The Carreta

by B. TRAVEN

  So, by the time the sun began to blaze down, they had left the soft, difficult road far behind them. The oxen, owing to the heat and the attacks of huge horseflies, could work no longer and Andrés gave the word to halt.

  The drivers took out their animals, lit their fires, and cooked their food. They wasted no time; they were tired and wanted to sleep.

  Their camping place was not large, but it was covered with good grass. It was triangular in shape.

  The road to Jovel met it at one corner, traversed its left side, and then left it at the next corner to go around a hill. The next side of this triangular parcel of grass bordered high ground covered with gnarled trees and bushes. The third side fell away steeply. This steep descent was grassy and clothed with bushes and stunted pines.

  Far below, a stream, with clear drinking water, wound its way through thick undergrowth. On the other side of the stream began the great bush.

  2

  This little camping place was to enshrine for Estrellita one of the most beautiful memories of her life.

  It was the first place since she had left her home where she felt secure from all pursuit. She breathed freely for the first time, like a young animal of the forest who has escaped from its cage and smells again the familiar trees and bushes in the bliss of being with good and trusted friends once more.

  After he had rested, Andrés took her down the steep descent to the stream below. There they found a clearing in the thick undergrowth which gave them just enough room to sit side by side. As they sat together he took a scrap of paper from his shirt pocket. On it was a poem of a few lines. It pleased him because of its simplicity and its tender melody and because its whole meaning was clear to him and found an answer in his feelings. He had carefully torn it from a printed sheet he had picked up on the road somewhere—he had long forgotten where. It was now yellowed and worn from being so long in his pocket.

  He unfolded it carefully and read to Estrellita: “Blue flowers by the way / Red tunas at Nopal / They are part of you, Prieta / Since I looked into your eyes.”

  He had read it in Spanish. When she looked up at him inquiringly because she did not understand, he translated it into Tseltal for her.

  “It is like a bird singing among the bushes when he wants a wife and wants to build a nest for her,” she said.

  “That is just what the man who wrote it meant,” said he, moved by the simple explanation she gave to the lines.

  “Wrote?” she asked. “Why did he write it when it is a song to be sung aloud?”

  Then he began to explain to her what writing was, what its use was, and how by means of it you could speak to people who were not present.

  “Then I have no need for writing,” she said impulsively, “for you will always be with me and I with you, and there is no one else in the world I want to speak to. I can say everything I want to you with my mouth and don’t need to write.”

  “That’s true, Estrellita,” said he, and he was quite sure she was right.

  But he felt so rich in the knowledge he had so painfully acquired that it hurt him not to be able to share it with Estrellita. He wanted to share with her all he possessed, to possess everything in common with her.

  In his impulse to share all he knew with her and to make her a partner in all he possessed, Andrés looked for another way of making her understand how important reading and writing, and arithmetic too would be for her.

  “You see, Estrellita,” he said, “if you can write and read you can’t so easily be deceived with contracts, accounts, and government regulations. If the peons on the fincas could read and understand figures, the finquero could not keep them in slavery and debt and sell them when he liked.”

  She did not understand why this could free a peon, because she did not see the connection. To understand this connection she would have first had to understand reading, writing, and arithmetic and thus recognize their advantage. But since he said so she believed it without understanding.

  “Can you write?” she asked.

  “Yes, I can write. Would you like to see how it goes?”

  He found a scrap of paper in his pocket and wrote on it in pencil: “I found Estrellita when she was poor and forsaken and had not a single friend in the wide world.”

  She watched attentively while he slowly traced the letters, and was full of admiration. It filled her with great joy that he, who was the whole content of her life, was so clever and could do everything and knew everything that was to be known and done on the earth.

  When he had read what he had written, she said: “That is true. It is as true as the stars in heaven.” She seized his hand and pressed it against her face.

  “Take this paper and keep it,” he said.

  As she folded it and tucked it into the top of her shirt, she said: “I will wear it next to my heart where I keep all you say.”

  Then she said: “I’d rather than anything in the world write you something as beautiful and dear as you have written for me.”

  “Well,” he said, smiling, “if you’d like to write me something beautiful, then I’ll teach you writing and Spanish at the same time. We can’t write in Tseltal because it has no letters. The letters are of the language of the Ladinos. They made them so as to be able to write up contracts and debts.”

  This was how their lessons began; and they began down by the stream, a hundred feet away from the carretas and their drivers, while the last rays of the sun grew pale. The first word Andrés taught her to write was the name he had given her—Estrellita—though she got no further that day than writing an E with much difficulty.

  Since that day Estrellita had been back to this camping ground four times, when Andrés was in charge of carretas and halted there. And each time they had gone down to the little clearing beside the stream, and she had knelt and kissed the grass in greeting and in remembrance.

  Whenever in later times she heard the word “home,” she thought of this little piece of ground.

  3

  It happened on this fourth journey when Andrés and Estrellita had made their ascent from the little stream that they heard their native Tseltal being spoken in low tones. The voices came from a campfire nearby, around which sat a group of Indians.

