# Fombombo/Chapter 5

CHAPTER V
GUMERSINDO'S automobile turned out to be one of those cheap American machines which one finds everywhere. Its only peculiarity was an extra gasolene-tank which filled the greater part of the body of the car, and which must have given the old rattletrap a cruisingradius of a thousand or fifteen hundred miles.
Just as the negro and the white man were getting into the car the man with the knot of hair at the back of his head strolled into the garage. He called to Gumersindo that the Americano was to take him on the expedition which was just starting.
The black editor looked up and stared.
“Take you!”
“Sí, señor, me. This caballero—” he nodded at Strawbridge—“promised to take me along for the courtesy of directing him to… well… to a certain address.”
Strawbridge heard this with the surprise an American always feels when a Latin street-runner begins manufacturing charges for his service.
“The devil I did! I said nothing about taking you along. I didn't know where I was going. I still don't know.”
“Caramba!” The man with the hair spread his hands in amazement. “Did I not say we would go to the same address, and did not you agree to it!”
“But, you damn fool, you know I meant the address here in Caracas! Good Lord! you know I did n't propose to take you a thousand miles!”
The man with the hair made a strong gesture.
​“That 's not Lubito, señor!” he declared. “That's not Lubito. ”When a man attaches himself to me in friendly confidence, I ' m not the man to break with him the moment he has served my purpose. No, I will see you through!“
“But—damnation, man!—I don't want you to see me through!”
“Cá! You don't! You go back on your trade!”
The American snapped his fingers and motioned toward the door of the garage.
“Beat it!”
The man with the hair flared up suddenly and began talking the most furious Spanish:
“Diantre! Bien, bien, bien! I'll establish my trade! I'll call the police and establish my trade! Ray of God, but I'm an honest man!” and he started for the door, beginning to peer around for a policeman before he was nearly out. “Yes, we'll have a police investigation!” He disappeared.
Strawbridge looked at Gumersindo, and then by a common impulse the black editor and the white drummer started for the door, after the man with the hair. The editor hailed him as he was walking rapidly down the calle:
“Hold on, my friend; come back!”
Lubito whirled and started back as rapidly as he had departed. His movements were extraordinarily supple and graceful even for Latin America, where grace and suppleness are common.
“We have decided that we may be able to carry you along after all, Señor Lubito. We may even be of some mutual service. What is your profession?”
“I am, señor, a bull-fighter.” He tipped up his handsome head and struck a bull-ring attitude, perhaps unconsciously. The negro editor stared at him, glanced at Strawbridge, and shrugged faintly but hopelessly.
“Very good,” he said in a dry tone. “We want you. No ​expedition would care to set out across the llanos without a bull-fighter or two.”
If he hoped by voice and manner to discourage Lubito's attendance, he was disappointed. The fellow walked briskly back and was the first man in the car.
The other two men followed, and as the motor clacked away down the calle Lubito resumed the role of cicerone, cheerfully pointing out to Strawbridge the sights of Caracas. There was the palace of President Cancio; there was an old church built by the Canary Islanders who made a settlement in this part of Caracas long before the colonies revolted against Spain.
“There is La Rotunda, señor, where they keep the political prisoners. It is very easy to get in there.” Whether this was mere tourist information or a slight flourish of the whip-hand, which Lubito undoubtedly held, Strawbridge did not know.
“Have they got many prisoners?” he asked casually.
“It's full,” declared the bull-fighter, with gusto. “The overflow goes to Los Castillos, another prison on the Orinoco near Ciudad Bolívar, and also to San Carlos on Lake Maracaibo, in the western part of Venezuela.”
“What have so many men done, that all the prisons are jammed?” asked the drummer, becoming interested.
It was Gumersindo who answered this question, and with passion:
“Señor Strawbridge, those prisons are full of men who are innocent and guilty. Some have attempted to assassinate the President, some to stir up revolution; some are merely suspected. A number of men are put in prison simply to force through some business deal advantageous to the governmental clique. I know one editor who has been confined in the dungeons of La Rotunda for ten years. His offense was that in his paper he proposed a man as a candidate for the presidency.”
