by B. TRAVEN
If Cándido had not been given advice by his comrades, he would have been dashed to pieces with his family at the first cataract. It was not so easy an operation as he had imagined to haul the heavy canoe out of the water by himself and transport it across steep rocks in order to get round the rapids. He would have been able to cut down branches and work at them until he could use them as rollers—but he had no machete.
On the other hand, he could not abandon the canoe and go on through the jungle, because his pursuers knew the trail he would have to follow so as to avoid the swamps. The foremen would merely have had to wait patiently for him at some open place. Cándido did not know any of this, and it was precisely his ignorance that made his escape from the camps difficult. Celso, who, with all his heart, wished that Cándido and Modesta would get away to freedom, would have done everything possible to dissuade them from this expedition. He had had enough experience to know that such an attempt at flight could not succeed.
The day was well advanced. In about two hours more the sun would have set. El Guapo said to his companion: “Look. There’s a little arroyo and we can take shelter under that tree with the thick foliage. It’s up high enough so that we can watch the river. Let’s sit down here for half an hour, eat a bite, and smoke a cigarette.”
“Besides, the horses must have a rest,” replied El Chapopote. “They must have a breather.”
El Chapopote (“Tarface”) had been given his nickname because his dark skin was nearly covered with black spots that betrayed his racial background. He had been born on the Pacific coast.
They were carefully wrapping beans in tortillas when El Chapopote, who was scanning the horizon, uttered a cry of joy: “Hurrah! Look! The Holy Family sailing along in their transatlantic liner!”
It was, in fact, the canoe approaching them, moving slowly. Clumsily managed, the prow was turning to right and left as if the pilot were in a state of hesitation about the direction he ought to take.
Cándido, Modesta, and the boy were seated in the bottom of the canoe, above the edge of which only their heads and necks could be seen. El Chapopote and El Guapo put down their tortillas carefully so as not to spill any of the beans. Then El Guapo unfastened the shotgun from his saddle.
While El Chapopote was taking out his revolver to load it, one of the horses for some unknown reason let out a neigh. Immediately the occupants of the canoe became aware of the presence of the two foremen. Cándido tried vainly to steer his canoe toward the opposite bank, but the current bore it irresistibly toward where the two foremen were. Before it had come up to them, El Guapo shouted: “Bring the boat in close, Chamula, or I’ll shoot.”
The foremen could not judge whether Cándido had any intention of disobeying or whether he simply could not steer the canoe, which, instead of coming nearer, was continuing on its way. So El Guapo fired. His intention was simply to scare the Indians, but the whole load of shot sprayed the canoe. Pedrito groaned and screamed, shouting that he had been hurt. Then he stood up in the canoe, pressing one hand against the other little arm. El Chapopote fired his revolver while El Guapo reloaded his shotgun and, aiming toward the canoe, shouted: “Come on in here, Chamula, or by our holy Mother today you’ll die!”
El Guapo went down the embankment and with his feet in the water pointed his revolver at the canoe, ready to shoot.
On seeing his son’s bleeding arm, Cándido lost all his courage. He no longer even thought of escape. He realized the seriousness of the foremen’s threat. They were surely going to fire again and to go on shooting until all of them were wounded or killed—his son, Modesta, and himself. He shouted: “I’m coming, little chiefs! By the most holy Virgin, don’t shoot any more!”
By desperate efforts he succeeded in getting the canoe to a sandbank, on which it grounded. He got out of the canoe, picked the child up in his arms, and went toward the bank followed by Modesta, the water reaching their waists. The little pigs followed excitedly after him, grunting. When they reached the bank they began to root about. The dog shook himself and leaped about happily in front of the group.
11
“Well, then, swine of a Chamula, you not only tried to get away, but also to rob me of my canoe,” Don Felix bellowed at Cándido, whom he had summoned to appear before him.
Don Felix had ordered them to bring him the Indian, Modesta, the child, and everything that Cándido had with him. He wanted to give a punishment that would teach a lesson, and thus demonstrate how he treated those who dared to break their contract.
