Government

by B. TRAVEN

  “And what is Isidro in prison for?” asked don Gabriel. He did not know which of his prisoners Isidro was. He knew none of them by name.

  “Isidro is the man who was only drunk and shouted so much, but he meant no harm,” said his brother. “We want you to let him out now. He is sober by this time, and if he doesn’t see to his maize he will have a bad crop.”

  Don Gabriel got up. “Right,” he said, “you can have him at once.” He was going to let Isidro out of the prison there and then.

  “Wait a bit,” said don Mateo. “You must say first what multa he has to pay.”

  The Indians understood very little Spanish, but they understood what was being spoken of. They understood moreover that Don Mateo was interfering with the free discharge of Isidro. They were used to being threatened with a multa when for any reason, mostly drunkenness, they found themselves in prison in a town where they had gone to market. If they had no money and none of the friends or relations with them paid the fine for them, they were kept in prison for a week or longer and had to work on the roads or in the streets and parks of the town.

  Here, however, they were in their own village and Isidro had done nothing but shout and refuse to go quietly to his hut.

  “Isidro’s multa is ten pesos,” said don Mateo. “As soon as he has paid it, he can go.”

  “But where can Isidro get ten pesos?” asked his brother. “He hasn’t got ten pesos—only a large family. Ten pesos? Why, that is nearly the price of two fat pigs when prices are good. When they are as bad as they were last time the dealers were here, it is as much as three fat pigs would bring.”

  “Gabriel,” don Mateo called out, “isn’t that what it says—ten pesos multa for drunkenness and violence?”

  Don Gabriel took up a printed document. “Yes, that is laid down by the government.”

  “Then we cannot alter it,” said don Mateo. “It is the law.”

  Don Gabriel had had time to grasp that a new source of income was being tapped. Now that the people of the place, having found themselves in a tight corner, had had to support the secretary—in their own defense—in arresting the drunken men, the opportunity seemed too good to lose.

  It was true that don Gabriel would have let all the prisoners go without fining them if he had been alone. It would not have been because he acknowledged any responsibility for what had occurred through his having sold them the brandy, or because he had any sympathy for the weakness of the Indians, but simply from prudence.

  For one thing, he was afraid. He knew what the fate of several other secretaries had been. For another thing, he did not want to force matters but rather to tap all sources gradually one by one. He was not at all as stupid as his brother supposed. At bottom he was perhaps cleverer than don Mateo; in any case, more diplomatic.

  It was all very well for Mateo to take the high hand and play the strong man. He was not responsible—he could put everything onto the secretary. And he could clear out at a moment’s notice, whereas Gabriel had his wife to think of, as well as a few possessions he would not like to lose.

  Gabriel had no reason to suppose that Mateo deliberately wished to get him into difficulties. He knew that Mateo had not much brotherly affection for him; all the same, he did not believe he could be so malevolent as to plan his destruction. Mateo did not covet his post—that was certain—and it was very improbable that he had an eye on his wife.

  On the other hand, there was no doubt that don Mateo was a born gambler. If he was now cut off from gambling with money, he gambled with the fates of others, just to see how they turned out and to enjoy the sensation of being the power behind the scene.

  7

  Whatever was behind it, don Gabriel was now cornered and there was no escape. Don Mateo had named the amount of the multa and appealed to the regulations. Don Gabriel was forever debarred from saying that the multa need not be paid. He had to insist on the payment of it, whatever the consequences. Moreover, he had always counted on such fines as the chief source of revenue from his office. He had only been waiting until he was firmly in the saddle before exacting them with ruthless severity on every trivial pretext. Also, he had hoped to win over the Indian casique little by little, so as to have his support before engaging in this traffic.

  But he realized that if he gave way now, once Mateo had cornered him, it would be a long time before he would be able to convince the people that fines were necessary in order to maintain peace and quiet in the place. Everyone would exclaim that he had let the worst disturbers of the peace go free, while now he was inexorable in the case of mere trivial offenders against some supposed regulation.

  The decisive factor, however, was that he was afraid of Mateo’s ridicule. If he did not take the tip now, he would never hear the last of it. His wife, whose avarice exceeded even his own, would add venom to every gibe of Mateo’s, and he would finally have to admit that he was the biggest fool who had ever, by the grace of God, been blessed with the opportunities of office.

  Don Mateo got up and took his brother aside. His manner and his lowered voice might well have suggested to the Indians present that he was pleading with his brother to show mercy to the prisoners. What he actually said, however, was this:

  “Hombre, you’ll never have another such chance, not if you are secretary here for a hundred years. Don’t let it slip. The men and women came and begged you to put the drunks and rowdies in prison. The casique, in their view, has given his approval, since he has made no protest. Your luck again—he was as drunk as the rest. You’ve made your haul with the full approval of the whole place. Make them pay before they get out. After this it will go of itself. Every week you can collar one or two. There’s always some pretext. You can produce as many regulations as you please—not one of them can read. If they don’t like it they’ll curse the government. That won’t hurt you, and the government is far away. Even if they send a deputation and the governor puts himself out to receive it, they won’t be able to make themselves understood, for the governor doesn’t know a word of the language. He’ll ask their names, shake hands, give them a meal at a fonda, some inn that serves dinners at half a peso a head, and write you an official letter telling you to find out what they want. You can say what you like in reply. In any case, he will put it to one side, for meanwhile he will have forgotten about these lousy Indians, even if he’s still governor and has not already been replaced by somebody else who knows nothing at all about the matter and is thinking only of how much he can squeeze out of the coffee plantations in extraordinary taxation for roads and railroads which are never even started.”

