The Carreta

by B. TRAVEN

  It was the same with any maize or beans they had to spare; they could not sell them just as they liked to a passing dealer or in the market of the nearest town. Here too the patrón had a prior right, and his permission had to be asked before they might sell anything, and a part of the money they received had to be handed over. If they were in the patrón’s debt—and they were all in his debt—they might not be permitted to sell at all but had to give him whatever they had to dispose of. And the patrón deducted what he chose from their debts.

  All that was just: it was the law and the decree of heaven, and the Church confirmed it. For the gods were blood relations of the patrón, but they were not relations of the Indians.

  It was so and it could not be altered. It had always been so, and so it would always remain. The peons knew no better. They knew only that it was the same all over the world; for wherever they might go, there was not a finca where it was otherwise. Therefore it must be the same all over the earth. Their earth, or what they knew as earth and world, was the region inhabited by Indians who spoke the same language as they themselves. A world where their tongue was not spoken was foreign to them and quite unknown. They had no idea what might go on there and they could never find out.

  True, there were some independent villages in their district. They were mostly inhabited by Indians who had never been made peons on a finca. Either the land was so barren that no Spaniard had ever wanted to own it, or else the Indians there had always been so turbulent and rebellious that no Spaniard could survive there. The latter had always been the case with Bachajón and with several other villages. But when the peons went there they found that these independent Indians lived an even more wretched life than they. These free Indians were sometimes so desperate that they forsook their villages and of their own accord went as peons on a finca. There were a number of reasons for this, some of which were to be found in the temperament, habits, and customs of these Indians; but the chief reason was their ignorance and the cleverness of the big landowners, backed by the Church, in leaving them to their ignorance.

  4

  Andrés’s father was in no way bound to buy his son a new serape and a new petate. He did it for love of his son and because he could not bear to see him suffer.

  The man whose place it was to buy these things for Andrés was his master, don Leonardo. But to him it was a matter of utter indifference whether Andrés froze at night or slept on the bare floor and got a bad chill which might ruin his health. What did the health of an Indian boy matter to him? He might get inflammation of the lungs or a fever and die if it came to that—there were plenty more Indian boys. He would merely ask his wife to write to her father, who would then send another along. Where would it end if he began looking after barefooted Indian boys? Besides, it did not hurt them to sleep on the bare floor. They were used to it. He had better uses for his pesos.

  Andrés still got no wages and don Leonardo never thought of giving him any. The only difference the last two years had made was that now, when there was a feast day at Tenejapa, Andrés was given, instead of five or ten centavos, a tostón—fifty centavos.

  “See you don’t spend it on trash—and no aguardiente either,” don Leonardo warned him when he bestowed this largesse with an air that suggested a gold twenty-peso piece.

  5

  Don Leonardo now trusted Andrés sometimes with matters of considerable responsibility. He sent him with large sums of money to San Cristóbal, the nearest large town, where he had to make purchases and then bargain with arrieros—mule drivers—for the transport of the goods to Tenejapa, and accompany them and see that nothing was missing or damaged when the goods were delivered.

  These tasks gave Andrés valuable experience. He got to know what a real town was like and saw the wealth and variety of goods which came from all over the world and heard of towns which were a hundred times larger than San Cristóbal, though when he saw it for the first time it seemed to him that there could not be a larger and finer town on earth. There were streets half a mile long, house touching house, and all of stone and many with windows. He had never till then known that there were houses with windows. He had never seen such a thing. In Tenejapa, some had latticed apertures, but that was all. And now he saw windows with glass panes, and even shop windows with huge sheets of plate glass behind which the goods were piled up and it looked as if you could put out your hand and take them.

  He saw bullock carts—carretas—for the first time. Until then he never knew there were such things as carts and wagons and that they could be drawn by animals. He had never seen them before. The fields on the finca were not plowed; a hole was simply dibbled in the ground with a stick and then the maize or beans were dropped in. With plants like tomatoes or peppers, where shallow plowing was necessary, it was done with a plow that was little more than a wooden stick pulled by a peon. So how could Andrés have known anything about draft animals? There was not in all that vast area a road on which wheeled vehicles could have gone. There were only narrow paths, called veredas, frequently so narrow and stony and so loose and crumbling that even a pack mule was barely safe on them.

  Andrés was told by a carreta driver that the carretas made journeys fifteen times as long as the journey from Tenejapa to San Cristóbal—and from Tenejapa to San Cristóbal was a good day’s journey for a pack mule. The boy looked incredulously at the carretero when he told him this. But other carreteros said the same. And an Indian dealer in salt, who was selling in the street, told him that it was all true; and he knew it because he had once accompanied a carreta with a load of salt as far as Arriaga.

