Black White/Chapter 12

NLY once in my life, señores, have I seen in another man’s face the look that then came into that of White. That was when, down the Orinoco, a man whose curial had capsized was dragged under by a caimán. He clung desperately to his overturned boat while I and other men drove ours at full-speed to rescue him; but just as I was reaching for him the brute under him tore him loose and pulled him down.

That man was lost, and he knew it. It was a long time before I stopped seeing his awful eyes in my dreams. And now in the dilated eyes of White I saw the same look.

He stared into my face with the hopeless horror of the man dragged to a frightful death. And, seeing in my expression that this thing was true, he seemed to crumple up. I grabbed him to keep him from falling.

“My God!” he whispered hoarsely. “My God!”

I could say nothing. I was shocked dumb. I sat him down in his hammock and stood looking at him. In a dazed way I felt that this was why he had itched so badly last night; it was the change in his skin. And faintly I seemed to hear again the words spoken at the camp where we met the black Indians:

“In one day they had fever. In three days they turned black. They never can turn light again.”

I remembered, too, the things of which I had thought that night when I puzzled about the changed skins. And now, some how, I knew why this had been done to those men, and why it now was done to White; something which I once had heard about Indians far over in Colombia came back to me. And before I knew I was speaking, I muttered—

“Juana.”

He did not hear me, or if he did he gave no sign. He sat hunched over like a man wounded to death, his gaze fixed on his hands. Indians gathered around us, looked, grunted to one another, and went to bring others. I turned and found the capitán approaching. He walked calmly in, and I saw that his eyes were hard, as they had been last night. He looked at White’s hands, his face, his neck. Then he gave a little nod and turned to walk out.

I stepped in his way, blocking him. Pointing to the blackened man, I demanded:

“''Como? Porqué?'' How? Why?”

I knew he understood those Spanish words; but his mouth remained tightly shut, and his eyes turned colder. Sudden anger seized me.

“Answer!” I yelled. “Answer, you dumb fool! Who did this and why?”

I got my answer—I knew it already—but not from him. Into the hut, her face set like her father’s, came the girl Juana. She was carrying something. Up to White she walked, and into one of his hands she pushed the thing she held. It was his missing mirror.

In that mirror he stared at the blackened face which always would be his. Suddenly he dashed the glass to the hard dirt, where it smashed. Jumping up, he tore his shirt from his body and looked down at himself. Black to the waist, he was—black as his hands and face.

Lifting his head, he looked into the eyes of Juana.

“You!” he said in a low, blood-chilling tone. “You did this! You put into the red yucut’ ’sehi the black blood—you poisoned me—like the men of Caño Cerbatana—you made me”

He choked and clawed at his throat. And though he spoke English, she understood what he meant. And in her short Spanish she answered, her eyes never wavering.

“Si. You took me. Then you would go. My father knows. A week he has known. He would kill. But I would not have it. You are my man. You will stay with me. You are no blanco. You are negro. You can not live with blancos. You will live with Maquiritares. You have drunk the Maquiritare ’sehi. You are black Maquiritare. It is done.”

His eyes, like hers, did not move. In them grew a terrible gleam. His face twisted, and stayed twisted. All at once something seemed to snap inside him.

“A nigger!” he screamed. “A squaw man! you!”

He struck her in the face. She fell senseless, six feet away.

With a wild laugh he jumped at Juancito. His fist cracked under the chief’s ear, and the capitán dropped as if shot.

In another instant he was among the Indians, kicking, striking, attacking the whole tribe of Uaunana with his knotted black hands and laughing like a fiend from hell.

Men threw themselves at him, their faces flaming. None had a weapon, but none ran to get one. With hands curved like talons they leaped to claw him, to choke him, to throw and break him. Their Carib blood, usually cool, had suddenly boiled up as they saw their capitán fall.

Man after man reeled and sprawled under the blows of those black fists. But other men surged in like maddened peccaries attacking a tigre. They yanked him backward, kicked his legs from under him, threw him down and swarmed on him.

It had all happened in a few seconds. Now I did the only thing that could save him. Grabbing my rifle, I fired shot after shot just over their heads. The crash of the gun so near their faces shocked them into a pause. They jumped up and retreated a step or two.

“Stop!” I yelled. “Es loco—he is mad! Stand away!”

With that I walked at them. They looked at my big black gun-muzzle, at the man gasping and writhing on the ground—some one had kicked him in the stomach, and he was struggling for breath—and broke away. I stood over him and roared at them.

“Mad!” I repeated. “You made him so. Now you try to kill him because he is what you made him. You are snakes! You are poisoners! Are you murderers too?”

They looked at me—the man known from the Padamo to the Caura as the friend of Maquiritares—and heeded what I said. Some seemed a little ashamed.

“Get to your house!” I commanded. “Your capitán is not dead. Take him and throw water on him, and on this woman also. Leave the man to me. Go!”

They went, muttering among themselves. With them they carried Juancito and Juana. Not until they were well away did I take my eyes off them. Then I looked down to find White struggling up.

