The Exiles and Other Stories Page 5

  “We’re not selling you anything, not I or my compadre. With us you’ve been different from the rest. The lion is yours.”

  “Thanks,” answered Longhi gravely. “When can it be here?”

  “Next week. He has to be the one to do it.”

  The following Monday the lion arrived. It was a lioness, but already grown to a husky size. Longhi had prepared a strong cage, where he installed the beast, who roared when she saw that she was separated from her master.

  This was going on in February. In June the lovely feline, now fully developed, wouldn’t part for an instant from her new owner.

  It’s unbelievable what wonders of patience, willpower, and self-control Longhi had to perform to attain that domesticity. Under the sway of his affection and unshakable disposition, the lioness had been transformed into a big dog full of docility and tenderness towards her master. Longhi had achieved what almost all trainers do: he’d taught the beast to be quiet. A stern hiss would make her fall silent; but it must be said that in this terrible struggle for control—control the feline was fated to resist—Longhi was twice on the verge of losing his life. He had five deep scars from her claws on his shoulder. Finally, however, he had succeeded in subduing her.

  What was Longhi’s purpose in exerting his awful will to teach a lioness something in no way indispensable, and certainly very dangerous?

  One night in August—which is to say: six months after the day that Alves made Longhi pay, in the way we’ve seen, for his noble fairness toward the laborers—Longhi was standing on the central trail, unmistakably waiting for someone. After a while, a woeful cry of pain rang out in the distance, and was answered at once by a muffled roar to his left. Longhi turned quickly toward the woods and hissed. The noise subsided.

  A moment later Guaycurú appeared on the trail. The Indian, saved by the panic aroused in the ants by the boom of the explosion, had taken much more time than Longhi to recuperate. There had been four months of interminable pain, wounds that kept reopening, pustules that ate him alive, an atrocious convalescence—only for him to return, barely recovered, to the same mute work as before, and with Alves’ threat to begin the affair of the ants again at his slightest mistake.

  Out of prudence Longhi hadn’t wanted to go see him. But now that he had a mature plan it was necessary to see him, so he’d had the logger take him the message.

  No sooner were they together, they who had suffered the most abominable of tortures, than a torrent of emotions welled up in both their breasts. They looked hard at each other, and a moment later Longhi again felt the Indian’s lips on his hands. Between them now there was a common bond, impossible to undo: their having suffered together and the inner fire of the same dark longing for retaliation.

  They had hardly begun to talk when a horrifying roar quite close to them caused Guaycurú to jump.

  “Damn you!” yelled Longhi angrily, turning toward the woods. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “What is it, boss?”

  “Nothing, a lion I own. That stupid . . .”

  And he went in among the trees. Right away Guaycurú heard the ill-tempered voice of Longhi scolding. An instant later he came out with the lioness.

  And now we go back to the first part of this story, to the stormy night in which Longhi, Guaycurú, and the lioness were walking toward the logger’s hut.

  The ex-inspector had asked Guaycurú to send him news, by way of the logger, of the first trip to the port that Alves might undertake. In the afternoon the woodsman got in touch with Longhi, and the object of their nocturnal meeting was to bring his plan to a conclusion.

  Once arrived at the hut they talked for quite a while, and when dawn was upon them Guaycurú went back to the camp. The following night he returned to the trail, where Longhi was already waiting for him. Alves had to go by that point, on his way to the port.

  The cold, clear weather favored Longhi’s designs. The moon was shining down on the trail, painting a quiet white stripe amid the gloomy woods.

  “Are you really sure he said at one in the morning?” Longhi asked.

  “Yes, at one. The steamboat went upstream the day before yesterday in the afternoon, and it’ll come by today at dawn. He also said he didn’t want to miss the steamboat for anything.”

  “What peones will he come with?”

  “With Raimundo, nobody else. He carries his suitcase . . .”

  “Quiet!” Longhi cut him off in a low voice. “There’s noise.”

  They both held their breath so as to hear better.

  “It’s nothing,” he murmured after a while. “Besides, there’s still half an hour till three. He won’t come by here before three o’clock.”