  This was how Andrés got his first idea of the size of the earth on which he lived. So far he had not had the faintest notion of it. When he heard Tuxtla, Tonalá, Tapachula, San Gerónimo, Veracruz, Mexico City mentioned in don Leonardo’s house or store he supposed these places were much the same as Tenejapa, the only town he knew. And when they were spoken of as far away, it only meant to him that they were twice, or at most three or four times, as far away as his native finca, Lumbojvil, was from Tenejapa. In any case they must be within the horizon, for there, as everybody knew, the world came to an end.

  Another carretero whom he encountered beneath the portico of the cabildo—the town hall—told him, while he ate his tortillas and frijoles which an Indian woman warmed upon a little tin stove, that Arriaga was the end of his journey with his carreta and that Arriaga was the railroad station. When Andrés asked what that meant, the carretero explained to him that gigantic wagons brought goods to that place from distant lands so that they could be loaded on the carretas and taken upcountry. He told him more: that the wagons were as large as a stone house, and that one wagonload was enough to fill forty and even fifty carretas to their utmost capacity. These wagons ran on roads made of iron, and forty or more—sometimes many more—were pulled by another big wagon which made a lot of smoke and puffed and sweated like a great beast. And the name of this was ferrocarril, railroad.

  Andrés knew the word; he had been taught to write it in school. But the schoolteacher could not explain the thing, because he had never seen it, or a picture of it, and so was unable to form any idea of it. He had to be satisfied with giving them the word and teaching them to write it correctly. The word was in the spelling book. Because Andrés knew the word and could write it correctly he now felt that he was in some peculiar way familiar with the thing itself. When the carretero described what it looked like and how it puffed and sweated, coughed and bellowed and snorted, the boy almost felt that he had actually seen a ferrocarril somewhere. It did not seem to him like something strange and new and unexpected, for he knew its name, by which it was called and described, and not only knew it but could write it. In spite of its puffing and roaring the monster aroused no fear in him. On the contrary, he wished to see it with his own eyes. And he made the discovery, without being aware whence it came, that if you know of an unfamiliar thing and can call it by its name, this unfamiliar thing loses its power to strike you wi
th fear. To be able to write this name inspired him with unbounded confidence and gave him a sense of his own identity such as he had never had before.

  In these few minutes he had an inward experience, trivial in itself, which suddenly opened his mind to the real meaning of education—for here was this terrifying monster (which the carretero to increase his own importance had represented as being far more terrifying and frightful than it actually was) reduced to sober proportions by the mere fact that he knew its name and could write this name down in visible and intelligible characters. He would not have been able to explain to anyone how this came about. He could only feel that it was so.

  And the more he thought about it, the clearer it became—and not only it but the whole world too. The word, with which he was already acquainted, explained and dissected the thing so that there was no mystery left in it: ferrocarril—quite simple. “Fierro” meant “iron,” “carro” meant “wagon,” “riel” meant “rail”: a wagon, then, of iron that ran on rails. All this was only slightly obscured in the word itself: each syllable was shortened so that the whole word should not be too long.

  From this insight he arrived at the perception that all words were alike in this: every word explained a thing and a process and brought their secrets to light. He thought of other words and found that this sudden revelation was borne out.

  His attitude toward education altered completely. He no longer thought of education as being useful only for success and quickness in business. He felt that it had a further value, greater perhaps than its mere business utility. This set him off thinking.

  6

  It was the same with Andrés as with anyone who reasons out a philosophic theory from a strictly limited relation to economic or social life, and does not know that the same theory has already been enunciated by a multitude of men before him, and that among these there were some twenty or so to whom the groundwork of his little theory was familiar when philosophers sold sandal thongs in the streets of Athens to make a living. For even in those days a philosopher could not live on his world-shattering theories alone; he needed a sideline which guaranteed him bread and a roof over his head. And so it was the same with Andrés as with all who believe they have struck on a new idea. He believed that education might weaken the threatening and fear-inspiring power of finqueros, priests, and all those dread phantoms of superstition which play off their fooleries on mankind. He thought that if education could render harmless such unknown monsters as the railroad, if education could throw down superstition and menacing phantoms, it must also be able to set his father and all the peons at home on the finca free from the apparently unending oppression of serfdom.

  He had education and he was free.

  But Lucio, the mule driver who was going to transport the goods to Tenejapa next morning, broke into the wild turmoil of his thoughts.

  “Where are you sleeping then?” Lucio asked.

  “I can sleep here under the portico of the cabildo,” said Andrés, spreading out his petate only three feet from the Indian woman who all night long kept the simple food of the drivers hot for them.

  “Stop that and come along with me,” said Lucio. “We’ll sleep in don Ambrosio’s gateway where the goods are. The mules are near to hand in the back yard. We’ll load up at three and be well on our way by four.”

  Thus Andrés was reminded that he was not free, that he could not do as he wished, that he was not even free to sleep here under the portico, where all night there was a lively coming and going of men on horseback, of carreteros and mule drivers, of troops of earthenware sellers and basket-makers, where there was so much to see and hear. He had to sleep where Lucio would have him under his hand without the need to go and look for him. For Lucio was to be in command during the journey back with the goods; he had been put in charge of the transport by his master. And Andrés too had his master, who had ordered him to accompany the goods whether he liked it or not—for his master fed him and allowed him to spread his mat in a corner of his house.

