by B. TRAVEN
The woman with the new crown had thrown the old one aside as if to say: Well, what sort of junk is that? The pump-master woman picked up her discarded crown, crumpled it in her hand so that nobody would pay any attention to it, left the hut, and threw it into the bonfire.
31
Suddenly excited voices were heard outside the hut. Right away a man entered carrying under one arm the little coffin which he himself had made as his last gift to the kid. With his free hand he took off his hat.
The moment he put the coffin on the floor the Garcia woman broke out into a fit of hysterical shrieking. All the other women in the hut and outside in the yard joined her as if they were all mad.
The coffin-maker wiped the thick sweat off his forehead with the backs of his hands and then dried his neck with a large red handkerchief.
Three men came in and went straight to the table. The Garcia woman yelled: “Don’t take him away from me! Let him sleep here only a few hours more, please, don’t take him away!” She wrung her hands and ran around the hut, pushing her head here and there against the posts which supported the roof, shrieking and yelling all the time. Finally two women cornered her and took her in their arms.
In the meantime, with a short businesslike “Con su permiso!” and ignoring the shrieks and lamentations of the women, the men pushed the women out of their way and got to work.
Sleigh was one of the three who had just come in.
The coffin was only a very crude box made of rotten boards taken from different kinds of old cases. Not a bit of this coffin was planed. The outside was covered with blue and red paper to give it a more decent appearance. The inside had been filled with dry grass and corn leaves, on top of which pieces of limestone had been laid.
The coffin was set on a box. Without any ceremony the four men grabbed the little body and tried to lift it from the table. While lifting it the head dropped with a jerk as if it would break off. I jumped forward and held the pillow under it for support. The beautiful paper dresses spread apart and the whole laboriously achieved make-up turned into something horrible. But at last we got the body into the coffin. The pump-master woman jumped up and with her quick, expert hands arranged the dresses to give back the body its former illusion of beauty.
The coffin was then put on the table. At once the Garcia threw herself over her baby to kiss him good-by. She was just about to press her lips to his mouth when she realized that his lips were all gone. Then she smelled the odor rising from the poor little body. She gasped for fresh air and drew back, almost falling over the woman sitting there.
She stood five feet away from her baby. She flung her arms up, waved them violently, then dropped them with a gesture of fatigue. Now her hands fumbled at her face, ran up and down her breasts, and finally glided down her belly, where she moved them around as if she were searching for something hidden there. Then her fingers climbed up her face like little snakes until they reached her hair. She pulled at her hair so savagely that two women fell into her arms to keep her from tearing her scalp off. Her eyes flickered about helplessly. She broke away from them, screamed, and dropped to the floor as if she had been struck by a club.
The women lifted her head, poured water between her tightly pressed lips, and tried to force open her clenched fists. First her lips and then her face got blue—but only for a minute. Slowly she came to. She opened her eyes, sat up on the floor, wiped her face, looked around, recognized her friends, and tried to smile at them.
That was her last good-by to her beloved baby.
Her husband came in. Staggering towards her, he dragged out of one of his pockets, with great difficulty, a bottle of mescal and pushed it into her hands with a gesture of love and sympathetic understanding.
The Garcia, holding the bottle in her hands as if it were something very sacred, rose from the floor and disappeared into the little storeroom. I could watch her through the sticks which formed the wall and I saw her take a swig which would have knocked an old Norwegian sailor straight under the table. She took the bottle from her mouth, looked at it, and then took a shot that was not quite so big as the first one, but was still more than two fingers of a quart bottle. Having taken her consoling medicine, she came out and, good and honest wife that she was, returned the bottle to her lord and master. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand with a satisfied look in her hollow eyes.
Since the bottle was out of his hip pocket and since it had been so hard to get it out, old man Garcia thought the occasion very opportune and he too whipped a fine shot down his throat. Fiestas must be celebrated on the day they fall.
The coffin-maker dragged a hammer out of one pocket and out of another two thick rusty nails. He considered this gesture more suggestive than a speech about what he was now going to do.
The Garcia immediately understood the meaning of that gesture. She went up to the coffin, took off the cloth, and looked at what was still left of the face which had only yesterday been so full of life and joy. She stared in horror and covered the face hastily.
She stood there for a minute as if she were waiting for something. Then she walked with quick steps to the little shelf on which the picture of the Holy Virgin was standing, removed the little ukulele, and put it in the coffin beside the kid. Then she pondered again over something she wanted to remember. Once more she returned to the shelf, gathered together all of the kid’s playthings—the battered tin automobile, the fish-hook, the strings, the broken cork, and the few other silly items which her boy had treasured so highly—carried them to the coffin, and put them in too. And in a very low voice she said: “He mustn’t feel lonely, he mustn’t.” And after standing there a few seconds more, she said: “Adiós, Carlitos! Adiós, Carlosito mio!”
Nobody in the hut moved, nobody said a word, nobody mumbled, nobody even seemed to breathe while the mother was talking to her baby.
