by B. TRAVEN
The little shelf, at least to the Garcia family, was not only the house altar. It was at the same time the place for miscellaneous secular things needed in the house. On it were standing withered flowers in several broken pots. There, also, wrapped in a piece of newspaper, were what the Garcia called her sewing utensils — that is, a few rags, a few partly rusty needles, a few pins, and pieces of white and black thread wound around a strip of brown packing paper. There were also a comb, a dozen hairpins, matches, and Carlosito's toys, including a broken tin automobile worth a dime, a fish-hook, a sling made out of a piece of automobile tube, a broken cork, a small, brightly coloured glass ball used as a marble, two brass buttons, a few coloured pictures of the kind one finds in cigarette packages. And there was the little ukulele, his treasured gift from Manuel, with which he had wanted to form a dance orchestra with his fiddle-playing father. From one corner of the shelf a cheap rosary dangled. In a little cup which once had belonged to a doll's kitchen, a few centavos were piled, and a few more bronze coins were lying near it. The total could not have been more than thirty-five centavos, the whole fortune of the house.
From a thin wire tied to a pole in the roof, a reed basket was hanging. It contained the family's few provisions, two little cones of unrefined brown sugar, a few ounces of ground coffee wrapped in greasy paper, a pound of rice of the cheapest kind, a few pounds of black beans, and half a dozen green and red chile husks. Two bottles were tied to the basket. In one of them there was salt — crude, large grains which looked old and dirty. One third of the other bottle was filled with lard, which in this region never hardens and must therefore be kept in bottles. If it were kept in an open vessel it would be found full of drowned ants. As in all the other homes, this basket was hung up to protect its contents from rats and mice. But the rats in this region were such excellent acrobats that they climbed down from the grass roof along the thin wire without difficulty, and, of course, stole the provisions; for the Lord in His infinite wisdom has so made the world that no one is so poor that he cannot be robbed by another, and no one is so strong that he cannot be killed by somebody else.
On the earthen floor near the wall a fire was smouldering. It was the family hearth. An earthen pot filled with coffee stood close to the fire. Obviously it had been left there early in the evening so that Garcia would be able to gulp hot coffee in the morning when returning from the dance. Next to the fire, leaning against the wall, there was the usual piece of sheet iron on which to heat tortillas. Then there were three earthen pots, two earthen vessels, none of them whole, an old, rusty iron pan, and the metate, the big concave stone in which boiled corn is ground for the dough out of which tortillas are made.
The choza had a second, very small room. It was formed by a wall made of sticks tied together with lianas. This wall was about six feet high and ran parallel to the outer wall, forming a separate compartment five feet wide and three-fourths of the hut in length. That narrow side room was filled with old sacks, a shabby Mexican saddle, two home-made, wooden pack saddles of the most primitive kind, many old ropes and lassos, an old basket for the hens to lay their eggs in. The few chickens the Garcias had roosted in a near-by tree, as no other shelter was provided for them. From a spike in this compartment the Garcia's week-day dress was hanging. It was very ragged and very dirty.
On the floor of this narrow side room there was a bast mat on which lay a fairly good blanket. This was the bed in which Manuel slept while he was here. In the camp in the Texas oil fields where he worked he was provided with a decent cot, two clean sheets, and two clean army blankets, but, like all his fellow workers, he would grumble daily about the stinginess of the rich oil companies. Of course, there he worked and helped the company make millions of dollars, while here he was on vacation having a good time. And that made all the difference, which lots of people can't grasp.
23
More candles were brought in by friendly neighbours. They were lighted and two were set near the boy's head and two near his feet. Two had been set in front of the picture of the Madre Santisima. Because of these candles, and because so many people were coming in and going out and moving around inside the house, and especially because the women were dressed in their best, the jacal had lost its poor appearance. It looked almost like a little country chapel on Christmas Eve.
