“The devil take you, you pack of nobodies! That’s the way you rob me of the money I’ve worked so hard to make. For three months all you’ve done is scratch your asses, and I haven’t been able to send off even one load of mahogany. God and the most holy Virgin are witnesses that I’ve paid you down to the last centavo, that I don’t owe you anything. And now I come to the end of three months and find nothing in the dumps, not one chip of mahogany worth mentioning. Expecting to find logs piled up as high as hills, or at least as high as the cathedral in Villahermosa, I find nothing! But, by God and all the saints, what have you been doing all this time? Now scratch your bellies, you sons of bitches! Now answer me, and don’t try lying or I’ll punch you each one in the nose. Come on, let’s see! What’s your answer?”
In these choice terms Don Severo directed himself to his two overseers, El Pícaro and El Gusano—the “Rogue” and the “Worm.” He shouted so loud that he could have been heard over a mile away, and nobody hearing his shouts could have helped choking up with fear.
The more Don Severo thundered, the redder and more congested his face became. No doubt he was afraid of bursting, for suddenly he muted his fury, though in such a way as to announce clearly that this was merely a short respite and that when his two overseers had given him their explanations, he would return to a display of his vocabulary’s shining gems.
Don Severo was the oldest of the three Montellano brothers, owners of this great mahogany camp and of two smaller ones situated on the other side of the river. The most important was called La Armonía, the others La Estancia and La Piedra Alta.
La Armonía covered an area so large that it had been found necessary to divide it into four regions or camps: north, east, south, and west. The boundaries of the exploited territory were very vague; it had been difficult to determine them clearly because the property was all buried in the jungle. Streams ran near its edges, and these had sometimes been taken as its natural boundaries. From one frontier of the exploited territory to the other, it measured at least fifty miles as a bird flies, a distance that seemed easily doubled in walking or on horseback because of such natural obstacles as rocks, gorges, rivers, and swamps.
The north camp was under the personal direction of Don Severo. Each of the other camps was in charge of trusted overseers, foremen, and some assistants.
Don Félix, the second brother, looked after the accounts in the central office of the administration, known as “the village.”
The administration office was not situated in the center of the camps, but at one extreme edge, near the bank of the river that carried the wood to the sea. This allowed the management to supervise and control the cargoes of wood set going down the river, make a reasonable estimate of their extent, enter their number in the books, and calculate their value. This location also allowed the personnel to circulate more easily between the central office and the various camps, using canoes called cayucos and paddling along tributary streams, all other means of communication being precarious. To tell the truth, it was often impossible to paddle up the small streams, but the owners of the camps had chosen this site as best for their central office, their chief reasons having been strategic. The exploitation of this area had been begun by an American group, which in time, having found a richer region, had ceded it to the Montellano brothers.
The youngest brother, Don Acacio, managed the camps on the other bank of the river. That completed the organization of the business as settled by common agreement among the three brothers.
Don Severo had so much to do in his own camp that he could not go to inspect the other camps every two or three weeks. The routes between them were so bad and so long that a tour of inspection of the three camps, not counting his own, would have taken him fifteen or twenty days, especially if he should wish to visit the dumps. He had, then, to be satisfied with an inspection every three months, and that was anything but a pleasure tour. It was, in fact, a penance that ought to have merited divine indulgence and direct admission to paradise.
Don Félix could not undertake this inspection because it was impossible for him to leave the central office, the heart and brain of the camps.
To the office came the customers. It was there that tools and equipment were received, that everything required for the existence of the workers was stored. The invoices were received there, as were official communications from the tax office, letters from banks and from customers, and reports from agents in New York and London, with information about the state of the market in mahogany and of the timber trade in general.
Thanks to his energy and to his long experience, Don Severo was clearly the man to direct the exploitation and hauling of the mahogany. It was for this reason that the hardest job had been given to him, leaving to Don Félix the more agreeable administrative work.
In his distant post Don Acacio was as indefatigable as his brothers, but he was even more greedy than they—and more irritable. From the time the three Montellanos had bought the camps, he had hardly set foot in the central office or even risked sending a messenger across the swampy roads. For long periods of time at a stretch his brothers did not know whether he was alive or whether his corpse was rotting somewhere.