“Yes! It’s becoming a habit here, this leaving the camps when anyone feels like it!” Don Felix thundered. “Rebellion! Mutiny! Here in the camps!”
Near him were four overseers. The workers of the encampment had come out of their huts, and from the doorways the boys and some women looked at the scene, though nobody dared go near.
“And you too, you ungrateful bitch, you also wanted to run away from me,” said Don Felix to Modesta, catching her by the chin. “But this time you won’t get away, because I need a really young girl.”
“Forgive us, little chief,” Cándido pleaded. “Forgive us. We’ll never do it again. I was very sad. I needed to go back to my village. I couldn’t stay here after my son was drowned in the river. I had hopes of finding him. It could be that he managed to save himself. But I won’t find him. Forgive us, little chief!”
Peditro, with his arm in a sling tied with a piece torn from Modesta’s underskirt, began to cry when he heard his father pleading. Then he knelt down and, joining his hands as his mother had taught him to join them before the image of the Virgin, said: “Forgive us, little chief. We promise never to do it again. We miss my little brother so much!” He tried to say something more, but he only got his words confused, a mixture of Tsotsil and very bad Spanish.
“Shut your mouth, brat,” said Don Félix, giving him a cut with the whip, which immediately left a red streak on the child’s small face.
Bowing his head, Cándido in turn got down on his knees with his hands joined as Pedrito had done. He was not thinking of himself; his only thought was of protecting his son.
Modesta also fell on her knees, lowered her head, and pressed her forehead between her palms as if silently, passionately, to invoke the image of some saint. At last she was able to speak, and she muttered: “Have mercy on us, little chief!” But her voice was so weak that Cándido scarcely could hear it. The girl was barefooted. Her wool skirt was torn and covered with clay, her white underskirt in shreds, baring her legs to the knees. Her cotton blouse no longer covered her arms.
“So you still have the gall to ask for pardon, you lousy swine!” Don Félix answered, giving Cándido a violent blow across his bent back.
Cándido took it without moving, awaiting the blows to come.
“Every day, rebellions, mutinies,” continued Don Félix, his face ablaze with rage as he struck Cándido again. “Every day you get more insolent. At night behind my back you sing revolutionary songs. But you’ll learn that I’m still the master, and I assure you that I’ll go on being boss, you bunch of pigs! I’m going to teach you the price of running away from the camps. That’s finished! I’ll not be a Montellano if anyone manages to run away again!”
Turning toward the foremen, he shouted: “Hey, Gusano!”
“At your orders, chief.”
“Get your knife out.”
El Gusano drew a hunting knife from his belt.
“Cut the ears off of that dog of a Chamula!” Don Felix ordered.
El Gusano looked at his master with inquiry and fright.
“Can’t you hear me, you ass? I’ve just given you an order. Do you want me to give you, too, what you deserve?”
Don Felix underlined his words by making his whip whistle in the air.
El Gusano leaped on Cándido, grabbed him by the ears, and—not without an expression of disgust—sliced them off. Cándido, still on his knees, did not try to defend himself.
“Now you can eat your own flesh!” shout
ed Don Felix, “instead of getting fat swallowing lice, you swine of a Chamula!”
He kicked Cándido, who fell sidewise, then righted himself, got up, and made as if to leave.
“Gusano!” said Don Felix again. “Where did that fool go?”
“Here I am, chief, at your orders,” said Gusano, going up to him.
“Don’t be in such a hurry. Don’t put your knife away yet. You still have to cut the ears off the brat. They’ll soon see how I re-establish order here. Come on, now, cut the mule’s ears off the little bastard!”
Cándido leaped forward like a jaguar and shielded the boy with his body.
“You, you swine, get away from there! Get down on your knees as quick as you can if you don’t want to lose your nose and your fingers too!”
Cándido continued to clasp the child closely to him.