​Strawbridge was shocked.
“Why, that's outrageous! What do the people stand for it for? Why don't they raise hell and stop any such crooked deals? Why, in America, do you know how long we would stand for that kind of stuff? Just one minute—” he reached forward and tapped Gumersindo two angry taps on the shoulder—“just one minute; that's all.”
Lubito laughed gaily.
“Yes, La Rotunda to-day is full of men who stood that sort of thing for one minute—and then raised hell.”
Strawbridge looked around at the bull-fighter.
“But, my dear man, if everybody, everybody would go in, who could stop them?”
Gumersindo made a gesture.
“Señor Strawbridge, there is no ‘everybody’ in Venezuela. Wben you say ‘everybody’ you are speaking as an American, of your American middle class. That is the controlling power in America because it is sufficiently educated and compact to make its majority felt. We have no such class in Venezuela. We have an aristocratic class struggling for power, and a great peon population too ignorant for any political action whatsoever. The only hope for Venezuela is a beneficent dictator, and you, señor, on this journey, are about to instate such a man and bring all these atrocities to a close.”
A touch of the missionary spirit kindled in Strawbridge at the thought that he might really bring a change in such leprous conditions, but almost immediately his mind turned back to the order he was about to receive, how large it would be, how many rifles, how much ammunition, and he fell into a lovely day-dream as the tropical landscape slipped past him.
At thirty- or forty-mile intervals the travelers found villages, and at each one they were forced to report to the police department their arrival and departure. Such is the law in Venezuela. It is an effort to keep watch on any considerable ​movements among the population and so forestall the chronic revolutions which harass the country. However, the presence of Strawbridge prevented any suspicion on the part of these rural police. Americans travel far and wide over Venezuela as oil-prospectors, rubber-buyers, and commercial salesmen. The police never interfere with their activities.
The villages through which the travelers passed were all just alike—a main street, composed of adobe huts, which widened into a central plaza where a few flamboyants and palms grew through holes in a hard pavement. Always at the end of the plaza stood a charming old Spanish church, looking centuries old, with its stuccoed front, its solid brick campanile pierced by three apertures in which, silhouetted against the sky, hung the bells. In each village the church was the focus of life. And the only sign of animation here was the ringing of the carillon for the different offices. The bell-ringings occurred endlessly, and were quite different from the tolling which Strawbridge was accustomed to hear in North America. The priests rang their bells with the clangor of a fire-alarm. They began softly but swiftly, increased in intensity until the bells roared like the wrath of God over roof and calle, and then came to a close with a few slow, solemn strokes.
As is the custom of traveling Americans, Strawbridge compared, for the benefit of his companions, these dirty Latin villages with clean American towns. He pointed out how American towns had an underground sewage system instead of allowing their slops to trickle among the cobblestones down the middle of the street; how American towns had waterworks and electric lights and wide streets; and how if they had a church at all it was certainly not in the public square, raising an uproar on week-days. American churches were kept out of the way, up back streets, and the business part of town was devoted to business.
​Here the negro editor interjected the remark that perhaps each people worshiped its own God.
“Sure we do, on Sundays,” agreed Strawbridge; “or, at least, the women do; but on week-days we are out for business.”
When the motor left the mountains and entered the semiarid level of the Orinoco basin, the scenery changed to an endless stretch of sand broken by sparse savannah grass and a scattering of dwarf gray trees such as chaparro, alcornoque, manteco. The only industry here was cattle-raising, and this was uncertain because the cattle died by the thousands for lack of water during the dry season. Now and then the motor would come in sight, or scent, of a dead cow, and this led Strawbridge to compare such shiftless cattle-raising with the windmills and irrigation ditches in the American West.
On the fifth day of their drive, the drummer was on this theme, and the bull-fighter—who, after all, was in the car on sufferance—sat nodding his head politely and agreeing with him, when Gumersindo interrupted to point ahead over the llano.
