The Carreta

by B. TRAVEN

  “Then he went out to seek the Plumed Serpent. He found it after a search of many years in a deep and dark cave. It was the symbol of the world. Therefore it was guarded by a sorcerer in the pay of the bad gods.

  “Chicovaneg succeeded, by great cunning, in slaying the sorcerer. First he made him drunk with sweet maguey juice. Then, when the sorcerer lay drunk and all his forty eyes were shut, Chicovaneg crept up to him and killed him with his spear, which he had poisoned with a hundred poisons the wise man had told him of.

  “Now he sang sweet songs and played soft melodies on his flute; whereupon the Plumed Serpent came out and followed him, obeying all his commands.

  “After this Chicovaneg set out on his long journey, and after many years and many fights with bad gods he came to the end of the world. Here the stars were at their lowest above the earth. He easily leaped up to the lowest of them.

  “He told the spirits of the departed who lived on this star, and whose faces were black because they were not of Indian blood, that men had no sun and that he had left his wife and his people to give a new sun to men. The spirits gladly gave him a small bit of their star to be of help to men. Chicovaneg fastened it to the center of his shield, where it began at once to shine with the beauty of a diamond.

  “From now on he could see his way better in the darkness of night, owing to the light of this tiny star on his shield. He sprang from star to star, and everywhere he went, and whether the spirits were yellow, white, brown, or black of face, they willingly gave him a little bit of their stars.

  “When he came to those who were of his own blood he was greeted with great joy. They were proud that it was one of their own people who was restoring the sun to mankind. They strengthened his weary body and sharpened his weapons.

  “At every leap he made from one star to another the shield became brighter. And when at last his shield was so bright that it far outshone the largest of the stars, the bad gods took note of him. They saw that he was on the way to making a new sun for men and they began to fight him with great fury and to try to hinder him from going any farther. They made the earth quake so as to shake the stars and make him miss his jump to the next star. They knew very well that if he missed only one jump he would fall into the blackness of space whence he could never again emerge, because there the bad gods had all power in their hands.

  “But Chicovaneg was clever. If a star was too small to be judged properly, he had the Plumed Serpent take a look at it first and it told him the size so that he would not jump short or overjump the mark. If the distance was too great to cover in one leap, he had the Plumed Serpent fly up first and let its tail hang down. Then he could easily make a jump, grab it by the tail, and crawl up the body of the Plumed Serpent.

  “As he climbed higher in the vault of the sky and as his shield grew brighter and brighter, men on earth began at last to see him. They knew that he would now restore the sun, and they were merry and held many festivals.

  “But they could see too what a hard time he had. When they saw the distance to the next star and knew that he might well jump short, they were filled with terror. And when they saw the bad gods fighting against him they fell into despair.

  “The bad gods roused howling storms which deluged their huts and laid their fields waste. The bad gods flooded the earth and made the mountains spit fiery lava, so as to destroy mankind before the sun stood in the sky. And the bad gods flung burning stones down at Chicovaneg as he climbed up. They threw so many that thousands of these stones still fly about the sky at night.

  “Nevertheless, Chicovaneg climbed higher and higher. Brighter and brighter grew his shield. Flowers began to grow and bloom on the earth. The birds came back and sang. Mangoes and papayas began to ripen on the trees, and bananas, tunas, and tomatoes were plentiful.

  “And then at last when men looked up one day there stood the sun shining down from the vault of the sky right above their heads. And they held a great feast to honor Chicovaneg.

  “But the bad gods never cease in their efforts. They veil the earth in black clouds until the people fear the sun will be put out again.

  “But Chicovaneg, the brave, is on the watch. He stands behind his sun shield to protect men from the bad gods. And when the bad gods press him too hard he gets into a fury and flings blazing arrows above the earth so as to hunt out and hit the bad gods who are hiding in deep black clouds. Then he rattles on his shield, and the thunder of it shakes the air.

  “And when at last he has chased away the bad gods he traces in the sky his many-colored bow to tell mankind that they need not be afraid: he will not give in and the sun will not again be put out and destroyed by the bad gods.”

  15

  The girl, nestling against Andrés all the time, had now brought her story to an end. She said no more.

  After a while Andrés asked: “Did your mother also tell you who made the Huh—the moon?”

  “Yes,” she said, “Chicovaneg’s son. When he grew up he wanted to go to see his father. He could not, however, find a plumed serpent, because his father had taken with him the only one there was, and when he had made the sun he told it to coil about the earth where the vault of the sky rested on the earth. There it lies keeping watch against the evil ones who are on the other side of the vault of the sky, trying to break through it so as to strengthen the power of the bad gods under the vault of the sky.

  “But Chicovaneg is clever. He does not wholly trust the Plumed Serpent and is afraid it might sleep and fail in its watch. For this reason he climbs down every night to see if by any chance it is asleep.

  “Since there is only one plumed serpent, Chicovaneg’s son had to seek some other creature by whose help he could climb up to the vault of the sky. He chose a rabbit because rabbits can jump well.