The majority of the people stayed outside. Anyway, there would not have been room enough in the choza for the hundred or more persons who were now here. They squatted on the ground outside the hut, where they smoked and chatted in low voices. Now and then a few women or men entered the hut, while others left to make room for the newcomers.
Manuel's younger brother, the one who was considered halfwitted, squatted on the ground, right by the entrance, where he was weeping quietly. No one paid any attention to him. Nor did he pay any to the people passing by, although occasionally they pushed him unintentionally. It was not clear whether he wept for his little stepbrother or because he saw the women weeping or because for the moment he did not know what else he could do. No one asked him anything and no one consoled him. He was the only stranger present, now that I had been accepted by the crowd as a fellow mourner.
Manuel entered as though he were sneaking in. He looked at the kid, went to the shelf, took the tin comb, and parted the kid's hair at the other side. For this simple job he took a long time.
The pump-master woman, standing between the body and the shelf, was working with strips of gold, silver, red, blue, and green paper, which she had produced from the devil knows where, to make a little crown which would be set on the kid's head. When that crown was ready a little cross was fastened to the top. A man had cut this cross out of an old tin can with his pocket knife while the pump-master woman was making the crown. With a few drops of hot paraffin from a candle the cross was covered with gold paper. Repeatedly the woman measured the kid's skull with a thread to make sure the crown would fit. Her tears rolled down her cheeks and dropped on the coloured paper, and every once in a while she had to dry her tears because she couldn't see through them. Whenever she put the little crown on the kid's head to see whether it fitted, the crown looked more beautiful than before, and she smiled under her tears. And each time she took it off she had a new idea how to make it still more beautiful.
The two men who were busy stretching the kid's legs finally shaped them to everybody's satisfaction. A board on which rested a heavy stone was laid across the knees to prevent them from returning to their unnatural position.
I noted that his mouth was wide open. It did not disturb me a bit. Why, I thought it only natural for a little boy who looks suddenly at another and entirely different world to open his mouth wide for sheer astonishment. No one he would meet on his trip would take offence on account of it. His mother, however, thought differently. She wanted to have a beautiful dead baby. She tried to close that little mouth, but it would not stay closed. I asked for a strip of an old shirt. Having obtained it, I tied it round his face so that the lower jaw was kept firmly pressed against the upper, and I made a sort of tie under his chin, so that the meaning of the strip was concealed.
If any of the neighbours or visitors got busy on the kid nobody paid much attention. But as soon as I went near the body and touched it, all the people came around and many from the outside hurried in. It seemed they thought that I might still be able to perform a great miracle, even bring the kid back to life. A foreigner is always, everywhere, believed to be gifted with strange powers. That I might do any harm to the kid, even now after his death, no longer occurred to them. I had known them only three days, but I learned a few days later that they had known me for a long time. My fame rested on a story told about me far and wide which also had to do with a dead Indian; it was said that after he had been dead for seven hours he was brought back to life by me, or, to tell the truth, was nearly brought back to life by me. At least I had made him breathe once more and, in the opinion of all the Indians concerned, I would have raised him from the dead had it not been fo
r a gachupin, a most hated Spaniard, who entered the scene at the crucial moment and ordered a treatment contrary to the one I had applied. Everybody in the Indian village where that had happened was convinced that I could raise Indians from the dead if I was left to do it my own way.
The dressing of the kid's jaw was approved by everybody in the hut and I was raised in the estimation of the mourning community.
With the help of a man, the pump-master woman now folded the kid's arms across his chest and tried to put the hands in the position they would take in prayer. Neither the arms nor the hands obeyed. Apparently the pump-master woman had learned from what she thought was my invention, for she and her helper tied strings around the little arms and hands. The strings cut deep into the swollen, spongy flesh.