“For the love of God, little chief, don’t hurt him! Cut off my nose and hands if you wish, but the boy—let him go!”
“Cut off your hands? You’re smart, eh? So that you could watch the others work while you rested? No, I need your paws, whereas the ears of your brat are no good to me. Go ahead, Gusano, or you’ll be the one to get fixed up!”
El Gusano rained blows and kicks on Cándido. Then, taking advantage of the surprise, he snatched the boy away. At once Modesta intervened. In one movement she grabbed the child and put herself in front of him. But El Pulpo, one of the cruelest of the overseers, took him from her and pushed him toward El Gusano. The boy stumbled and fell. At the same time Modesta flung herself down, covering him with her body.
Don Felix leaned down and, taking hold of her braids, pulled her up.
“Don’t be afraid. I won’t cut off either your nose or your ears. I like very much to look at them. I’ll only separate your legs.”
“Do whatever you want to me, little chief, anything you want! I’m here to serve you, little chief. But don’t touch the boy, I pray you!”
She had fallen on her knees in supplication before Don Felix.
“Why didn’t you say that sooner, you whore? It’s too late now. And whatever I want from you I’ll take by force.”
On hearing Don Felix say that it was too late, Modesta turned suddenly and sprang to the spot where the child was. She caught her skirts up to her thighs and tried to staunch the rivulets of blood running down both of Pedrito’s cheeks.
“And now that’s what will happen to everybody who tries to escape or rebel, or who simply sings insolent songs during the night. Here I am the boss—and I’ll go on being the boss! You’ll all work. That’s what you’re here for. Don’t forget it!”
He took in his cartridge belt a hole, turned around, and strutted toward his hut, stopping a moment to light a cigarette.
That night he called the cook and said to him: “Do you know that Chamula, the one whose ears we cut off? The one who tried to get away and to steal my canoe? Well, go and tell him to give you the pigs, that you’re going to kill them for me as the best way to balance the cost of chasing him. What could he need pigs for? Isn’t he a pig himself?”
“So at last, chief, I’m going to be able to serve you a nice piece of meat,” replied the cook, laughing.
“Come in and have a swig, meanwhile.”
“Thanks, boss.”
On the following day Cándido was sent to the new camp. But, by order of Don Félix, Modesta and the child had to stay in the main camp. Don Félix was convinced that it was Modesta who had incited her brother to flee. If he separated them, they would not think of leaving, or at least, if the temptation came to them again, they would have to go looking for each other to make plans. He had also decreed that Modesta should help in the cookhouse and clean the hut in which he lived. For wages she would receive fifty centavos a day and her food. Nobody in the camps had a right to live unless he earned his meals. As for the boy, he was big enough, Don Félix thought, to earn his bread as an ox-driver. “He’ll learn very soon,” Don Félix said. “And all the better because we’ve cut off his ears—he has the advantage that now nobody can pull them.”
The camp where Celso had been sent lay about an hour and a half’s walk from the main camp. To avoid a great loss of time, he and his companions had chosen to build some tiny shelters in which to spend the nights on the spot where work was. They returned to the main camp twice a week to get their rations and change or sharpen their axes.
The heavy September rains were drawing near. In three weeks’ time it would be possible to throw the logs into the water. This work always began in the regions farthest away from the river, where the flood waters lasted only three or four days. The other districts, nearer the river, could wait, because there the high waters lasted two or three weeks.
The heat had become unbearable. In the jungle that Celso and his companions were clearing of undergrowth, the air was charged with stifling humidity. As the sun rose higher in the sky, the workers found the work more painful.
On the open plains the rainy season is agreeable and refreshing, but in the jungle, where the rains last longer, the three or four weeks during which at least half a dozen times daily the ground is covered as though by a lake three feet deep, man’s existence and that of domestic animals become a hellish torture.