“Speaking of irrigation ditches, señor, yonder is a Venezuelan canal now.”
The motor was on one of those long, almost imperceptible slopes which break the level of the llanos. From this point of vantage the motorists could see an enormous distance over the flat country. About half-way to the horizon the drummer descried a great raw yellow gash cut through the landscape from the south. He stared at it in the utmost amazement. Such a cyclopean work in this lethargic country was unbelievable. On the nearer section of the great cut Strawbridge could make out a movement of what seemed to be little red flecks. The negro editor, who was watching the American's face, gave one of his rare laughs.
​“Ah, you are surprised, señor.”
“Surprised! I ' m knocked cold! I did n't know anything this big was being done in Venezuela.”
“Well, this isn't exactly in Venezuela, señor.”
“No! How's that!”
“We are now in the free and independent territory of Rio Negro, señor. We are now under the jurisdiction of General Adriano Fombombo. You observe the difference at once.”
By this time the motor was again below the level of the alcornoque growth and the men began discussing what they had seen.
“What 'a the object of it!” asked Strawbridge.
“The general is going to canalize at least one half of this entire Orinoco valley. This sandy stretch you see around you, señor, will be as fat as the valley of the Nile.”
The idea seized on the drummer's American imagination.
“Why!” he exclaimed, “this is amazing! it's splendid! Why haven't I heard of this? Why haven't the American capitalists got wind of this?”
Gumersindo shrugged.
“The federal authorities are not advertising an insurgent general, señor.”
After a moment the drummer ejaculated:
“He will be one of the richest men in the world!”
Gumersindo loosed a hand from the steering-wheel a moment, to hold it up in protest.
“Don't say that! General Fombombo is an idealist, señor. It is his dream to create a super-civilization here in the Orinoco Valley. He will be wealthy; the whole nation will be wealthy,—yes, enormously wealthy,—but what lies beyond wealth! When a people become wealthy, what lies beyond that!”
This was evidently a question which the drummer was to answer, so he said:
​“Why,… they invest that and make still more money.”
The editor smiled.
“A very American answer! That is the difference, señor, between the middle-class mind and the aristocratic mind. The bourgeois cannot conceive of anything beyond a mere extension of wealth. But wealth is only an instrument. It must be used to some end. Mere brute riches cannot avail a man or a people.”
The car rattled ahead as Strawbridge considered the editor's implications that wealth was not the end of existence. It was a mere step, and something lay beyond. Well, what was it, outside of a good time 1 He thought of some of the famous fortunes in America. Some of their owners made art collections, some gave to charity, some bought divorces. But even to the drummer's casual thinking, there became apparent the rather trivial uses of these fortunes, compared with the fundamental exertion it required to obtain them. Even to Strawbridge it became clear that the use was a step down from the earning.
“What's Fombombo going to do with his?” he asked out of his reverie.
“His what?”
“Fortune—when he makes it?”
“Pues, he will found a government where men can forget material care and devote their lives to the arts, the sciences, and pure philosophy. Great cities will gem these llanos, in which poverty is banished; and a brotherhood of intellectuals will be formed—a mental aristocracy, based not on force but on kindliness and good-will.”
“I see-e-e,” dragged out the drummer. “That's when everybody gets enough wealth—”
“When all devote themselves to altruistic ends,” finished the editor.
The drummer was trying to imagine such a system, when ​Gumersindo clamped on the brakes and brought the car to a sudden standstill. Strawbridge looked up and saw a stockysoldier in the middle of their road, with a carbine leveled at the travelers.
Strawbridge gasped and sat upright. The soldier in the sunshine, with his carbine making a little circle under his right eye, focused the drummer's attention so rigidly that for several moments he could not see anything else. Then he became aware that they had come out upon the canal construction, and that a most extraordinary army of shocking red figures were trailing up and down the sides of the big cut in the sand, like an army of ants. Every worker bore a basket on his head, and his legs were chained together so he could take a step of only medium length.
