by B. TRAVEN
“Very well, Don Severo. I’ll go with you.”
Her tears had almost completely disappeared. She carefully wiped her face with her damp handkerchief and did what every woman tries in order to appear fresh and pretty when she has just won the man who can keep her from dying of hunger.
Don Severo half opened the door and called: “Faldón! Help the señorita get her bundles ready. We’ll leave very early tomorrow morning. Have them get the mules ready and send me one of the men to help me.”
El Faldón made a significant gesture to the other foremen, pointing at the room where Aurea and Don Severo were. Unfortunately, Don Félix was sitting at the table with them, for otherwise their tongues would have been wagging. A moment later Don Severo joined them, shutting the bedroom door behind him.
“She could have come with me too,” Don Felix said.
“Sure. But with that woman of yours things would have turned out very badly. Tomorrow we would have had another funeral, perhaps two. And well you know it, little brother.”
Don Felix filled a glass, drank the contents, slammed his fist on the table, and exclaimed: “You’re right, Severo. It’s better that things should be as you’ve decided.”
All the foremen, or at least the principal ones—the majordomos—had been called to headquarters to be informed of the new division of districts, necessary because of Don Acacio’s death, and also to learn about the areas they would have under their charge.
Don Severo had been managing the north region. Now he took over the west and a part of the south, so as not to overburden Don Felix, who would continue to carry on the general administration of the camps. The regions allocated to Don Severo were still poorly cleared off and they demanded the full attention and all the effort of an experienced man.
Furthermore, the central office was relatively free of work for the time being. As a consequence of the floods, no mail was arriving. Don Felix therefore could manage the north, south, and east regions, the ones nearest the clump of buildings around the office. He also took over the districts on the other side of the river, where cutting was to be started the next week. It was unnecessary for Don Felix to give all his time to them—the operations there would not be important enough to keep him away from administrative tasks, which could not possibly be entrusted to underlings, being of basic importance in a sensibly administered camp. The “village” was on the bank of the river. All the tree trunks brought in by the smaller streams passed that point, which was the counting station. The rainy season, which, though it had been raining sporadically for some time, was actually just beginning, would soon bring with it constant activity.
The village was also the meeting place of the boatmen in charge of the floating logs. Their job was to prevent the logs from piling up at certain places and thus slowing down or stopping their forward movement, or even diverting the river. It was absolutely necessary to prevent the forming of such jams. This was dangerous work—much more dangerous than in temperate zones. The men had to slither in among the trunks to discover what was causing the jam—it might well be just one log—move it into a good position, and get it into the current again. But often while the men were balancing themselves among the logs, trying to get them in order and to even up the movement, enormous masses of water that had accumulated somewhere upstream as the result of a torrential downpour swept down upon them with a roar and the irresistible power of an avalanche, thundering against the log jams and sucking up the men at work on them. The men could see the flood coming, but they had to be exceptionally agile to escape in time to prevent the logs from pounding against their bodies and turning them into shapeless pulp. Most often their skulls were bashed in before they could make the first jump toward safety, and moments later only some blood-tinted spume showed for a fraction of a second the spot where their bodies had been torn to pieces. The more fortunate among them, those able to reach the water and try to get to the bank by swimming underwater, generally drowned. It was not uncommon for twenty men in a gang of fifty to perish.
Downstream, in the populated regions, little motorboats were in use, and watching the log movement could even be fun, but that pleasure was unknown to the men in the camps.
In the downstream villages free peasants or professional boatmen were employed to haul in the logs and stack them in safe places.
The village nearest to the camps lay a long distance downstream. Ten leagues below the camps, nevertheless, on each side of the river, a mounted armed gang was posted, watching to prevent any of the men from slipping by astride a floating log, reaching some village, and fleeing. It was impossible to escape at night. The watchers knew this well and contented themselves with keeping a lookout during the day. At night the gloomy banks of the river, matted with underbrush, concealed too many dangers.
When Don Severo arrived at the principal camp, there were about four weeks to go until the date fixed by him and Don Félix for completing the launching of the logs. It was raining heavily nearly all day, but the arroyos and streams that cut through the region still were not high enough for logs to be launched on them from the distant corners of the camp. It was necessary to wait until the beds of the streams were so saturated that they had become impermeable, making the streams overflow and thus permitting the launching.
On the other hand, the longer Don Severo waited to launch the logs, the more tons of wood he would have, for the cutting did not stop. To obtain the maximum number of tons was his sole preoccupation, as it was of his brother Don Félix.
Three days after the famous conference everybody had forgotten the resolution about treating the men with more consideration. The foremen, who received a handsome commission for every ton delivered, as well as Don Félix and Don Severo (who were interested only in accumulating all the wood possible), loosed themselves again on the ox-drivers and cutters with the same harshness as before. What had happened to Don Acacio had been forgotten before the worms began to enjoy his remains.
Besides, they were far from certain that Don Acacio had fallen under the blows of one of the men. At the best, some rat of a foreman might have had it in for him for bad treatment in the past or because Don Acacio had taken his woman while he was away at work. For Don Acacio had never despised the forbidden pleasures, and Don Félix and Don Severo had known what to expect of him.
