The Rebellion of the Hanged

by B. TRAVEN

  The good-for-nothings were two Indian boys who worked in the office.

  “Take the lanterns,” he ordered.

  The Indians lighted the lanterns at the flame of the candle on the table.

  “We’ve got to take those swine down. They’ve been hanging long enough now. If we don’t hurry, tomorrow they’ll be all raw and won’t be able to work,” added El Guapo, swaying on his feet.

  “Won’t you let us go with you to see how you hang the Indians and how you untie them to get them down?” asked one of the women, moving toward the door.

  “Go on—let us,” said the other, pulling up her blouse, which she had let slip down to her navel, “I want to see.”

  With one slap El Guapo flung her against the wall.

  “Bitches, old whores! You wait for me right here. Don’t let me see you hanging around the place where the boys are hanged, or I’ll smash in your mouths. Do you need a show in order to be satisfied? Sows! If you value your skin don’t go sticking your sows’ snouts into that!”

  He took a step toward the woman who had expressed the foolish wish. No doubt she knew what was going to happen to her, for she covered her face with her open hands. But he pulled them down with a brutal gesture and gave her half a dozen blows so violent that the unhappy woman’s nose swelled up and began to leak blood over her face.

  “Get moving,” he shouted to the other foremen. “We’ve got to take them down. They’ve been hanging in their trees too long.”

  The three foremen passed among the groups of Indians squatting near the fires without seeming even to notice their presence.

  “Where are they going?” asked Antonio in a low voice.

  Fidel, to whom he had spoken, replied: “They’re going to untie the men who have been punished.”

  “And what if we went to watch?” one of the newcomers proposed, and stood up.

  Matías forced him to sit down again. “Be quiet if you value your skin. If the foremen saw you show your face there, you’d suffer the same fate. When blows are being dealt out gratis, it’s better to run before receiving one.”

  “Patience,” said Santiago, his voice lowered. “The day will come when we too will be hanging and unhanging. And when we approach them it will be not to accept blows, but to give them. Those dogs forget that it’s not possible to go on striking a man forever. One fine day that man learns to use a whip and strike blows to give a little comfort to his soul.”

  Having said these words, he fixed his look on Martín Trinidad, who returned his gaze as though trying to pry into his thoughts.

  “Why are you staring at me like that? If you’re a spy, say so. In any case we’ll know it very soon, and then you can be sure you won’t squeal any more.”

  Martín Trinidad replied with a sly smile: “If you don’t want me to hear what you say, all you have to do is stop talking before me. I didn’t ask you to come here. It was you who came and joined our group.”

  Santiago inclined his head, contracted his mouth, and took an ember to relight his cigarette. “Tomorrow,” he said finally, “Celso will have a good look at you three. And Celso sees clearly. He has a pair of good eyes.”

  “And we have six excellent eyes,” replied Martín Trinidad.

  His two companions broke into laughter, and Juan Méndez added: “Yes, we have three pairs of excellent eyes. Without them we wouldn’t be here, I assure you, brother,” he said, turning toward Lucio Ortiz.

  “We three see for six,” the latter replied.

  “Look, there they come,” said Santiago, indicating the foremen with a movement of his head, “as satisfied as hogs.”

  “Now we can go find the men,” said Fidel.

  He stood up, and ten workers followed his example.

  Fidel and two of his comrades went to the large hut that served as their dormitory, picked up two lanterns, and made toward the underbrush. Eight men, eight shapeless masses, were twitching on the ground. They were incredibly doubled up, as if they had been cooped up in narrow boxes for six months. Each wore only a torn pair of white breeches. They groaned quietly, like sleepers half awakened. They squirmed on the ground and slowly stirred their limbs one after another to ease the stiffness, for their arms and legs were stiff and swollen.

