by B. TRAVEN
And the general said to the captain, who sat on the neighboring bunk, yawning and scratching himself, “I’ll teach that cavalry sergeant a lesson for not looking after the horses better. Hey, God’s damnation, where’s my gun? I wasn’t so drunk that I don’t know where I put my belt with my revolver. I remember clearly I hung it over the end of the bed so as to have it handy.”
The general searched right, searched left, searched under his bunk, searched along the wooden pegs on the plaster wall, fumbled all around his stomach, and then said, with a look of amazement, “Well, where the Devil did I sling my artillery last night? Tell me, Captain, was I really so drunk that I didn’t know what I was doing?”
“Of course not, sir. I had the impression that you were as sober as a monkey before Mass.”
“Whether a monkey is always sober before Mass, I beg leave to doubt,” replied the general, standing up and peering down his legs in the hope of finding that his revolver was dangling between them. “But monkey or no monkey at Mass, my gun’s gone—that’s one thing I do know.”
“Perhaps your servant’s taken it to clean,” said a lieutenant.
“Then he seems to have collected all our revolvers for cleaning,” said another officer, who for the last few minutes had been hunting, with the help of a flickering candle, under the mat, in his boots, and beneath his pile of clothes.
Outside the house, in the wide patio, there was the usual teeming confusion of men who have just wakened. It was still pitch dark, but at several places in the patio small fires were now burning, which gave some illumination to the courtyard.
“You, Claudio!” came a loud voice from out of the swarm. “Have you seen my damned gun? The Devil knows where it’s gone.”
“Don’t ask me, you fool; for the last half hour I’ve been doing nothing but look for my own pea shooter. And I can’t find the bayonet, either.”
A sergeant roared out angrily across the mob, “Which of you lumps of dirt has knocked off the pile of rifles? There’s not a sign of the bloody things.”
The confusion grew.
Simultaneously, from all corners of the patio, came always the same furious cry: “Which son of a whore has taken my rifle?” And again: “Where’s my gun, damn you all?” And from another corner: “I swear that when I catch the bastard that hid my rifle, I’ll knock his teeth down his throat. To hell with the whole lot of you, where’s my damned gun gone? It was right by my side the whole night like a frigid woman, and now its vanished.”
The bugler blew fall-in for morning parade. There was a gray tinge of dawn in the sky. When a count was taken, it appeared that 130 rifles, eight officers’ revolvers, two machine guns, four boxes of machine-gun ammunition, 150 loaded bandoliers, an indeterminate number of bayonets, knives, and small hatchets, and about thirty sacks of corn were missing. When the cavalry began to ride on to parade, the riders slid from side to side on their horses, and the horses, becoming frightened, ran wild. It appeared that all the saddle girths had been cut three quarters through so that they would break as soon as a horse began to gallop or became unruly.
“What sort of a half-baked gang of soldiers d’you think you are?” screamed the general. “Has such a thing ever happened before in the army? Letting your weapons be snatched away from under you? I’ll have the lot of you given three months’ punishment drill till you sweat blood from every pore. And a man that’s lost his machine gun will get an extra ten days on top of that. I’ll teach you what your equipment’s worth, you scum. Every man who’s lost his rifle will cut himself a cudgel, and with cudgels only we shall now attack those Indian swine who stole your weapons from under you. Otherwise, by God, I’ll have the whole lot of you shot here on the spot. Dismissed for breakfast!”
“And as for you, gentlemen,” said the general, as his officers sat down for breakfast. “I perceive that you, too, have no revolvers. What have you to say in excuse?”
The officers who very well knew that not only they, but also their commanding general, had lost all their revolvers without a trace, said nothing at first. They merely tried to smile at their general with a conspiratorial twinkle. The general, however, responded with a sour grimace that excluded all further familiarity.
A lieutenant who seemed quickly to have interpreted that sour and forbidding expression looked at the general’s right hip and with a wink incited his comrades to follow the direction of his glance.
At the general’s right hip hung a regulation .45 army revolver. They all had the impression that the general had hitherto carried not an army revolver, but a regulation automatic. However, each thought that he must have been mistaken and that the general, for this expedition against the rebels, had exchanged his automatic for a revolver without any of them having hitherto noticed it.
Of course it was easy enough for the general to deliver a stern reprimand to anyone who had had his gun stolen during the night. Immediately after he had searched for a few seconds and been unable to find his own automatic, and when he remembered the disturbance during the night, he had had the glimmering of an idea of what might have happened. Without searching further, he had hurried out of the room and gone to the door of the second room in the house, where the ranchero and his family slept. On the previous evening he had noticed that the ranchero possessed a nearly new heavy .45. And for a sum that he forthwith paid in cash, sufficient indeed to buy the ranchero two new revolvers and still leave something over for a few boxes of ammunition, the general secured for himself this revolver with the stipulation that the ranchero give his word of honor to betray nothing of the transaction.
