The Rebellion of the Hanged Read online

  THE REBELLION OF

  THE HANGED

  B. TRAVEN

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  Prologue

  Cándido Castro, a Tsotsil Indian, his wife, Marcelina de las Casas, and their two little sons, Angelito and Pedrito, lived on a plot of ground in a district of small agricultural holdings called Cuishin, on the outskirts of Chalchihuistán. Cándido’s property amounted to about five acres of arid, powdered, stony soil that required back-breaking work from him if he was to wring enough food from it for his family. The big landlords—called finqueros—of the districts of Jovel and Chiilum had tried several times to persuade Cándido to abandon his miserable piece of land, take his whole family, and go to work on one of the fincas as a peon.

  The finqueros were forever on the hunt for Indian families, essential to them for labor on their fincas. They were completely unscrupulous about snatching the Indians from their own villages and districts. The finqueros contested the possession of such families as though trying to establish the ownership of unbranded cattle. Quarrels over the possession of Indian families went on and on, were handed down from fathers to sons, and were prolonged even when the cause had long since been forgotten and no one could guess what had started the deadly hatreds among the finqueros.

  The political bosses and other minions of the dictatorship, naturally, were always on the side of the powerful finqueros. When a finquero asked them to deprive some Indian family of its shred of land, declare the Indians devoid of rights, or take advantage of any criminal method whatever, the representatives of the government carried out his wishes immediately, leaving the victims at the finquero’s mercy. He then undertook to pay off the family’s debts and take care of the exorbitant fines inflicted—most often for no reason, but useful for drowning the Indians in debt to such a depth that the finquero could acquire absolute rights over them. That a finquero was related to a political boss or friendly with one or could help to assure some other employee of the tyranny a long and easy existence was enough to guarantee that Indian labor would never be lacking on his finca.

  Cándido had been able to preserve his independence and live in freedom thanks to his innate peasant caution, his natural good sense, and the line of conduct he had imposed on himself: to be concerned only with his land, his work, and the well-being of his family.

  The small community was made up of five families belonging, like Cándido, to the Tsotsil tribe. Their patches of land were as poor as his. Their miserable hovels were made of adobe and thatched with palm leaves. They led the kind of hard existence that only humble peasant Indians can endure. All the finqueros’ efforts to turn them into peons had failed, nevertheless, as they had with Cándido. The Indians were not unaware that life on a finca would be less harsh for them; but they preferred to stay on their dry and sterile land—because of which the district was called Cuishin, which means “burning”—preferred to live their precarious lives full of the constant anguish of seeing their harvests ruined rather than lose their liberty for an Eden in servitude. They preferred dying of hunger as free men to getting fat under an overseer’s orders.

  If the Tsotsils had been asked the reason for their preference, they might have replied like the old Louisiana Negress who had been a slave in her youth, before the Civil War. In the old days the slave’s masters had taken care of her existence. She had eaten as much as she wanted. Now she lived in a miserable shack and in order to make a living had to take in neighbors’ washing. She never knew whether she would be able to eat the next day or would be driven to robbery in order to feed herself and would then be thrown into jail. One day they asked her: “Now then, mammy, didn’t you live better when you were a slave?” And she answered: “Sure, I lived better before—but now I’m happy—a man’s stomach’s not the only thing that makes him happy.”

  And in Cuishin the stomach alone did not give orders. If it had, there would be no explaining why those Indians accepted their painful lives instead of turning over the care of their Stomachs to a finquero in return for simply obeying his orders.

  1

  In the depths of his soul the Indian believes more in the power of his destiny than in that of any god whatever. He knows that, do what he may, he cannot escape that destiny. When he senses its approach, the Indian comports himself like all human beings: the purely biological instinct of self-preservation drives him to resist by all available means, by whatever methods he imagines can help him, including invocations to the saints—who communicate, as everyone knows, with God. But he understands perfectly that he is like a lost sentinel and that if he opposes his destiny, it is merely to delay its action a little.

  When Marcelina, Cándido’s wife, fell suddenly ill and none of the usual remedies proved effective in easing her pains, Cándido felt intuitively that he had reached a decisive moment in his life. Marcelina had a horrible pain in the right side of her belly. She said she felt as if she was swelling up so much that it seemed she was going to burst. The old family midwife declared that her intestines had got themselves into a knot. To untie them she prescribed purges strong enough to empty the belly of an elephant, but they only doubled the sick woman’s pains and wails. Marcelina felt as though her intestines were on fire and about to be torn apart.

  The midwife then gave it as her opinion that this was the sign of approaching death, and advised that they send one of the children to Mateo to set him to making a coffin so that poor Marcelina should have a Christian burial. But Cándido was far from satisfied by this solution. He loved his wife and was not disposed to see her taken from him so easily. He decided to take Marcelina on muleback to Jovel to see a real doctor.