  The ropes that had held them to the trees had been simply untied by the foremen, letting the men fall brutally to the ground. The foremen never worried about their victims, because they knew that the men would come to help them. Besides, the foremen were not required to watch over the health of hanged men. They could burst or not during the torture. The Montellanos and their bodyguards were not concerned with the possible death of the hanged men beyond the fact that a death meant the loss of a man’s labor. If a cutter was lazy or weak and could not produce three tons of mahogany daily, the loss was not great, the man could die quietly. For the worker, work is a duty. If he is lazy, he has no right to live. After all, if he dies, there is one less nuisance.

  The eyes of the hanged men were bloodshot and inflamed. Their bodies were covered with the bites of red ants and mosquitoes. Hundreds of ticks of all sizes had penetrated so deeply beneath their skins that infinite patience was necessary to extract them without leaving the heads behind, for if these were left under the skin the bites produced by the insects’ stings would become dangerous. Wherever a tick had worked its way in, there remained, even after its removal, a terrible itching that lasted as much as a week and compelled the victim to scratch himself incessantly. The bodies of the tortured men were still covered with ants, which now began to make their escape replete with their booty of blood or flesh. On and between their toes chiggers had left their eggs deposited deep in the flesh. Spiders had invaded their hair, and some of them had begun to weave webs to catch the flies attracted by the blood and sweat of the hanged men. On their legs could be seen the sticky tracks left by snails.

  The old hands picked their comrades up in their arms and carried them, still stupefied by pain, to the bank of the arroyo. They immersed them in the running water to alleviate the burning stings of mosquitoes and to rid them of ants and spiders. After this ducking they laid them out on the bank and began to stretch their limbs, massaging them at the same time.

  “This isn’t so bad,” explained Santiago to Antonio, who was helping him revive one of the cutters, Lorenzo. “It’s not so serious when they hang one near the huts. What is dangerous is when they do the hanging far from the camp as a special punishment. Because then the wild boars and wild dogs eat them, and they aren’t able to defend themselves in any way.”

  “There’s still another marvelous punishment, an invention of Don Severo,” said Matías, rubbing another of the hanged men. “Toward eleven o’clock in the morning they grab a man and take him to a place where there isn’t a tree or any shade of any kind. They take off his clothes, tie his hands and feet, and bury him in the hot sand to just below his mouth, leaving only his nose, his eyes, and the top of his head above ground, and all this under the caress of the sun. To you, you innocent lambs who don’t yet know anything about these things, I can say that when a man has been buried once in this way, just once, he shakes like a goat’s beard when he hears Don Félix say these pretty words: ‘Now you’ll cut your three tons, or I’ll have them bury you for three hours.’ Those three hours seem longer than a lifetime.”

  The barbarous practice of hanging was effective and rarely cost a human life because the Indians were strong and had such powers of resistance that often they were capable of work on the same day that they had been tortured. In the course of their long experience the Montellano brothers had learned that hanging produced on the “lazy ones” as terrifying an effect as the lash formerly had. Hanging and burying did not leave wounds bad enough to prevent working. What remained, giving magnificent results, was the fear of reliving frightful hours, hours that seemed an eternity and terrorized the unfortunates. The fact that their torment occurred in the darkness prevented them from seeing the dangers threatening them, and they were therefor
e surprised and totally unable to defend themselves. Only the Indians of the region know the horrors the jungle can produce.

  But what increased to madness the terror of hanging, of the impossibility of defending oneself in the night in the depths of the forest, was the unspeakable, inexplicable horror, the instinctive and unconquerable fear that the Indian feels of phantoms and specters—his superstitious belief in ghosts, which he sees arising on all sides in the darkness.

  A white man shut up at night in a wax museum or in the crypt of a mausoleum suffers less than an Indian suspended from a tree in the forest, far from all light. The Montellanos were sufficiently experienced and intelligent not to hang their workers far from the camp, except some exceptionally tough types. To have hanged the majority far from the camp would have been to find not one of them alive the next day.

