by B. TRAVEN
When the teacher had eaten and sighed with deep satisfaction, he said, “My name is Villalva, Gabino Villalva, at your service. My grateful thanks for the meal.”
“And what shall we do with him now, Professor?” asked Eladio, who had brought in the half-starved teacher. “Is he a spy or not? If not, then I’ll go back to my sentry post.”
“I’ll deal with him, Eladio, and you can go back to your post. At all events, it was right of you to have brought him here. One never knows who and what anyone is that comes creeping past our camp.”
“So that’s it, amigos,” said the teacher. “You, too, have your troubles with the bandit gangs that are swarming about here and reducing all the finqueros to desperation. You’re right. Be careful. They’re an evil crowd who roam about day and night and give no one any rest. I see you’ve got a few dozen rifles hanging around. That’s necessary in times like these.”
General had come in and heard the last few words. “Times are bad. You’re right there, hombre. And all the worse since one doesn’t know who are the real bandits in the land.”
“Well spoken, amigo. That’s right,” said the teacher, turning toward General, who had now come nearer and sat down with the group. “Well spoken. In these times, one never knows who’s ruling and who’s ruled.”
“That’s why we say, ‘Que muera El Caudillo! Abajo la dictadura!’ ” intervened Andreu.
The teacher looked at him. Then he looked at all the others who sat around and watched him leisurely drink his coffee, sip by sip and pensively as if he’d never before drunk such good coffee.
His glance finally rested questioningly on Andreu. “Why do you say ‘Death to the Leader! Down with Dictatorship!’? That’s what I’d like to know.”
“Because we’re not free and can’t live freely as long as the dictatorship muzzles and oppresses the people,” said one of the muchachos.
“What leader and what dictatorship do you mean?” asked the teacher, astonished.
“Every child in the land knows who we mean,” said Andreu. “There’s no need for you to act so stupid and innocent. You can speak freely here, absolutely freely. There are no informers or police spies here.”
Professor, with a mistrustful look in his eyes, said to the teacher, “Now I’d really like to know what to make of you. First you talk one way and then you talk another. What’s the truth about you?”
“Have I landed on the moon, or in Africa, or in the middle of China, or where?” asked the teacher, looking at each in turn with a stare of incomprehension.
“Of course we mean El Caudillo, the leader and ruler, Don Prudencio Dominguez. Who else?” called out one of the muchachos.
“I certainly would never have guessed that amigos,” retorted the teacher. “If you mean the Don Prudencio Dominguez who exploited this country for the last thirty or God knows how many years, you’re very much behind the times; it was eight months ago that he abdicated because he couldn’t hang on any longer. He’s now in London; that’s a town in France.” “England,” interrupted Professor.
“England, Spain, or Holland, for all I care. Anyhow, he’s gone away.”
Andreu turned to Professor and said softly, “Many months ago? Then he couldn’t have been in power any more when we left the monterías.”
“So it seems, boy. What a joke!” he said, as if to himself.
“What a heavenly joke!” he now exclaimed aloud and shouted with laughter.
“Joke?” said the teacher. “There’s not much to joke about nowadays, not anywhere in this country.”
“Who’s in power now?” asked Professor.
“That’s what I’d very much like to know,” replied the teacher. “That’s what everyone in the country would like to know, poor and rich, capitalists and workers.”
“But there must be a government,” interposed General.
“A? A government?” The teacher made a wry grimace. “There are now five thousand governments. Five thousand politicians are shouting and yelling, and each one has his own government. There’s not a parliament; there are ten, twenty, forty, all at the same time. Each state hasn’t got one governor, but seven or eight, simultaneously.”
“Isn’t there a party to which the people could rally in order to set up a popularly elected government?”
“There are parties, too. Countless parties. Constitutionalists, Institutionalists, Revisionists, Reformists, Re-electionists, Anti-reelectionists, Laborites, Communists, Communalists, Imperialists, Anti-imperialists, Indo-Americanists, Agrarians, Dominguezists, Separatists, Regionalists, Continentalists, Unionists, and about two hundred more ists. It’s impossible to remember the names. Every day new ones crop up, and every day there vanish some that yesterday had the most followers.”
“And the army? What’s the army doing, then?” asked General.
“In the army not a general knows who’s in command, whose orders to obey and whose not. Every general, colonel, and major receives twenty different telegrams a day giving orders, and he doesn’t know which one to follow. So he simply sits where he is with his men and draws his pay, no matter who’s providing it. Besides, there are now about ten thousand generals who gave themselves the title overnight and then went off with their men. Most of these generals have no more than twenty men under their command. And all these ten thousand generals are at one another’s throats, each one claiming to support a different party and the next day fighting the party on whose side he was yesterday.”
“Then that is really all that El Caudillo, in nearly forty years of merciless dictatorship, achieved?” exclaimed Professor, jumping up and flinging up his arms as he was wont to do when he switched from an ordinary conversation to a harangue addressed to all. “That’s what the dictatorship achieved. That’s exactly what everyone who had any understanding of humankind prophesied a hundred times, proclaimed, wrote, printed, and thundered forth, and, for that, was martyred and slaughtered like a sick dog. Chaos. That’s what he achieved, that idiot of a dictator, that madman of a leader. He has created chaos. Who are these who have now arisen and are rending the people in all directions? They are the very people who were born under his dictatorship, who were educated under his dictatorship, who grew up under his dictatorship, who were thundered into silence under his dictatorship, who, under his dictatorship, had no rights and no opportunities to think for themselves, to educate themselves in political thought. That’s why they’re now all shouting. And everyone who shouts is shouting his own tune because he doesn’t know any other and doesn’t hear any other and can’t learn any other. That’s just as natural as it is for a stream to run down the mountain and not up.”