  He collected every centavo he could find in the house. He counted and recounted the money and convinced himself that his fortune consisted of eighteen pesos. Cándido was not unaware that doctors are like priests and never do anything for nothing. Besides, he knew that Marcelina’s illness was not one of those for which the doctors accepted the usual fee of one peso.

  Every step of the mule tore cries of pain from the unhappy woman. When the trail became rougher, Cándido decided to carry his wife on his shoulders and lead the mule by the bridle. But this did not improve matters for Marcelina; on the contrary, it made them worse, for now the weight of her body pressed her belly against her husband’s body, and her sufferings were so atrocious that she begged Cándido to put her back on the mule. Finally she begged her husband to put her down on the road, where she could stretch out to die in peace, for she felt that her end was near.

  They remained thus for more than half an hour: she stretched out on her back and he seated by her side at the edge of the road, not knowing which saint to invoke. Every now and then he went to fetch her a few swallows of tepid water from the brook on the other side of the road. At last a group of Indians came along—men, women, and children returning from the market. They were Tsotsils belonging to the same village as Cándido. They a
ll stopped to refresh themselves at the brook.

  “Where are you going, Cándido?” one of them asked. “The market stalls were closed quite a while ago.”

  “Marcelina is very sick. I think she’s going to die. I wanted to take her to Jovel to see a doctor who can take the knots out of her intestines. But I can’t carry her on my shoulder because she screams, and on the mule’s back she suffers so. She’s already half dead. Now I’m just waiting—because if it happens I’ll be able to put her on the mule and take her back to the house. What a pity—she’s so young and so amiable! She keeps our house so well, does so much work! Furthermore, the children will be left without a mother.”

  “No need to give up hope, Cándido,” replied one of the Indians. “Naturally, if Marcelina has to die, she’ll die. But that’s not certain yet. Wait a minute, we’ll give you a hand.” He called his companions together. They talked among themselves for a few moments and then walked back to Cándido. “Look, we’re going to carry her to Jovel. We’ll do it so carefully she won’t know we’re carrying her.”

  Cándido thanked them silently with a movement of his head.

  The men went a little way into the underbrush, cut branches, and wove and fastened them together, improvising a stretcher on which they placed the sick woman. The women and children meanwhile took charge of the various objects carried by the caravan, which began the return trip to Jovel.

  Night was already falling when Marcelina finally reached the house of the doctor, who, after feeling the painful spot, declared: “It’s necessary to operate immediately. I must open the belly to remove part of the intestine that is infected and will bring about her death in less than twelve hours if I don’t operate. How much can you pay me, fellow?”

  “Eighteen pesos, my doctor and patron,” Cándido told him.

  “But don’t you realize that just the cotton, the alcohol, and the iodoform gauze cost me more than eighteen pesos? Not counting the chloroform, which will cost ten pesos at least.”

  “But, for the love of God, my doctor and chief, I can’t let my wife suffer like a dog!”

  “Listen, fellow. If God our Lord will pay my back rent, my account for light, my debts to the provision store, the butcher shop, the bakery, and the tailor shop, then, yes, I could operate on your wife for the love of God. But you must know, fellow, that I have more confidence in the silver and in the solid promises you can give me than in the love of God our Lord. He takes care of lots of things, but not of a poor doctor overwhelmed by debts. I got myself into these debts in order to study, and if I have not been able to pay them it’s because here there are many doctors and few sick people with any money.”

  “But, my doctor, if you don’t operate on my wife, she’s going to die.”

  “And I, fellow, if I operate without charge, I’m going to die of hunger. All I can say to you is that an operation like this costs three hundred pesos. But just to show you that I’m not a wicked man capable of allowing anybody—even the wife of an ignorant Indian—to die, I’ll do something for you. I won’t charge you more than two hundred pesos. It’s a scandalous price, and I run the risk that they’ll throw me out of the association for lowering the price so much. Nevertheless, I’ll do it for only two hundred pesos. But you must bring me the money within three hours at the outside, for otherwise the operation will be useless. I’m not going to tell you pretty stories or perform an operation for love of the art. If I take your money, I’ll give you my work in return and restore your wife’s health. If she doesn’t come out of the operation well, I won’t charge you. That’s the most I can do. You don’t give away your corn, your cotton, or your pigs. Isn’t that true? Then why should you want me to give you my work and my medicines?”

  While this conversation was taking place, Marcelina remained stretched out on a straw mat on the floor of the portico. The Indians who had brought her on the stretcher loitered near by, talking in low tones and smoking their cigarettes.

  What could they have done? Even by putting together all the money they possessed they could not have raised the two hundred pesos—no, nor even by selling all their sheep. As for Cándido, he knew neither how nor where to come by the sum demanded.