  “He too, with the rabbit’s help, sprang from star to star. But the departed spirits could not spare him so much of their stars as they had his father. That would have made the stars too small. Therefore his shield is not so large and brilliant as his father’s.

  “But so as to be near his father he follows him over the whole vault of the sky, and whenever he passes his father he gives him a greeting from his mother, who sleeps on a high mountain under a mantle of snow.

  “The rabbit which the son took with him to help him leap from star to star you can see clearly on his shield.”

  16

  Andrés looked away over the prairie and up into the sky. He saw the young chieftain climbing up to the stars.

  The poetry he was conscious of as the girl told him this story of her religion was not in the tale itself. He felt it far more from the simplicity of her way of telling it, from her gentle and quiet voice, and most of all from the feeling he had, while she told it, that she felt herself close to him and safe in his arms from every sorrow in the world. The knowledge that he might and could protect her, and that she put herself under his protection utterly and without thought or question, made him feel big and strong.

  “She is like a helpless songbird fallen from the nest,” he said softly. She made no reply. She seemed to hear without quite realizing what he said, for she wriggled and nestled closer into his arms.

  But when he looked up again to the starry roof above, the story immediately became real. At once he saw the young chieftain climbing up, saw him forsake his wife and his child, and saw a molten stone whirl from the hand of one of the bad gods in a flaming arc above his head.

  He asked himself whether he would really like to be a god and to live in a glory of light. It might, indeed, be necessary to restore the sun to men when they had none and were in great want; and it was, indeed, a fine and glorious deed that the young chieftain had done. He deserved to be a god and to be honored by men. At the bottom of his heart Andrés was glad, nevertheless, that men now had the sun and that he could never be troubled by the pangs of conscience and valorous intent until compelled to do as that chieftain had done. He felt the warm pressure of the girl on his breast, and it made him wonder whether he
would be capable of making the sacrifice that god had made of abandoning his wife and child and people forever. But, thinking and feeling as he did, he understood all the more how great and beautiful a deed that god had done, and what love of his fellow men it showed, to have sacrificed all that makes a man’s life worth living in order to be of help to men. And what made the deed all the greater and more worthy of admiration was that the god could never die, never sleep, and never forget; for ever and ever he had to think of the loves he had given up, and the pang of his loss could never cease. For though he knows that all whom he knew on earth have been dead for thousands of years, yet they live in his memory as vividly as on the day when he forsook them for the sake of mankind. It is only a very slight consolation to him that his son is near him and that he can embrace him on those days, few and far between, when for an hour the sun is darkened for men on earth. It was very natural, then, that Andrés should feel no ambition to become a god of his people; for when he considered and pondered the matter he came to the conclusion that the lot of a god is not an enviable one. The greatness and glory of the gods is dearly bought.

  17

  He wanted to ask something, but he saw that the girl was fast asleep. Taking her gently in his arms, he picked her up and carried her all the way to the camp where the carretas were.

  The others were all asleep. Some seemed to have drunk to excess in their recent celebration of the fiesta in honor of San Caralampio. They groaned and grunted in their sleep and lay on the ground like logs.

  He put the girl tenderly down. Then he prepared a comfortable bed for her in the carreta, and when he had got it ready to his satisfaction he lifted her carefully into the carreta and settled her down. She only sighed now and then—she was so utterly tired out.

  Then he spread his petate on the ground under the carreta and lay down to sleep. His last waking thought was that never in his whole life had he fallen asleep with such joy and content and hope as on this night. With his last glimmer of consciousness before he fell asleep, he knew in his heart that the loveliest and sweetest days of his life had begun—days that would make him forget all the cares and troubles of his hard life.

  His drowsy thoughts even got so far that he whispered: “To be a carretero is the finest life on earth.”

  13

  The carreteros were up early, as always. There was plenty to do. The carretas had not yet been made ready to go through the next few weeks without breakdowns.

  Andrés was responsible for the good order of the whole train; but he saw that nothing much in the way of repairs could be expected that day. The fellows were still befuddled from the previous day’s celebrations. Some of them had fiendish headaches because of the bad and doctored tequila they had drunk—for lack of the money to drink good comiteco. Early in the afternoon they would start drinking again. They knew of no other recreation; or if they did it was not available.

  Andrés decided to send the worst cases—those whom the night’s boozing had reduced to the condition of wet rags—out over the prairie to see that the oxen had not strayed too far and had no sores. It was light work which the fellows could do all right. He himself would go with one or two others to the pine forest and hew out some poles and yokes to take along as spares.

  When breakfast was ready he went to his carreta to see what the girl was doing. She had been awake a long time and was sitting on a case combing her hair.

  “Buenos días—good morning, little girl. How did you sleep?” he asked laughing.

  “I slept fine,” she replied cheerfully, “better than for months past. I wish you the best of good days, Binash Yutsil.”

  “You must be hungry,” he said. “We haven’t got anything very good for breakfast—black beans, tortillas, chile, and coffee.”

  “That’s a meal for a king,” she said. “I’ve got a fine appetite for it.”

  She climbed down from the carreta. Then she arranged her crumpled skirt, smoothed down her jorongo over her breast, and went shyly to the fire, where the fellows had already begun to shovel up the black beans with their tortillas and cram them into their empty bellies.

