“What have you done, Papá! . . .”
The doctor sank his head into the cot, and the little teacher murmured again, her hand reaching for her father’s beret:
“Poor Papá . . . It’s nothing . . . I feel a lot better now . . . Tomorrow I’ll get up and finish everything . . . I feel a lot better, Papá . . .”
The rain had ended and peace now reigned outside. After a moment the doctor sensed that the ailing girl was striving vainly to sit up, and as he lifted his face he saw his daughter looking at him with her eyes wide open in sudden revelation:
“I’m going to die, Papá! . . .”
“My little girl . . . ,” he murmured, and nothing more.
The child tried to breathe deeply, again in vain.
“Papá, I’m dying! Papá, listen to me . . . for once in your life. Don’t drink any more, Papá . . . Your little girl . . .”
After a while—a near-eternity of time—the doctor got up and went staggering to the bench to sit down again—but not without first sweeping an odious creature from the seat with the back of his hand, for already the web of monsters was dizzily spinning itself anew.
He could still hear a voice from the other world:
“Don’t drink any more, Papá! . . .”
The ex-man still had time to let his hands fall into his lap, in a collapse and abdication more forlorn than the most forlorn of the sobs he was no longer capable of. And there beside his daughter’s corpse Dr. Else again saw emerging into view at the door the snouts of the beasts who were coming back for a final assault.
Note
1 Eighteen hundred litres.
The Forerunners
“Now, boss, I’m sort of educated, and from gabbing so much with the big shots and lowly comrades, I know a lot of words about the cause and can make myself understood in Castile talk. But those of us who did our toddling talking Guaraní, can’t none of us never forget the lingo altogether, as you’re going to find out right away.
“It was back in Guaviró-mi that we started the union movement on the yerba mate plantations. That’s a lot of years ago, and some of us who made up the old guard—just like that, boss!—are gone today. Then we didn’t none of us know what it meant—the misery of the wage slave, the claiming of rights, the agrarian proletariat, and so many other things that youngsters nowadays can say by heart. It was in Guaviró-mi, like I said, in the boliche of the gringo Vansuite (Van Swieten), that was on the new trail from Puerto Remanso to the town.
“When I think about all that, it seems to me that without the gringo Vansuite we wouldn’t have done a thing, even though he was a gringo and not a mensú.
“How about you, boss, would you want to get mixed up in the hardships of the peones and extend us credit for no good reason? That’s what I’m saying.
“Oh, the gringo Vansuite was no mensú, but he could sure swing an axe and a machete. He was from Holland, from Way-Off-Yonder, and in the ten years he’d been a criollo he’d tried ten different trades, without making good at none of them. It even seemed like he bungled them on purpose. He’d sweat like the devil on the job, and then right away look for something else. He hadn’t never been a hired hand. He worked hard, but alone and with no boss.
“When he set up the boliche, the boys we thought he was going to go broke, because along the new trail you’d be lucky to see a cat go by. He never sold even a lump of cake-sugar, not in the daytime and not at night neither. Only when the movement started the guys we went heavy on the credit, and in three weeks he didn’t have a can of sardines left on his shelves.
“How’d it all happen, you say? Take it easy, boss, I’m going to tell you right away.
“The thing got started with the gringo Vansuite, One-Eyed Mallaria, Taruch the Turk, the Spaniard Gracián . . . y opama—and that’s all. Not one more, I tell you true.
“Mallaria we called him One-Eye because he had a great big and sort of bulging eye that looked straight ahead. But he wasn’t a real one-eye, because he could see fine with both eyes. He was quiet and hard-working like only he could be during the week, and a hell-raiser like nobody else when he was running around loose on Sundays. He always walked around with one or two ferrets in his pockets—irarás, we say in Guaraní—and more than once they’d ended up under arrest in the police station.
“Taruch was a dark-skinned Turk, tall and curly like the black lapacho tree. He went around grubby and barefoot all the time, even though he had two brothers with a boliche in Guaviró-mi. He was a good-natured gringo, and fierce like a pit viper when he was talking about the bosses.