  Having fixed the price of the operation and assured himself that nobody else was waiting for him in his consulting room, the doctor picked up his hat, put it on, and went out to the street. He felt the need to assure himself once more that the town’s old houses were still in their usual places and, above all, to learn whether in the last three hours some event worthy of comment in the cantina had occurred. Perhaps Doña Adelina had at last found out that her husband spent every second evening in the house of the amiable Doña Pilar, who had been a widow scarcely four months. The fact that Doña Pilar gladdened herself with Don Pablo, though he was married, was not the most scandalous aspect of the thing. What was deplorable was that she had not waited to do so until at least one year of the mourning she should have observed for her husband’s death had gone by. The whole town was up to date on Don Pablo’s evening visits—except, naturally, Doña Adelina. As sensational events never happened in the town, and as the only thing worth discussing was an occasional robbery, the townspeople were eagerly awaiting the moment when Doña Adelina would become aware that she was neither the preferred nor the only woman with the right and pleasure of consoling herself with Don Pablo for the sadnesses of this poor world. If two men met in the cantina, if two women ran across each other in the market or chatted in front of a door, they came, after a brief consideration of the temperature, to the inevitable question: “Has Doña Adelina found out at last?”

  Nobody found anything immoral in the extramarital visits of Don Pablo, because everybody was healthy enough in spirit and normal enough to admit that Doña Pilar was doing nothing more than take advantage of a natural right; and as nobody before Don Pablo had undertaken to console the solitary lady, he was playing the providential role. In the bottom of her heart every married woman of Jovel rejoiced that the place had been taken by someone other than her own husband. The neighbors awaited the scandal, not for love of scandal, but because they wished ardently to be present at the scene that Doña Adelina would feel obliged to stage in order to safeguard her dignity. Nevertheless, there was one black spot. It was very possible that she knew already and was deliberately avoiding scandal. In that case all hope of witnessing a tragicomedy was gone.

  Before going to take a stroll through the plaza, the doctor called at the house of Don Luis the pharmacist, his best friend and associate, to wish him good evening. When pharmacist and doctor thoroughly understand one another, business is profitable for both. If on the other hand they are at loggerheads, invalids get fat and live to old age and German manufacturers of pharmaceutical products discharge their workers.

  When Cándido saw the doctor leave, he wondered again what he ought to do. He decided to go out to see where the doctor was going. He did not for one moment think of consulting another doctor, as he knew very well that in the matter of fees they were all the same. He had sought out this one because he was the one whom the Indians of the town and the surrounding villages were accustomed to consult. The Indians do not change their medical man except when he has killed one of them. Then they try another until the next death comes, and so on, successively. At the end of a few months they have gone through the whole local membership of the medical profession, and there is nothing else to do but to go back to the first doctor.

  The Indians were the preferred patients of Jovel’s doctors because they paid spot cash and were never given credit. At the exact moment when the Indian crossed the threshold of the consulting room, and even before the doctor spoke the slightest word to him, the Indian had to deposit his peso or whatever portion of it corresponded to the special price the doctor usually made him.

  Cándido had left Marcelina lying in the portico in the care of his friends. He himself stood immobile in the middle of the street, not knowing which way to go. Obsessed by his wife’s sufferings, he set
out instinctively for the nearest drugstore with the idea that the pharmacist could give him some remedy. He nursed the vague hope of being able to buy some beneficent medicine with his eighteen pesos. On seeing Cándido enter, Don Luis asked him: “What do you want, fellow, ammonia or camphor?”

  “What good would that be to me? I want something for my wife, who has a terrible bellyache on the right side.”

  He explained the situation. When he finished, the pharmacist told him that he had no remedy for a case like that. He was an honest man. From Cándido’s account he understood the illness Marcelina suffered from, and in his opinion only an operation could save her.

  “Ask a doctor,” he told Cándido.

  At that precise moment the doctor entered the drugstore with the object of hearing from Don Luis what sensational event had occurred during the four hours since they had last seen each other.

  “I know this fellow,” the doctor said. “His wife is laid out in the portico of my house. She has appendicitis. I’ve put ice on her belly, but that can’t cure her. If I don’t operate, she’ll die. But how can I operate if this fellow has only eighteen pesos?”

  The pharmacist let loose a roar of laughter.

  “That’s clear. How could you operate on her at that price? But tell me, fellow, don’t you know anybody who will lend you two hundred pesos to save your wife?”

  “Who’s going to lend me two hundred pesos?” replied Cándido in a voice that betrayed neither his despair nor his emotion, a voice so neutral that it seemed to mean: “So it is, and there’s nothing I can do.”

  “You could get yourself engaged as a coffee-picker in Soconusco. The hiring boss won’t refuse to lend you two hundred pesos,” suggested the pharmacist.