9
For a whole week Celso had sacrificed two hours each day to help Cándido produce his four tons the same as the others.
“You don’t need to help me any more, my friend,” Cándido often said to him. “You’re using up your own time, and they’ll whip you because of me.”
“Don’t worry, brother. Aren’t we both from the same village?”
“That’s true, we’re both Chamulas, and we’re neighbors.”
“You see! That’s reason enough. And maybe I’ll have another reason soon.”
Cándido smiled, put down his ax, and lighted a cigarette. “Don’t get impatient, little brother. She hasn’t any sweetheart. We were talking again last night, and she told me that she likes you. But you know that among us these things aren’t arranged overnight. What I can tell you is that you don’t displease Modesta.”
“How her name pleases me! I don’t think there’s a prettier one.”
“You’ve told me so many times. But even before you had spoken to me about her, I had already understood everything.”
Cándido picked up his ax and again set to work.
That night after he had finished his supper Celso rolled some cigarettes, put them in his shirt pocket, and went down to the river. He sat on the sandy bottom and moved forward into the water until only his head stuck out. That way he could smoke. This was the only way to kill the ticks that had penetrated beneath his skin and were too small to be pulled out. Too, the water was like a balm: it soothed the bites of the mosquitoes and horseflies that had harassed him during the day. The insects were particularly voracious during the rainy season, and there were far more of them then. While he was submerged, th
e smoke of his cigarette protected his face and head from the mosquitoes that swarmed in clouds over the riverbanks. Celso was not the only one refreshing himself like this. Near both banks he saw other men resting, some of them squatting in groups, some by themselves. After five minutes he saw a man come and take up a spot near him. It was Martín Trinidad.
“Hey, Celso, pass me your cigarette. I want to light mine.”
“Why didn’t you get it going before you came into the water?”
“I did, but it went out.”
“All right. But tell me—where do you hail from? Who are you?”
“I’m going to tell you, Celso, and you’ll be the only one to know it. I’m from Pachuca, where the silver mines are. I used to be a schoolmaster there.”
“Hah! A schoolmaster, and now a cutter in the camps?”
“Yes indeed. What of it? I’ve never known how to keep my mouth shut. I always told the truth to the miners, who, for the most part, were fathers of the little ones I taught in the school.”
“You told them the truth? What truth?” Celso asked suspiciously.
“I told them the truth about the dictator and about the people’s rights. I told them that no man, however clever he may be, however convinced that he has the right to rule a whole people, has the right to take away freedom of thought and expression or to crush other men’s wills. For every man has the right to say what he thinks, and every man also has the duty to teach, to explain to the rest that they are being badly governed and wronged. And even though a man is wrong in the eyes of others, he has a perfect right to say what he thinks and how he believes things can be made to work well.”
“Is that what you said to the Pachuca miners?” asked Celso, looking at him sidewise. But it was now too dark for him to make out the expression on Martín Trinidad’s face.
“I told them that and many other things besides. I advised them to stop going down into the mines, not to go on working for the profit of the owners and of nobody else. I advised them to ask for an increase in wages and for permission to form a union to help them make collective bargains, because a man by himself can’t do anything. You know. One is shot, another is dragged off to jail, a third is beaten to death. But if they all join together to fight for their rights, they won’t be shot, because then there would be nobody left to work and to extract the precious metal from the ground. And if the mine owners want silver, they’ll have to pay the miners’ demands in silver.”
“And what did the miners say to your advice?”
“When they heard it they refused to work. The soldiers came and shot ten of them. The others went back to work because there was no union to get the miners together.”
“And you? Why didn’t they shoot you? That’s very strange, don’t you think?” Celso asked, his suspicions again aroused.
“No, after beating a miner until they made him tell who had put those ideas in his head, they locked me in the jail and told me that I wouldn’t be as lucky as the ten men I had misled, who had been shot. For three days they tortured me. When one of the sergeants torturing me got tired, another one took his place, and so on. Tomorrow I’ll show you the hundreds of welts on my body. They wanted to make me shout ‘Long live Don Porfirio!’ I refused because I hate him and don’t want anything but his death. Every time I could open my mouth it was to shout: ‘Down with Porfirio! Death to the tyrant! Down with the exploiters! Long live the people’s revolution!’ And each time I shouted they lashed my face.”
Celso asked: “And how were you able to escape?”
“I didn’t escape. How could I have escaped when I was half dead? They took me to the railroad station with a hundred other men, all young students, teachers, workers, and peasants. They locked us all into one freight car, stacked one on top of another, without ventilation or light. For food they threw us a handful of moldy tortillas, which we rushed for, because we were all ravenous. A few times they emptied a potful of frijoles over us, which we picked off of our clothes and scraped up from the floor all mixed with other filth, which we ate without noticing the difference. Instead of water they emptied pots of piss over us. Finally one day, after having traveled forever in a boat in worse conditions than those I’ve told you we suffered on the train, we reached Yucatán. We were supposed to work on the plantations or at roadmending. They tied forty of us together to pull a heavy roller that even twenty horses might not have been able to drag. To make us advance, they whipped us. We had to pull under a sun a hundred times hotter than it is here. There were women among us too, and they were treated the same way. Many of those men and women were textile workers from Orizaba who had refused to go on working unless their wages were raised. They had escaped the massacre. Those who gave in were punished by being made to work for still lower pay.”
