by B. TRAVEN
“You’ve also told here that wise men in your country to the north have another black tube, by which they can look straight into the inside of any man or woman to see if there is a bullet there and where it is located, so that these medicine men of yours can get the bullet out without cutting open the wrong part of the body. More you have said. You have said that white men can talk to other white men who are mil and more mil miles away and they can talk to one another without shouting just the way as I talk to you now, and that they don’t even need a copper wire on which their words run along, as do telegraph wires in our country. I want you to talk right now and before my eyes to my woman, and tell her that I am hungry and that I’ve no tortillas and no frijoles to eat. And I want you to tell her to come right home, and that she has to come home on one of those air-wagons you have said your people ride on when they are in a hurry. And I am in an awful hurry now.”
Having finished his speech with the difficulty an urchin has saying his catechism at Sunday school, he began again swinging his machete pirate-fashion, obviously with the intention of making his demands more imperative.
What was I to do? If I got the better of him and clubbed him down, everybody in the village would accuse me of having killed a poor, ignorant, but honest Mexican peasant, who had done me no harm and had never meant to do me any, and who had not even insulted me, but had only come, a very humble human, to another human, asking for help which no good Christian would have denied him.
I had to do something to get me out of the hole I was in, and in which I did not feel very comfortable. As I was considered one of the greatest medicine men, there remained nothing else for me to do but to rely on medicine. The only question was, what sort of medicine I was to use to cure myself of his desperation, and of his machete which, as he demonstrated over and over again, would cut a hair as if by magic. The medicine to be served had to be of a special kind—that is, it had to be effective enough to save both of us at the same time.
At this precious moment, when I was thinking which of the gods I might call upon for a good idea and a better medicine, there flashed through my tortured mind a mental picture of two black tubes sewn together in such a way that they might look like one.
“With your kind permission and just one minute,” I said to him and went into my bungalow.
Out I came, carrying in my hands my modest fieldglass. I carried it before me with a great solemnity, as if it were the holiest object under heaven.
I stepped close to the fence where the Mexican stood, high expectancy in his eyes.
In a mumbled voice I now spoke to the glass, moving it at the same time around over my head, now to the left, now to the right, also moving it towards the man who was watching me with an ever growing bewilderment.
Now I pressed the glass firmly to my eyes. I bent down and searched the ground while walking round and round, slowly lifting up the glass until it was at a level with the far horizon. For many minutes I scanned the horizon, searching every part of it while moving round in a circle. And I said, loud enough so that he would understand it: “Donde estás, mujer? Where are you, woman? Answer, or I’ll make you by hell’s or heaven’s force!”
Another idea came to my mind at this minute. I whispered to him: “Where’s the village you come from?”
He tried to answer. His excitement did not allow him to speak, though he had his mouth wide open. He swallowed several times and then pointed, with one arm only slightly raised, towards the north.
So I knew that I had to find his woman towards south to make my medicine work properly for his benefit and mine.
Now, all of a sudden, I yelled: “I see her. Ya la veo. I see her. There she is now, at last. Poor woman. Oh, that poor, poor woman. A man beats her terribly. He has a black moustache, that man who beats her has. I don’t know who he is. I am sure I’ve seen him once or twice in this village here. Oh, that devil of a man, how he beats that poor woman. And she cries out loud: ‘Ay mi hombre, my dear husband, come, come quick and help me; fetch me away from that brute who has taken me by force and without my will; I want to come home and cook frijoles for you because I know you must be hungry after so much hard work in the bush; help me, help me, come quick!’ That’s what she cries. Oh, I can’t stand it any longer; it’s too terrible.”
I was breathing heavily, as if entirely exhausted from the trance I had been in.
No sooner had I stopped and taken the glass off my eyes than the man, sweat all over his face, shouted as if going mad: “Didn’t I tell you, señor? I knew all the time that it must be that dirty dog Pánfilo who has raped her. He has got a black moustache. I knew it all the time. He was after her since we came to this part. Always after her and always around the house whenever I was working in the bush. All the neighbors knew it because they told me so. I haven’t sharpened my machete just for the fun of it. I knew that I would need a sharp edge somehow, somewhere and for someone, to cut off his stinking head. Now I’ll have to hurry to get her and get at the same time that Pánfilo cabron. Where is she, señor, quick, quick, pronto, pronto, say it. Ask her. Tell her that I’m on my way already.”
I looked through my glass once more and mumbled something as if asking someone a few questions. Now I said: “She is mil miles away from here, your woman is. The man with the black moustache has carried her far away, I think with an air-wagon, perhaps. She says that she is in Naranjitos. That’s way down in that direction.” I pointed towards the southeast. “It is only mil miles from here and along a trail not so very hard to go by.”
“Well, then, señor mister, excuse me, but now I have got to hurry to fetch her and leave my marks on that Pánfilo dog.”
He picked up his morral, a little bag, from the ground. It contained all he possessed on earth, a fact which made his life and his goings so easy, and it would have made him a truly happy man had it not been for women who would never be satisfied with such a little bast bag instead of some solid furniture or an electric refrigerator.
