by B. TRAVEN
He felt uselessly for his pistol. He felt at his waist, searching for the cartridge belt.
“That bastard has taken everything, even my cartridge belt—unless it has fallen somewhere.” He felt for it in the sand with his feet.
“No, chief,” said El Faldón, “there’s no gun or belt anywhere.”
“Then that damned swine has taken them.”
“Probably, chief, that’s most likely it. Never mind. He sure will cause us trouble before we can catch him. He won’t stop to think before firing at us.”
“So! Now you’re all of a tremble because of a lousy Indian! Only bring him to me, and you’ll see how I’ll strangle him with my own hands.”
“He can’t be far off, chief. In this rain he can’t make headway, and he’s very likely to get bogged down in the jungle.”
During this conversation El Faldón had led Don Acacio toward the office and had helped him sit down. The girl, seeing her lover in such a state, rushed toward him, shouting: “Ay! My poor man! Savages! They’re not Christians, they’re wild animals. But I’ll never leave you!”
Don Acacio flung the girl from him violently.
“You shut your whore’s face! Leave me in peace from your goodness. I’ve many other things to think of!”
“But, my love, I only want to console you,” the girl sighed tearfully.
“I don’t need your consolation, you sow! What I want is for you to get out of here and not be bothering me.”
The girl threw herself on the bed and began to howl and lament in a voice loud enough for Don Acacio to hear.
“Faldón!” shouted Don Acacio.
“Coming, chief. I’m preparing a dressing.”
“Throw that bitch out of here! I don’t want to hear her howls. Throw her in the river or do whatever you like, but get rid of her quickly.”
He got up and gropingly took some steps with his hands stretched out in search of a bottle. When he did not find one, he thought they had maliciously moved everything in the place.
“The devil! Where have you put the bottle of mezcal?”
“Here it is, chief.”
El Faldón held out the bottle, which Don Acacio took and emptied in one long swallow. Then he threw it with all his force, not heeding those around him.
“What I can’t stomach, what I’ll never be able to stomach, is that a lousy pig of that sort caught me, Acacio! No! That, no! Never!”
He beat his head against the wall, stumbled a little, tripped on a chair, and fell full length on the floor. In rising he struck the corner of the table. His rage passed all limits. Beside himself, he shouted: “I’m no good for anything now, not for anything!”
“Take it easy, chief,” said El Faldón, going up to him with the makeshift bandages he had cut from a white shirt and dipped in a washbasin full of hot water in which he had put a few drops of alcohol.
“Sit down here on that chair, chief, the one just behind you, and let me treat you.”
Don Acacio turned, seized the chair, and beat it so violently on the floor that it smashed.
“What good to me are your treatments? It would have been better if you had arrived in time. I don’t need anything now. You can stick your treatments up your ass!”
He went up to the bed where the Indian girl was lying. He heard her weeping softly.
“So it’s you, still there, you sow! I gave them orders to throw you in the river. Go on! Get up!” he added, moving toward her with his fist raised. But the girl dodged. When he realized that she had escaped him he had a clear idea of his helplessness.
“To think that I can’t even break the skull of this whore who so well deserves it. To think that from now on I’ll have to go on living like this, letting even the dogs piss on me! And all because of that God-damned son of a bitch!”
He tried to find the door.
“What are you whispering about?” he asked El Faldón and the girl, who were in a corner discussing the best means to calm him and get him to lie down.
The Indian girl understood his state and had decided not to abandon him.
“God damn it! Something between you so soon? Now I’m in a fine position! You no sooner learn that I’m no good for anything than two steps away from me, right in my face, you’re acting like rutting swine!”
“But, Cacho, my little love,” protested the girl in a tone of tenderness, “I love you and I’ll always stay with you, if you’ll let me.”
“You’ll stay out of pity, bitch! I don’t want your pity! Understand? Where’s that bottle?”
“My life, you’ve drunk enough already. Be reasonable. Come and lie down. I’m going to help you.”
“Don’t come near me or I’ll strangle you, you wretch.”
“Good. Here I am. Strangle me if you like!”
Don Acacio heard her get up. He struck her in the face. Then, violently shutting the door that separated the two tiny rooms of the bungalow, he let down the crossbar to lock it and remain alone in the bedroom.
El Faldón and the girl pressed their ears against the door and heard him lie down.
“Thanks, most holy Mother! At last he has settled down. When he gets up he’ll be calmer and will see things differently.”
El Faldón laughed sarcastically.
The girl commented: “He’ll be quieter and will realize that he can go on living blind and even be happy.”
The two turned to bringing a little order into the room.
“It would be good to saddle a horse, Faldón, and go and tell Don Félix. Unless it would be better to tell Don Severo.”
“Don Severo is in the main camp, which is nearer—but it’s already very late. I’ll go the first thing tomorrow morning.”
At that moment they heard a shot. They both rushed forward, bursting open the door that Don Acacio had closed. They found him with a bullet in his head.
“Holy God!” the girl shouted, horrified. “But where did he find the pistol? I took care not to leave one within his reach in the office.”