The guard, a smiling, well-equipped soldier, began an apology for having stopped the car. He had been taking his siesta, he said; the popping of the engine had awakened him, and he had thought some one was trying to rescue some of the workers. He had been half asleep, and he was very sorry.
The cadaverous, unshaven faces of the hobbled men, their ragged red clothes gave Strawbridge a nightmarish impression. They might have been fantasms produced by the heat of the sun.
“What have these fellows done!” asked the American, looking at them in amazement.
The guard paused in his conversation with Gumersindo to look at the American. He shrugged.
“How do I know, señor! I am the guard, not the judge.”
Out of the rim of the ditch crept one of the creatures, with scabs about his legs where the chains worked. He advanced toward the automobile.
“Señora,” he said in a ghastly whisper, “a little bread! a little piece of meat!”
The guard turned and was about to drive the wretch back ​into the ditch, when Strawbridge cried out, “Don't! Let him alone!” and began groping hurriedly under the seat for a box where they carried their provisions. When the other prisoners learned that the motorists were about to give away food, a score of living cadavers came dragging their chains out of the pit, holding out hands that were claws and babbling in all keys, flattened, hoarsened, edged by starvation. “A little here, señor!” “A bit for Christ's sake, señor!” “Give me a bit of bread and take a dying man's blessing, señor!” They stunk, their red rags crawled. Such odors, such lazar faces tickled Strawbridge's throat with nausea. Saliva pooled under his tongue. He spat, gripped his nerves, and asked one of the creatures:
“For God's sake, what brought you here?”
The prisoners were mumbling their gracias for each bit of food. One poor devil even refrained, for a moment, from chewing, to answer, “Señor, I had a cow, and the jefe civil took my cow and sent me to the ‘reds.’” “Señor,” shivered another voice, “I… I fished in the Orinoco. I was never very fortunate. When the jefe civil was forced to make up his tally to the ‘reds,’ he chose me. I was never very fortunate.”
An old man whose face was all eyes and long gray hair had got around on the side of the car opposite to the guard. He leaned toward Strawbridge, wafting a revolting odor.
“Señor,” he whispered, “ I had a pretty daughter. I meant to give her to a strong lad called Esteban, for a wife, but the jefe civil suddenly broke up my home and sent me to the ‘reds.’ She was a pretty girl, my little Madruja. Señor, can it be, by chance, that you are traveling toward Canalejos?”
The American nodded slightly into the sunken eyes.
“Then, for our Lady's sake, señor, if she is not already lost, be kind to my little Madruja! Give her a word from ​me, señor. Tell her… tell her—” he looked about him with his ghastly hollow eyes—“tell her that her old father is… well, and kindly treated on… on account of his age.”
Just then the bull-fighter leaned past the American.
“You say this girl is in Canalejos, señor?” he broke in.
“Sí, señor.”
“Then the Holy Virgin has directed you to the right person, señor. I am Lubito, the bull-fighter, a man of heart.” He touched his athletic chest. “I will find your little Madruja, señor, and care for her as if she were my own.”
The convict reached out a shaking claw.
“Gracias á Madre in cielo! Gracias á San Pedro! Gracias á la Vírgen Inmaculada!” Somehow a tear had managed to form in the wretch's dried and sunken eye.
“You give her to me, señor?”
“O sí, si! un millón gracias!”
“You hear that, Señor Strawbridge: the poor little bride Madruja, in Canalejos, is now under my protection.”
The drummer felt a qualm, but said nothing, because, after all, nothing was likely to come from so shadowy a trust. The red-garbed skeleton tried to give more thanks.
“Come, come, don't oppress me with your gratitude, viejo. It is nothing for me. I am all heart. Step away from in front of the car so we may start at once. Vamose, señors! Let us fly to Canalejos!”
