by B. TRAVEN
“Yes, that’s what I mean. You’d think that somebody was tormenting gagged animals.”
“By God, comrade,” said Santiago ironically, “I assure you that you’re sharp of hearing. You must be able to hear a flea dancing on a silk handkerchief. With hearing like that, you’ll get somewhere! Besides, you’re not mistaken.”
“No, you’re not mistaken, you’ve heard perfectly,” interposed Matías. “They’re tormenting animals, and they’re holding their mouths to stifle cries that might disturb Don Acacio while he’s slipping between the heavy thighs of his Cristina, the girl with the twisted nose. By the devil, she’s ugly! But her ass must have some enchantment, for he takes her everywhere with him and buys her boxes of scented soap whenever the Turk comes.”
“And why are they tormenting those poor beasts?” asked Antonio.
The ox-drivers laughed uproariously.
“Those poor beasts!” replied Santiago. “Yes, the poor beasts are being cruelly mistreated because in spite of the gags they can hear their screams.”
And there was another outburst of laughter.
“But they’re not little lambs with white fleece,” explained Pedro.
“Beasts, poor beasts! No, those are not animals that are being tormented, you pack of asses! It’s twenty cutters, twenty ax-men who are howling. They’ve hung them up for three or four hours because they haven’t produced, either today or yesterday or the day before, the tons of mahogany they’d been told to. You are innocent and ignorant, but within three days you’ll know what four tons are. Two tons are the normal production of an experienced cutter who’s as strong as an ox. And now that son of a bitch Don Acacio wants us to cut four tons a day. Whoever can’t cut that amount is hung from a tree by his four members, and even by five, for half the night… . Then the mosquitoes come humming around, because the thing happens at the edge of the swamps; not to mention the red ants, which arrive in battalions. But I don’t have to give you any more details. In less than a week you’ll know as much as I do—and by personal experience. After that you’ll have been initiated into all the mysteries of a camp belonging to the Montellano brothers. You’ll be soldiers of the regiment of the hanged.”
Somebody said: “I thought that all they did was flog you the way they do in the prison camps and coffee fincas.”
It was Martín Trinidad who seemed to be so well informed. Martín Trinidad was one of the three ragged men who had joined the column on the road and whom Don Gabriel had engaged without a stamped contract. During the three long weeks of the trek through the jungle those three vagabonds had hardly exchanged a word with the Indians. They had always remained together in a group, talking among themselves and not appearing to bother about the others. This was the first time that Martín Trinidad had spoken to them.
Santiago looked at him with half-closed eyes and an air of suspicion, with the caution a real proletarian employs in the presence of an informer.
“Where do you come from?”
“I’m from Yucatán.”
“That’s a long way! How did you get here? Are you running away?”
“Let’s say that’s right, brother.”
“Right, let’s say that… . When they’ve hanged you at least three times, I’ll begin to believe you. Because, look, if anyone here isn’t flogged or hanged we get suspicious—he may be a squealing son of a—And even to receive some lashes doesn’t prove anything, but to be strung up, to be well and duly hanged as El Rasgón, La Mecha, and El Faldón know how to do it—that’s altogether another matter. After that there’s no comedy. I hope you understand what I’m going to tell you. Celso and Andrés will have a little chat with your two pals in order to know more about who you are. Here nobody’s afraid of anything, and nobody can match our skill in sweetly slicing the next fellow’s neck for almost no reason at all. It can happen within twenty paces of the hut without the interested party’s feeling it at all. Nor is any attention paid to how the loathsome soul of an informer goes down to hell. As you’ll see, we don’t give a thought to anything, not even their bullets—you don’t shoot a man you expect four tons a day from. A dead man can’t fell trees—isn’t that so? The worst they can do is hang us, and we’re so used to that now that it doesn’t help them any more. They used to beat us savagely when we couldn’t cut more than two tons. But we got hardened to beating, and it no longer served any purpose. On the contrary, the more they beat us, the less we produced. At that point the Montellanos thought up the scheme of hanging us. It’s horrible, it’s terrifying, but only while you’re strung up. Next day you can work again, and then you cut your four tons! This new invention has really worked for them, because the recollection, the mere recollection of the suffering, the terror of being strung up again, drives you to try to cut four tons, even though after one ton your hands are skinless. Only now we’ve almost got to the stage where even their new invention will become useless. There’s nothing they can do about Celso there, for instance. When they’ve hanged him for four hours and El Guapo arrives to take him down, Celso shouts: ‘Hi! you son of a bitch, here you come just when I feel fine. I’m sleeping peacefully, and this is the moment you choose, you pig, to come and disturb my dreams!’ Celso was the first. Now there are about six of us. This is the secret: human beings can become like oxen or donkeys and remain impassive when they’re beaten or goaded, but only if they’ve succeeded in suppressing all their natural instinct to rebel.”
Martín Trinidad did not reply.
The men in other groups finished eating their warmed-up black beans and coffee and soon afterwards came over to the group formed by the ox-drivers Matías, Santiago, Cirilo, and Fidel, who had been working in the camps for some time.
