General from the Jungle

by B. TRAVEN

  The general looked up.

  In the open doorway stood a human figure that at first he failed to recognize.

  The room in which the officers were eating had no windows. All the light came through the door, which therefore always stood open. The general was sitting facing the door. The bright daylight was in his eyes. Therefore, he could easily see that someone was standing in the doorway, but could not immediately recognize the face. He perceived only that the man had an ordinary red handkerchief wound around his face, as if he were suffering from a toothache. Behind the man there now appeared an Indian, carrying a muddy sack on his back, and this sack he now let fall with a thud on the portico.

  “What is it?” asked the general.

  “Lieutenant Ruben Bailleres at your command, General, reporting back from reconnaissance and night patrol.”

  “Come in, Lieutenant Bailleres, come in. We’re just having breakfast. Hey! Don Rosendo. Bring a chair for Lieutenant Bailleres.”

  The lieutenant now came into the room.

  “What’s happened to your face? Your nose shot off? Good God!” The general evidently found it funny and laughed. “Easier to kiss without your nose, Lieutenant. Was anyhow much too long.” At this he once more fell into guffaws of laughter. “What do you say, gentlemen? Aren’t we all of the opinion that our friend Bailleres’s nose was far too long for kissing in the old and well-tried military manner?”

  The officers did not laugh, but out of politeness drew their faces into sour grins.

  The laughter of his commanding officer threw the lieutenant into a blinding rage that at first he did not show, maintaining his composure.

  Meanwhile, an Indian boy brought in a chair, and the lieutenant sat down. A maidservant laid a place for him and gave him a plate.

  In the little rancho where the lieutenant and his companions had left their horses, he had been provided with two young men to accompany him on his way back and to bring the other horses and the sack he was to deliver to the general for breakfast. One of these two Indian lads—the one that had brought the sack—cowered on the portico and waited to be summoned. The other unsaddled the horses in the patio and handed them over to the soldiers.

  “Listen, Lieutenant,” the general addressed the new arrival, “at this hour of the day it’s no longer so cold that you have to go around with that snot rag wound around your face like an old granny. Or have you got a toothache? Speak up, man, what’s the matter?”

  On the way the lieutenant had washed off the blood and the encrusted dirt in a brook. The stump of his nose had ceased to bleed. At the little rancho he had cleaned the stump with aguardiente, and the wound was now dry, though hideous enough.

  The officer hesitated a few seconds; then he began to fumble under his chin to untie the knots of the red-flowered handkerchief. It had been his intention to tear off the handkerchief with a rapid gesture, as answer to the general’s remarks, which he found to be both insulting and stupid. However, the handkerchief stuck fast to both ears, and when the lieutenant tugged at it, it caused him agony.

  “Please, campañeros,” he said, “would you mind handing me that bottle?”

  An officer who sat next to him said, “You certainly need a drink. You look pale enough.” He poured him out a tumblerful of spirits.

  The lieutenant swallowed it in four great, gurgling gulps. Then he picked up the bottle and poured the contents over his scalp.

  “Hey, hey, you!” exclaimed the general. “I thought you’d been baptized long ago. And now, wasting this precious comiteco. It’s an unheard-of luxury out here in the wilds, where it’s so difficult to get the stuff and where—a-ah hombre, what’s that?”

  The lieutenant, when he felt that the brandy had sufficiently moistened and unstuck the cloth at his ears, had torn the handkerchief off with one brave jerk. Immediately the blood began to pour down his neck again. Thrusting forward his head at the general, he shouted, “That’s why I had my face bound up, General. How do you like it?”

  “Shot off too?”

  “Nothing was shot off. All cut off. By those savages, those animals.”

  “Lieutenant Bailleres, you are not going to tell me that I sent you out there on reconnaissance? Certainly not. You suggested it yourself. And I let you go. Where are the two lieutenants and the N.C.O. you took with you?”

  “The savages kept them there.”

  “As hostages?”

  “That I don’t know, General. Nothing was said to me about that. I was led out of their camp to carry a message which that filthy swine who calls himself General wanted to send to you.”

  “What does that criminal look like? A Chamula?”

  “No, General. He is not a Chamula. But he’s an Indian. How he can be their general, I can’t understand. He hobbles about like a lame dog. Can hardly stand upright. Don’t know how he can even grip a rifle barrel. No one respects him. They all address him as an equal. Eats like the rest of the gang with his fingers. Sleeps on a mat like the other swine. We can finish off that collection of animals in three hours. All scum.”

  “That’s no news to us, Lieutenant. I’d expected more.” The general began a gurgling laugh. “You’ve certainly lost your beauty, Lieutenant. And they were such lovely little ears. And it seems to me that that miserable general, who hobbles about like a lame dog, certainly had little enough respect for you. Perhaps he wasn’t quite so stupid as you thought him to be when you suggested disguising yourselves as peons in order to spy out their disposition, numbers, armaments, and plans. He saw through your disguise. And the next time you want to get yourself up in fancy dress, you’ll have to cover your whole head; a mask in front of your face won’t be much good to you. How can anyone be such a fool as to let a pack of robbers cut off his ears?”