The kid had the crown on his head by now. It was really astonishing how the pump-master woman had been able to make a very becoming piece of headwear a little work of art, out of such primitive material. If one did not look closely, one would not believe that the crown had been made of paper. Were it not for that horrible sailor suit, a suit which made one laugh and weep at the same time, the child would not look like a little boy who had been born and brought up in a poor Indian choza, but more like the son of a dethroned Aztec king of old whose high rank and dignity had been restored after his death.
The pump-master woman contemplated the body for a while with a smile on her lips. A new idea entered her mind. She found him not quite beautiful enough for her taste and her neighbourly love. She left the hut and then returned with a thin stick, around which she wound gold paper. When everything was done, a golden sceptre had been made, with a little golden cross at the top. This she put in the kid's right hand after loosening the strings.
Just as she finished this job, old man Garcia returned from his trip to Tlalcozautitlan and entered the choza. For a long while he remained standing at the door. Then, without showing by any gesture what was going on in his mind, he looked at his little prince. He took off his hat and stepped up to the table.
The kid was to him not just a boy; he was not just the youngest and therefore the most petted and the most beloved. This little boy meant far more to him than his other two. Having had the luck to be loved by a pretty woman who was half his age, he had seen in that child the assurance of a happy life with his young wife, permanent proof to her and to all the other men that she had made no mistake when she had married him.
All the people present in the hut stared at him to see how he would take it. Everybody knew how much he loved that kid of his, the only one he had had by his young wife and most likely the last he could expect.
He looked at the body with empty eyes as if there were nothing before him. He did not understand it, could not grasp the cold fact that the kid was dead and that he would never again hear him bustle about the house and climb up his back and ride on his neck when he returned from work in the bush. He turned around and gazed at the floor as if he were looking for something. When he raised his head again, thick tears like little crystal balls were running down his cheeks. He did not ask when, where, or how. He stood for a minute near the door, his head leaning wearily against the door post, then left the hut.
A few men, his intimate friends, went after him. He did not see them. He left the yard, mounted the horse on which he had come, and rode out into the darkness.
24
As there was nothing I could do inside at the moment, I too left the hut. Outside, in the yard, men, women, and children were lying all about, huddled up and asleep. Others squatted on the ground talking. Others were walking around. Out of every choza in the settlement dim lights were shining.
Burros brayed plaintively in the prairie. The jungle was singing its eternal song of joy, love, sadness, pain, tragedy, hope, despair, victory, defeat. What did the jungle or the bush care about the things which had happened here? To the jungle, men are of no account. It does not even accept men's dung, leaving it to flies and beetles. But it does take men's bones after the buzzards, ants, and maggots have been satisfied. What is man to the jungle? He takes a few trees out, or a few shrubs, or he clears a patch to build a jacal and plant some corn and beans or a few coffee trees. If man forgets that patch for but three months, it is no longer his; the jungle has taken it back. Man comes, man goes, the jungle stays on. If man does not fight it daily, it devours him.
I walked over to Sleigh, whose hut was only about thirty yards away. He was blowing on the fire and his face was red. The coffee seemed to be ready. It was not good coffee. It was stale, ground weeks, if not months, ago.
'Won't you have a cup?' Sleigh asked the moment he saw me.
'You'd better take some over to the women first, mister, they need it badly, they're breaking down.'
'Okay, if you say so. It's your loss. Never mind, I'll cook another pot and you can have as much as you like of that. The woman left two pounds with me. Anyway, I think we need some hot coffee just as badly as others do.'
The girl lying on her petate spread out on the ground and hidden under her mosquito bar, slept soundly. Perhaps Sleigh had told her about the kid. She did not care. He was not hers. She had hers in her arms — and what else was there to worry about? She made no pretence that she might also belong to that great world community of mothers. She was on her own.
'Get those cups, please and help me carry them over to the women.' Sleigh winked at a box on which were standing seven enamelled cups of different sizes, four of them battered so badly that no enamel was left. Two were leaking, Sleigh explained, and he said the people who used them would have to gulp like hell if they wanted to get some coffee.