  These Indians were on their way from their native district in the north of the state to the villages and settlements of the fertile south and southeast, and had just stopped to rest on the grassy meadow.

  It was music to their ears when Andrés and Estrellita caught these Tseltal words.

  “Buenas noches,” Andrés called out, and then added in Tseltal, “are you from the Bachajón district?”

  “Yes, that’s where our pueblo is,” one of them replied, “but we don’t live near Bachajón. We come from farther on, nearer the great jungle.”

  “I’m from the finca of Lumbojvil,” said Andrés, walking up and introducing himself, “and Estrellita, my wife, is from the same neighborhood, but nearer to the road to Simojovel.”

  Estrellita was a few feet behind him. It is not the custom for Indian women to thrust themselves into the company of men and join in their talk. She stood where she was.

  “And where are you bound for?” Andrés asked, squatting down by the fire and lighting a cigarette from one of its smoldering branches.

  “We are after young mules,” one of the men said.

  “Mules are very expensive in these parts,” Andrés told them.

  The eldest of the Indians, who seemed to be in charge of the party, laughed. “You must be a fool yourself if you think us such fools as to buy any mules here. I have been on this job four times now since I earned my first money on an American’s coffee plantation in Soconusco and was able to buy my first two mules. No, muchachito, we are going down to the railroad and then further still to the lagoons on the coast. Then we shall keep going along the railroad. That is the best hunting ground for us, for there the people have plenty of young mules and sometimes they’re only too glad to sell them as soon as they’re born; for,
don’t you see, the people down there by the railroad are always hard up for money. They’re always seeing something they’d like to buy whether they need it or not; and that is good for us, because otherwise it would be very difficult to buy up enough young animals to bring back from these long trips.”

  These mules were not so easily bought as it might seem, for the farmers and owners of haciendas were not very eager to sell; they preferred to rear the animals themselves, since a good mule brought ten times, often twenty times, as much as a fat pig. So the Indian buyers sometimes went from one ranch to another for a week or more without being able to purchase a single animal, and they were often months on the road before they had bought up all the young mules they had come prepared to buy.

  Then again, they often had a stroke of luck. They would come upon a young mule which its owner did not want to sell, but while they lingered on the ranch a trader would arrive and set out his wares. Then the ranchero, but a hundred times more his wife, felt wretched not to be millionaires and able to buy up everything in one sweep. The ranchero would catch his wife smiling at him as she never had since their marriage and at the same time would become aware of the Indians still standing about with ready money in their pockets. Half an hour later the Indians were the possessors of a fine young mule and three hours later the money they had paid for it was in the hands of the trader.

  The Indians bought mules even when they were not yet weaned and had scarcely begun to graze, for at that age the animals were cheapest; and these men could only buy at the cheapest prices if they hoped to bring home a few animals each, for money was a rarity with them.

  They had an unwearied patience and kindness in rearing these young mules. When, after three years, the mules were offered for sale they often brought ten times what had been spent on them. Indians living in independent communities on barren soil were able to earn a tolerable living by rearing mules, and it gave them a life they enjoyed.

  4

  “Did you come through Lumbojvil?” Andrés asked the men.

  “We spent a night there,” said one of the men as he stirred up the fire.

  “Didn’t you say you were from Lumbojvil?” said the Indian who appeared to be the leader, scrutinizing Andrés.

  “Yes,” Andrés replied. “I come from Lumbojvil and my people live there, although it’s a long while since I’ve seen them.”

  The man’s question already hinted that he had news to tell which might interest Andrés. Now he took a flaming branch from the fire and threw the light on Andrés’s face.

  “Yes, now I know who you are,” he said. “You’re Criserio’s son who lives on the finca there. You’re the son of Criserio Ugalde.”

  “That’s my father, yes. How is he? And my mother and all of them?” asked Andrés.

  Lázaro—for that was his name—made no answer. Instead he reflectively pulled out some tobacco leaves, which he rolled in his hand. Then, selecting a larger leaf to wrap them in, he slowly and carefully made himself a cigar which, when it was at last completed, was almost twelve inches long and two inches thick.

  It gave Andrés a queer feeling to see this cigar. It was eight years since he had left home. During this time he had become Mexicanized. He spoke fluent Spanish, though with the peculiar accent of this remote southern state of the Republic. In these years, moreover, he had also grown accustomed to the habits of the Ladinos, even though he could not himself copy these habits—he had to lead the hard and meager life of a carretero, who is always with his carreta on the roads of the state, which are forgotten by God and engineers alike. But he was used to the cigars that he saw for sale in the tiendas in the towns, cigars of the same shape and size as are familiar throughout the civilized world. He could not himself buy cigars; they were too expensive. He had to stick to cigarettes, which he rolled himself. Now, when he looked at this immense cigar, his home rose so clearly before him that he saw his father sitting on the ground with one of those huge cigars between his fingers. Andrés’s father had smoked nothing but cigars of this size, which he made for himself, as did all the other men of his race in that region.