The ground is carpeted thickly with mosses that make it impermeable, preventing it from absorbing one drop of water. Also, evaporation is slow because the hot rays of the sun do not penetrate to the pools and swamps. The tops of the towering trees are so packed together and their foliage is so dense that the sun does not get through them except when by chance a gust of wind stirs and separates them for an instant. The previous days’ rains have created such vitality in the soil that it is practically carpeted by thick, light-green vegetation. In a few days the undergrowth has covered trails and paths, and the opaque arches of foliage form an almost unbreakable barrier against light and air. Heat is the jungle tyrant. It makes sweat run in streams from man, and the steaming air does not permit it to evaporate.
This unbreaking humidity under the arch of impenetrable foliage, together with constant standing in water up to the thighs, leaves a man in a heavy stupor. Whatever way he turns he sees only the green arch and closed walls of foliage, and the asphyxiating humidity is everywhere. The atmosphere alone is enough to debilitate a man, blunt his senses, and make him lose his judgment. At each stroke of his ax against the mahogany trunks, which are as hard as steel, the cutter thinks that he is at the end of his strength. He feels that he will be unable to go on and that before attacking the next tree he will fall, indifferent to the fate awaiting him.
But his torment must still increase. As the rainy season is prolonged, the wild animals, snakes, and insects multiply. The mosquitoes swoop down in huge, dense clouds. In the jungle their violence lasts throughout the year, but during the rainy season hundredfold swarms contain them by millions. For these voracious armies blood is a gift, the most coveted of gifts. They arrive in inconceivable numbers, no doubt vomited up by hell to poison the existence of man on the earth and to make him sigh for the peace of paradise. Little black flies, whose bite leaves a painful red dot, appear in incredibly numerous squadrons that in half an hour can turn a man’s skin into a mass of coagulated blood. The bigger varieties of mosquitoes also arrive, as voracious as rats, and with them giant and dwarf spiders, scorpions, centipedes, and snakes that seem to be waiting patiently for the naked foot of an Indian to be placed on their ambush of moss and vines. Jaguars, pumas, and wildcats spy on their victims from sloping tree trunks, ready to spring on a passing cutter absorbed in his work and not even thinking of looking up.
During the rainy season working becomes atrocious toward noon. The men made a habit of drinking a little coffee and eating some warmed-over tortillas on waking, before starting to work, and of eating more substantially at noon. In this way they avoided the torture of working during the hottest hours.
In the little camp that they called Fallen Log some of the workers were squatting around a fire, raised up on a dry
spot. They were Celso, Martín Trinidad, Juan Méndez, Lucio Ortiz, Casimiro, Paciano, Encarnación, and Román.
They were all cutters. Two of them were leaning over the fire and watching the pots of coffee and the bowls in which rice and beans were heating. The others, a little distance away, were smoking, half-asleep, waiting for the food to be ready.
Early that morning Celso had killed an iguana with stones. Lucio had cleaned it and was cooking it on the hearth. That day their fare would be a little less frugal.
For a long time Celso had been smoking less for pleasure than to drive away the mosquitoes. Seated quietly, he finally dozed off with his knees apart, his arms at his sides, and his head resting against a tree.
Suddenly he woke up in fright and exclaimed: “Somebody just called me from over there! Who can it be?”
“Who’d be calling you? I haven’t heard anything. You’re dreaming, old man. El Pasto was here half an hour ago to mark the trees, but he won’t be back, at least not before night. You’ve certainly been dreaming.”
“Go on snoring,” said Lucio, laughing. “You’ve still got to be patient for half an hour. The iguana is getting soft, but it’s not yet cooked. I’ll wake you when it’s ready.”
Celso did not seem satisfied with this explanation. He tried to stare through the underbrush and said: “I’d have sworn that somebody called me by name. By God, I heard a voice as clearly as though somebody was speaking into my ear.”
Once again he stared into the surroundings. Then again he tried to sleep. He had hardly shut his eyes when he jumped to his feet. “You can say what you like, but somebody just called me again. I heard someone say: ‘Celso! Celso! Where are you?’ I assure you that I’m not crazy. It was a woman’s voice.”