'By all means leave two here for us. I don't like to drink coffee out of my hat if I can help it. Let's hoof.'
I took the cups and we returned to the Garcia's. Sleigh put the cups and the pot on the floor, poured coffee and offered the Garcia woman the first cup. Automatically she drank the hot coffee with one gulp. The pump-master woman and a few others took some sips. None drank the whole cupful, but only part of it, handing the rest to the woman next to her.
The pump-master woman rolled a cigarette. Then she handed the little bag with black tobacco to the Garcia, who also started smoking after rolling her own. She did not sit down, but kept hustling without doing anything definite. The truth was that there was nothing anybody could do now.
After the women had sat around for some time smoking cigarettes or cigars and sipping hot coffee, they felt that they had to get busy. Using old shirts and dresses and bright-coloured rags, they designed coverlets and fancy ribbons to adorn the kid and the coffin in which he was to be laid.
Sleigh winked at me, seeming to feel out of place now, as I did too. So we went back to his hut.
There we sat near the smoking little tin bottle which was his lamp. I blinked at the fire on the hearth, on which had been set an old enamelled pot full of water to make fresh coffee.
'Listen, Sleigh, where do you get the water you consume in your household?'
He eyed me as if he had not heard me well.
'Yes, I mean the water you have in that bucket.'
'Well, my eyes, such a question! That water? I guess it's big enough for you to see where the water came from.'
'You don't mean to tell me that you got the water out of that river?' I repeated the question, spoke very clearly, because I saw him staring at me as if he doubted my sanity.
'And what do you think? You don't expect me or anybody here to order water in sealed beer-bottles from Kansas City or by air mail from Yosemite Valley, do you? You shouldn't ask such a dumb question because I always believed you were a guy with some brains — sometimes, I mean, not always. Don't misunderstand me. Look here, wise guy, when I met you the first time down at that stinking pool in the jungle where I had to stick you up to save my skin from a jungle-mad greeny, didn't I see you lap up that stinking water as if it were ice-cold beer, or did I? That time you didn't ask who had spit in it or what mule had let go into it only half an hour before. You
drank it all right, and you were pretty happy to have found that muddy hole with some water still in it!'
'All right, all right, you win. But now how about the water for our coffee out of that river? '
He grinned at me. 'All the water you have drunk since you came here was from the river. You don't expect me to boil the water first or, as you would call it, deseenfaict it before we drink it? Don't make me laugh.'
'You know pretty well what I'm talking about. I'm not referring to the water I drank yesterday or today. I'm talking of the water in which only a few hours ago and only a hundred or a hundred and fifty yards from here that kid was drowned.'
'And what of it? Was that kid poison or what? His mother drank the coffee we brought, didn't she? And she liked the coffee, didn't she? Well, she didn't ask me that damn foolish question of yours — where I got the water for the coffee she drank! She knew what water that coffee was made of, and if she, the mother, can drink the coffee, you aren't too good to criticize it. We're thankful to the Lord for giving it to us and that we have water all the year round, while there are hundreds of thousands of families in this republic who have no water for months and have to leave their homes and fields in search of it, taking along all their chickens and goats and what have you.'
Sleigh was right. He might not be interested in reading a full column in a newspaper at one sitting, but he was right. I should not have thought of that little spongy body and of the blood dripping out of his mouth, his nose, and his skull.
After a long silence Sleigh said: 'God, I say all this doesn't interest me a damn bit. Water is water, and as long as I can drink it without getting cramps in my belly, I consider it good water and I thank God for it, if He wants me to, even on my knees. No, it isn't that. What interests me about that water is quite another thing. What I mean is that board with the candle on it. That's what got me shivering all over. I'm still not feeling very comfortable along my spine, frankly speaking. It's a remarkable thing, that board and the candle on it. My woman has told me about it before. They also do it where she comes from. She belongs to another region and another sort of people or what you may call another tribe. But they do it just like here. And I tell you, man, that candle always finds the drowned.'