  While Lázaro with infinite pains rolled his cigar, and did it with an air of not having heard Andrés’s question, another Indian, Emilio, said: “I know your father Criserio very well, and your mother and all your people. I bought five little pigs from him two years ago, but I had to pay the money for them to the finquero because your father was in debt to him. All the same I managed to slip your father a peso on the quiet when the finquero wasn’t looking, otherwise he’d have had that peso as well. That finquero of yours is a bad one, es un hijo de la chingada, bad luck to him. What’s his name? Don Arnulfo? Yes, that’s it, don Arnulfo. Wolf would suit him better.”

  “We say in the pueblo that don Arnulfo must have had a tiger for his father,” said another man.

  “And a stinking coyote for his mother,” Emilio threw in.

  Lázaro had at last put the final touches on his cigar. He licked it all around with the tenderness of a connoisseur and smacked his lips as though ready to eat it slowly instead of smoking it. When after an ample pause he had lighted it and made sure with equal care that it was well lit, he exhaled a few thick clouds of smoke, his head thrown back and his eyes half shut in order to savor his delight to the full. After he had taken several puffs, he looked steadily at Andrés, letting his glance pass over and about him, as if he wanted to appraise his worth.

  Andrés looked into the fire. He felt now in every fiber of his being that things at home were not as he would like. But he did not break in, because he knew that men of his race say what has to be said when the right moment has come. They are not babblers who speak without thinking.

  “How much do you earn with the carretas?” Lázaro asked.

  “Since I am now encargado I earn seventy centavos a day and rations,” answered Andrés.

  “Does your wife earn anything as well?”

  “No,” Andrés replied. “I buy her what she wants, but she does not want much more than a little bird.”

  “Seventy centavos a day,” Lázaro repeated slowly, as though comparing this sum with another in his mind. “Seventy centavos. That is damned little. Then you can’t help your father out of the mess he’s in. Hell take it. That would need more than a hundred and I don’t know how many pesos.”

  Andrés gave a violent start. He gulped and swallowed and could not open his mouth. His lips were clamped together.

  Lázaro pushed some branches further into the fire and shut his eyes tightly when a cloud of green smoke was blown into his face.

  Estrellita was now squatting on the ground about five feet behind Andrés, because she felt that the conversation by the fire would go on longer than at first seemed likely. None of the men paid any attention to her or called to her to come nearer the fire. This was not out of any disrespect to the girl, but simply because she was free to sit by her husband at the fire if she felt any desire to do so.

  5

  Andrés had looked around several times toward Estrellita while this talk went on and had nodded and smiled to her to show that he had not forgotten her. Now, under the shock of this terrible blow, when his lips seemed to have lost the power to form words, he turned around toward her again. He did it unconsciously, as though he looked to her for refutation of what he had just heard, as though she alone could release him from the anguish he was suffering at that moment.

  The men around the fire had spoken in undertones and Estrellita had been able to catch only a word here and there, so that she knew nothing of what they were saying. That was why, when Andrés turned to her, she only nodded carelessly and smiled as she had before.

  At this Andrés had a strange experience. He saw her not just five feet from him but so far away that she might have been sitting on the opposite shore of a sea. And with this peculiar optical illusion there rose in his heart the conviction that he had lost her.

  He moved his neck as though he were choking, and then took a deep breath
and asked: “How do you mean help my father, hombre?”

  Lázaro did not lift his eyes from the fire—not for a long time. Then he stretched his shoulders. He looked at his companions. When he saw that they all stared into the fire-some poking at the burnt-out ends, others putting on fresh wood, and all occupying themselves in case Andrés might call on one of them by name for an explanation—he became restless. He moved this way and that, held an ember to his cigar although there was no necessity, and said nothing.

  Then Emilio spoke up. “What is the good of beating about the bush?” he asked roughly. “It’s not our fault that we’ve met you here. We were not looking for you. It’s you that ran your head into us. No one told us to tell you the news.”

  “Of course not,” said Andrés. “It is no business of yours. But it’s my father, and I’ve heard nothing of him for so many years.”

  Emilio replied as though with indifference. “This is how it is: Don Arnulfo has sold your father to the monterías—to an agent. I believe his name is don Gabriel.”

  For minutes Andrés sat there stunned. When his brain began to work again his first thought was to take the quickest way to Lumbojvil and murder don Arnulfo. This thought, however, quickly passed. He saw at once that by murdering don Arnulfo he would be unable to help his father, whose situation would then be even more hopeless.

  Slowly, the full weight of his father’s plight pressed down upon his consciousness. “My father … sold to the monterías,” he kept repeating in a scarcely audible voice, “sold to the monterías because I was not at home to help him work off his debt.”

  In the turmoil of his thoughts and feelings he recalled the day when he saw his father for the last time. It was the day when his father had bought him a petate, and a serape to keep him warm. He had bought these things for him because he could not bear to see his son suffering. His father had to buy the petate and the serape on credit from the finquero and had thus greatly increased his debt.