Andrés, the most intelligent of the drivers, was not there. He had been sent with a number of other men to take tired, hungry animals to the big pasture and to bring back oxen in good condition. The pasture was eighteen miles from the main camp, on the shore of a lake, but as the greater part of the way there was inundated, they would not be back in less than three days.
“Do they hang some cutters every night?” asked Antonio.
“No, man, that way they’d contract fevers more easily and kick off too often. Many have died already, and there’s never a week when we don’t bury two or three.”
Pedro interrupted him: “You’re talking about things you know nothing about.”
Pedro was the oldest hand in the camp and, like all old hands, felt a driving need to show off his knowledge and experience of things, especially now when he saw how attentively they had been listening to Santiago. It was a real joy for the old man to hold forth before people to whom everything he related seemed like a story.
“Yes,” he continued, “you don’t know what you’re talking about. Sure they don’t hang cutters every night, and even less do they hang us ox-drivers. The proof of that is that here we are this moment smoking our cigarettes and talking in peace to you new fellows who don’t know anything.”
“Things are as they are,” Cirilo broke in, “and it’s only after a lot of going and coming that we get any idea of what’s really happening here.”
“Don’t listen to that preacher,” Santiago cut him short, laughing. “This morning a tree trunk fell on his head, and he still doesn’t know what he’s saying. That’s why he’s talking through his hat. And tomorrow he’ll be still worse. But what I am going to tell you is the real truth. Five or six days ago the youngest of the Montellanos arrived here. His district is flooded and won’t be dry before January. That means that his camp won’t give them even a chip of mahogany, and what they can’t get there they’ll have to get here. Don Acacio is the worst of the three. Last spring he took eighty men to his camp, strong and healthy Indians accompanied by a dozen women and some twenty children. Do you know how many of them are left now when he has to abandon his camp? Twenty-three! All the rest died, the majority from bad treatment, after beatings and hangings. Fevers carried off others. Ten disappeared in the swamps. Four fled
and one died in the jungle. Others were eaten by animals or bitten by snakes while they were hanging. For how can any man defend himself from a jaguar when he’s strung up? You can’t move even’a finger. Of the twelve women, three went crazy. He shot dead the husband of one, the prettiest one, to get her into his bed. Two ran away with their husbands and shared their fate. They beat another barbarously because she’d urged her husband to escape. She was left lying unconscious on the ground and, as there was nobody to rescue her, she was eaten by wild boars. As for the children, of the twenty, only two survive, and they have the fevers.”
“All in all, he’s done a good job,” commented Fidel.
“You, fellow, you’ll speak when you’re asked. Well, then, Don Acacio, having merrily buried nearly all his workers, left his camp in a state of flood, and now we have him here with the few who could escape. Five cleared out on the way, and two foremen have been sent to look for them. The poor devils will be caught, for though they know how to run, two horses can always run faster. They may hang themselves or cut their own throats when they’re at the end of their strength or about to be captured. If they’re brought back, not a square inch of their skin will be spared. Don Acacio arrived here five or six days ago and made his bow with the beautiful ideal of making up the loss. He has given orders that each cutter must fell four tons every day, and whoever doesn’t produce four not only loses the day’s pay but must be taught how that amount of timber can be cut with the application of a little goodwill. The horsewhip didn’t produce good results in his camp, and he knows that here it will be even more useless. That’s why he has put into practice his invention of mass hanging. You arrived just in time to enjoy the songs of the first hanging group. We ox-drivers have already received the new orders. Every day Don Acacio goes on his horse to the felling-places and determines how many logs each driver must cart to the dumps if he wishes the day to count for pay. So that, if we are here tonight sitting quietly around the fire telling you pretty stories, it’s not unlikely that tomorrow at the very same hour you’ll also hear us, nothing but our voices coming from down there in the darkness, and it will be the cutters’ turn to listen to our music”
“What can anyone do against all this?” one of the new arrivals asked in a voice that trembled. He came from an independent village and had sold himself to the camps in order to be able to marry later.
“Yes, what can anyone do against all this?” Fidel repeated like an echo. Then he looked at the faces of the men seated near him and, tightening his lips, added: “What can be done? that depends on the sort of men you are!”
“What do you mean?” one of the newcomers asked.
“Nothing,” replied Santiago for him, “nothing, except that the other night I heard one of those boys singing amid the howls and groans of the others who were hanging with him. It seemed as if he got relief by singing.”
“You must remember his words,” said Cirilo, who knew the song, but wished Santiago to be the one to repeat it to the new men.
“Sure I remember. It’s enough to hear such songs once in a lifetime never to forget them. It goes more or less this way:
If my life is worth nothing
And I live worse than an animal,
I’d lose nothing by killing
Him who has hanged me,
And I’d gain a lot sending
A condemned man to hell.
Ay, ay, ay, ay, little iguana,
Let’s go to the tomb to sing… .”
“I don’t understand a word,” said Antonio.
Matías roared with laughter and then, through compressed lips, said: “You’ll understand soon enough. The music will make it clear to you.”
Someone else asked: “But don’t the men resist when they’re going to hang them?”