  When the hanged men were at last revived, thanks to the ministrations of their comrades, they could sip a little coffee and cat a few warmed-over frijoles. They got up and, staggering like drunken men, moved toward their huts, where they collapsed at full length. It was nearly eleven o’clock at night.

  At four o’clock the next morning La Mecha went into the huts to kick the sleeping men awake. They were still so full of pain and fright from the hanging of the preceding evening that, without washing their hands, they threw themselves on the pot of tepid beans, which they scooped up with their hands and ate ravenously. Then each of them drank a few gulps of coffee and, ax on shoulder, went off into the forest resolved to cut his four tons that day.

  Throughout the entire day they had only one idea in their heads, an idea that never left them in three weeks: “By all the saints in heaven, little God, make me able to cut my four tons so they won’t hang me!”

  But God, who came to earth two thousand years ago to save men, undoubtedly forgot these Indians. It is certain that at that time their country was still unknown. And when at last it was discovered, the first thing the conquistadores did was to plant a cross on the beach and say a Mass. In spite of that ceremony the Indians still suffer.

  “Certainly,” said Martín Trinidad unexpectedly some nights later, “the Lord came to the world two thousand years ago to save men. Next time we’ll save ourselves.”

  “Maybe so,” replied Pedro, one of the ox-drivers who had some ideas about religion and priests, “maybe so. But we’ll still have to wait another two thousand years for our turn to come.”

  Celso intervened dryly: “Why wait for the Saviour? Save yourself, brother, and then your savior will have arrived.”

  6

  “This little tree of yours isn’t bad,” Celso said to Cándido. “Did Don Cacho pick it specially for you?”

  “Yes, look. My number’s written in ink on the bark.”

  “It’s just as I thought. It’s really a pleasure to look at this tree. From it they’ll easily get three tons.”

  Cándido had laid his ax on the ground and was spitting generously on his hands. Before picking up the ax and beginning to hack he said: “I don’t know anything about tons and logs. This is the second tree I’ve ever cut. El Faldón told me that the first two weeks count as apprenticeship and that they won’t hang me even if I produce less than four tons. For fifteen days he’ll be satisfied with three. But the trouble is that here I’ve been at it for more than two hours and I haven’t yet succeeded in making a dent in it.”

  Celso began to laugh. “The devil you say! There’s nothing strange about that. If you go on scratching as you’ve been doing this morning, four days will pass and the tree will still be standing.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of. I’d like to leave it and look in the forest for another marked with my number that’s less difficult.”

  “You won’t gain anything that way. This tree has been assigned to you. If you don’t cut it today, you’ll have to cut it tomorrow.”

  Cándido looked at Celso in despair. “Then what shall I do? My ax is good and sharp, but it doesn’t sink in. It’s as though I’m chopping iron. Every stroke I give bounces back and doesn’t even nick the bark. Twice already it’s bounced back and hit my leg. You can see the mark.”

  “It’s because you’re tackling it wrong. This sort of tree has to be attacked another way.”

  Celso explained that the tree belonged to an exceptionally hard species. Furthermore, such trees were frequent, and Don Acacio and his foremen found them easily to assign them to workmen whose lives they wanted to make extremely difficult—men like Celso.

  A great many trees in the virgin forests of the tropics have around them roots that rise out of the earth at the same time as the main trunk during the first period of growth. These roots form a kind of ribs that reach an inch in thickness at their biggest. The closer they are to the trunk, the thicker they are, and they penetrate deeply into it. Some trees have seven or eight ribs of this sort sticking out from the trunk like rays. The ribs formed by the roots are of a wood much harder in texture than that of the trunk. To fell such a tree it is necessary first to cut away all these ribs, as that is the only way the ax can reach the tree itself. These side growths are often three feet high.

  It was against a tree of this sort that Cándido was exhausting himself in useless effort. He realized that at least two days’ work would be required to bring it down.

  Celso was one of the strongest and most expert cutters in the camps. Cándido’s confusion amused him. He saw only the three tons of wood, and in his eyes those long roots were nothing but an insignificant obstacle, when compared with the amount of wood the tree would yield.

