Carmen Boullosa - They're Cows, We're Pigs

I did not have a copper in my pocket but the Brothers took me under their wing and invited me to eat and drink, the pirates being, as I have said, ever generous with their own. Besides, they wanted me to tell them about L’Olonnais’s end and about the bad luck that dogged our recent ventures, just as I wanted them to tell me about Tortuga. Very little had I managed to relate, though by this time I had mentioned my desire to hear the news about what I had already seen on the island, when Jambe-de-bois, an old pirate and one of the men on the Council of the Society, moved quickly in my direction, holding out his bowl with both hands. He thrust it against my body, almost shoving it into me, looking me steadily in the eye without removing that insistent wooden bowl from my belly, and said Excuse me! out loud, while in a very low voice that he concealed behind a blow of his wooden leg against the floor, in order to obscure it from the others, he whispered, Here, take it! I held on to the bowl and moved away hastily, and suddenly I heard a shout: We are cattle but you are pigs! with several voices at once screaming out, Pigs! and then very quickly came three shots in a row, hurled from three firearms. I did not raise my eyes to see where they had come from because my eyes were following the body of Jambe-de-bois sinking to the floor, and as I watched him go down, something guided my eye to the bowl he had shoved at me to take. In the bottom was a folded piece of paper. I picked it out immediately and stowed it discreetly beneath my clothing, against the skin, and continued staring at the scene without moving.

With the words Le Trépaneur, look to him , someone in the midst of the commotion pushed me toward the injured man. Others were trying to get at the group that had attacked him.

The sound of the shouted Pigs! still rang in my ears. I walked over to Jambe-de-bois and bent down to check him over. He was dead. A bullet had gone through his heart. I said nothing but left the tavern. I started walking inland, where there were no buildings, treading the paths that Pineau had loved so and that le Nègre Miel had covered so many times looking for herbs and roots for his cures. Yes, I too, like Pineau, loved the island. Mixed emotions were moving me, stirring my heart. Pineau and le Nègre Miel, my two fathers, had died here, and this was my land.

I do not know how much time passed as I walked around, caught up in the emotion brought on by that word pigs . Suddenly, I recalled the piece of paper Jambe-de-bois had served up to me in that bowl. I sat down on a rock, listening intently to see if anyone had been following me. Nothing was heard but the buzzing of the flies and bees and the passing of the wind through the leaves.

I drew the piece of paper from where I had put it and unfolded it. There were actually two pieces, one of them a long, narrow strip, the other a full-sized sheet covered with tight handwriting. First I looked at the long strip, in the fading light of the oncoming night. There were many rough sketches, but all quite clear: a white man screwing a black man, a black screwing a white, with them grasping each other by the hand; the white man screwing a black woman, and the black man likewise; the woman holding the white man by one hand and the black man by the other; the black man, the black woman, the white man, and a mulatto child; the black woman with a dagger in her breast, buried there by the black man; the mulatto child and the white man in a ship inscribed with this legend: Lord of La Pailleterie with the son of Louise-Césette Dumas . In the next sketch there was a white man screwing a black man and a black man screwing a white; and the last sketch was a small map of Tortuga.

I did not understand a thing. In larger letters, toward the lower end and below all the drawings, could be read this legend:

PRO PHE CY: IF WO MEN ARE NOT PRO HIB IT ED THERE WILL COME A DAY WHEN BRO THER WILL MUR DER BRO THER AND THE PO WER OF THE FREE BOO TER WILL END.

And in smaller handwriting in the corner, this appendix: Those who are loyal to King or Cardinal are not people, they are cattle .

Very carefully I coiled it up and put it inside the other, folded sheet, just as it had come. Why had Jambe-de-bois given this to me? It was getting too dark to read any more. I went back and found the Brothers in the cave. We performed the rites of the Brethren, all of us eating from the same loaf of cassava bread, and singing songs in which we swore eternal loyalty to each other. And drinking.

In the same spot we kept vigil over Jambe-de-bois’s dead body. No one spoke of avenging him, but they did speak of not buying any of the women brought by the governor. I did not mention the papers, nor did I cease to think about the prophecy.

Yet, as I have already mentioned, twenty-seven more women were bought, the majority by men who had still not been initiated into the Society, matelots whom we would expel for that reason before they got to be freebooters. But there were also two of the older Brothers, something I was unable to explain.

It was rumored that they, with connections to the governor, had been Jambe-de-bois’s murderers. Even if they were, the count was not exact. I had heard three gunshots. Who was missing?

Had I known for sure, I would have killed the three of them by kicking them to death, pounding their cattle flesh as they deserved.

When I finished reading the document written in the tight, neat hand of Pineau, I was moved, and also contrite. Why had I not been aware before? How was it I had entered the Brotherhood in a cloud of alcohol to take an active part in that marvelous dream without knowing that I was part of this utopia of great hearts? How was it that I had benefited from many of those aspirations without being shaken by the thrill of it, simply turned into a brute animal being fed choice tidbits without understanding or enjoying any of them, without knowing that I formed a part of what the girl on the ship (my beloved she ) had told me about as we voyaged from gloomy Europe to sublime Tortuga ( In the lands we are going to, I have heard it said that there is no “yours” and “mine” but that everything is “ours.” And that no one asks, “Who goes there?” and no doors are secured with locks and chains, because everyone is everyone’s brother. I have heard this said. And the only rule is that of loyalty to the Brothers. To be one of them you cannot be weak, a coward, a woman. I will go to a nearby island and see if I can fit in with that better life )? But it all seems to be read now in some other way because the ambitiousness of a few of them (piglets who dare to call themselves hogs) did its best to turn their faces away from it, because on Tortuga “yours” and “mine” and “Who goes there?” are now alive and well, because even though Benazet the owner of the gaming enterprise is dead, there were now three others just like him that I was unable to kill because I did not know who they were, and still others powerful and wealthy who were well protected and who would not let anyone take “theirs” away from them. Even worse, with gambling they dulled men’s desire for adventure, drawing them back to land, clipping their wings with the false battlefields represented in the card decks and chips, turning their wild energy into straw to feed the fires of their riches.… Now they let themselves sign on with the governor in exchange for a few coins to pay for their card games that take the place of their adventures, or to allow them to bring home a few trifles for their women.

The dream of the Brethren had come to an end, and I saw no way we could make it live again.