March to the Monteria

by B. TRAVEN

  “Of that you can be sure, mano. Life will be far more comfortable without those two. The lowest scum on this earth are those who hit the defenseless. And those snatchers, if you meet one of them alone and you happen to have the better of him, they’re the dirtiest whining sons of whores you can imagine. Whimpering, trembling and shaking all over worse than an old woman.”

  “Did you tell those two whip-swingers what you read in their hands?” Andrés asked. “It might not be so bad if you told them all about it so they can be more careful on their way.”

  Celso looked at Andrés with half-closed eyes. He was not quite sure whether Andrés meant what he said or if he just wanted to be funny.

  “Do you really mean,” he asked, “that I should warn those two of what fate has in store for them?”

  “Well—it is—I mean to say, they’re Christians and not heathens,” said Andrés hesitatingly.

  “Christians, you said? Beasts, that’s what they are, but not Christians.” Celso said it in a tone as if fate had already taken care of the two capataces. “And let me give you some brotherly advice. If you tell that pair of whoremongers one single word about my prophecies or if you breathe it to anyone else in the troop, I swear you’ll be spitting out all your teeth. Keep your goddamned trap shut.” He sighed. “Well, there are the cabrones whistling to continue our march. Let’s get up.”

  25

  The whole troop came to life once more. The arrieros loaded the pack mules, then tightened the girths. Soon yells and shouts sounded all over the place: “Ora, mula, adelante. Que diablos y cabrones. Pronto Prieto, pronto. Abran. Abran!”

  The yells and blasphemous oaths of the arrieros were returned a hundredfold by the echo from the lake.

  The capataces and drivers, not to be outdone by the arrieros, hollered at the troop. The whips cracked and the agents blew their whistles furiously, while the men shouted to one another.

  After a short march the troop arrived at the newly constructed bridge. The bridge, built rapidly and precariously, crossed a swamp.

  The swamp had a width of approximately twenty yards. Obviously nobody had ever cared to find out how far it stretched out to the left and the right. A greenish-black color, it was full of little watery pools and puddles. In the leaden, heavy, dark green enclosure of the jungle, the swamp seemed far blacker, more ghostly and more terrifying than it would have appeared in clear, open sunlight. If someone took a single step into it, putting his foot down hard, he sank immediately up to his knee. The mud stuck to his leg as if it were a live being. It clung firmly and sucked. You had the sensation that somebody was pulling the foot down, slowly but unceasingly. If you brought the other foot close to pull out the first one, the second foot also sank into the ooze and was sucked down. Panting, sweating, breathless, and with your heart on the point of bursting, you managed to reach firm ground where you could sit down, regain your breath and think of what to do next. There is no turning back in such a swamp. It’s either ahead or perish.

  That had been the experience first of the ancient Mexicans, the Aztecs, and later that of the Spaniards and Frenchmen who came searching the jungles for the legendary holy cities of the Mayas, where walls and roofs were supposed to be of pure gold and where the women wore necklaces with pearls and diamonds as large as ducks’ eggs. When these first explorers and adventurers found the cities in ruins, they looked for gold mines and diamond fields. They did not find those, either, and so finally they had to be satisfied with caoba which, if handled wisely, could be transmuted into gold. Thus, their efforts and their expeditions had not been completely in vain.

  The caoba caravans were in no way prepared to go exploring for other routes. Their corn rations were calculated so precisely that a delay of two days along the march might be fatal. The animals used by the montería caravans were accustomed to dry, hard plains and mountain passes. One can lead these animals through brooks and across rivers, but not easily through swamps. Neither blows nor kind words nor the most blasphemous oaths can drive them across a swamp once they sense danger.

  The danger actually existed that the animals might sink out of sight with their loads, so the old hands among the arrieros did not even attempt to force the passage through the swamp. Experience had taught them that it took less time and offered greater security for both the load and the animals if a bridge was built.