  The lieutenant had certainly not expected pity, either from his commanding officer or from his comrades. He would have rejected it had anyone attempted to pity him, and he would have asserted that a soldier must make sacrifices since he is a soldier. But that no one acclaimed him as a hero, as a brave officer who had ventured into the camp of the enemy and had suffered pain and humiliation to earn himself a name in his battalion—that infuriated him. It was true that the general had not ordered him to make a reconnaissance. He had volunteered in order to be able to boast among his comrades, not because it was a vital duty. The general attached little or no importance to intelligence concerning the rebels. He did not take the revolutionaries seriously from a military point of view, and in many respects had regarded it as unworthy of his rank and position when he, the almighty general, had been sent out to deal with a gang of verminous peons. In his view, that could have been dealt with by a major with half a battalion. But someone in the War Ministry had ordained that he should attack the rebels with so and so many troops, and he had to obey the order. If three young officers had a yearning for adventure because they found it too boring to hang about in the dust and dirt, waiting for the rebels, that was their affair. He had given them his permission because they had asked for it. That their adventure had turned out disastrously for them was no concern of his. So why shouldn’t he now have the pleasure of teasing the lieutenant, of twitting him on his appearance, just as he would have twitted a young officer involved in an unhappy love affair?

  Lieutenant Bailleres, however, thought differently of the matter. And because his due recognition was denied him, he now thought that he, too, would have some fun, and this time at the expense of the general, who sat gobbling his gross breakfast with much gusto and noise and clattering, and who was more intent on the exact additions of salt, pepper, chilies, and tomato sauce than on the sufferings and injured pride of his lieutenant.

  “The so-called general gave me a message to bring to you, General,” said the Lieutenant, as soon as he had finished his broth.

  “This message will be a really funny one, gentlemen, and nonsensical as well. A message to me from lousy peons! Well, out with it, Lieutenant.” The general laughed loudly, choked and coughed.


  “The message is not exactly respectful, General.”

  “I didn’t ask you that, Lieutenant Bailleres. But I hope that at least it’s funny.” The general looked around at his officers and grinned. “Gentlemen, now we shall have some entertainment.”

  “Most certainly, General. But don’t hold me responsible. I’m only repeating to you what I was told. Your mother is an old whore.”

  “What’s that? What do you mean by this, Lieutenant Bailleres?”

  “You wanted to hear what the general of those stinking Indians had to say to you.”

  “That’s different. All right. Get on with it.”

  “And he wishes you to be told that he is going to slice you and all your army to ribbons and that he will have the pleasure of personally cutting off your nose, ears, and certain other appendages. He will not do you the favor of letting his men be massacred by you in the gorge near La Peña Alta, but instead he will take a wide detour around you and burn down all the large fincas and towns in your rear, and hang their inhabitants from the nearest trees and there let them hang in the hope that you will be degraded with dishonor by the War Ministry for laziness and for having your trousers too full to be able to attack him. And if you have a spark of courage and wish to show yourself a proper man and soldier, you will advance against him where he is waiting for you. But you are only an old broken-down, randy goat who doesn’t dare go out against lousy rebels and who only thinks of his stomach and his pay. You are a hundred times lousier and more oversexed than the filthiest and stupidest of his muchachos, who have guts enough to deal with you, your whole army, and all those who wear uniforms and trot around with revolvers, rifles, and machine guns, and who can whip you with merely a few rotten cudgels, and who, without even the help of broken machetes, will throw the whole lot of you onto the muck heap to be eaten by ulcerated dogs and old swine. And you’re of no use for anything except whoring and raping, and you’re only soldiers because, if you couldn’t wear a uniform, not one of you would be able to earn a crust of bread or a moldy tortilla by honest work. And you, General, are the greatest, stupidest, laziest, greediest scum that’s to be found upon earth; in your head you have nothing but a bladder full of lukewarm water; if anyone knocked against your shinbone it would snap like a worm-eaten twig because you’re riddled with disease. And, what’s more, you’re not really a general, but only have that rank today because your wife and all your daughters have gone to bed with all the people who have anything to say in the matter. And if your mother didn’t whore about all over the place, assisted by her daughters, you wouldn’t be even a sergeant, you’d be a mule driver. Forgive me, General, but you wanted to hear the message. And as a subordinate officer I had to obey your order, sir, and, as always, I am at your service and owe you my deepest respect. And now I have something to hand over to you which that louse-general sent you for your breakfast.”

  Neither the general nor any of the other officers, either those sitting at the table or those that had come in afterward and were now standing about, had interrupted the lieutenant. They let him talk himself out, as if he were a madman who could not be held responsible for what he said. But now that he had finished, they all realized that the lieutenant had not spoken for himself, but that, in actual fact, he had only repeated what the rebel general had told him to say. A single one of these epithets would have brought the lieutenant before a court-martial, and the whole speech would certainly have cost him at least 250 years in the military prison at Santiago. Quite apart from all this, the expressions he had used were such as an officer could scarcely have thought up himself, even if he had tried to. These were the reasons why neither the general nor the other officers had interrupted the lieutenant with a single word.