  The lioness, numb with cold, struggled to make wild lunges which her master restrained.

  “You’ll warm up soon,” he murmured.

  Slowly, one after another, the minutes went by, and the end of the drama came upon them.

  In the distance, far in the distance, the steps of a horse had sounded on the stones.

  “Hurry!” cried Longhi, lending an attentive ear, “and hide in the woods. If the horse doesn’t throw him, come out right away. I’ll stay here.”

  The Indian, like a ghostly shadow, ran along the trail and disappeared into the jungle. Longhi, after talking to the lioness a while, caught her snout between his hands, as he always did when he wanted to make her understand something, and in his turn vanished into the woods with her beside him.

  Down the trail, with his horse at a walk, rode Alves, enshrouded up to his ears in his heavy poncho. Behind him came a laborer, carrying a stout suitcase on the bow of his saddle.

  “Damned cold!” muttered Alves, feeling needles of icy air prick his ears. “Just so the steamboat comes by soon . . . Come on! Let’s pick up the pace!” he yelled to the laborer. And the duo went on at a trot.

  All of a sudden an enormous, frightful roar thundered in the jungle beside them. Alves and the laborer let out a yell. The horses, crazed with terror, reared up, their front legs frantically pawing the air.

  “Raimundo!” hollered Alves, his voice hoarse from fear, as he tried to control his horse.

  “I can’t, boss! The . . .”

  The jungle shook with another terrifying roar, which filled the human soul with all the anguish passed on by the flesh when it’s about to be devoured.

  “Boss! There it is! Right there! It’s going to jump!” shouted the laborer.

  And at once Alves heard the wild charge of Raimundo’s horse, as he reined in and stormed back up the trail, crazed by the imminent attack of the beast. Alves let out a curse and tried desperately to pull out his revolver. But at that instant another roar shook the earth, then at once another, and another, and Alves’ horse, its eyes out of their orbits, and drenched in sweat from fear, made a huge bolt, breaking into a run. The Brazilian, upset by the move, fell off.

  “Coward!” roared Alves, getting up.

  “He’s no coward, he’s done right,” he heard a calm voice answer him. Alves felt his hair standing on end:

  “That voice!”

  “It’s mine, that’s all,” the voice spoke again.

  And suddenly the Brazilian saw standing before him, with his hands in the pockets of his trousers, the motionless form of his ex-inspector.

  Alves’ forehead broke out in a heavy sweat.

  “Eh, the dead don’t talk!” he muttered, going furtively for his revolver. But once more he heard the tranquil voice:

  “You’d better not draw it.”

  Alves looked and saw shining beside Longhi two greenish lights, of that dismal green light of the jungle. A cry escaped from the Brazilian’s chest, and he stood paralyzed with fright.

  “Throw down the revolver, Sr. Alves,” he heard again.

  Alves unconsciously took hold of it to throw it down. But when he had it free, his mouth twisted horribly, and his arm stretched out.

  “Drop it, Sr. Alves; it’s better that way.”

  From the
impassible tone of his voice Alves realized that all was lost. He was now fully certain that his hour had come, inexorably and irremissibly, and a burst of insults exploded from his mouth.

  “Bandit! Thief! I’m to blame for not having had you skinned alive! Thief! Thief!”

  “Guaycurú!” called Longhi, as if he hadn’t heard him.

  The Indian came running up the middle of the trail and stationed himself behind Longhi.

  “Sr. Alves,” Longhi addressed the Brazilian, in a placid voice to which the setting, the moon, and the circumstances lent a somber solemnity. “Sr. Alves, listen to me. Five years ago a strong, healthy man arrived at your logging camp, a man who asked for nothing but to work in peace and live as tranquilly as possible. You, Sr. Alves, prevented him from doing the little good that an honorable man can do in your camp. You insulted him, pursued him, tortured him, and if this man is still alive, it’s surely because he has a mission other than that of stealing from you, as you claim. That man was incapable of taking revenge. But there are some things that embitter too deeply; so if, after a half-hour’s horrible agony, imposed with utter cowardice, and two months of suffering, that man wants to prevent forever the daily torture of two hundred peones, that man is only doing his duty. You’ve got about a minute left, Sr. Alves.”