  Tree trunks, branches and twigs with heavy foliage were spread over the swamp. When it is covered by heaps of branches with all the leaves left on, the swamp loses its dangerous aspect for the animals. Besides, and this is a very important point, the ground acquires greater firmness. This cover, of course, oscillates and wiggles over its swampy foundation, and that makes the going insecure for the animals. They step cautiously, but at least they advance. At one short section of the swampy terrain a sort of bridge was built of long, stout trunks, held together with bindweed, and well covered with branches and twigs so that the animals’ hoofs wouldn’t slip between the trunks.

  When everything was ready the whistles blew, and the mule drivers took over. The most spirited animals were already pushing on, while the men were still busy piling branches and twigs. These lively animals went so fast that the muchachos had to jump out of their way so they wouldn’t be trampled on.

  The site echoed with the wild shouting of the arrieros who were incapable of pronouncing a single sentence that was not studded with satanic oaths about whoring cabrones, whoring old women and whoring sons of this and of that.

  The yells and oaths, the racket of the excited pushing animals, kicking and biting, stamping and groaning, panting and grunting, the squeaking and rattling of the straps and ropes of the packs, the unexpected fall of an animal and its struggle to get up rapidly so as not to be kicked by the following animals, or be pushed off the bridge, enlivened the scene. The shouting and swearing of the arrieros and muchachos, many of whom stood up to their chests in the swamp, attracted a huge throng of monkeys, called gritones. The gritones, high up in the tops of the trees, made terrific howls and roaring bellows that made the loudest shouts of the swearing arrieros sound like sweet whisperings.

  All this confused and irritated the pack mules, and the more the animals became excited, the more the feeble mat of twigs and branches sank in the ooze. The last animals stood in the swamp to their girths and crossed the disintegrating bridge at really great risk.

  The main troop of men, which had been kept back to make way for the animals, now approached and wore out the last thin remains of the covering and also the last splinters of the bridge. When about half the troop had reached the opposite bank of the swamp, both the cover and the bridge were no longer visible. The swamp looked more horrifying and impassable than when the caravan had arrived. The soft banks had caved in, and some of the trunks had slid off and now lay lengthwise across the black, muddy, sticky water. The next caravan would have to build a new causeway.

  26

  It happened on the second day in the jungle. Around noon the troop had made a short halt at a site called La Lagunita. Celso had hurt his foot against a sharp rock. He squatted near the water and rinsed off the blood. The signal was given to continue marching.

  Celso bandaged the wounded ball of his foot with a dirty cotton rag torn from his shirt. It was slow work because he wanted to tie the simple bandage as firmly as possible, so that it wouldn’t slip and get lost along the road.

  It was not on account of the pain that Celso bound his foot so carefully, but because of experience. When working in the coffee plantations at Soconusco County, he had seen a young man cut himself slightly with a machete to which specks of earth had adhered. On the following day the man could neither move his head nor his shoulders, and a few hours later he died. With the bandage, Celso meant to protect the wound against poisonous earth as well as new bumps when marching. There was no physician with the troop and none at the monterías. Everyone had to take care of himself and be his own doctor. He who perished only proved that he had no right to live and prove
d, furthermore, that he was a scoundrel who cheated the agent or the montería out of an important advance.

  The troop was already on the march. Celso had not quite finished his bandage when the last men passed him.

  Back of that group, El Zorro came on horseback. El Zorro, The Fox, was one of the two coyotes who had framed Celso in Hucutsin to earn five pesos for hooking him. The other of the two was nicknamed El Camarón, The Shrimp.

  El Zorro had ridden a few hundred paces back to see whether any muchachos were lagging behind. He had found everything in good shape and now came trotting along. He saw Celso squatting on the trail, still busy fixing his bandage.

  “Andale, Chamula, ándale, you stinking old mule,” El Zorro shouted. “Andale, ándale, do you want to go to sleep here and dream of fucking women? Up with you, up, up, on your feet. The others are already arriving at the montería.”

  When Celso did not get up immediately, El Zorro struck him across the face with his whip.