  Don Gabriel knew that his brother was right. Unless he meant to spoil his job for good, he had to grab a slice of the pie before him.

  The Indians seated on the bench had been talking too and considering what they could do. When don Gabriel and don Mateo turned around and faced the men again, Isidro’s brother spoke up.

  “Listen, señor Secretario, we will pay four pesos for Isidro, so that he can go back to his wife and children.”

  Don Mateo gave don Gabriel no time to reply. “The regulation puts the fine at ten pesos. But I am not secretary here. If don Gabriel can put it at less, he will have to answer for it to the government.”

  “Good,” said don Gabriel. “I am no tirano. I am not a tyrant, but an understanding secretario. We will say eight pesos. Isidro is poor and he has a large family.”

  “Five,” Isidro’s brother replied to this. “We will pay five pesos and he will be able to pay us back when he sells some goats.”

  After further discussion they came to terms at six pesos multa for Isidro.

  Don Gabriel made out no receipt for the payment of the fine. Nevertheless, don Mateo could not refrain from good advice.

  “You must never give receipts, then nothing can ever be brought home to you if the Indians here get unruly and rebel. You must hammer it into them that the government makes these regulations and that you are nothing but the official who is here to carry them ou
t and who, if he does not do so, will himself go to prison. But why make a song about it? They don’t ask for receipts. They haven’t the sense. Here are the goods and there is the money, and if you give credit, another must stand surety.”

  “All I wonder is why they never made you a secretary,” don Gabriel said with a laugh.

  “Too slow for me, hombre,” don Mateo replied. “I haven’t your patience. I would force the pace, and then I would have them all about my ears. To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t care to be on my own here with a villageful of Indians whom I was trying to fleece.”

  Don Gabriel threw away his cigarette and put his foot on it. “That’s just what I’ve been thinking, Brother. You want to get me embroiled, and then you’ll make yourself scarce when the sparks fly.”

  “That will never happen with you, Gabriel,” don Mateo said, laughing. “You’re too thick in the head for that. You can put a good face on it. I can’t. That’s why you’re safe enough with a job like this.”

  8

  By midday all but two of the prisoners had been released at six pesos a head. In some cases the money was paid in cash, in others it was entered to the prisoner’s account on the surety of two of his relations.

  Don Gabriel assessed the multa at twenty pesos for the man who in his drunkenness had threatened to kill his wife and children and whom his wife had begged the secretary to put in prison until he was sober again. Twenty pesos meant the value of his maize crop or twice the value of the pigs he had to sell.

  His brothers and uncles and others of his family came to bargain for him. After three hours of discussion twelve pesos were agreed upon, and this sum was entered against him. All those present stood surety for payment within six weeks with three pesos interest.

  No one had so far come to ask for the release of Gregorio, the murderer. Only his wife had come at regular intervals to bring him his food. Each time she squatted in front of the door of the prison, with one child at her breast and three others running here and there; and each time she sat there for three hours or more. Her husband said little to her and she less to him. She regarded it as her duty as a wife to be near her husband. Sometimes she wept silently.

  In the evening she came with the baby only. She brought her husband black beans and tortillas and a jug of coffee. She lit a fire outside the door, heated the food on it, and gave it to him through the bars. She watched while he ate, and asked if he wanted salt or more water.

  When he finished she handed him leaves of tobacco and he rolled himself a thick cigar. Then he leaned against the wall and smoked, asking a question now and then about affairs at home. He gave her brief instructions about the work that had to be done, and what jobs and which of the animals had to be seen to.

  Then he stretched out on the straw petate his wife had brought him, covered himself with a thin and tattered blanket, and fell asleep.

  His wife squatted patiently by the fire outside. She made up the fire, clasped her infant to her naked breast, smoked a cigar her husband had given her, fell asleep without stirring from the squatting position, woke up when the fire burned low, spoke gently and tenderly to her little one and clasped it more closely to her, lit the cigar again and took a few puffs, fell asleep, and woke again when the fire threatened to go out. Her husband slept peacefully; his conscience gave him no bad dreams.

  When the night grew pale, the woman got to her feet and with a quick, short step returned to her hut to prepare her husband’s breakfast.

  9

  The door of the prison was made of roughly hewn planks, which were fitted together without nails. The grating consisted of heavy pieces of wood, cut out at the intersections so that they fit into one another. Each opening was wide enough for a prisoner to put his head through if he wanted to.