El Faldón went up to an iron-bound wooden trunk that stood open near the body. It contained letters, documents, some books, a number of little sacks full of coins, two loaded revolvers, and six boxes of cartridges.
“Now I know why he wanted to lie down,” said the girl. “Just for that! Unfortunately, I didn’t know that he had a pistol there. I never stuck my nose into his affairs during the two years that I’ve been with him. Believe me, Faldón, I loved him a lot.”
She knelt down, caressed the dead man’s face, and with the foreman’s help straightened the body out decently on the bed.
“Yes, I loved him very much,” she repeated. “I loved him from the first day.”
She wept disconsolately and remained kneeling, holding one of Don Acacio’s hands between hers.
El Faldón left. Then she went to look for a jar of water and a towel and began to lay out the corpse. She crossed the hands on the chest. She took the crucifix that was suspended from his neck and put it on the body. Finally she pulled the bed toward the middle of the room and put candles around it on chairs and boxes. She covered the face with a black shawl and sat down, weeping and mechanically passing through her fingers the beads of her rosary.
8
Don Severo and Don Félix arrived to assist at the burial of their brother. They interred him in the cemetery intended for workers who died in the camps. The graves were all the same, except that for a personage as important as Don Acacio it was necessary to raise a cross of more impressive dimensions and to enclose the grave in a sort of cage sufficiently strong to prevent the vultures from coming in search of the body. For greater security, the spot was covered with stones.
The moment they got back to the office, Don Severo asked: “Did the men see what happened to Don Acacio?”
“Nobody saw it, and we have not said a thing,” replied El Pechero, El Faldón, and the girl.
The men learned of the boss’s death that evening in the cookhouse from the mouths of the cook and the
woman with him. But the cook was unaware of the circumstances of Don Acacio’s death. That same night a rumor began to spread about the camp that Don Acacio had had a terrible row with his woman, that she had picked up a pistol, and that when he had tried to tear it away from her hands, it had gone off.
When night came Don Severo said to the girl, the foremen, and Don Félix: “Keep this thing to yourselves. If the men get a smell of the truth behind this story, it will be dangerous for all of us. Tricks like this are contagious. If the men get to know, it’s possible—one can go so far as to say that it’s certain—that they’ll imitate Urbano. Furthermore, I ought to tell you that I’ve received letters with news that’s far from reassuring. The newspapers that come remain silent. They say nothing because they can publish only what the old chief likes. He’s not only the soul of the country—he also rules the periodicals and books. But letters are less prudent, and they provide plenty to think about. And in the newspapers themselves you can read between the lines. In one place it says that they have arrested three schoolmasters and sent them to Vera Cruz or Yucatán. Another deals with two teachers sent to jail of whom no further news has been heard. Or again it deals with all the men of a small village in Morelos whom the old man’s rural police have taken God knows where—and twenty of whom were found later hanged along the road. There’s mention also of derailed trains and of bombs exploded in the main Puebla police station. In Monterrey they caught a whole traveling coachful of men who were going about inciting rebellion. The driver, who perhaps was innocent, was shot there and then. That’s the latest news. There’s no need to be a great prophet to be able to say that everything’s on the verge of bursting. If the old president’s throne shakes and falls, the whole of this republic will go up in flames. And, as for long years nobody has learned to think, because thinking is forbidden, things will go on burning until we have all been consumed.”
Don Félix coughed and said: “All that’s correct, brother, but we knew it when we first went to Villahermosa to buy this property.”
“Quite so,” replied Don Severo, “but now things seem more serious. They’re moving rapidly toward real trouble. That’s why I advise you all, and particularly you, Félix, you Pícaro, and you too, Gusano and Pulpo, to slacken the reins a bit. Treat the men a little better. There’s something in the air that I just don’t like. Pascasio’s attack on La Mecha and the crime committed by Urbano against Don Acacio are far from encouraging. Six months ago nobody would have dared to raise his little finger, and now they have the audacity to attack and to kill. To speak quite frankly, friends, I think we’re sitting on a barrel of dynamite. Let one spark touch it, and up we’ll go. Then there’ll be nothing left of us, not a hair of our beards. If sometime the disturbance should start on one of the nearby fincas, and if one of the men from there should get over here, we could consider ourselves lucky if we had time to do what Don Cacho did yesterday.”
“That’s so, chief,” said El Pícaro. “But then, what do we do? Run away?”
“Certainly not, burro-head! Do you think that we’re going to lose our investment here like that? We still have many thousands of tons of wood ready to toss into the water. It’s not exactly to pay out advances to those Indian pigs that we’ve worked.”
“Then give us your instructions, Don Severo,” answered El Faldón.
“But I’ve already told you what to do. For a few weeks move softly—slacken the reins. If the men can’t give us four tons, be content with three or even with two if it’s necessary. You’ll go on threatening them as before, but no whippings or useless hangings for the time being. The days will return, you can rest assured, when we’ll be able to insist again on the four tons daily, but not until after the floods. Meanwhile, we’ll let the atmosphere of the whole country clear up. It’s even possible that that little man Madero may see the light. He’s a dwarf who scarcely reaches the edge of a table. But perhaps for that very reason he’s had some success in lighting a fire on the seat of the old man’s chair until the old man’s on the point of leaping out of it and falling down with his ass scorched.”