  “Just so you won’t forget, Chamula,” he said, “that I’m a ladino and you a stinking Chamula swine, full of lice.”

  By now Celso had lifted his pack. He said in a freezing voice, “Those blows were all I needed to make up the account, and by the Holy Mother of God Almighty you’ll get your due receipt today, cabrón.”

  Celso said these words in Tsotsil, his native language, but El Zorro knew “cabrón.”

  “You’ll get that ‘cabrón’ back with interest, tu hijo de una puta that you are,” he yelled. “You just wait until we get to the montería. I’ll get commissioned to celebrate ‘la fiesta.’ Then I’ll take you on first, while I still have full strength in my arms, and skin you to your rotten bones. You, and that carretero, that Tseltsal joto. Both of you I’ll take on first.”

  “If you ever get to the montería, you offspring of a dirty five-centavo whore,” replied Celso. He was following closely after the horse. El Zorro delivered his speeches turning his head backward, because he wanted to be sure that Celso got every word of it and he also hoped to get some pleasure out of the scared or furious face of the Indian. And this was the reason he paid no attention to the trail. The horse stumbled over a root. Along these lonely paths over plains, through bush, jungle and virgin forest horses develop the habit of listening when their riders talk. They turn their ears around and, sometimes, even turn their head. They do not know whether the talk is for them and whether, in the long speech, there might be a word of command which they would want to obey because, if they didn’t obey quickly, they might feel the whip.

  El Zorro’s horse had been paying attention to the speech because obviously it thought that it might contain an order to stop or trot faster.

  El Zorro dug his spurs deep in the flanks of the animal and hit it a tremendous blow with his whip.

  The horse reared and at the same time turned to the left.

  Mad with pain, it jumped so violently that its forefeet sank into holes and both hind legs flew up into the air. El Zorro catapulted over the head of the animal and fell face deep into a wide mud hole. When he managed to crawl out and get to his feet he got a terrific kick from the frightened animal right in his belly. He dropped back, wheezing and swearing the devil out of hell, and tried to wipe the mud from his face.

  The horse attempted to turn around but fell down on its side. After some struggling, pulling and pushing it was able to twist the left foreleg out of the hole, whereupon the right sank in deeper. The horse kicked in all directions and finally came to stand on its four legs, panting and trembling with exertion and excitement but patiently waiting for its rider to mount again.

  When Celso first saw the horse’s foot sinking into the hole and realized what was going to happen, he let his pack slip off his back and leaped out of the way to avoid being kicked by the animal.

  El Zorro, barely able to look out through his mud-covered eyes, yelled ferociously, “Come here, you Chamula pig. Don’t you see that I’m over my ears in this shit? Get me out of it, chusco apestoso. Hey, there, for Christ’s sake, don’t let that damn caballo run away. Hold it, I say. Get a move on, you stinking fart of a Chamula whore.”

  He stopped yelling and swearing because the thick mud in his mouth was suffocating him. There he sat on his hams, scratching and rubbing the mud from his eyes, from his hair and out of his mouth, spitting and blowing all the while like an angry seal. Nearly dazed from the hard fall, wild with rage, he smeared all the mud back in his face again, unaware of what he was doing. Now he noticed it, spit it out and shook it off his hands. He tried to get on his feet. But, partly because of the horse’s tremendous kick which had landed right on his belly, partly because his foot had become stuck in a liana which held him down firmly, and lastly because he was so furious that he could not think clearly, he simply could not stand up.

  “You goddamned stinking Chamula swine,” he shrieked. “Will you come here and pull me out of this shit or, by God Almighty, I’ll whip you into whining shreds and bare every single bone of yours of the last bit of skin.”

  “Voy, ya voy,” answered Celso, “I’m coming; you don’t know how fast I’m coming.”

  He tied the still trembling horse to a tree. When he was about to pick up the reins which were dragging along the ground, he saw a thick broken-off ebony branch, grabbed it and walked close to El Zorro, who was fumbling for his pocket knife to cut the liana which had caught his leg.