“And then there was the stone-man. Old Gracián was a little guy with a beard, who wore his white hair all brushed back, like a monkey. He had a face like a monkey too. Once he’d been the best stonemason in town, but in those days all he did was go around here and there stoned on rum, with the same white undershirt and the same baggy black torn-up pants that his knees came through. In Vansuite’s boliche he listened to everybody without opening his mouth; and afterwards he just said ‘You win’ if he thought the guy who’d been talking was right, and `You lose’ if he thought he was wrong.
“So from these four men, between one rum and the next after dark, out came the movement, clean as a whistle.
“Little by little the word got around among the boys, and first one, then another, we started to drop in at night at the boliche, where Mallaria and the Turk would be yelling against the bosses, and the stone-man just saying ‘You win’ and ‘You lose.’
“I already half understood the stuff. But those wild characters from the Upper Paraná all nodded yes, like they knew what was going on, with their hands sweating just from being so god-awful crude.
“That way the boys we got ourself excited, and between one who wanted to win big and another who wanted to work little, we roused up about two hundred plantation hands to celebrate May Day.
“Ah, the great things we did! Now it seems strange to you, boss, that a bolichero was head of the movement, and that the yells of a half-drunk one-eyed guy woke us up to the state we were in. But in those days the boys we were like drunk on the first swig of justice—wow, what a spree, boss!
“Like I say, we celebrated May Day. Since two weeks before we were meeting every night in the boliche to sing the ‘Internationale.’
“Oh, not everybody. A few guys all they did was laugh because they were too embarrassed to sing. And some other still cruder ones didn’t even open their mouth and kept looking off to the side.
“Even so we learned the song. And on May Day, in a rain that poked holes in your face, we left Vansuite’s boliche on a march into the town.
“The words, you say, boss? Only a few of us knew them, and like pulling teeth at that. Taruch and the blacksmith Mallaria had copied them into the workers’ debt register, and those of us that knew how to read would press up by threes and fours against another guy who was holding up the account book. The rest of them, the real country boys, would holler who-knows-what.
“That demonstration was a ball, I tell you, like we’ll never see another one so good. Nowadays we know more about what we want, we’ve learned to fool the bosses royally and not get fooled ourself. Now we have our demonstrations with secretaries, discipline, and guards out front. But on that day, raw and dumb as we were, we had the sort of faith and enthusiasm we won’t never see again in the back country, añamembuí!1
“That’s the way it was at the first workers’ demonstration in Guaviró-mi. And the rain came down to beat the band. Singing and dripping water we all followed the gringo Vansuite, who went ahead on horseback, carrying the red flag.
“The face of the bosses was something to see as our first march went by, and the eyes of the bolicheros watching their colleague Vansuite, stern like a general out in front of us! We swung through the town singing the whole time, and when we got back to the boliche we were soupy wet, and muddy up to the ears from the spills we’d taken.
“That night we really sucked the bottle, and right t
here made up our mind to ask for a delegate from Posadas to organize the movement.
“The next morning we sent Mallaria to the yerba plantation where he worked, to take our list of demands. Bunglers like we were, we sent him alone. He went with a red kerchief around his neck, and a ferret in his pocket, to ask his bosses for the immediate betterment of the whole work force.
“When he came back One-Eye told us the bosses had faced him with the charge that he was trying to trample them underfoot.
“‘Madonna!’ he’d yelled in Italian. ‘Ma che foot or anything else! This is about ideas, not men!’
“That same afternoon we declared a boycott against the company.
“Yes, now I’ve got some learning, even though the Guaraní she always gets in my way. But then hardly none of us knew the terms for making claims, and quite a few thought that Don Boycott was the delegate we were expecting from Posadas.
“The delegate finally came, just when the companies had thrown the boys out, and we were eating fat and flour from the boliche.
“You’d sure like to have seen the first meetings chaired by the delegate! Not one of the boys understood hardly nothing of what the most down-and-out caipira2 knows by heart nowadays. The crudest ones thought what they were winning by way of the movement was to always get things on credit from the boliches.