“And how were you able to escape from Yucatán?” Celso asked.
“One day we assaulted four policemen. After killing them as we’d have killed mad dogs, we fled as fast as we could. There were thirty of us. The other men hadn’t dared—they were too terrified. Many of the thirty were caught again. Others were shot in the back by the rural police who pursued us. Others drowned while crossing a river. But we three—Juan Méndez, Lucio Ortiz, and myself—were shrewd enough to keep well away from the main roads. By taking shortcuts we reached Campeche and then your region. There we met Don Gabriel, the contractor, who seemed to us like the Saviour Himself, and who brought us to the camps. Here, at least, they won’t look for us.”
Celso laughed silently.
“What a lot of lies you can tell, my friend! Certainly they won’t look for you here. You’ll soon find out that all you’ve done is to change prisons. Unless you see a difference—”
“Yes, for me there is a difference, which is that this is worse than Yucatán. There each one had to work, sick or well, as much as he could. The work was hard. They beat us, and they fed us badly. But here we all must produce our four tons, and, besides, in Yucatán they hadn’t discovered the trick of hanging.”
“And the two companions who escaped with you—who are they?”
“Juan Méndez was an infantry sergeant in Mérida. Now he’s a deserter.”
“Why did he desert?”
“A drunken captain entered the barracks one night. Juan had a brother serving in the same company with him. It was his first year’s service. That night he was on sentry duty near the stables of the artillery mules. The captain had no reason to be in the stables, but he went in staggering, cursing. He stumbled and fell down in the mule’s filth. Then he shouted for the sentry—Juan’s brother—struck him a blow, and, with all the strength that marijuana-smokers can muster, dragged him to the water trough and held him under water until he drowned. The captain was tried by a court-martial, and all he got in the way of punishment was the forfeit of one month’s pay. That was all. Two days later, when the captain was passing in front of the stable door, Juan Méndez jumped on him, shouting: ‘Murderer! You murdered my brother, and they didn’t punish you, but I’m going to punish you with my own hands to show you that there is still justice in the world!’ And before the captain could put up any defense, Juan slit his throat. Lucio was corporal of the same battalion and a close friend of Méndez. The two had enlisted at the same time and they had been together through good times and bad. When Juan found himself driven to desert, Lucio didn’t want to abandon him. ‘If I’d had the chance I’d have done the same thing to the captain. I’m as guilty as you, and, that being the case, I’m going with you.’ They ran away together and since then have stayed as inseparable as Christ and the cross. We met in Tabasco and, finding that we share the same ideas, decided to travel and try our luck together.”
“But,” Celso asked, “but why do you tell me all this? How the devil does it concern me?”
“It’s quite simple. I tell you because it’s a thing of interest to all of us. I know perfectly well that you have the same idea we have—and that we’re not very far from what you’ve been thinking of.”
&nb
sp; “And what is that?”
“We’re not far from the day when all this must end, from the day when we’ll begin to hang so as not to be hanged ourselves ever again. Don’t think I was the only one in Pachuca. In Yucatan I met others, even though you always had to be afraid that your bedmate was a spy for the rural police. But when there are thousands of men in the prisons, in the dungeons, on the prison islands, because of the same idea, it’s because the country is on the point of blazing up, and the blaze is ready to devour everything, despite the lies spread by the newspapers. In the north, blood has begun to run, and the dictator, the old baboon who has the audacity to call himself the protector and savior of the country, doesn’t dare step out without a guard of fifty. Who can say but at this moment, while we’re talking about him—the Irreplaceable Man, as he calls himself—he hasn’t been kicked out of the palace and isn’t hiding under his bed, wetting his pants because he’s scared to death? The crueler a tyrant is, the more cowardly he shows himself at the first reverse. I’ve read a lot of books, Celso, you can’t imagine how many, and I know an endless number of things about revolutions and insurrections. The same thing always happens. Tyranny lasts for a time, but only for a time.”
“It’s a shame that I don’t know how to read, Martín,” said Celso. “I can only sign my name, and that very badly.”
“Perhaps I can teach you and the other men to read and write.”
“If we had time, even just a little time, we could learn lots of useful things, lots of things that could bring satisfaction into life. My comrade Andres, the ox-driver, can read and write, and he often tells me that in books you can read wonderful stories that very few men know how to tell. But books only have life in the hands of those who can read; for those of us who can’t, they’re only so many sheets of paper put together. It was Andres who taught me to write my name. Unfortunately, he sleeps in the other camp so as to be near his oxen. When he’s able to come here it’s always late at night when we’re very tired. We need to have more time and, above all, to work less so that we can think a bit about ourselves and things instead of looking at each other like oxen that carry the yoke, chew the cud, and frighten flies with their tails. Sometimes I think that we’re more unfortunate than the oxen. They don’t know anything about a better life. But we do know about it because we’ve seen other places, and we know other men who are less miserable and less ignorant than ourselves.”