She bowed her head, turned around until her back was to the coffin, and walked towards the wall through which she could see the bonfire outside.
Quickly the coffin-maker put the lid on the box and with a few light blows of his hammer nailed it loosely so that it could be taken off again before the burial.
32
From now on, everything happened in a hurry. Four youngsters, each about fourteen years of age, lifted the coffin, and the funeral train was on its way.
Men, women, children followed the pall-bearers. The women carried their babies on their backs wrapped in rebozos.
In no time the train had reached the spot on the bridge from which the kid was supposed to have tumbled over.
Here the pall-bearers instinctively halted.
All the men took off their hats. The Garcia wept bitterly, but she did not yell. Her tears stirred the hearts of all the mourners more than her yells had, honest though they had been. The pump-master woman kissed her. “There, there, now,” she said, “weep if it helps you. Here, blow your nose in this.” The pump-master woman pressed her handkerchief against the mother’s swollen face.
The pall-bearers marched on again.
Sleigh had stopped on the bridge with the others for a minute. Then he turned around and went home as soon as he saw the procession move on. He did not say so, but I was sure he had to find a cow which had strayed.
The crowd left the bridge and passed the pump-station. On this rough, occasionally swampy trail through the bush, it would take almost the whole afternoon for the procession to reach the little cemetery.
Naturally, the mourners did not march in good order.
Garcia staggered between two friends who had difficulty keeping him on his feet, especially since they themselves were no longer very sure of their faculties.
The mother walked beside the pump-master woman, on whose right arm she was hanging. She still wore her sea-green gauze dress and apparently she did not know it. Aside from her week-day rags she had nothing else to wear on such a great occasion. The dress was streaked with blood and mud. It had many holes in it and was ripped wide open at various
places. The flowers had fallen off, but the safety pins by which they had been fastened were still there.
The pump-master woman, like practically all the other women, also wore the dress she had worn the night before, but her dress and those of the other women were less soiled and not torn.
After the people had left the bridge they all began to feel more comfortable. A new world opened before them and that sinister bridge would soon be forgotten.
After having walked in silence for a quarter of an hour, the crowd slowly began to get lively. A heavy burden seemed to have been removed from everyone’s chest.
The musicians—one fiddler and one guitar-player, both Indians—lifted their instruments. They did not know that there were such things as funeral dirges, death marches, and nocturnos which allure ghosts to come out of their chimneys and attics and dance before a pleased audience. That hymns existed they knew because they had heard them in church. Yet they could not play them, and for some unexplainable reason they would not have played them even if they had known how. What in the world were the American jazz compositions for if not to be played any time and on any occasion, whether a wedding, or a baptism, a saint’s day, a dance, or a funeral? Music was music anywhere and to have different tunes for different occasions was silly and befitted only people who knew no better—perhaps because they had degenerated and needed a rough-fisted bolshevism to put them out of their misery. Be this as it may, the little boy had to be buried with music, and any music would do, since he was already on his way to heaven.
I was afraid that they might play something like Home, Sweet Home or My Old Kentucky Home. But no, these good Indian musicians were not that far away from the path of civilization. They were far nearer to us. I could see here very clearly that international borders and the colors of skins weren’t barriers against the spread of our mighty culture. The dynamic force of our crooners, torch singers, and night-club hostesses had actually made it possible for our Vallees, Berlins, Whitemans, and Crosbys to reach even the depths of American jungles. Over this trail blazed by our dance songs, there would soon arrive Fords, vacuum cleaners, electric refrigerators, air-conditioned grass huts, jungle-colored bathrooms, windmill-driven television, canned alligator stew, and pulverized hearts of young palm trees.
So it was that the tune played (as befitted the sailor suit) was Taintgonnarainnomo, which was the latest around here.
It was a long time since I had heard that tune. And since the time that tune was the rage back home, we Americans, tough guys that we are, have happily survived weddings of painted dolls, sonnyboys, and mammies crooned by poor devils suffering from St. Vitus’s dance; we had also had to swallow the strange news that only God can make a tree, a fact which none of us ever knew until we were told so by night-club entertainers. Then there was the coming (two hundred times every day and night) of the moon over the mountains with my memories of you. Then we took our sugar to tea, asked for just one more chance, and incorporated the little innocent cucaracha, which used to be sung by Mexican revolutionists under the fire of machine-guns, but was sung by us under the fire of booze.
Everything in its right place and the world will be a better location to live in. No, it won’t rain any more. This elegant song was played by Indians who for nine months had had no drop of rain and by whom rain was considered God’s greatest blessing.
We reach these people so easily with our sailor suits, with our polished shoes and our yeswehavenobananas. Would that we tried once in a while to reach them, not with puffed rice and naked celluloid dames going with the wrong man in the right bed, but with the Gettysburg address, which next to God’s rain would be the greatest blessing to all these so-called republics if we would take the trouble to make the people understand the true meaning of the greatest, finest, and most noble poem any American has produced to this day.