  Andrés had made the discovery, as his thoughts whirled through his brain, that education, which he believed he possessed, could destroy all fear of monsters and idols; but as soon as Lucio spoke soberly and practically of daily tasks and reminded him of his master, he felt afraid again. He knew by experience how hard and furious don Leonardo could become if anything did not go as he thought it ought to go, knew that don Leonardo didn’t think twice about seizing a board or the iron band of a packing case and hitting him over the head with it when he lost his temper.

  What good was education to him then? thought Andrés as he went with Lucio through the dark streets to don Ambrosio’s house. It was of no advantage to anyone but don Leonardo if he could read and write and reckon figures. He remembered what he was: a peon, who got no wages, who had to do as he was told, who had to be on the spot all through the twenty-four hours of the day in case he was wanted.

  But he was free, for he knew what freedom was. The peon was free when he was not shut up in the dirty hole called calabozo, or prison. His patrón could send him there when he liked. And it was freedom when during a Sunday your hands and feet were not tied together behind your back for idleness during the week or for disobedience or because a calf had run away.

  So Andrés could not say he was not free. He was not in prison, nor was he lying bound in the harness room of the finca. He was free. If next day with the loaded mules he wanted to go over to the right because the way to the left was too marshy or soft, he could go to the right for the safety of the mules. And he was free to give the yellow mule a few more kilos than the gray one. And he was free to smoke cigarettes if he had any. What more freedom can a peon expect? Perhaps the freedom to marry when he grew up, if another peon gave him his daughter for a wife. And then he had at last the great freedom to beget plenty of children and to rear them on the produce of the patch the patrón assigned him and so supply the patrón with more peons.

  He had all the freedom he could think of. And if he had been asked he would have rattled off in a loud voice that article of faith which was drummed into every child at school: “I am a free citizen of an independent republic. Viva la república! Viva la patria! Viva!”

  And not only rattled it off but believed it.

  3

  Don Leonardo had bought thirty mules at Chilón very cheap from a finquero who was hard up for cash. With Andrés as convoy they were brought to Tenejapa, where don Leonardo saw to them well so that they should look their best.

  He made inquiries and found out that mules were bringing a better price at La Concordia than anywhere else at the moment, as there were coffee planters there who were in the market for hundreds of them. So he decided to take the mules to La Concordia.

  Don Leonardo rode ahead on his best horse to negotiate a deal, leaving the mules to follow with Andrés in charge and a few Tenejapa boys to help him; for a patache of mules cannot on a long journey keep pace with a good horse mounted by a good rider.

  Thus don Leonardo sold the mules two days before they arrived. Buyer and seller were equally pleased with the transaction. Don Leonardo made a handsome profit, and the planter had got the mules much cheaper than he had expected. Had he had to buy them in Tabasco he would have paid half as much again.

  2

  There were a great many people at La Concordia that week. The town was holding its annual fiesta and there was a large fair—a feria—in connection with it.

  There were horse dealers, cattle dealers, donkey dealers from Comitán; there were agents recruiting Indian labor from the independent villages for the coffee and cocoa plantations; buyers of coffee, maize, timber; agents for the sale of machinery; agents for ironware and agricultural implements; land speculators; dealers in goods and necessities of all kinds. All these people had a lot of money on them, so as to do business on the spot; and they also made a lot of money. This year they hoped to make more than usual.

  The evenings were long and drink was plentiful; and as a change from talking
business all day they played cards.

  Don Leonardo did not return home immediately after selling his mules. He took the opportunity of doing more business with the money he had made, hoping to make a good profit. But he was no more able than any of the rest of the men to bring his business to a speedy conclusion. No one was in a hurry; there was plenty of time, and everyone hung on for a better bargain. So it was very natural that don Leonardo, like the others, should sit down and play cards.

  He was acquainted with every one of the caballeros with whom he played. They were all, as he was himself, known to be men of honor when it came to cards; though all, not excepting himself, did their utmost often enough to get the better of another in business by any ruse they could hit upon. At cards a man had to play fair; it was a point of honor with the caballero, even though in business he might stretch a point and still remain a man of honor. They were playing Siete y Medio (Seven and a Half). The game is a very fast one, and by two o’clock in the morning don Leonardo had lost every penny he had got for the mules. The game went on, but he had not even a peso to stake in the hope of winning back his money; and no caballero borrowed money during play. That was an old and well-tested rule.

  They were playing in a large room in the house of a citizen of La Concordia whom they all knew. All had their muchachos—their boys—with them. These boys were always in attendance on their masters. On this occasion they were lying close by, asleep on their mats. Some were under the portico, others in the room where their masters played. Their presence did not interfere with their masters at all.