“We all listened to the delegate’s talk with our mouth wide open; but we didn’t say nothing. A few brave guys went up around the table afterwards and told the slicker in a low voice: ‘So . . . my brother he told me to ask you . . . to excuse him plenty ’cause he couldn’t be here . . .’
“Another one, when the delegate had just called a meeting for Saturday, he’d call the man aside and say to him secretly, in a half-sweat: ‘So . . . me too’s supposed to come?’
“Ah, those were fine times, boss! The delegate was only with us for a little while, and he left the gringo Vansuite in charge of the movement. The gringo ordered some more merchandise from Posadas, and we came down like the locust with our wives and kids to stock up.
“Things were going great: a work-stoppage on the plantations, the boys living high off the hog through Vansuite, and joy on everybody’s face on account of the program for workers’ rights brought in by Don Boycott.
“A lot of time? No, boss. Even it lasted just a little while. A big-shot plantation owner was blown off his horse by a rifle bullet, and nobody never found out who’d killed him.
“And with that, my friend, you see the rain come down on the boys’ enthusiasm. The town filled up with judges, police inspectors, and army stiffs. A dozen workers were arrested, another dozen got a horsewhipping, and the rest of the boys disbanded like a flock of birds into the bush. None of them went to the gringo’s boliche no more. Excited as they were about the May Day demonstration, not a one showed up anymore, no matter how bad-off he might be. The companies took advantage of the situation, and wouldn’t take back any worker who was in the union.
“Little by little, one of us one day, later another, the mensús we started drifting back to the yerba farms. The proletariat, workers’ awareness, claims and demands—the whole works went to the devil Añá along with the first dead boss. Without even looking at the notices all over the doors we accepted the cruel list of conditions . . . y opama, that was that.
“And how long we were in this pickle, you say? Quite a while. Even though the delegate from Posadas had come back to get us together again, and the Federation had its own office in the town, the boys we were feeling hounded, and sort of ashamed about the movement. We were working hard and in even worse shape than before in the yerba fields. Mallaria and Taruch the Turk were in jail in Posadas. Of the first regulars, only the old stonecutter went every night to the Federation hall, to say like he always had ‘You win’ and ‘You lose.’
“Ah! The gringo Vansuite. Now that I recollect him: he’s the only one of us who built the movement who didn’t see it come to life again. At the time of the uproar over the boss that got shot, the gringo closed up his boliche. Nobody went there no more anyhow. Besides he didn’t have enough stock left to half-supply a whippersnapper. And I’ll tell you something else: he locked the doors and windows of the hut. All day long he was locked inside, standing in the middle of the room with a pistol in his hand, ready to kill the first person who knocked on his door. They say that’s how the bugger Josecito saw him, when he spied on him through a crack.
“But it’s true the youngsters didn’t want to go down the new trail for nothing, and in the sunlight the gringo’s bolted-up boliche looked like a dead man’s house.
“And that was right, boss. One day the kids spread the news that going by Vansuite’s hut they’d noticed a bad smell.
“The chatter got to the town; people thought this, that, and the other; and what happened was the police chief and the troops pried open the window of the boliche, and through it they saw Vansuite’s corpse on the cot, and it stunk plenty strong.
“They said it had been at least a week since the gringo killed himself with the pistol. So instead of killing the caipiras who were going to knock on his door, it was himself he killed.
“And now, boss, what do you say? I think Vansuite had always been sort of loco-tabuí, as we say. He always seemed to be looking for a trade, and he finally came to think the one for him was to fight for the rights of the mensús. That time too he made a big mistake.
“And there’s something else I think too, boss: not Vansuite, or Mallaria, or the Turk neither, they never figured their union work could take them as far as the death of a boss. The boys from around here didn’t kill him, I swear. But the shot came out of the movement, and the gringo had laid the ground for that madness when he came on our side.
“The boys we never thought neither that we’d find corpses where we were looking for rights. And turning scared, we fell under the yoke again.