  Both the general and the officers had ceased to eat as soon as the first significant words had been uttered. First the general turned purple in the face, then pale, then purple again. The officers, particularly the younger ones, turned pale and remained pale. Every man in the room expected the general to draw his revolver and shoot the lieutenant. But for the same reason that the lieutenant had been left uninterrupted, not a man made a movement to shoot him or strike him in the face. The lieutenant had delivered his speech without a second’s hesitation. His fury gave him courage to deliver his message without excusing himself with a single interpolated apology. He reserved this for his conclusion. In the mood he was in, weary from a long ride through the night, humiliated by his disgrace, and weak from loss of blood and pain, it would have been a matter of indifference to him if the general had shot him. He would have taken it as a favor.

  The speech was followed by a silence of several seconds, which seemed like minutes to all those present. No one knew what to say or do in order to relax the oppressive tension.

  Then, however, this silence was sharply broken by the loud shout of Lieutenant Bailleres: “Hi, Chamaco, bring in the sack you had at your pommel.”

  The youth had squatted on the portico, waiting for someone to give him something to eat. Now he took up the sack beside him and carried it into the large room where the officers were assembled.

  “Here, General,” said Lieutenant Bailleres, “is the present which that mangy hound of a bandit captain sent you.”

  “A present? For me? From that swine?” The general had not yet quite recovered from the flood of shameless, obscene insults that had swept over him. “Throw the present onto the dung heap. What sort of a present can that scum of an insolent, godless Indian send to me? Probably a stolen ham that he’s poisoned. Put the sack on the dung heap, Chamaco.”

  The lad from the rancho picked up the sack again. But when he was already over the threshold and walking along the portico, the general was seized with curiosity to know what was in the sack. At the same time he thought the contents of the sack might yield some clue to the plans of the rebel leader. “Lieutenant Bailleres, do you know what is in the sack?”

  “No, General. I must honestly confess that on my wretched ride back, my mind was occupied with other things than looking to see what it might contain. Besides, sir, I didn’t feel justified in opening a closed sack, the contents of which had been sent to you or belong to you.”

  “Quite right, Lieutenant Bailleres. Thank you.”

  He beckoned to one of the junior officers: “Call that boy with the sack back again.”

  The lad returned and let the sack fall on the hard-packed clay floor of the room. All present stared at the sack is if they would guess what it contained. It might really be poisoned ham, or coconuts or pumpkins. Perhaps—and this thought occurred to all simultaneously—perhaps it was bombs that would explode the moment they rolled out of the sack.

  A captain gave expression to this thought: “Sir, we should be careful. It appears to be bombs.”

  “Don’t be so senseless, Captain. If it were bombs, the boy with the sack would never be here.”

  The officers laughed, and the captain made a face.

  “Come on. Untie the sack, Chamaco,” the general commanded the lad.

  The youth squatted down beside the sack and took the knots between his teeth in order to loosen them, so tightly were they tied. This took too long for Lieutenant Ochoa. He seized a knife from the table and with one stroke sliced through the bast thongs.

  “Shake out the sack, Chamaco,” said the general, rising from his chair to get a better view across the table.

  The boy took the sack by its bottom corners, heaved it up, and out tumbled the severed heads of Lieutenant Bailleres’s three companions.

  “They’ll pay bitterly for this, those savages, those barbaric murderers!” yelled the general, when he had recovered from the shock. “And my holy mother, mi santa madre, my own mother—for him to speak her name with his filthy mouth, and sully it! I’ll tear the skin off him alive, slowly and day after day, dragging him behind an ass. Those beasts, those wild animals. What have I always said and advocated, gentlemen? I repeat it, and will continue to repeat it until at last the government
listens to me: exterminate all the Indians, destroy them mercilessly like the most poisonous creatures we have in the country. And as long as we haven’t swept everything that’s Indian from the face of the earth, so long will there be neither peace nor rest in this beautiful land. To sully my beloved mother, this filth, this lousy, ragged, stinking native! And here, our comrade, Lieutenant Bailleres, threatened with his life, and three of our comrades slaughtered in a bestial manner. What did the mangy hound have to say to me? I can’t thrash him where he’s waiting for me? He—waiting for me? He, a lousy swine of a rebel waiting for me? Such a worm, such a shooter of dog filth, and he says to me that I’m hiding from him and won’t come out of my hole to tear the hide off him. Gentlemen, with one single battalion I shall deal with that muck heap. And what’s more, gentlemen, you can all spit in my face if I don’t utterly destroy that whole verminous gang within three days. But to that dog of a stinking Indian I won’t grant the privilege of being beaten to death with cudgels like all the other riffraff. I’ll bring him back myself, his syphilitic bones strung tight together, dragging him behind an old, lame mule. Colonel Viaña, you will take over command of the troops remaining here during my absence.”