He became extremely restless now, so I thought it a good opportunity to give him another shot of the medicine. “Hustle, amigo, hurry up, or, dear God in heaven, you will miss her. And don’t you dare stop on your way. You know it’s more than mil days to walk. That rascal with the black moustache is likely to carry her farther away still. You’d better go right now, this very minute.”
“This certainly I will do, señor, since you say so. This very second I shall go. In fact, I’m running already.” His feet were dancing about as if the ground consisted of embers. I knew that something still held him back, or he would have been a quarter of a mile off already.
It was his courtesy, the courtesy of the primitive man, that kept him still here. After a few wrong starts which seemed not to satisfy him, he at last found the right words. “Many, many thanks, señor, mil, mil gracias for your magnificent medicine.” The word magnífica appeared to be one of the new words he had heard last night from the villagers, for he stumbled on it, but he would not lose the opportunity to use it for me. “The people in the village,” he continued, “are right about you. Truly and verily you are a great medicine man. You know all the hidden secrets of the world. You found her so quickly, much sooner than I could ever have expected. Of course, the two pesos and forty-six centavitos I promised you for your medicine, señor, I cannot pay now. I am very sorry for that. But you are a great doctor, surely you are, therefore you will understand that I cannot pay for the medicine now. You’ll have to be satisfied with my thanks, which are honest by all means. You see, señor mister, the money I need for my trip. That’s why I cannot part with my money and pay you off. You surely will understand this easily since you’re such a very wise man. Adiós, señor, adiós, and again mil, mil gracias.”
And he was off like a hunted deer, without looking back. One minute later the bush had swallowed him up.
Never have I cheated a Mexican. I did not cheat that man either. The medicine I gave him is the best he could ever get. No other doctor would have prescribed him
such a good medicine.
The village I named is about five hundred miles from here. He is without funds, save those two pesos and forty-six centavos. So he will have to walk the whole way. No hitchhiking for him, because there is no highway. As there is no highway there cannot be motorcars. Even if there were motorcars none would pick him up. Latin Americans are not dumb enough to pick up strangers parked along the highways.
It is an excellent medicine for him and for me. It saves me from the surprise of finding myself with my head chopped off. He is a strong and healthy fellow, and he is used to hard work. He won’t go fifty miles, and he will find some work or a job. Or he will steal a stray cow and sell it to a butcher in one of the villages through which he passes. In the meantime, and more than a half dozen times, he will have had his belly filled with tortillas, frijoles, and green chili. His belly satisfactorily full, he will forget his grief. Once he has found some work, he will stay on in a village in the end. Once there, it won’t be one week before a woman will believe herself fairly lucky if allowed to cook frijoles and toast tortillas for him, and also hang her basket, or a sugar sack with her Sunday dress in it, at a peg inside the jacalito he will eventually, and quite predictably, occupy.
Assembly Line
Mr. E. L. Winthrop of New York was on vacation in the Republic of Mexico. It wasn’t long before he realized that this strange and really wild country had not yet been fully and satisfactorily explored by Rotarians and Lions, who are forever conscious of their glorious mission on earth. Therefore, he considered it his duty as a good American citizen to do his part in correcting this oversight.
In search for opportunities to indulge in his new avocation, he left the beaten track and ventured into regions not especially mentioned, and hence not recommended, by travel agents to foreign tourists. So it happened that one day he found himself in a little, quaint Indian village somewhere in the State of Oaxaca.
Walking along the dusty main street of this pueblecito, which knew nothing of pavements, drainage, plumbing, or of any means of artificial light save candles or pine splinters, he met with an Indian squatting on the earthen-floor front porch of a palm hut, a so-called jacalito.
The Indian was busy making little baskets from bast and from all kinds of fibers gathered by him in the immense tropical bush which surrounded the village on all sides. The material used had not only been well prepared for its purpose but was also richly colored with dyes that the basket-maker himself extracted from various native plants, barks, roots and from certain insects by a process known only to him and the members of his family.
His principal business, however, was not producing baskets. He was a peasant who lived on what the small property he possessed—less than fifteen acres of not too fertile soil—would yield, after much sweat and labor and after constantly worrying over the most wanted and best suited distribution of rain, sunshine, and wind and the changing balance of birds and insects beneficial or harmful to his crops. Baskets he made when there was nothing else for him to do in the fields, because he was unable to dawdle. After all, the sale of his baskets, though to a rather limited degree only, added to the small income he received from his little farm.
In spite of being by profession just a plain peasant, it was clearly seen from the small baskets he made that at heart he was an artist, a true and accomplished artist. Each basket looked as if covered all over with the most beautiful sometimes fantastic ornaments, flowers, butterflies, birds, squirrels, antelope, tigers, and a score of other animals of the wilds. Yet, the most amazing thing was that these decorations, all of them symphonies of color, were not painted on the baskets but were instead actually part of the baskets themselves. Bast and fibers dyed in dozens of different colors were so cleverly—one must actually say intrinsically—interwoven that those attractive designs appeared on the inner part of the basket as well as on the outside. Not by painting but by weaving were those highly artistic effects achieved. This performance he accomplished without ever looking at any sketch or pattern. While working on a basket these designs came to light as if by magic, and as long as a basket was not entirely finished one could not perceive what in this case or that the decoration would be like.