“But the gringo Vansuite was no mensú. On the bounce, the shock of the movement went to his head, which was sort of tabuí, like I told you. He thought they were after him . . . y opama.
“But he was a good gringo, and generous. Without him—who was the first one to carry the red flag out in front of the mensús—we wouldn’t have learned what we know today, and yours truly wouldn’t have been able to tell you your story, boss.”
Notes
1 Literally, “son of the devil,” in Guaraní.
2 “Yokel” in Brazilian Portuguese.
List of Place Names
Apariciocué. Town in the vicinity of San Ignacio.
Blosset (beach). On the Paraná, west of San Ignacio.
Buenos Aires. Capital of Argentina, located about 850 kilometers south-south-west of Posadas.
Cazador (creek). Joins the Horqueta southeast of San Ignacio.
Chaco. Argentine province, 300 kilometers west of Posadas.
Chubut. Argentine province in Patagonia, 1,100 kilometers southwest of Buenos Aires.
Corpus. Town near the Paraná, 15 kilometers north of San Ignacio.
Corrientes. Argentine province on the Paraná, bordering Misiones on the southwest.
Foz-do-Iguaçu. Brazilian town on the Paraná just north of Misiones, 240 kilometers northeast of Posadas.
Guaraní. Language of the native inhabitants of the Upper Paraná; it is still widely spoken in the region, and has been written since the days of the Jesuits (1600–1767). The name is also applied to the Indians themselves, and to the areas where they live (especially Paraguay).
Guaviró-mi. Perhaps a fictional place, but see Iviraromí.
Guayra. Brazilian region north of Foz-do-Iguaçu.
Horqueta (stream). Flows into the Yabebirí a few kilometers south of San Ignacio.
lberá. Zone in northeast Corrientes, southwest of Posadas.
Iguazú (river). Flows into the Paraná from the east, just south of Foz-do-Iguaçu; famous for its falls, the Cataratas del Iguazú.
Itacurubí (cape and town). On the Paraná near San Ignacio.
Itah�
� (beach). On the Paraná near San Ignacio.
Iviraromí. Guaraní name for San Ignacio.
La Balsa. Town on the Paraná near San Ignacio.
La Plata. Capital of the province of Buenos Aires, 100 kilometers southeast of the federal capital.
Mato Grosso. Brazilian state west of the Paraná; its southern border is about 175 kilometers north of Foz-do-Iguaçu.
Misiones. Northeasternmost province of Argentina, between Brazil and Paraguay.
Montevideo. Capital of Uruguay, on the South Atlantic, 200 kilometers east of Buenos Aires.
Ñacanguazú (river). Flows into the Paraná from the east, a few kilometers upstream from Corpus.
Paraná (river). Second only to the Amazon in South America, it flows 3,200 kilometers from southeast Brazil to the River Plate estuary at Buenos Aires.
Paranáí (river). Enters the Paraná from the east, about halfway between Posadas and Foz-do-Iguaçu.
Paseo de Julio. A street in downtown Buenos Aires.
Pequirí, or Piguirí (river). Major Brazilian river, in the state of Paraná; it enters the Paraná at the southern edge of Mato Grosso.
Posadas. Capital of the province of Misiones; 1980 population about 110,000.
Puerto Cazador. Port on the Paraná, about 10 kilometers north of San Ignacio.
Puerto Chuño. Port on the Paraná near San Ignacio.
Puerto Felicidad. Port on the Paraná, near the mouth of the river Ñacanguazú.
Puerto Remanso. Port on the Paraná, probably fictional.
Puerto Viejo. Port on the Paraná northwest of San Ignacio.
San Ignacio. Also called Iviraromí. Site of Jesuit ruins, 38 kilometers east-northeast of Posadas. Quiroga’s Misiones home is on its outskirts.
Santo Pipó. Town about 17 kilometers northeast of San Ignacio.
Teyucuaré. A cerro (low mountain) with stone cliffs, on the Paraná just southwest of San Ignacio.
Toro (island). In the Paraná near the mouth of the Yabebirí.
The Exiles and Other Stories Page 19