  “No, you’ll never do anything that way. You’ve got to set about it differently. First you have to build a kind of scaffold high enough so that you can reach the trunk with the ax. You’ve got to raise yourself above the tree’s ribs so that you can strike directly at the tree without touching the roots.”

  “But just to do that I’ll need at least half a day.”

  “The first time, possibly. When you’ve got used to it, it will be a simple thing to do. First you must cut a few small branches and join them together with vines. Don’t try to make a platform that’ll last a lifetime. Even if it only holds you up until the moment you’ve made your first good stroke, that’ll be enough. I’ll tell you what you’ve got to do after that to keep yourself up.”

  Celso cut a few small branches. These Cándido lashed together to form a makeshift foothold. In less than an hour they were able to surround the trunk with a primitive scaffold.

  “Now you see, little brother,” said Celso, contemplating his work with a satisfied look. “You certainly can’t stand on that as solidly as on the ground. You have to brace your feet well against the crossbranches. If you don’t steady yourself firmly, you’ll fall, and you’ll have to climb up all over again. Now then, try it so that we can see.”

  Cándido climbed up and began to swing his ax. He had made three strokes with the ax and was getting ready to give the fourth when he fell full length on the ground.

  “Very good,” said Celso, laughing. “Now at least you know how it’s done. Wait a minute, I’m going to show you a good trick. Put that rope around the trunk. Now tie one of the ends to your belt. Now make a knot, neither too tight nor too loose. This way, if you slip you won’t fall all the way—you’ll just hang there. And if the length of rope you’ve left between the tree and you isn’t very long, you can easily get back to your place. That way you can strike better and with greater force.”

  Cándido spat on his hands and struck several good blows. The ax wounded the trunk.

  “You see, boy, how everything’s easy when you know how it’s done?”

  Celso started to go back to his own work, but Cándido stopped him. “Tell me, friend, why are you helping me? I hardly know you, and yet you’re running the risk of being hanged for taking the time to help me.”

  “I’ve already got a few tons cut, and I know that I’ll have my quota by the end of the week. And if I do this it’s because I’m sorry for you; you’re n
ot used to it. Besides, if they hang me once or twice more it will be better, because I need a lot of courage, an immense amount, and if they hang me I’ll be able to accumulate it.”

  “And for what do you need that much courage?”

  “To—to catch a wild pig. I’m hungry and I want to eat the fresh, tender meat of wild boar. Soon I’ll go hunting.”

  Celso picked up his machete, put it through the coils of rope around his waist, took a little bag from inside his shirt, and held it out to Cándido.

  “Do you know what’s in there?”

  “Yes, they’re arrowheads.”

  “Exactly. And I’ve made myself two beautiful bows. When I shoot my first arrow I’ll have a wild pig, or at least a pheasant. If I knock down something good I’ll invite you and your children and your sister to share my supper. What’s your sister’s name?”

  “Modesta.”

  “Modesta! I like that name. Once I was in love with a girl. She must be married by now because I couldn’t get back. But now not even remembering is good. I prefer to think about hunting.”

  “Are you still going to do some work?”

  “Naturally. I do it without suffering much. Look at my hands.”

  He held out his hands for Cándido to see. The latter leaned down, examined them, and felt them.

  “Man! But they’re not of flesh. They seem to be solid bone or iron.”

  “That’s so,” said Celso, laughing. “They’ve peeled more than a hundred times, and each time they come out harder. Now they seem like leather. That’s why I can cut up to six tons of mahogany a day if I wish. Usually I cut four—or only three when I’m in a bad humor. But, believe me, when I let one of these hands come down on a foreman’s head, it cracks like a nutshell.”

  “My hands are not like yours,” said Cándido, showing his palms, on which the skin was torn away and bits of loose flesh were hanging at some bloody spots.

  Celso examined them like an expert.