  The Brazilian, in terror, fell to his knees.

  “Perdón, perdón!” he shouted.

  “Just that is what Guaycurú asked from you.”

  “I won’t do it anymore!”

  Longhi smiled imperceptibly.

  “Guaycurú,” he said to the Indian, “come near so he can get a good look at your face.”

  But Alves leaped to his feet.

  “Bandits!” he yelled. “I’m not dead yet! I don’t care a damn about the Indian! And this is for the robber of my lumber!”

  And quickly grabbing his revolver, which he had unconsciously returned to its holster, he fired it at Longhi. His aim, thrown off by his haste, failed to score.

  “Sr. Alves,” said Longhi in a trembling voice, “get in the middle of the trail.”

  There was such indignation and strangely unshakable will in the voice of Longhi that Alves obeyed like an automaton.

  And in a second he was thrown to the ground. The lioness, at a signal from Longhi, had leaped and fallen on him, and was holding him down with her powerful claws. Longhi, with his hands in his pockets, came up and stopped beside him.

  “It’s killing me, it’s killing me!” wailed Alves.

  “Not yet,” answered Longhi calmly. “In a quarter of an hour.”

  In that quarter-hour, under the claws of the motionless beast, whose doleful eyes, fixed on his own a few inches away, were driving him crazy, Alves lived an eternity of terror.

  “There’s a minute left,” said Longhi.

  Alves, hoarse, could yell no more.

  “Ten seconds left,” said the same unyielding voice.

  In each of his final seconds, Alves paid back every scrap of what he owed for his thirty years of plunder. Suddenly Longhi gave the lioness an imperceptible pat on the back, and breaking the silence there spread down the trail, cold and white with moonlight, the crunching noise of Alves’ head, which had just been split between the teeth of the lioness.

  With a new palm-stroke the animal gave up her prey, still growling. Longhi, unmoving, stared at Alves’ corpse for a while, and then with a sigh moved off. Guaycurú and the lioness went with him.

  On the bluff above the river, Longhi and Guaycurú waited for the steamboat to come. When the smoke from one of its stacks was visible in the distance, Longhi went into the woods and tethered his lioness. What did he say to her? Was there any troubled tenderness he hadn’t felt upon leaving his animal, whose life, tightly fettered to his own for five months, he’d just sealed to his life with blood?

  When he came out of the woods his face was drawn. The steamboat was coming now, and Longhi waved for it to stop. The scow came moving in and Longhi got ready to get on.

  “Good-bye, boss . . . ,” said Guaycurú in a hoarse voice, lowering his eyes.

  But Longhi, deeply moved, embraced him warmly. From here on they’d never see each other again. He got aboard. A moment later he reached the steamboat and it continued downstream.

  Longhi kept his eyes fixed on the shore, where the Indian stood mute and desperate, till the distance erased his image. Then, as the steamer went down the river, leaning on the rail and looking at the dismal jungle, he relived all the anguish of those final months in which he’d left behind so many hopes that now he’d never retrieve: a dark and faithful friend, and a puma who, hoarse by now, roared desperately after the master who was deserting her.

  The Contract Laborers

  Logging-camp workers Cayetano Maidana and Esteban Podeley were returning to Posadas with fifteen comrades on the riverboat Sílex. Podeley, a woodcutter, was coming back after nine months, his contract fulfilled, and thus with his passage free. Cayé, a laborer, was arriving in the same circumstances, but after a year and a half, the time he had needed to work off his debt.

  Skinny, disheveled, in short pants, their shirts torn in long slashes, barefoot like most of the others and dirty like all of them, the two mensús devoured with their eyes the capital of the woods, Jerusalem and Golgotha of their lives. Nine months up there! A year and a half! But they were coming back at last, and the still painful axe-blow of life in the logging camp was barely the graze of a wood-chip in view of the grand delights they could smell in the city.