“When you’re going to kill pigs they also squeal,” said Prócoro. “But that doesn’t prevent you from eating the cracklings three hours later. It’s exactly the same with us. What can you do when three or four brutes fall on you at the same time? Suppose you resist. Then they give you three blows on the head, and when you come round, you find yourself neatly hung from the branch of a tree, with an army of red ants strolling around in your nostrils and ears, which they have smeared with lard to attract them better. You feel lucky that they didn’t anoint your ass or smear you in front—both mighty pleasant things! As for the mosquitoes, they come without the necessity of lard. The next morning you wake up with your head so swollen and your stomach so sour that next time you take care not to offer the slightest resistance when they want to string you up.”
“That foreman called La Mecha, that cross-eyed animal, has discovered a new trick you haven’t yet become acquainted with,” said Santiago to the old hands. “Tell Prócoro to show you.”
Prócoro had no shirt. He turned his naked back to the light of the fire, and to show them better Santiago passed his finger over the lines, like zebra stripes, which furrowed the man’s shoulders. “After stringing up Prócoro that stinking coyote La Mecha scraped his skin with a thorn so that the ants, mosquitoes, and other insects could suck more easily. Now then, boys, where do you think you are? On a finca? In your village, where only the lice and the fleas can eat you? Here you’re not just at the entrance to hell; here you’re at its very bottom.”
“You’ve said it well, Santos,” Fidel interposed, “in the final pit of hell. That couldn’t be more exact. The cruelest of the devils wouldn’t want to be here. He’d be ashamed.”
Thirty steps away, near another fire, Cándido and Modesta were keeping warm in the company of Indians of their own tribe. Cándido’s children had fallen asleep. The distance that separated the two groups prevented Cándido and his companions from catching the animated discussions of the ox-drivers and the tale of horrors that froze the blood of those who heard. On the contrary, there was almost complete silence in Cándido’s group. The men were exhausted, broken by the long march and perhaps also by the vague fear of what awaited them in the future. They were enveloped by terror. It surged about them from all sides, from the dark night, from the grass on which they were squatting, from the jungle that surrounded the camp, from the dying murmur of the arroyo near by. Like those of the other group, they heard the lamentations and groans rising from the jungle, and when the wind caught the cries and brought them more clearly, they looked at one another with horror because they well understood that those were cries of pain from men being tortured, of their companions in tomorrow’s misery. They knew that those who were sitting around the fires, to all appearance in peace, would soon be wailing like the others, who would listen to the cries in turn, helpless like themselves to help their brothers.
They knew that in the other group what those wails meant was being explained anew. They knew it because incomplete phrases, raised voices, reached them. That was why none of them rose to go over and ask the old hands the meaning of the cries peopling the jungle. They did not wish to lose their last hope. They were afraid to know the truth. They wanted to persuade themselves, in their inner beings, that it was not their companions who were being tortured, that those groans were not what they were, that what they heard was merely the soughing of the wind or the buzzing of insects in the underbrush. Not one of them thought of going up to the edge of the jungle to try to see what was happening, especially as they saw that nobody from the other group was doing so. They all knew that here, as on the fincas, in the barracks, in the jails, in the prison camps of Vera Cruz, Yucatan, Tabasco, and Jalisco, it was better not to show oneself too curious or to go deeply into the cause of anguished cries, of wails and groans that arose from wells, caves, dungeons, or ruined convents. The laborers and peons knew by experience that inquisitive persons moved by the cries of the victims and trying to help them would not have to wait long before uttering similar groans.
Furthermore, it was very possible that those groans were without basic reality: in the forest, by night and by day, man is constantly at the mercy of hallucinations, mirages, obsessions. From
any point of view, it was preferable not to say anything, not to make any allusion to those noises. After all, it could be pretended that this was happening in a foreign country very far from the place in which they were.
In the office the foremen could be heard laughing and swearing. To the Indians came the sounds of their obscene songs and the sharp cries of drunken women.
In the camp there were only two women to satisfy the appetites of Don Acacio’s five foremen. They had followed the men when the flood had compelled Don Acacio to evacuate his camp. They were old women with slack flesh. Nothing about them was attractive, and they knew it. They also knew that they had reached their last stage. They had contracted all, without exception, of the diseases inherent in their profession. Nobody had forced them to follow the foremen. They would have preferred to be carried along by force so that they could have added ten centavos to the price of their favors. But nobody, not even those filthy foremen, had wanted to force them, and they felt happy that Don Acacio had permitted them to follow the men and had assigned them animals for the journey. Put to it, they would have followed the column even on foot, because if it had been decided to leave them in the swamps, they would have had no recourse but to beg the foremen, for the love of God, to give them the coup de grâce, to finish them off with a bullet in the head. Thus, they were happy still to see around them men from whom they could extract something, however little, and who would share with them their beans, tortillas, and coffee. And there was still the possibility that when the Turk came to the camp, somebody would buy them a length of muslin without too much grumbling.
They felt really satisfied when they heard someone say in front of them: “It’s an advantage to have something here that resembles a woman.”
The women began to sing in rasping voices, and two of the foremen joined in with them.
The foreman called El Guapo stepped out of the hut, staggered, and shouted back: “Eh! Faldón, and you, Mecha, come on out. You too, you good-for-nothings.”