The hall had filled with men and women, crowding closely together to give all a chance to hear what Professor was saying. The majority, indeed, did not entirely understand what Professor was talking about, because they had not heard the beginning.
“And that’s the bitter end of the dictatorship, a disgrace our country will suffer under for a hundred years to come. I have spoken, muchachos.”
“Bravo, Professor!” echoed from all sides. “Abajo la dictadura! Tierra y Libertad!”
The teacher, plainly inured to such speeches through newspapers, brochures, leaflets, manifestoes, and programs that now flooded the country, so much so that they had now begun to bore him, continued to sip calmly at his coffee and rolled a cigarette from some tobacco a muchacho had offered him.
Professor sat down and said to the teacher, “This is really great news that you bring us. We’ve been so far out of touch that we couldn’t know what was happening in the world.”
“Maybe. Only it’s not clear to me why all of you here shout so wildly about Tierra y Libertad. You’ve got all the tierra you need, and as far as freedom’s concerned, it seems to me you’ve got more freedom here than anywhere else, much more freedom than even I have. In truth, I have no freedom. I’m a slave. A school slave. The head of the department orders where I’m to go, and I have to go there, and if I don’t go then
I have even less to eat than I do now. And what I get to eat now never fills me, with the exception, of course, of today,” he added, with a grin. “I’ve never been so deliciously and gloriously full in my life. Today and here, for the first time. For that I must indeed say ‘Gracias,’ and it comes from my heart. No, really, it comes from my stomach.”
He fidgeted around uncertainly on his low seat. “Bueno, I think I’ve just enough time to get to the next ranchito before nightfall. So I must now be on my way, with your permission. Bitter as it is to my soul, I cannot longer impose my scrawny cadaver on your hospitality.”
Looking around, he beckoned to the Indian boy who was accompanying him, gesturing to him to bring the horses and replace the packs on the mules.
Professor gazed at him pensively, as if hoping to discover from his face his character and future plans. Plainly satisfied with his scrutiny, he glanced across questioningly at General, Celso, Andreu, and Colonel. Apparently his look was answered in the sense he had expected.
At the same moment that the teacher stood up to depart, Professor prodded him gently on the shoulder. The teacher sat down again.
“Tell me, Gabino Villalva, profesor rural ambulante, why don’t you stay here with us? Permanently, I mean. We could well do with a second teacher. One for the older children and one for the small ones—and Andreu will help, too. Of course, the salary will sometimes be lacking. That depends on how much hard cash the finqueros have at home. But, salary or no salary, I promise you that as long as you’re with us, you’ll always have a full stomach.”
“If that’s so, friend and colleague, what do I want with salary? A salary has never filled my belly. Of course I’ll stay here. But what’s the name of this village?”
“Solipaz,” answered Professor.
“Sun and peace. A wonderful name for a village. But, in God’s name, who are you actually?”
Professor bent close to the teacher’s ear and whispered a word into it. Aloud he said, with an open laugh, “Don’t repeat it, even if you’re asked. We speak it only in special, very special circumstances. And since we now know, officially know, that the dictator has fallen, what we were has changed to what we now are, officially are, no matter what kind of government finally occupies the palace.”
“So that’s it. I might almost have guessed it. But times being as they are at present, it’s difficult to guess right. Of course I shall now stay here. This is what I’ve wanted since I was eight years old. And I had to be thirty-seven before I could find you.”
He stood up. Drew himself up. Held his clenched fist on high and shouted in greeting, “Muchachos, Tierra y Libertad!”
And the muchachos answered with one voice: “Tierra y Libertad!”
The Jungle Novels
Government
The Carreta
March to the Montería
The Troza
The Rebellion of the Hanged
General from the Jungle
Other Books by B. Traven Published in English
The Death Ship
The Cotton-Pickers
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
The Bridge in the Jungle
The White Rose
Stories by the Man Nobody Knows
The Night Visitor and Other Stories
The Creation of the Sun and the Moon
About the Author
B. Traven (1882–1969) was a pen name of one of the most enigmatic writers of the twentieth century. The life and work of the author, whose other aliases include Hal Croves, Traven Torsvan, and Ret Marut, has been called “the greatest literary mystery of the twentieth century.” Of German descent and Mexican nationality, he has sold more than thirty million books, in more than thirty languages. Films of his work include The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which won three Oscars; Macario, the first Mexican film to be nominated for an Oscar; and The Death Ship, a cult classic in Germany. You can sign up for author updates here.
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Also by
About the Author
Copyright
Published in the United States
by Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc.
Our eBooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension. 5442, or by e-mail at [email protected].
Library of Congress catalog card number: 72–81292
eISBN 978-0-374-72255-5
First American Century Series edition, 1974