It was not certain that Don Severo and Don Félix would have grieved much to know that their brother Acacio had been murdered, that fever had carried him off, that a jaguar had devoured him, that a scorpion had mortally stung him, or that he had drowned in the swamps.
Very probably if he had left the dumps well enough supplied with mahogany logs—this was the only thing in the world that interested the Montellanos—the other two would not have been able to shed one small tear over the premature end of their younger brother. In any case, they would have consoled themselves quickly by thinking that the profits from then on would be divided into two parts instead of three.
Don Severo was making his inspection in the south camp and was directing his amiable words to El Pícaro and El Gusano. He had set out very early on horseback, accompanied by El Pícaro, intending to note the quantities of mahogany felled and collected in the various dumps and ready to be sent floating down the rivers. At each dump he estimated with a quick glance the number of piled-up logs and then let loose his fury.
“So this is all the work done in three months! How is it possible to have produced so little in three long months? It’s a crime, a sin against all the saints!”
And every time this happened, El Pícaro gave the same reply: “But, Don Severo, there are still other dumps where you will find plenty of logs.”
This did not stop Don Severo from declaring at the next dump that it had fewer logs than the one before, so that as his inspection progressed, his anger grew. This anger was slowly changing to a mad fury, a demented rage. When, on returning to the camp office after an exhausting ride, they found El Gusano stretched out full length on the floor and helplessly drunk, Don Severo struck him with his whip, lashes that El Gusano did not even appear to feel, being in a world in which grief and pain seem as sweet as syrup.
Then Don Severo began to bang the crude wooden table, and each phrase of his discourse, emphasized with disgraceful oaths, was underlined by thwacks of his whip on the table, the other pieces of furniture, and the door: “I ought to tear your guts out! There’s no excuse for bastards like you! Hell would be too good for the two of you.”
In his rage he rushed on: “But, by the devil and all the carrion-eating curs, what have you been doing these three months? Scratching your asses and picking your noses? Answer me!”
El Pícaro stayed on the other side of the table, where he had barricaded himself against Don Severo’s anger. As things went from bad to worse, he cautiously moved nearer the door, ready to escape.
“Are you going to speak up, you rat?”
“All the trunks of the trees were cluttered up with roots.”
“With roots! With roots! Is that a reason?”
“We had to build scaffolds at least two yards high to get at the trunks,” argued El Pícaro.
“Anybody would think it’s the first time that has happened! As if I myself didn’t have to do it for years and years with nearly every tree. I myself have built scaffolds because the branches and the roots were nearly ten feet up. That didn’t prevent me from making the men produce up to three and four tons every day. But you, you pair of good-for-nothing overseers, whom I leave in charge of the simplest work in the world in return for wages as high as a contractor’s—you find a way to produce four times less. You’re a pair of bandits, thieves who take my money to drink yourselves silly. Hardly one ton a day per man!”
El Pícaro sidled a little toward the door and said: “Pardon, but the amount is more than two and a half tons a day per man.” He spoke in a frightened tone as if to defend himself.
“Shut your mouth when I speak to you. Understand? Two tons! Did I or didn’t I order you to produce at least four? And to top it all, the rains are coming. Within four weeks we’ll be beginning to haul them to the water, and what am I going to dispatch? A ton and a half! That’s not the way we’ll be able to pay the sixty thousand pesos due on the first of January.”
He looked round the room furiously, unseeingly. His bloodshot eyes falling again on El Gusano, he rushed at him and kicked him in the legs: “Pig, pig of a hog!”
El Pícaro decided that the moment had come to take up the defense of his pal: “This is the first time he’s been drunk for six weeks, for the simple reason that we haven’t had even a drop of aguardiente. Until yesterday, when the Turk came, we couldn’t get any bottles. It was natural, then, for him to drink a little.”
“A little! Magnificent! Where’s your bottle?”
