B. Traven - The Cotton-Pickers

The master, a short, fat fellow with freckles, didn’t hurry himself. He finished putting on his shoes and then seated himself on the edge of his bed and lit a cigar. When he’d taken a few puffs he looked at me suspiciously, looked me up and down and said: “Are you a baker?”

“No,” I said. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know much about baking.”

“Really?” he said, still suspicious. “Do you know anything about cakes?”

“I’ve eaten them,” I said, “but I’ve no idea how they’re made. That’s just what I want to learn.”

“Well, have a cigar. You can start tonight at ten s Would you like something to eat?”

“Not just now, thank you just the same.”

“All right. I’ll have a word with the old man. Now I’ll show you your bed.” It seemed he’d lost all his mistrust of me, and was very friendly.

“I’ll make a good baker and pastry cook out of you if you pay attention to what I have to tell you and don’t try bringing in new-fangled ideas of your own. That would never do you any good around here.”

“I’ll be most grateful to you, señor. I’ve always wanted to become a baker and pastry cook of the first order.”

“You can have a nap now if you want one, or you can have a look around the town — just as you like.”

“All right,” I said, “I’ll take a walk in the town.”

“Well, ten o’clock, don’t forget.”

I met Antonio, as agreed, in the park.

“Well?” he greeted me from the bench where he sat.

“I’m starting tonight.”

“That’s fine. Maybe later on I might hike down to Colombia with you.”

I sat down beside him.

I couldn’t think of anything to talk about and, searching in my mind for some subject of conversation, it occurred to me that this might be a good moment to mention Gonzalo. Actually I wasn’t so much interested in talking about it as in observing his reaction and seeing how a man with murder on his conscience would behave when someone surprised him by disclosing that he knew all about the crime.

There was, no doubt, a certain risk involved. If Antonio discovered I knew he was a murderer, he’d make it his business to do away with me at the first chance. But I was prepared to run the risk; the very danger made me itch to throw my card on the table face up. I wouldn’t be taken by surprise and was quite able to defend myself, although I would certainly avoid tramping through the bush, or going to Colombia, with him as my only companion.

“Do you know, Antonio,” I said suddenly, out of nowhere, “that you’re wanted by the police?”

“Me?” He seemed quite astonished.

“Yes, you!”

“What for? I don’t know of anything I’ve done wrong.”

It sounded very genuine, a bit too genuine to be on the level, I thought.

“For murder! Murder and robbery!”

“You’re nuts, Gales. Me wanted for murder? You’re badly mistaken. True, I was mixed up with Emiliano Zapata, but no murder. It must be someone else with the same name.”

“Not a matter of mistaken identity,” I said, getting tired of that cat and mouse play. I let loose, almost shouting: “Did know that Gonzalo is dead?”

“What?” he shouted, even louder than I had.

“Yes,” I said, very quietly now, yet watching him intently, “Gonzalo is dead; murdered and robbed.”

“Poor devil. He was certainly a good guy,” Antonio said sympathetically.

“Yes,” I agreed, “he was a decent fellow. It’s a pity. Where did you see him last, Antonio?”

“In the house, where we all had been sleeping during the harvest.”

“Mr. Shine told me that the three of you — you, Gonzalo, and Sam — left his place together.”

“If Mr. Shine says that, he’s mistaken. Gonzalo stayed behind. Only the two of us, Sam and I, went to the station to catch the train.”

“I don’t understand,” I put in. “Mr. Shine was standing at the window and definitely saw the three of you.”

At this, Antonio gave a short laugh and said: “Mr. Shine is right, and I’m right too. The third man with us wasn’t Gonzalo but a man from nearby, a native who came to buy the hens from Abraham because he thought he’d get them cheap. But Abraham left two days before and had already sold them, to Mr. Shine I think.”

“In the house where you last saw Gonzalo,” I said, slowly now, “I found him murdered and robbed. That is to say, he hadn’t been robbed of everything; the murderer had left him a little over five pesos.”

“I wish I could be serious about this tragic story,” said Antonio, smiling slightly to himself, “but I can’t help laughing. The rest of Gonzalo’s money is in my pocket.”

“There you are! That’s just what I’ve been talking about.”

“You may have been talking about it your way, Gales,” replied Antonio, “but I won the money from him. Sam knows all about it; he was there at the time. Sam lost five pesos himself. He would have a stake in it.”

This was a strange story indeed.

“Sam, myself, and the Indian neighbor, we left the house together. Gonzalo wanted to stay behind and have a good sleep. I went with Sam by train to Celaya. Sam went on by train, and I did the rest of the way here partly on foot and by riding freights for a few stretches.”

What Antonio said rang true. What was more, he had Sam for a witness. That Antonio should have traveled back the long distance from Celaya to murder Gonzalo seemed highly improbable. He had already won Gonzalo’s money, honestly, as Sam could testify. Gonzalo had no valuables of any kind. Each of us knew the entire possessions of the others, and none of us could have secreted anything on his person, for we were all going around half naked. There remained no grounds for suspicion. Antonio was innocent.

“Well, my dear Antonio, you must accept my sincere apologies for thinking that you’d be guilty of Gonzalo’s murder or responsible for his death.”

“That’s okay, Gales. No offense taken. But all the same, I wouldn’t have thought that you’d have been so quick to suspect me. I’ve never given anyone cause to think badly of me, have I?”

“True, you haven’t. But you know it was remarkable how all the circumstances pointed against you. You and Sam were the last with Gonzalo in the house. If, as you say, Gonzalo didn’t go with you, he never left the house; he was murdered there. Mr. Shine told me that no one else had been around since you left. There’s nothing to steal there, and there’s no trail nearby that could lead anyone there by chance. I was up that way again because I had to wait for a message from the oil field. It was sheer curiosity that made me look inside the house, where I found Gonzalo dead. He had several knife wounds, the most serious of which was a stab in the chest from which he’d evidently bled to death.”

As I went on describing the wounds, a terrible change came over Antonio. He turned as white as a sheet, stared at me with horrified eyes, moved his lips, and gulped again and again. But no words came. With his left hand he worked at his face and about his throat as though he wanted to tear the flesh away, while with his right hand he groped toward my shoulder and my chest as if he were trying to discover if there really were someone sitting beside him or if it were only a figment of his imagination, a dream from which he would awake.

I was at a loss to know what to make of it. It just didn’t make sense. Antonio had suddenly taken on the appearance of a guilty man who had just begun to realize the full implications of his dark deed. And only a few moments before he’d been laughing at the thought that I suspected him of Gonzalo’s murder. How was I to figure out his behavior? And yet I must; otherwise I’d get lost in my own confused thoughts. I might even begin to imagine that I’d killed Gonzalo myself! The park lights came on. Night had suddenly closed in around us. Darkness had fallen within the moments since the start of Antonio’s inner battle, for I’d last seen his face, open and guileless, in clear sunset light. Then the coming of night had obscured what I’d glimpsed of the true, the undisguised Antonio. What should have been for me the unforgettable experience of studying the features of a man assailed by the powers of darkness, shaken, moved, his every hair and every pore electrified, was now distorted by the harsh lights. They lied, throwing lines and shadows into Antonio’s face that were in truth not there.