  They all looked up as the girl approached, but there were no inquisitive glances or shameless stares. Since Andrés had brought her out from his carreta, they knew already whose she was.

  “Mi mujer,” said Andrés, “my woman. She travels with us now.”

  That was enough not only to introduce the girl, but also to conclude a contract of marriage, which would be respected by Andrés’s own comrades and all other carreteros no less than if it had been solemnized in a church. She was from now on as unapproachable and as far from the thoughts of any carretero as the patrón’s wife.

  Besides, these carreteros, like all the rest on the road, had too much sense to play the fool. It was as much as their lives were worth. Each man knew that—if not in open fight, then one night in the bush when the oxen were being looked for. Every man of them would have his machete in his hand to cut a way through the bushes—and a machete leaves the guilty man no time to think before it slips between his ribs. Carreteros had their own code of morals and honor. The dead man had had his due. Why had he not left the woman alone? He had known the score. The verdict of any carretero who knew the circumstances was short and sharp. There were no lengthy proceedings or superfluous talk. The culprit was buried. The patrón was told that he lost his life in the jungle while looking for the oxen. And if the deed ever came out, perhaps through a carretero’s drunken talk, the worst that could happen was that the man who carried out the sentence had the dead man’s debt entered to his own account. No court of law was bothered with it. If the law had once begun bothering itself over the private affairs of carreteros, it would only have been a useless expenditure of public money on matters which once done could not have been undone. And once the law interfered with the carretero’s personal liberties, transport contractors would have had no able-bodied carreteros left in their employment. Besides, judges had other things to think of which paid them better. There was not a cent to be made out of carreteros. Why trouble, then, and why add to the accumulation of legal documents which nobody reads, which only collect dust and which it costs time and labor to draft and file away?

  2

  The carreteros merely said casually: “Cómo estás, Chica—how are you, little one?” without even ceasing to chew as they said it.

  It was nothing of importance and nothing new that one of their company should pick up a wife somewhere and take her along with him. That might happen on any day’s journey.

  Sometimes the woman saw out one trip and then, finding she did not like the life, took a job at some place on the road; or else she came across an agricultural laborer whose settled way of life suited her better or who attracted her more. Then the marriage was dissolved—without tears or sentiment.

  The rough and ready life of a carretero left no room for soft hearts and fine feelings. Life was taken as it came. It is the lies and perjuries of romance and poetry that inflate a man with feelings which, in truth, he never has, and never indulges in without embarrassment.

  The fellows moved up to make room for the girl at the fire. It was still early. The sun was rising halfheartedly. A thick and clinging mist lay over the prairie and the air was cold.

  Andrés squatted beside the girl and handed her an earthenware bowl of hot beans in their own watery sauce, without fat or meat. He put a few chiles on a tortilla and gave it to her. Then he laid some tortillas on the naked fire, turning them this way and that, and passed them to her when he thought they were heated through.

  She ladled up her beans with pieces broken from the tortillas and took little bites of the chile to season the plain black beans.

  For the girl, Andrés poured some hot coffee into a jarrita—a little earthenware jug. He drank his own coffee from a gourd that is grown in this country especially for its smooth, hard rind.

  All carreteros drank their coffee out of gourds, and the same with their bean soup. The little
jug and bowl which the girl used were the only utensils at the fire which gave any hint of what you might call civilization.

  There was, indeed, a blue enamel pot in which the beans were cooked, but this was so battered that its proper place was a rubbish heap among the refuse that civilization vomits out. It was so blackened with smoke and so battered and bashed that there was scarcely a flake left on it to show that years ago it had been enameled blue without and white within. The beans in it were stirred with a splinter split from a spoke.

  3

  “Make a good meal, girl,” Andrés said to encourage her.

  She nodded like an obedient child.

  “You’re thin enough, Chica,” Manuel—one of the fellows—said. “No cushions on your thighs, girl. You’re not my style, I can tell you. I want flesh in my hands to make me happy.”

  The girl nodded in assent. She did not understand what he said, for she knew very little Spanish.

  “She doesn’t know Spanish,” said Andrés, “and anyway, none of that.”

  “Don’t get excited, Andreucho,” said Manuel laughing. “All the better if she doesn’t understand Spanish. We needn’t put a gag in our mouths. But, hombre, what can you do with a stick like that, I ask you? What is there there when you get down to it? She’ll fly right off the hinges, hombre. There’s nothing to her at all.”

  They all laughed at this. But there was nothing nasty, nothing disgusting about their laughter. They had no thought of being obscene. It was as natural to them to speak of such things as of the state of their carretas. There were no dark secrets, no repressed sensuality in their lives. No one had taught them to play the hypocrite about natural things and to regard plain facts as sinful.

  They certainly did not mince their words. They spoke as they thought and felt. Problems of sex and psychology had no meaning for them, and so their lives took on no superfluous complexities. Man is man, and woman is woman; and when the two come together they know what they want of each other. That was the sum of their philosophy of sex. They found it a very satisfactory one, and it never played them false.