El Pícaro went to a corner of the office and from under the bed drew out a half-empty bottle. He thought that Don Severo would snatch it from his hands and smash it on the floor, but that was not what happened.
Don Severo had shouted so much that his throat was dry. He seized the bottle, looked at it against the light, shook it, and took several good swallows. He cleared his throat, shook the bottle again, and drank from it a second time. It seemed to calm him a little.
“Refreshing!” he said more calmly.
But his calmness was of short duration. It disappeared almost immediately when he remembered the reason for his presence in this place.
Three days before, Don Severo had received from Don Acacio the first and only letter he had written since he had been in the camp. He had sent the letter by a foreman who had traveled on horseback. Don Acacio informed his brothers that the exploitation of the small camps he managed must be suspended for the time being. Deeply shut in between two hills and two mountains, the camps had been turned into two swamps by the recent heavy rainfalls. The oxen could not walk without getting bogged down, as a consequence of which it was impossible to transport logs to the dumps. Even more serious, the cutting had had to be interrupted because the cutters were being drowned in mud.
This short letter brought Don Severo the disastrous news that the cutting in Don Acacio’s camps must be regarded as lost that year. The loss was all the worse because it represented more or less half of the total production. The deficit would probably prevent them from meeting the obligations they had contracted in order to buy the business, and in that case it was possible that the company that had sold it to them would foreclose on their property and resell it to others, as it had a right to do by the contract, the terms of which were very hard because of the small down payment made by the Montellano brothers.
Immediately, Don Severo and Don Felix had met in the central office to discuss the situation, and both had reached the conclusion that there was only one method of saving the year’s production.
They admitted that Don Acacio, the youngest, was the most energetic of the three when it came to obtaining the maximum yield from the men. If he wrote that his district was temporarily unexploitable, that must be the case, and nobody in the world would make more effort than he to obtain something. In these circumstances, then, seeing that the two small camps could not produce anything, it was necessary at least to double the production of the big camp or, if it was possible, quadruple it. It was entirely a question of yield, because the mahogany was abundant enough in La Armonía to make up any deficit. Nobody could be better qualified than Don Acacio, assisted by the foremen he had trained, to obtain this result. Don Severo and Don Felix knew Don Acacio would run grave risks, but they had to have recourse to the last possibility if they wished to win the game.
Don Acacio’s messenger returned with their reply inviting him to move to La Armonía with his men to start new dumps.
Don Acacio, at least as intelligent as his older brothers, was a step ahead of them: he was already on the way toward La Armonía when he met the messenger, fortunately for the latter, who was on the verge of being bogged down, together with his horse.
When Don Acacio and his men arrived at the principal camp to get provisions and tools, Don Severo had left for the south camp, administered by El Pícaro.
The aguardiente seemed to have a soothing effect on Don Severo, but only for a short time. He was thinking that all hope was lost as far as the other two camps were concerned. On the other hand, he had counted on an output double what he had found in El Pícaro’s dumps.
“If I had not wanted more tons of mahogany, do you think that I’d have sent two foremen here? For what? The boys would have done the work by themselves and probably would have produced more than under you two lazy pigs. But tell me, how have you managed to get only half the work that I expected from you? You must surely have slept more than you worked.”
“But, chief, what more could I do? I’ve whipped them like dogs, to the point of tearing the hide from their backs. But they soon got used to it, and the more you whip them, the less they work.”
“I’ve already told you that if you abuse the whip, it’s no use for any God-damned thing. They get obstinate, they lie down and don’t do any work. Why didn’t you hang them more often? That’s what we do in our camp. There’s nothing like it. It really scares them.”
“But we’re only two, El Gusano and me. And to hang half a dozen isn’t so easy. They resist and fight back. To pull it off there would have to be three men for each boy.”
“What use then is that gun hanging on your rump? Do you wear it to look pretty or for hunting pheasants?”
“Actually, it’s no good for anything.”
“You have only to flash it in the face of anybody who gets insolent and you’ll see how they’ll cool down.”