“Why haven’t they put Madero in jail?” asked Don Felix.
“Why? Why? They did lock him up for six months, and naturally the dwarf got hundreds of supporters and adorers at one stroke that way! The old man had to order his release because if he hadn’t done so, Madero’s friends would have battered the gates down, spilled oil, and started a fire that would have spread everywhere. What could the old man do when in every corner there’s somebody with a dynamite bomb—a thing easy to get from the miners? I don’t know what would happen here if we needed dynamite in our work too.”
“Oh, you’re nervous, Don Severo, because of what’s just happened to your brother, but that doesn’t easily scare us.”
“Sure, Chapopote, say what you like, but in the end you have nothing to lose except your torn pants. But it’s different with my brother and myself. We’ve put all our money into this business, everything we’ve been able to make in fifteen years of hard work. In any case, all you have to do is what I tell you to. For the time being, go easy. That’s all. Understand?”
Don Felix got two bottles and filled the glasses to give the session a more pleasant aspect.
Don Severo got up and went into Don Acacio’s bedroom.
“What are you going to do now, Aurea?” he asked of Don Acacio’s “widow.” “During these rains you can’t leave. You’d sink in the swamps, horse and all. And even if you got through, it would be impossible to cross the rivers. They’re swollen tremendously, and they’d sweep you off like a wisp of straw.”
The woman was stretched on the bed crying uncontrolledly. Her eyes were red. On hearing Don Severo she pulled herself together and sat on the edge of the bed.
“I don’t know what to do. It doesn’t make any difference. It’s all the same to me.” She fell back and began sobbing again.
“No need to make such a fuss,” said Don Severo, consoling her in his own way. “There wasn’t a day that he didn’t drag you around by the hair or beat you black and blue. Isn’t that true?”
“Yes, it’s true,” replied Aurea between sobs, “it’s true that we were always fighting—but I loved him and he loved me. He had promised to take me to Spain and marry me when he had enough money.”
Don Severo moved his chair toward her.
“What do you know about that! More likely he’d have sent you packing when you reached Villahermosa. Besides, what’s the use of talking about it now? Now he’s under the ground and we have no time to waste remembering him. That’s why I want to tell you something.”
The girl stopped sobbing. She felt comforted by the thought that, after all, someone was disposed to help her.
“Yes, Aurea, I must tell you something,” Don Severo repeated. “You can’t stay here alone. You’d fall into the paws of some pig of a foreman. Unless there’s one of them you like?”
“There’s not even one of them I’d honor by spitting in his face.”
For a few seconds Aurea forgot her grief when she heard Don Severo say: “In that case, Aurea, there’s only one thing for you to do. You come with me.”
“But, Don Severo, you’ve already got two women in your house.”
“That’s so, but if I can take care of two women, I don’t see why I can’t take care of a third.”
“Maybe. But the two girls who’re with you will tear out my hair.”
“That’s my business. Do you think I’m going to let them do it?”
“Of course not, Don Severo. You’re the master, and when you speak we all must obey.”
She gave vent to two or three sobs more, but it was plain that she was disposed to accept her fate. Moreover, what point would there have been in prolonging her mourning? Life is too short to go on weeping forever for a man who will never return. A man dies and, the same day, nobody thinks any more about him. What’s lost is lost, and there’s nothing that can be done about it. The next day it will be harder to find than
it was today, and so on day after day. Happiness must be enjoyed when it’s here. The next time it appears, it will be less beautiful and less fresh. Aurea had had more than enough experience to know that women can devote less time than men to the past and to the dead. Because it’s sure that women’s attractions, though more numerous, last for a shorter time.
Aurea replied in the doleful voice of a martyr: “If you order it I’ll go to your house and do whatever you wish.”
“I don’t give orders, Aurea,” protested Don Severo in a fatherly voice.
The girl moved away from him, sat on the edge of the bed again, and began to comb her disheveled hair. This occupation enabled her to consider the advantages of Don Severo’s proposal without showing it.
“I know very well you don’t order it, Don Severo,” she said, sobbing again. Definitely she could not throw off her widow’s weeds for Don Severo so abruptly without cheapening herself in his eyes. And she had been considering her own value from the moment Don Severo had entered the room to speak to her. Although this price was not conceived in figures, it nevertheless existed. A woman who does not value herself or know how much she is worth is generally held cheap by men.
“You don’t give orders, Don Severo, that’s true, but I have no choice. I can’t go away because I’d get drowned in the swamps. So I must stay and take advantage of your kindness. But I do hope that you won’t treat me like a servant, because, you see, in spite of our eternal fighting your brother treated me respectfully. I come from a good family. My father was a merchant and a businessman.”
“You know I never thought of treating you like that. Your education is not to be compared with that of the two women I have in my house. I can’t send them away, because they can’t travel just now either. Otherwise I’d send them to the devil right now. For you must know, Aurea, that you attracted me from the first time I saw you with Cacho. You always pleased me more than any other girl. But it was difficult to tell you once you were with Cacho, and I wanted no disputes. Now you know it, and you’ll come with me.”