People in the market town who bought these baskets would use them for sewing baskets or to decorate tables with or window sills, or to hold little things to keep them from lying around. Women put their jewelry in them or flowers or little dolls. There were in fact a hundred and two ways they might serve certain purposes in a household or in a lady’s own room.
Whenever the Indian had finished about twenty of the baskets he took them to town on market day. Sometimes he would already be on his way shortly after midnight because he owned only a burro to ride on, and if the burro had gone astray the day before, as happened frequently, he would have to walk the whole way to town and back again.
At the market he had to pay twenty centavos in taxes to sell his wares. Each basket cost him between twenty and thirty hours of constant work, not counting the time spent gathering bast and fibers, preparing them, making dyes and coloring the bast. All this meant extra time and work. The price he asked for each basket was fifty centavos, the equivalent of about four cents. It seldom happened, however, that a buyer paid outright the full fifty centavos asked—or four reales as the Indian called that money. The prospective buyer started bargaining, telling the Indian that he ought to be ashamed to ask such a sinful price. “Why, the whole dirty thing is nothing but ordinary petate straw which you find in heaps wherever you may look for it; the jungle is packed full of it,” the buyer would argue. “Such a little basket, what’s it good for anyhow? If I paid you, you thief, ten centavitos for it you should be grateful and kiss my hand. Well, it’s your lucky day, I’ll be generous this time, I’ll pay you twenty, yet not one green centavo more. Take it or run along.”
So he sold finally for twenty-five centavos, but then the buyer would say, “Now, what do you think of that? I’ve got only twenty centavos change on me. What can we do about that? If you can change me a twenty-peso bill, all right, you shall have your twenty-five fierros.” Of course, the Indian could not change a twenty-peso bill and so the basket went for twenty centavos.
He had little if any knowledge of the outside world or he would have known that what happened to him was happening every hour of every day to every artist all over the world. That knowledge would perhaps have made him very proud, because he would have realized that he belonged to the little army which is the salt of the earth and which keeps culture, urbanity and beauty for their own sake from passing away.
Often it was not possible for him to sell all the baskets he had brought to market, for people here as elsewhere in the world preferred things made by the millions and each so much like the other that you were unable, even with the help of a magnifying glass, to tell which was which and where was the difference between two of the same kind.
Yet he, this craftsman, had in his life made several hundreds of those exquisite baskets, but so far no two of them had he ever turned out alike in design. Each was an individual piece of art and as different from the other as was a Murillo from a Velásquez.
Naturally he did not want to take those baskets which he could not sell at the market place home with him again if he could help it. In such a case he went peddling his products from door to door where he was treated partly as a beggar and partly as a vagrant apparently looking for an opportunity to steal, and he frequently had to swallow all sorts of insults and nasty remarks.
Then, after a long run, perhaps a woman would finally stop him, take one of the baskets and offer him ten centavos, which price through talks and talks would perhaps go up to fifteen or even to twenty. Nevertheless, in many instances he would actually get no more than just ten centavos, and the buyer, usually a woman, would grasp that little marvel and right before his eyes throw it carelessly upon the nearest table as if to say, “Well, I take that piece of nonsense only for charity’s sake. I know my money is wasted. But then, after all,
I’m a Christian and I can’t see a poor Indian die of hunger since he has come such a long way from his village.” This would remind her of something better and she would hold him and say, “Where are you at home anyway, Indito? What’s your pueblo? So, from Huehuetonoc? Now, listen here, Indito, can’t you bring me next Saturday two or three turkeys from Huehuetonoc? But they must be heavy and fat and very, very cheap or I won’t even touch them. If I wish to pay the regular price I don’t need you to bring them. Understand? Hop along, now, Indito.”
The Indian squatted on the earthen floor in the portico of his hut, attended to his work and showed no special interest in the curiosity of Mr. Winthrop watching him. He acted almost as if he ignored the presence of the American altogether.
“How much that little basket, friend?” Mr. Winthrop asked when he felt that he at least had to say something as not to appear idiotic.
“Fifty centavitos, patroncito, my good little lordy, four reales,” the Indian answered politely.
“All right, sold,” Mr. Winthrop blurted out in a tone and with a wide gesture as if he had bought a whole railroad. And examining his buy he added, “I know already who I’ll give that pretty little thing to. She’ll kiss me for it, sure. Wonder what she’ll use it for?”
He had expected to hear a price of three or even four pesos. The moment he realized that he had judged the value six times too high, he saw right away what great business possibilities this miserable Indian village might offer to a dynamic promoter like himself. Without further delay he started exploring those possibilities. “Suppose, my good friend, I buy ten of these little baskets of yours which, as I might as well admit right here and now, have practically no real use whatsoever. Well, as I was saying, if I buy ten, how much would you then charge me apiece?”
The Indian hesitated for a few seconds as if making calculations. Finally he said, “If you buy ten I can let you have them for forty-five centavos each, señorito gentleman.”