  Of a hundred peones, only two get to Posadas with any money. For that one week of bliss to which they are swept downstream by the river, they count on the advance on a new contract. Waiting on the beach, as collaborators and intermediaries, is a group of girls, joyous by disposition and profession, at the sight of whom the thirsty laborers let out their ¡ahijú! of urgent lunacy.

  Cayé and Podeley got off the boat reeling with the foretaste of orgy and, surrounded by three or four girls, in a moment found themselves in the presence of more than enough rum to satisfy a worker’s longing for that potent beverage.

  A little while later they were drunk and signed to new contracts. For what kind of work? Where? They didn’t know, and didn’t care either. They did know that each had forty pesos in his pocket and the right to spend much more than that. Docile and awkward, drooling with relief and alcoholic bliss, they both followed the girls to shop for clothes. The shrewd maidens led them to a place where they had a special arrangement for a certain percentage, or perhaps to the store of the very company that had contracted them. But in one or the other the girls renewed the extravagance of their glad-rags, nested their heads full of combs, strangled themselves with ribbons—all of it stolen as coolly as can be from their royally drunk companions, for the only thing a mensú can really call his own is a drastic detachment from his money.

  For his part, Cayé bought many more extracts and lotions and oils than necessary to perfume his new clothes to the point of nausea, while Podeley, more sensible, opted for a flannel suit. Possibly they paid an inflated bill, only half understood, and backed by a fistful of papers thrown on the counter. But anyhow, an hour later they were flinging their brand-new selves into an open carriage, wearing boots, ponchos over their shoulders (and .44 revolvers in their belts, of course), their clothing stuffed with cigarettes that they clumsily tore apart between their teeth, and the tip of a colored handkerchief hanging from every pocket. Along with them went two girls, proud of such opulence, the extent of which could be seen in the rather bored expression of the laborers, as their carriage, morning and afternoon, spread through the scorching streets a noxious smell of wood-extracts and black tobacco.

  Finally night arrived, and with it the usual spree, in which the same shrewd young ladies cajoled the workers to drink. And their regal wealth in advanced funds led them to lay out ten pesos for a bottle of beer, getting only one-forty in change, which they pocketed without even batting an eye.

  So, after repeated squander
ing of new advances—out of an irresistible need to make up for the miseries of the logging camp with a week of living like lords—the laborers went back up the river again on the Silex. Cayé took along a girlfriend, and the three of them, drunk like the rest of the peones, settled in on the deck, where ten mules were already huddled together in intimate contact with trunks, bundles, dogs, women, and men.

  The next day, their heads now cleared, Cayé and Podeley inspected their account booklets—the first time they’d done so since signing their contracts. Cayé had received 120 pesos in cash and 35 in expenses, and Podeley 130 and 75 respectively.

  The two eyed each other with an expression that might have been one of panic, if every mensú were not thoroughly cured of that disorder. They didn’t remember having spent even a fifth of what was recorded.

  “¡Añá! . . .” (the devil!), muttered Cayé in Guaraní. “I’m never going to work this off . . .”

  And from that moment he quite naturally took up—as fair punishment for his extravagance—the idea of escaping from the work camp. The legitimacy of his life in Posadas was so evident to him, however, that he felt jealous of the larger advances granted to Podeley.

  “You’re lucky . . . ,” he said. “It’s big, your advance . . .”

  “You’re bringing a girlfriend,” countered Podeley. “That costs you in the pocketbook.”

  Cayé looked at his woman and he was satisfied, though beauty and other endowments of a more moral sort carry very little weight in the choice of a mensú. As a matter of fact the girl was dazzling, in her green skirt and yellow blouse of matching satin; displaying Louis XV shoes, a triple necklace of pearls around her dirty neck, brazenly painted cheeks, and, below her half-closed eyelids, a disdainful cigarette.

  Cayé looked over the girl and his .44 revolver: the two were really all there was of value in what he was taking with him. And even the .44 ran the risk of going under like his advance, no matter how slight his temptation to gamble.

  A few steps away, in fact, on top of a trunk stood on end, the workers were conscientiously betting everything they had in a game of monte. Cayé watched for a while laughing, as peones always laugh when they’re together, for whatever reason; and he drew near the trunk, putting down five cigarettes on a card.