Free Pig's Foot by Carlos Acosta Page A

and constantly managed to surprise him and in the end many end up a fool. José turned back to the coachman, his face now was calm.
    ‘Tell me, señor . . .’
    ‘Aureliano. Aureliano Carabalí, at your service.’
    The coachman bowed and smiled, showing a yawning gap where four of his teeth were missing.
    ‘Tell me this, Señor Aureliano, slavery has been abolished, has it not?’
    The man nodded. José said that if this was true, how could Aureliano bring himself to serve a white man after all the terrible things they had done?
    ‘The terrible things they did? I don’t understand, señor . . .’
    ‘José. José Mandinga.’
    ‘Could you explain to me exactly what you mean, amigo José?’
    José said there was no need, because the coachman knew very well what he was referring to. White men had spent their lives exploiting Negroes. They were to blame for the poverty, the misery in which the black man lived. For thirty years war had been waged with the sweat of the Negroes of this country, with slaves and those who were already freemen; that it had been the Negroes who had truly triumphed with their machetes. But even now, José went on, there were no white coachmen and Negroes were still in the same shit they had always been in while white men enjoyed every luxury. Of course there were exceptions, men everyone knew about, José Martí, Máximo Gómez, but in general, José concluded, that was how things were.
    The coachman listened intently, all the while baring his broken teeth. ‘I can tell you are a man of passion and that you speak from the heart; this is why I am going to give you my honest opinion on the subject. I never talk about such things with anyone, certainly not with someone I have just met, but I feel I can trust you.’
    The coachman told José his story. He had lived in slave quarters on a sugar plantation near Santa Clara, one of the most vile, where the food was poorer than the slaves themselves. They were never allowed to stop to rest, not even for a moment, because the overseer was always there with his whip ready to beat them. Aureliano hated the whip, but many times he bridled because he was stubborn. He was put in the stocks and was whipped until his back was lined and furrowed like a rice field. On other occasions he was shut up for weeks in one of the tiny recesses set into the walls, and when he was finally let out the pain in his back from being forced to squat for so long, unable to stretch his arms or his legs, was unbearable. And yet there came a time when he was to suffer a punishment far worse than whipping.
    ‘A punishment worse than whipping? What can be worse?’ asked José.
    ‘To be betrayed by those closest to you,’ said Aureliano.
    These were the lashes that truly hurt, the coachman said, and he had endured them all his life. His sisters, his mother, everyone had betrayed him. When not robbing him, they were playing some other dirty trick. A boyhood friend had slashed his face. Another raped his wife. The worst thing of all was that they never justified their actions but went on living cheek by jowl with him, their consciences clear, as though nothing had happened. This was why when slavery was finally abolished he went far away, where no one would ever find him. This was how he had come here. He was lucky to find the man who engaged him as a coachman, who taught him to read and write, a white man, the most generous man he had ever known.
    ‘As you can see, amigo José, my troubles have always been with black men, for whether you believe it or not, in my darkest hours when I found myself with nothing, with no one, it was always a white man who offered me his hand.’
    ‘What about slavery?’ asked José indignantly.
    The coachman replied that slavery was as old as mankind itself; that it had also existed in Africa, and not just slavery but human sacrifices and even cannibalism.
    ‘Slavery existed long ago, it is with us today, it will always be with us.’ These were