Gumersindo let in his clutch, there was a shriek of cogs, and the motor plowed through the sand. The bull-fighter turned and waved good-by to the guard and smiled gaily at the ancient prisoner. The motor crossed the head of the dry canal, and the party looked down into its cavernous depths. As the great work dropped into the distance behind them, the dull-red convicts and their awful faces followed ​Strawbridge with the persistence of a bad dream. At last he broke out:
“Gumersindo, is it possible that those men back there have committed no crime?”
The negro looked around at him.
“Some have and some have not, señor.”
“Was the fisherman innocent? Was the old man with the daughter innocent!”
“It is like this, Señor Strawbridge,” said Gumersindo, watching his course ahead. “The jefes civiles of the different districts must make up their quota of men to work on the canal. They select all the idlers and bad characters they can, but they need more. Then they select for different reasons. All the jefes civiles are not angels. Sometimes they send a man to the ‘reds’ because they want his cow, or his wife or his daughter—”
“Is this the beginning of Fombombo's brotherhood devoted to altruistic ends!” cried Strawbridge.
“Mi caro amigo,” argued the editor, with the amiability of a man explaining a well-thought-out premise, “why not? There must be a beginning made. The peons will not work except under compulsion. Shall the whole progress of Rio Negro be stopped while some one tries to convince a stupid peon population of the advisability of laboring? They would never be convinced.”
“But that is such an outrageous thing—to take an innocent man from his work, take a father from his daughter!”
The editor made a suave gesture.
“Certainly, that is simply applying a military measure to civil life, drafted labor. The sacrifice of a part for the whole. That has always been the Spanish idea, señor. The first conquistadors drafted labor among the Indians. The Spanish Inquisition drafted saints from a world of sinners. ​If one is striving for an ultimate good, señor, one cannot haggle about the price.”
“But that isn't doing those fellows right!” cried Strawbridge, pointing vehemently toward the canal they had left behind. “It isn't doing those particular individuals right!”
“A great many Americans did not want to join the army during the war. Was it right to draft them?” Gumersindo paused a moment, and then added: “No, Señor Strawbridge; back of every aristocracy stands a group of workers represented by the ‘reds.’ It is the price of leisure for the superior man, and without leisure there is no superiority. Where one man thinks and feels and flowers into genius, señor, ten must slave. Weeds must die that fruit may grow. And that is the whole content of humanity, señor, its fruit.”
Two hours later the negro pointed out a distant town purpling the horizon. It was Canalejos.
Strawbridge rode forward, looking at General Fombombo's capital city. The houses were built so closely together that they resembled a walled town. As the buildings were constructed of sun-dried brick, the metropolis was a warm yellow in common with the savannahs. It was as if the city were a part of the soil, as if the winds and sunshine somehow had fashioned these architectural shapes as they had the mesas of New Mexico and Arizona.
The whole scene was suffused with the saffron light of deep afternoon. It reminded the drummer of a play he had seen just before leaving New York. He could not recall the name of the play, but it opened with a desert scene, and a beggar sitting in front of a temple. There was just such a solemn yellow sunset as this.
As the drummer thought of these things the motor had drawn close enough to Canalejos for him to make out some of the details of the picture. Now he could see a procession ​of people moving along the yellow walls of the city. Presently, above the putter of the automobile, he heard snatches of a melancholy singing. The bull-fighter leaned forward in his seat and watched and listened. Presently he said with a certain note of concern in his voice:
“Gumersindo, that's a wedding!”
“I believe it is,” agreed the editor.
Lubito hesitated, then said:
“Would you mind putting on a little more speed, señor! It… it would be interesting to find out whose wedding it is.”
Without comment the negro fed more gasolene. As the motor whirled cityward, the bull-fighter sat with both hands gripping the front seat, staring intently as the wedding music of the peons came to them, with its long-drawn, melancholy burden.
Strawbridge leaned back, listening and looking. He was still thinking about the play in New York and regretting the fact that in real life one never saw any such dramatic openings. In real life it was always just work, work, work— going after an order, or collecting a bill—never any drama or romance, just dull, prosy, commonplace business… such as this.