He was a terrible sight now, scratched and bruised, streaked with blood, smeared with dirt, his breeches torn to tatters through which showed that blackened skin. Worst of all was his face. His bloodshot eyes glared like those of a mad dog; his mouth turned down, and from its corners oozed froth. I felt chilly. But I spoke as calmly as I could.

“Come, amigo, and sit and control yourself,” I said. “There may be some cure for this. Let us talk. Come!”

I put a hand on his shoulder to lead him to the hammock. It was a mistake. A snarl broke from him. Before I could jump back out of reach he drove a fist with all his power upward at my jaw. I felt that my head was torn from my body. Then I felt nothing more.

A long time later I found myself in my hammock. Men stood around me, watching. One of them was Juancito, his face swollen at one ear.

As I tried to move my head, a sharp pain in my neck wrung a groan from me. Juancito spoke.

“Be still. You are hurt. It is finished.”

Raising a hand, I found my neck wrapped in crushed leaves and cotton strips. My chin, too, was bound up. It was sore. Later I found that the flesh there had been split to the bone by that savage blow.

“Finished? Have you killed him?” I demanded.

Another Maquiritare answered.

“No. He is gone. He took his gun and went into the forest.”

“And Juana?” I asked.

“She too is gone. She has followed him. Men have gone after her.”

I tried to sit up, but the pain was too great. It seemed that the whole top of my head would blow off. My stomach sickened. For minutes I could only grit my teeth and lie still.

When I could talk again I asked:

“That is why men are made black? It is done by women to keep men from leaving them?”

“It is so.”

That was what I had thought; for those Colombian Indian women of whom I had heard are said to do the same thing for the same reason, though the drink made there covers the skin with blue patches instead of blackening it all over.

“So Juana, seeing that el blanco liked the ’sehi, put into it the blood of—what?”

“A black dog. A black hen.”

“And what else?”

There was no answer. So I felt sure that there was something else. If there was not, why should these people refuse to answer?

“What else?” I persisted. “What is the thing that makes the black skin? The blood of two black creatures, and what?”

The silence continued. At length one said shortly—

“Loco, there are things that no blanco may know.”

And, señores, I do not yet know more than was told that night at my camp below the Caño Cerbatana. As the Uaunanan said, there are things no blanco may know. But if you doubt that this can be true, reflect a moment on the fact that the Indians of our Guayana make that marvelous curare poison, which paralyzes and kills any creature, yet leaves it meat sweet and harmless for eating. To people who can create such a mixture, what is impossible?

It was two days before I could leave my hammock, and six before I could move my head freely. If it had not been for the care given me by the Maquiritares, who from time to time brought more of those crushed leaves and bound them on, I might not have risen as soon as I did; for that terrible blow under the chin, striking me so suddenly that I could not even set my jaw to receive it, had nearly broken my neck.

As I lay there aching through the long hours and reflected on what I had done for White and considered how he had repaid me for it, I cursed him and myself bitterly more than once. It was the deed of a mad man, I kept telling myself; but that did not change the fact that I was in pain, or lessen the feeling that I had been a fool to put myself in the way of such an assault.

As the pain grew easier and my usual strength came back, though, I became more reasonable. And the Maquiritares, now that the man who had injured all of us was gone, held no grudge against me for saving him. Perhaps the fact that I too had suffered at White’s hands made them realize that he must truly have been out of his mind, and caused them also to feel more kindly toward me than they otherwise might have done.

At any rate, they tended me faithfully and well, and their capitán often lounged for hours beside me in White’s abandoned hammock, saying nothing but keeping me silent company.

Then back came the men who had taken the trail of the blackened white and of the girl who had made him what he was. Five of them had gone out, and five only came in. Neither White nor Juana was with them.

They told their tale briefly to Juancito, who sat for a time looking solemnly at the edge of the forest. Then he spoke a few words. The five went to the house and put away their weapons, and the chief walked slowly away by himself, his face giving no sign of his thoughts.

“They have followed Juana and found her,” one of the men with me explained in Spanish. “She was with el blanco. The white man who now is black takes no rest by day. He goes on and on and does not stop. He seems not to know or care where he goes. She walks behind him.

“When these men tried to come up with her she cried out. The blanco turned and shot the gun at them. They covered themselves behind trees. They tried to get around him. But the woman would not have it so. She said they must go back. She said she would stay with her man. If in time her man would come to Uaunana, then her father Juancito would see her again. If not, not.”

“And the men came back with no more words?”

“It is so. El blanco wears a big belt full of bullets. His gun is strong. His woman will not leave him. So they came back.”

“And what says el capitán?”

“He says that what has been has been, and what is to be will be.”

And that, señores, is how the matter was left by all of us. From that time till the day when the curial taking me back down the river left Caño Uaunana, not another word of the pair was spoken in my hearing. Neither did I speak of them. There was nothing more to be said.

And as my canoe slid swiftly away down the Ventuari that last morning I looked back once, seeing only the narrow stream rushing smoothly out from the high green forest in which wandered somewhere a man of the North and a girl of the South. And in my mind ran over and over the calm words of Juancito, capitán of the Maquiritares of Uaunana—

“What has been has been, and what is to be will be.”