  Raising his eyes, he saw Celso approaching with the stick.

  “What ya want that club for?” El Zorro asked, forgetting to cut the liana with the knife he had finally produced.

  His leg still caught by the tough, thick liana, he tried a half turn and came to rest on his knees, holding both his hands high in front of him, spreading his fingers apart and thus letting the pocket knife drop.

  Celso’s blow passed right between the two hands exactly where it had been aimed. Celso picked up the pocket knife which had not yet been opened and put it back into El Zorro’s pants pocket.

  Whether El Zorro was dead or not did not worry Celso. He wanted to cede part of the honor to the horse and let it do the rest.

  He squeezed El Zorro’s foot into the stirrup and buckled the spur tightly to the foot. He fastened the lead rope to the saddle stock. This done, he pulled the horse back on the trail, struck it a light blow on the behind, and the animal ambled off.

  El Zorro’s body, with its head on the ground, was being dragged along. As the animal walked, the body of El Zorro slid slowly under the horse and that caused the spur to dig into the horse’s flank. So the horse started to trot, dragging the body half under and half behind. As the animal’s excitement grew it ran faster and so El Zorro’s head hammered against rocks, roots and trees. Whenever the horse slowed its gait, the body slipped under again, the spur dug into the horse’s flank, and the horse once more began trotting.

  Celso could now leave the horse alone. It would fulfill its duty. He took up his pack and calmly continued on his way. The horse had already advanced so far that he could not see it any more.

  Celso knew the road well. He arrived at a spot on the road where a very narrow path, hardly visible, led straight across the mountain.

  He gathered all his strength. Like a goat, he pushed himself sideways through the thick, thorny bushes and crawled on hands and knees up the mountain. Several times he thought that he would not be able to make it.

  Every moment he felt as if his heart were missing a few beats and would stop altogether. His lungs seemed to be bursting.

  Soaked in sweat, panting, his mouth wide open and his nostrils trembling, he reached the top of the mountain.

  There he dropped on the ground, slipped off his pack, wiped the salty sweat from his eyelids, which seemed glued together, violently rubbed his neck and throat, his left breast, beating it a few times with his fist, took a few deep, resounding breaths, and then picked up his pack again.

  Going down the other side of the mountain, at times he stumbled and rolled down as far as twenty yards. But
he picked himself up and advanced in long jumps and strides, intentionally falling, gliding and rolling where he thought he could do so without hurting himself. Hard as all this was, he gained a remarkable advance over the troop.

  He arrived on the trail shortly after the vanguard passed. The marching men were coming along, one after the other, at irregular intervals.

  He did not step out straight from the thicket into the trail. He approached close and hid himself for a while behind bushes. Then he slipped off his pack and let his pants drop down.

  With pants half-dropped he stepped out from behind the bushes and entered the trail. Here he pulled and tucked at his pants, drew them up and rolled in his sash again.

  “I’ve just had a fine and healthy belly opening, damn it,” he said laughingly, when the next group approached. Some of the boys threw off their packs to rest for a few minutes, to wipe the sweat from their burning eyes and regain their breath. Celso still panted. But none of the muchachos resting around noticed it. Everyone had enough to worry about with his own fatigue.

  Celso dragged his pack out of the bushes, fumbled for a thick cigar, lit it and, slinging his pack over his forehead, said: “Bueno, muchachos, I have to be on my way now. My group is up in front. They must’ve gained a good stretch by now.”

  He trotted along while the other boys still remained a few minutes longer for a rest, talking until the next group arrived and also halted for a while in the shade. From a rift in the steep, rocky wall, a thin stream of cool clear water came forth. It was this spring that caused everyone who passed by to feel the urge for a brief rest and to knead himself a small piece of pozol into his drinking water.

  27

  Around four in the afternoon the caravan arrived at the paraje. The stragglers, the lame and the ones who had already caught calentura, arrived around five.