“That used to be true, chief. But now they just laugh at me when I stick the gun in their ribs. ‘Shoot, you bastard,’ they say. ‘Why don’t you shoot? Your day is sure to come somehow. Just wait a bit and we’ll get even with you and El Gusano.’ What’s more, they sing all sorts of songs against us, especially at night.”
“Then you’ve only to plug one or two. That way they’ll see that you’re not joking.”
“All right, chief, if you say so, that’s what I’ll do. After all, it’s not my funeral. Do you know what they say when I put the mouth of a gun against their hides? ‘Go on, shoot, Pícaro, you big fool—and then you’ll find yourself with one less cutter and you can stick the contract up your ass.’ That’s just what’s terrible about it: they would really like me to shoot so that they wouldn’t have to work any more.”
Don Severo remained silent. He put his head out of the door, looked in the direction of the workers’ hovels, then came back into the room, picked up the bottle of aguardiente, took another good round of swigs, and lighted a cigarette.
“Tomorrow,” he said after a moment, “Don Acacio will be here with his men and his overseers. Then we’ll take energetic measures. You’ll see how to deal with these guys and how to make every one of them turn in four tons a day. Maybe we’ll get it up to five.”
“Sure, chief,” replied El Pícaro.
“Damned right! What are you thinking of? All this you’ve been telling me is just child’s play compared with what my brothers and I have seen in other camps.”
He raised the bottle again, as if it contained nothing but water. Then he put it down and again looked at El Gusano.
“Bring me a bucket,” he ordered.
El Pícaro fetched him a full pail of water. Don Severo seized it and threw the water on the drunken man.
“Bring another,” he said to El Pícaro, handing him the pail. “One’s not enough. At least six are needed to put him on his feet. And when he stands up, you’ll flay the skin off his ass with this horsewhip. Then maybe he’ll be of some use. But do it later. I have no interest in being here during the punishment. Take him a little way off so that I don’t hear him yelling.”
“Very well, chief,” said El Pícaro, who, to save himself the trouble of fetching more buckets of water, lifted El Gusano onto his back, carried him to the arroyo, and doused him in it until he began to recover his senses.
“But listen, pal,” muttered El Gusano, “you’re not going to beat me up? Aren’t we friends?”
“Of course we are, you pig. But why must you get drunk just when the old man arrives? There’s nothing I can do about it. I have to give it to you whether you like it or not. It’s better for me to do it in a friendly way than to call one of the boys, Gregorio or Santiago, for example. For then, my friend, it wouldn’t be any fun, I assure you.”
“You’re right. Get it over in a hurry, while I’m drunk and won’t feel it so much. Can’t you fetch me a swig befor—to make it easier for me to bear?”
“Not a bad idea. I’ll have a little myself.”
El Pícaro ran to the office, slipped through the door, took the bottle, and made El Gusano drink a lot before he began to lash him.
On the following day a little before sunset Don Acacio and his column arrived at the south camp. Don Severo received him with these sweet words: “Everything’s going as badly as possible here, Cacho. They’ve done no more than two tons per cutter.”
“In that case there’s nothing for us to do but eat shit,” replied Don Acacio. But he was not a man to waste time idly. Even when he had made a hard journey, he did not seem disposed to rest. Still less was he likely to sit and listen to useless speeches. He called his overseers.
“Get going, you pack of mules! Hurry—get the huts up. We haven’t any time to lose. If you don’t want to spend all your nights under the stars, start now, because tomorrow we won’t be able to bother with that.”
The foremen, followed by their men, made their way into the underbrush to fell some trees and cut palm leaves for building the huts. But night surprised them before one hut was finished.
The men took shelter in the huts occupied by the camp workers, but there was not room for them all. It was hard spending the night stretched out on the ground. It rained torrentially and the ones who slept on the ground awoke in a bath of mud. They were called to their work, as usual, before the first rays of daylight.
“Good morning!” said Don Acacio. “It seems to me that building huts won’t be necessary. In fact, we’re not going to stay here—we’re going to settle in the forest. We’re leaving right away. You can boil your coffee and cook your beans later when we have time. Now you can eat on the way. Let’s go.”