Yet the simple fact that the taintgonnarainnomo tune was played here as a death march was ample proof that this vomit of our civilization had, at least in this part of the world, met a wall it could not break. Death is understood by these people, but the hypocrisy with which we, the followers of Christ, bury our dead they cannot understand. Therefore American dance tunes could not confuse their feelings, while hymns and nearer-to-thees would only upset them as something not quite befitting that great mystery which is the extinction of life.
What does it all matter anyhow? What does the sun above us care about the dead, about weeping mothers, about funerals, about American foxtrots and hair-removers? What does it care whether there is genuine culture or faked civilization, whether good music or noise with brass tubes? That glorious sun doesn’t give a rap for anybody’s anger about the white man’s dumping the contents of his ashcans over the heads of people he believes inferior. Whatever woe, pain, and sorrow we may have, real or imaginary, the sun stays mighty and dignified in the universe. It is a god, it is the only god, the redeemer, the savior, the only visible one, the always present, the ever young, the ever smiling god, forever an exulting song of eternal creation. It is the creator, the maintainer, the begetter, and the producer. It gives and wastes at the same time, never ceases to bless the earth with fruit and beauty, yet never asks for prayers or worship, nor for thanks. And it never threatens punishments.
What did the sun above us care about our funeral? It stood directly above and its flames struck us. We staggered along our dreary way, stumbled over roots and logs, fell into holes, and sank into swampy furrows. We squeezed ourselves through thorny brushes and beat our way through the high, wiry prairie grass.
For hours and hours we marched in this blazing heat. The crowd was chatting, laughing, yelling, squeaking, singing, whistling. Now and then the music played. Foxtrots, one-steps, two-steps, blues. Occasionally they played the Jesusita en Chihuahua and the Reina de mi jacal and Amapola del camino and Adelita for recreation, because these tunes they could play in their sleep. But if they had gone on playing these beautiful songs, the mourners would have believed them old-fashioned, and so that they should not be thought narrow-minded, doing only what their grandfathers did, they discarded their fine folk-music to show the crowd how Americanized they were. And there came floating through the boiling air the sounds of that musical glory of the century, the great American Te Deum, Taintgonnarainnomo.
The coffin swayed dangerously on the shoulders of the youngsters who carried it. If now and then one of them tripped over a stone or a root or sank into a hole, the entire crowd yelled: “La caja, la caja! The box, the box!”
Those walking near it jumped closer and supported the case, for otherwise it might easily have gone down the scarp which bordered the trail. I did not wish even to imagine what might happen if that coffin had really gone down there and burst open.
On both sides of our trail buzzards accompanied us, some flying ahead of us, others following, some of them dropping into a tree or a bush to perch there for a minute, then arising again and coming close to us. They never came very close-just close enough so that we could clearly see their hungry eyes and their dry beaks.
We came up to a row of termite-eaten fence posts. From a few of them pieces of rusty barbed wire were dangling. A dozen buzzards took possession of this row and perched on the posts. It was a ghastly sight, considering that we were going to bury a dead child, for these buzzards sat in a file like sentinels. A mourner tried to make a wisecrack and remarked: “With their black frock coats they look like undertakers.” Another one said with a giggle: “That one there looks exactly like our cura, who baptized our brats last fall.”
I too thought they looked more like ministers than undertakers—like ministers who could never forgive an error and who were at their best when preaching of hell-fire and Satan’s sadistic pleasures.
In front of the coffin the second brother marched. He was surrounded by a bunch of shouting and shrieking kids. One of the boys was constantly swinging a thick stick, the end of which burned slowly, to keep it aflame so that it could be used to light the firecrackers which were explod
ing every minute. When the first crackers went off like rifle-shots, the buzzards got frightened and left our procession to hide in the depths of the bush. But now they were accustomed to the noise and they went with us all the way. Nobody throws stones at buzzards here or hurts them intentionally. The law protects the birds. But even if there were no law for the preservation of buzzards, the people would protect them, for they know them to be their health department, which disposes of carcasses.
Manuel marched all by himself as if he did not belong to this procession. Twice I went up to him and talked about Texas and about his job there. He answered and even tried to force a smile. When I saw how it pained him to talk, I left him alone for the rest of the way.
Old man Garcia stopped every once in a while, dragged the bottle out of his hip pocket, and took a shot. Both his friends who were helping him reach the cemetery on his own feet also helped him finish the bottle. Now and then another of his friends came up and was served. Garcia could afford to be generous, for should this bottle give out, he carried a second one in another pocket.
The mother walked in the midst of the crowd. Seeing her now, one would not believe her to be the principal mourner. No longer did she hang on the pump-master woman’s arm for support. The heat and the rough trail would not allow it. The pump-master woman, however, still walked by her side, and a few other women were marching close by so that the mother could never feel alone, not even for a moment. They all chatted to shorten the trip and to forget the blazing sun. They were talking of a thousand different things, but not of the kid. They were walking back to ordinary daily life.