  The door had no lock. There was an iron staple on the doorpost, so emaciated by rust that it seemed to have galloping consumption. If anyone had put a stick through this staple and given it a twist, it would have yielded up the ghost with a faint crack and been of no further use in this world or the next.

  There was a chain looped around the bar of the grating nearest the doorpost. It suffered from the same tubercular complaint as the staple. Its links were so eaten away with rust that any one of them could have been crushed between the finger and thumb.

  A padlock was passed through the last link of the chain and the staple. The lock did not work, for its mechanism was rusted and immovable, but that did not enter into the question, for don Gabriel had no key. When he shut a prisoner in he merely lowered the hoop of the padlock as far as it would go. Since the works of the lock had long since fallen out of the race, there was no click to show that it had gone home. When don Gabriel released a prisoner he simply raised the hoop of the padlock.

  He let the prisoner out for ten minutes or so several times a day and went into the schoolroom or to his wife in the kitchen. He had no wish to see what use the prisoner made of his liberty. As soon as the prisoner had done all he had to do, he sat down at the door of the prison and waited patiently for don Gabriel to shut him in again.

  The walls of the prison, like those of the whole building of which it formed one corner, were made of thin poles, thickly daubed with mud. From inside or out they could have been broken through by a gentle kick or two. Anyone who chose could have opened the padlock as easily as don Gabriel did—every man in the place knew how it was opened and shut.

  Yet, even though a prisoner might have to spend weeks in this prison waiting for sentence of death, he would not make his escape and none of his friends would have set him free.

  Just as the door of a house is locked in the eyes of an Indian when it is merely tied shut with a rope, so the prison door was locked even though it could be burst open with one finger.

  10

  Don Gabriel considered whether there was any money to be made out of the murder, but neither he nor don Mateo saw any possibility here of increasing the secretary’s receipts. It did not matter to them in the least that the man had killed a fellow Indian. Whether there are a thousand more or a thousand less of these Indians in the world makes no difference to the economic condition of Mexico; and unless they affect the income of a governor, a general, or a tax collector, their presence or absence is of no more importance than in the case of a thousand head of game in the savannas or the forests.

  Don Gabriel had tried punishing the man by a multa of fifty pesos. He would gladly have settled for these fifty pesos, but the Indian did not have them. He could not have produced them even if don Gabriel had been willing to wait a whole year adding another fifty pesos as interest of course. Don Gabriel had even tried this, but the man could not produce a surety. No one would stand surety for him, because it was likely that the man would be killed by a relation of the murdered man in revenge, and then the surety would be called upon.

  If one Indian kills another, the whole village knows the cause of the murder. The motives are understood in all their bearings, in their whole moral and traditional aspect and origin. If the murder is considered to have been justified and inevitable on these grounds, neither the brother, the father, nor the son of the murdered man will avenge the murder. The verdict is that the victim brought it on himself by his own act and had had his deserts. It may happen, however, that a member of the family group, to whom perhaps the circumstances are better known, may not endorse the verdict of the village. He will then nurse his revenge and carry it out as soon as a drunken brawl or a dispute at a festival gives him the chance.

  If the general opinion of the village is that the murder was without justification, the murderer himself knows this without needing to be told, as soon as his fit of rage or drunkenness is over. He then leaves the place of his own accord, taking his family with him. No one hinders him. If, however, he does not go, but lives on in the place as though nothing has occurred, he will be found dead in the bush or on his land before the next moon.

  When opinion in the village is divided, one family group urging that the murd
er was without justification, another urging that the perpetrator had good cause, or was out of his mind with drink, or acted hastily and has since repented, then the chief advises him to leave the village and settle at a distance in the jungle. If he follows this advice all the families of the place will be reconciled with him.

  It would have been simple to hand the murderer over to the casique of the place, but don Gabriel was in a position which made this impossible. He had been called upon by the village to put the murderer in prison for the safety of the place, as he was so drunk he threatened to kill anyone who came near him. If the secretary were now simply to hand him over he would be prejudicing his authority—and he needed all his authority as a source of profit. He might even create the impression that he was afraid of the murderer or his family, and he could not afford to show fear if he wanted to remain there as secretary and extort arbitrary taxes and fines from the inhabitants.

  It would have been unwise to punish the man with a fine of ten pesos, a sum which he might somehow have been able to raise. Don Gabriel had already released a man charged with a far less serious offense for a fine of twelve pesos. Besides, a ten-peso multa might encourage robbers to attack and murder traders or travelers in the belief that ten pesos to the secretary would settle the matter, while they would profit by the hundred pesos which the trader had on him. The reasonings of uncivilized Indians, as of most uncivilized people, are often very odd; but they start from some perfectly rational assumption.

  Don Gabriel did what judges and police officials do in other countries, too, when they do not exactly know how to deal with a prisoner. He let the man remain quietly in prison without telling him what he intended to do with him, hoping that something might arise which would give him his decision ready-made.