“That’s the way to talk,” said Don Severo to El Pícaro, who stood beside him at the office door. “If you had been able to function like him, you and your drunken assistant, we’d have had our four tons a man right now.”
“Certainly, chief. But if I’d done that, I’d have lost my life before night, or I’d have had to leave two or three of the boys laid out somewhere with bullets in their ribs,” El Pícaro said, laughing derisively.
“That’s just what makes the difference. There are overseers who know how to make their people work and others who don’t know their job. You’re one of those who don’t understand and never will learn. And, by the way, where’s El Gusano?”
“Hi! Gusano!” shouted El Pícaro into the darkness. “The chief wants to see you.”
El Gusano came running, and without stopping to get his breath said: “At your orders, chief!”
“You and El Pícaro are going to break camp with all your loafers. You’ll leave with Don Acacio. Get your things together. On your way!”
The two overseers called their men and followed Don Acacio’s column.
A week later Don Gabriel, arriving at La Armonía with the caravan of men he had recruited, stopped on the wide embankment in front of the bungalow that housed the administration.
Don Gabriel had demands for labor for four different camps. He was considering the project of staying at La Armonía, of establishing his center of operations there and dividing up his men. On the very day of his arrival Don Severo was there, and Don Gabriel took advantage of the opportunity to have a talk with him. As a result of their conversation all of Don Gabriel’s Indians were taken on by La Armonía. The other camps would have to wait until other men were recruited or Don Gabriel should take pity on them.
Don Severo and Don Felix had a look at the newcomers and seemed to be satisfied.
The caravan of Indians was dead with fatigue. They fell on the ground, forming little groups. When Don Severo and Don Felix went up to a group, those who formed it immediately stood up. Don Severo felt their arms, the muscles of their legs, and the napes of their necks, as he would have done before buying a yoke of oxen.
“What’s your job, Chamula?” he asked Cándido, whose place of origin he recognized by his hat.
“Farmer, sir, and your humble servant,” replied Cándido modestly.
“In that case you’ll be a good cutter.”
“At your orders, sir.”
“Who is that woman with you? Is she your wife?”
“She’s my sister, chief. My wife died.”
“And the two little boys? Are they yours?”
“At your service, chief. They’re here to serve you.”
Don Severo felt their arms. “I believe they’d be good herd-boys.”
“I beg pardon if I contradict you, chief, but they’re still very little and won’t be able to work in the jungle. One of them is only six years old and the other only seven years and three months.”
“If they want to eat, they have to work. You’ll eat all your ration yourself, and if you want a double ration you’ll never finish paying your debts.”
“We can work. We’re strong, chief,” said the older boy, realizing that he and his brother might be the cause of their father’s finding himself in one more difficulty.
The younger boy took a step forward, planting himself in front of Don Severo and doubling up his arm to show how the biceps stood out. “Feel that, my chief, and see how strong I am. I’ll be able to work more than my brother, who’s bigger than me. And the job of looking after cattle pleases me. With your permission, papa.”
Cándido said nothing.
“That’s fine,” said Don Severo, laughing. “Those are the kind of kids I like. It has never done anybody any harm to begin work early and earn his bread. I’ll send you two boys to the pasture and your father will go on with the cutters.”
The two boys were taken aback. “But aren’t we going with our father?”
“Your father isn’t a cowboy. He’s a cutter. So he can’t be in the same camp as you. If it’s possible, we’ll arrange things so that you can be together at night.”
Cándido drew the little ones toward him as if intending to protect them with his own body. He caressed their thick mops of hair and said in a muffled voice: “There’s nothing we can do, my sons. He’s the master and we must obey him.”
Don Severo went on to another group.
Don Felix, who had remained behind, made a sign to Modesta, who had withdrawn a little while Don Severo was talking with Cándido and the boys. She obeyed the sign, coming up to him with her head bent forward, her eyes downcast, and her arms crossed.
Don Felix tapped her cheeks lightly and put his hand under her chin to make her raise her head. But Modesta resisted, half closing her eyes and clenching her teeth a little.
“There’s no need for you to be afraid, little hen. I don’t eat girls, especially when they have pretty legs. I satisfy myself with separating those when I want to. What’s your name?”
