a single man.”

  General now once again visited the incendiaries, who were lying flat on the ground about fifty yards from the roofs with piles of straw which they had to ignite, not even permitting themselves the luxury of smoking a cigar.

  “When I howl four times, like a coyote, set fire,” he ordered each gang. Then both of them, General and Celso, returned to their own army groups.

  Not one sound, apart from the occasional baying of a hound, who, as soon as he had opened his mouth a few times, quickly slunk away intimidated to the buildings of the finca or the huts of the village, betrayed the nearness of the armies. Cicadas, crickets, and grasshoppers chirped and shrilled in their millions of tiny voices, drowning even the suppressed coughs or sneezes of the muchachos, who lay so cleverly hidden in the grass that even a powerful searchlight, had there been one on the finca, would not have discovered them. In fact, a finquero could have ridden back and forth over the prone muchachos and a sudden shy from his horse, who, then recognizing a man, trotted on peacefully, would have been all he would have noticed as being out of the ordinary in his progress. And even then he would have thought it was a wild beast his horse had scented, perceptible to the animal but not to its rider. And had he, in fact, seen two or three of these almost naked bodies, he would have attributed no particular significance to the encounter, because he would have been certain that they were drunken peons from the finca who had reeled out here and simply fallen where they lay because their legs could carry them no farther.

  But not a finquero rode home before the gray of dawn, not a soldier left the safety of the walls during the night, and the peons of the finca, as soon as they were released from their duties, hurried to their huts and lay down to sleep, for at four o’clock in the morning the bells of the finca would ring to wake them for another day of work.

  When General saw that the great bonfire on the hearth in the center of the patio had not been replenished for more than an hour, and that only here and there the glimmer of a candle was visible in one of the rooms of the finca, he let out a terrified howl, and the four armies began, like so many snakes, to creep forward over the ground.

  Although they made no sound, the dogs remaining in the finca began to bark once more, and a dozen of the peons’ hounds felt obliged to join in the chorus.

  In the patio were to be heard a few curses from the soldiers lying there, who had been disturbed in their sleep, and immediately thereafter the whimpering howls of several dogs that had felt a truncheon swept under their feet.

  In small towns, in Indian villages, and in the remoter fincas little heed is given to the barking of dogs by day and far less by night. Of course, if all the dogs of the finca and the peon village had been present, their combined noise would have been so striking and unusual that perhaps the men in the finca would have realized that this barking warned of a genuinely serious danger. But because the dogs had been reduced by more than a half, and a goodly number of those remaining, intimidated by blows from stones and machetes, had crawled away and not joined in with the howling of the others, the barking and baying of the hounds aroused in no one in the finca the suspicion that anything unusual was brewing.

  Now the leading files were only about fifty paces from the walls and gates. They were already on the path connecting the village and the finca, so that this route was cut both for the peons and for the people in the finca.

  All the men, without awaiting any further command, firmly gripped their machetes or knives and raised the upper parts of their bodies in order to leap forward five paces at the first movement.

  In long-drawn-out complaint, a coyote howled four times.

  Glimmers became visible on the two flanks of the finca where the barns were, and also the houses of the major-domos and the capataces, the roofs of which were of dried palm leaves.

  A second later a yellow-red flame shot out hissing and ran like a terrified lizard along the edge of an overhanging roof. Only a few more seconds and another corner blazed up garishly with a crackling roar.

  It was extraordinary how nothing stirred, either in the patio or in the finca buildings, for at least fifteen seconds. Only the hounds which hitherto had been barking set up a terrified howling.

  The muchachos were by now over the wall. Like driven cats they flitted in groups toward the rooms of the massive main building, which were all on the ground floor and whose doors, because of the heat, were standing ajar and not locked or bolted from within. But because General had assumed that all doors would be secured, he had detailed groups to climb onto the roof, tear off the tiles, and drop into the rooms through the ceiling, as the agility of the muchachos would make this a much quicker procedure and the element of surprise far more effective than breaking down the doors. For behind the doors would be standing the officers and finqueros with their revolvers in their hands. Now, however, the att
ack took place simultaneously from the roof and through the doors.

  Before the groups who had to deal with the rooms had even reached the doors, not a man of those sleeping in the patio—soldiers, police, major-domos, and capataces—remained alive. The patio groups had slit their throats while the roof groups were still squatting on the buildings and prying off the tiles.

  The clattering, falling, and smashing of the tiles were the first definite sounds to be heard. Everything that had hitherto taken place, including the killing of more than 120 men sleeping in the patio, had produced no more than suppressed grunting, quickly choked death rattles, a scream that died in a gurgle before it could take form, a scrape of machetes when their points struck sand or flagstones in the patio, and an occasional dull thump as when a block of wood is tumbled on a stone floor.

  And now, some fifteen seconds later, there echoed across the patio the first human voices. It came from the house in which the major-domo lived with his family. “Fuego! Fire!” the voice shouted twice. Then it ceased.

  In the great buildings of the finca there rang out the sharp crack of revolver shots within enclosed spaces. But wherever one, two, or three shots sounded, from the noise of those shots it was apparent that they were repeated at the most twice from the same weapon and that the next shot came from another room or a different corner.

  It was remarkable that, even in the building, there was still no shouting, crying, or screaming. It was certainly not courage that prevented the brave officers of the Federals and Rurales and the equally warlike finqueros from yelling. Surprise had simply dried up their voices. And before they found time to utter a warning shout, their throats were already gaping too wide to be of any use in producing a sound.

  The only screaming came from three female voices, which, however, could be heard from afar as they ebbed to a loud gurgle.

  In the bright light of the crackling palm roofs, Professor was visible crouching high on the cornice of the main building.