“I ask again, gentlemen, what have you to say in excuse?” The general repeated his question with all the bitterness that he felt at having had such a trick played on him by the rebels. What, however, fanned this bitterness to a blaze of anger was not the actual theft of the weapons, but the fact that these filthy, verminous Indians had thus dared to attack himself and his own Federal troops, the pride of the nation, that they had shown so little respect for the flag that had been raised in the patio; and that they had cut this flag into small tatters and smeared it with the customary fresh excrement.
The next-senior officer stood up, saluted, and said, “With your permission, sir, I wish to state for my comrades and myself that we have nothing to say in mitigation.”
The general looked sharply and menacingly at his youngest lieutenant. “You, Lieutenant Manero, you were on camp duty last night.”
“Correct, sir. I was on camp duty.”
“We will deal with that, Lieutenant Manero, later.”
“A sus órdenes, mi general!”
The general nodded.
At this moment the maids brought in plates of sliced papayas for the breakfast fruit.
The general, who was the first to be served, gazed at his plate with a vacant expression as though oblivious of it. He nodded again. Then he reached mechanically for spoon and fork, cut off a piece of the juicy fruit, and pushed it into his mouth, which he opened uncommonly wide as if wishing to insert a piece that was three times the size.
As he gently pulped the fruit between his gums and his arched tongue, in order to savor its full deliciousness, he nodded once more. When he had emptied his plate and had to wait a few minutes before the eggs were brought in, he said, looking at each of the officers in turn, “According to immemorial military custom and precept, which admittedly has never been incorporated in military regulations, I should now be under the obligation of taking an honorable farewell of this world by sending a well-placed bullet through my head.”
A loud protest from the officers followed, as was indeed their duty vis- à -vis a superior. “We’re not at war, sir.” “That’s just a stupid old tradition.” “We’re modern soldiers, General.” “That’s moldy old superstition.”
Lieutenant Manero particularly distinguished himself with a resounding and energetic: “I, sir—I alone am to blame. I am the one who should take my farewell. I’ve failed in my duty. I beg your perm
ission to make an honorable end.”
“What a man! What a figure of an officer! He would go down forever in the history of the battalion as the officer who preferred death to dishonor. That was the material the officers of this glorious army were made of. So long as such a spirit prevailed among the officers, there was not the slightest danger of the nation’s possible decline. Without workers and similar rogues who are always grumbling about hunger, always trying to undermine the government, a nation could very well flourish and bask in the well-earned respect of all other civilized people on earth; but without such officers as Lieutenant Manero, no nation could survive for a day.
That was immediately and properly recognized by all officers present, who burst out in a thrice-repeated “Viva, Manero!” while all, with the exception of the general, stood up.
The general interrupted this exaggerated ovation with a curt “Lieutenant Manero, I do not give my permission for any such childish nonsense. Understand? And what is more, as your commanding officer, I forbid you to use any weapons against yourself. This battalion is on active service. Suicide on active service is equivalent to desertion in the face of the enemy. Do you understand me, Lieutenant Manero?”
“A sus órdenes, mi general.” The lieutenant had stood up and now saluted his general.
It was an extremely honorable, unquestionable, and, from the military point of view, satisfactory solution of the situation. So far as logic was concerned, the impregnability of this solution left nothing to be desired. The general could not give an order that he himself was not willing to carry out. An order emanating from him applied to all under his command. He was part of this command. Suicide on active duty was shameless and dishonorable desertion. And a general commanding a detachment was the last person who should commit an act of desertion. Rifles could be replaced. Not so a general. That, too, had to be taken into consideration. So there was nothing for it but to finish breakfast with the customary enjoyment and without impairing digestion with thoughts of suicide.
When breakfast was over and even the toothpicks had been used up, there was no further excuse for sitting longer at the table.
The general called several soldiers to carry out the hard, rough benches on which the officers had been seated, and here on the portico he summoned all the officers and sergeants to a council of war.
“Sergeant Morones, how many rifles have we left?” he asked the senior sergeant whom he had entrusted with the counting of all remaining available weapons and ammunition.
In the general’s opinion, there were enough to warrant proceeding with the projected advance. The muchachos, even if they possessed three times as many guns as the Federals, knew so little about handling these weapons that, as all the officers unanimously believed, one armed soldier could easily take on twenty armed rebels. These Indians, as he well knew and as all his officers knew, too, held the butt toward the enemy instead of against their own shoulders. Those of the insurgents, however, who knew enough to point the muzzle toward the enemy always gripped the butt between their knees, or rested it against their stomachs, or else laid the gun flat on the ground and squatted down to fire it in the hope that the bullet would go in the exact direction desired. Those ignorant Indians would be more at home with stones or arrows, for they believed that modern weapons fired at the selected target entirely of their own accord. That was clear as daylight, and every officer and sergeant had had personal experience from their numerous battles against strikers, insurrectionists, and rebellious Indian peasants. In this case it was no different, particularly since the fellow who called himself general of the rebels behaved and acted like an ignorant ape. In support of which view, there was the report of a reliable eyewitness, Lieutenant Bailleres.
The number of the rebels was also unknown. According to all reports, and taking into account those who had been killed in battle and executed, there could not now be many more than a hundred or 120 men at most, of whom a considerable number must be wounded and an equally large number incapable of handling a weapon or of being dangerous to regular soldiers.