“Modesta, your humble servant.”
“Good, I’ll call you Mocha. What did you come here to do?”
“I came with my brother so as not to leave him alone with the children, chief.” She spoke without raising her head.
“And where do you expect to eat, little hen?”
“In the camp, with my brother.”
“That’s impossible. He’ll receive only one ration, and if he wants another he’ll have to pay for it. Then there will be absolutely nothing left of his wage and only God knows how much he’ll be owing us then. We’ll pay him fifty centavos a day, and that on condition that he fells three tons of mahogany.”
“Two tons, chief, that’s the way it’s written in my contract. The mayor told us that in Hucutsin,” Cándido interposed, stepping up.
“I spit on what your contract says, and you shut your mouth if you don’t want me to call one of the foremen, who’ll give you a welcome to the camps. When he’s tanned your hide enough, you’ll know that here nobody opens his face except when he’s asked to. You’ll cut down your three tons daily, understand? If you don’t, we won’t pay you—and give thanks that you don’t have to cut four. That will come later.”
“Pardon, chief, with your permission, the man who signed me up, Don Gabriel, told me that it would be two tons, and the mayor of Hucutsin, who stamped my contract, told me that, too.”
“For you it’ll be four tons, you lousy coyote. And watch out for your skin and bones if you don’t cut them.”
Don Félix took a notebook from his shirt pocket, wrote down Cándido’s name, and added the following note: “Four tons, obligatory.”
“But, my chief—” Cándido never finished the phrase because Don Félix gave him so violent a blow in the face that blood began to spout from the Indian’s nostrils.
“Now I’ve told you, you sickening worm, that the only right you have here is to shut your trap.”
Cándido sat down on the ground and tried to stop the bleeding by applying a handful of grass to his nostrils. Modesta remained standing in front of Don Félix, her head lowered. The incident was more painful to her than to Cándido, but, like the rest of her race, she was accustomed from infancy to bear silently the worst treatment from white men. Not a gesture, not the slightest contraction of her face, betrayed what she felt. The children embraced their father tenderly, trying to console him. The younger began to sob, crying: “Papa, papa, it’s not my fault.”
Cándido caressed him and answered him with a smile. The older boy had picked a gourd and run to the arroyo to fetch a little water for his father to use on his face.
Don Félix continued his conversation with Modesta. The fact of striking an Indian in the face was to him something so unimportant that he did not give it a moment’s attention. That of killing an Indian by blows or by a shot was an incident forgotten an hour later. He remembered the hunting of a deer or a well-aimed shot at a jaguar more easily than the death of a peon.
“Do you know that you’re not entirely ugly, Mocha? But you must eat and for that your brother won’t be able to help you.”
“I’ll put up a little house here in the camp, I’ll fatten some pigs, and I’ll do the cooking for the workmen.” This idea had come to her suddenly. She knew that it would not be easy to put it into operation, but she felt happy to have hit upon it because she had fears about the sort of work Don Felix had in mind for her. She had signed no contract and she could do as she wished, but she had to eat, and here everything was the property of the Montellano brothers.
“Don’t think that’s so easy, little hen. You can’t build a hut unless I give you permission, and as for fattening pigs, you require my authorization for that too. As for cooking for the laborers, if that pleases you—But look, if you want to work, why not do it for me? It’s less hard to work for one person than for twenty. Next week I may be going to another camp to skin those loafers. I’ll take you with me, little hen, so that you can do everything for me.”
He caught her by the point of the chin and lifted her head to force her to look him in the face, but Modesta closed her eyes.
“If you behave well and are amiable with me, it will go well with you. But if you’re obstinate, then I’ll tan your hide and you’ll go back home carrying your lousy rags. You’ll have to cross the jungle and who knows when you’ll get out of it? At the best you’ll meet a jaguar that will eat your legs and all the rest.”
“I don’t wish to be your servant, chief,” replied Modesta in a low voice.
“That’ll be decided by me, not you, little fool.”
Don Felix turned his back and went to join Don Severo and continue the inspection.