Also, after the attack, the soldiers would recover their stolen weapons, and in addition to their own guns they would get the weapons that had been previously stolen or had otherwise fallen into the hands of the rebels, and thereafter the battalion could march back to headquarters with its honor vindicated.
Everything the general suggested at this officers’ council of war was agreed to without demur, because it was militarily correct and, from the point of view of honor, unavoidable. “Honor always comes first, gentlemen!” repeated the general on every occasion when he did not know what else to say, what orders to give, or what to do to advance the discussion.
Sergeant Morones, who was attending the meeting together with the other sergeants, was a great favorite with the general, owing to his long service and experience. In fact, the general regarded the sergeant as virtually an officer, and he had long ago sent in his recommendation to the War Ministry that Sergeant Morones should be promoted to lieutenant and thus inducted into the officers’ corps. This recommendation would certainly be approved.
In all matters Morones took far more liberties than the junior officers who had just come from the military academy and who were regarded as green, still wet behind the ears.
It was Sergeant Morones who now said, “May I have your permission to speak, sir?”
“Speak, Sergeant Morones. That’s what we’re here for, to discuss the situation and make suggestions. Of course, there’s not much to discuss in this instance. We shall advance and thrash those worthless, impertinent vagabonds once and for all. The only reason why we are conferring at all is that we lack weapons and our ammunition is not by any means too plentiful. Well, what have you to say, Sergeant?”
“I think, sir, that there’s something not quite right in this whole affair, if I may put it like that, sir.”
“Well, what? What do you mean, Sergeant Morones?” The general spoke with abrupt harshness. He feared that Sergeant Morones might even be going to criticize his brilliant suggestions or, what was worse, have discovered a flaw in his plans. But he was also aware that the sergeant had been well trained, particularly as a soldier, and would be most careful not to suggest flaws in the plans of a superior officer.
In this respect young lieutenants were tactless and blundering. At times they even came forward with half-a-dozen bright ideas that they certainly had not learned at the cadet school, where instruction was still based on the campaigns of Caesar, Hannibal, and Alexander; the methods of Napoleon were regarded as modern. No, they had discovered their ultra-novel ideas in a book on modern French tactics that they had half understood, not digested at all, and then attempted to bring out in order to show off their brilliance at times when their commanding officer was working out plans for maneuvers and had ordered the young officers to do the same in order to enjoy their stupidity.
But the general’s face lit up contentedly when the sergeant, almost like a pupil, asked quite innocently, “Why, sir, do you think the rebels did not murder all our men in the night? They crept among us so quietly and light-footedly to steal our weapons that they could easily have cut our throats as well. And because they didn’t do that, sir, I thought there must be something not quite right here.”
The general smiled. With this paternal smile still on his fat, rosy lips, he glanced along the row of officers. Then he nodded at the sergeant and said indulgently and patronizingly, “Sergeant Morones, your question and your observation do you credit. They show that you are an excellent soldier, able to think for yourself and weigh unusual occurrences such as last night’s. However, the question is easily answered, Sergeant Morones.”
The officers, none of whom had thought this remarkable behavior of the rebels worth mentioning, striking though it was, waited with expectant faces for their commanding officer’s explanation. At this moment they realized the importance of the sergeant’s remark. The general, however, entirely overlooked the point. His explanation
was an example of the atrophied powers of thought of all those who occupy a public office or a position of responsibility under a dictatorship. Intelligent men are unable to hold any appointment for six months under such a regime.
“Quite simple, gentlemen. There’s nothing simpler on earth than to explain the behavior of those swine. They knew very well that the death penalty is inflicted on anyone endangering the life of any person representing authority. That includes not only El Caudillo, but all officers, soldiers, and police forces. Even an attempt on the life of a man in authority, be it no more than a threat, is punishable with shooting or hanging. And that, gentlemen, is what these shameless rogues are afraid of. They know very well that stealing weapons in peacetime is punished like any other theft, with a few months in prison, nothing more. That is why not so much as a hair of our men was touched. These sons of bitches are yellow cowards, and they all behave just as one would expect of such riffraff. In the bright light of day, when God’s sun is shining, they creep into their stinking holes. That is also the reason, and the only reason, why they have not marched against us and come to where we were willingly waiting for them in order to inflict on them their long deserved thrashing and then to hang them. They’re brave enough with defenseless men, like Lieutenant Bailleres here and our three unfortunate comrades. But these louse-eaters lack the guts to meet an honest soldier openly in battle. That’s clear to you, I hope, Sergeant Morones?”
“Yes, sir, thank you very much, it’s quite clear to me now.” The sergeant said this with all the respect due from a subordinate to such a high ranking officer. But his tone involuntarily betrayed the fact that he was no wiser than before and that he thought differently. As a dutiful and experienced soldier who, moreover, knew that his promotion to officer depended on always conceding one’s superiors to be in the right, always being tactful toward higher-ups, and not concerning oneself with matters not expressly entrusted to one, he carefully avoided even mentioning any doubts that still lingered in his mind after his commanding officer had expounded his opinion.
