Baldomero Lillo, “El Chiflón del Diablo”, in: Armando Donoso (comp.), Algunos cuentos chilenos, Editorial Espasa-Calpe, Buenos Aires, 1945, pp. 19-31. Collaborative translation from Spanish into English by Nathan Azarrati, Anthony Ascencio-Carvajal, Andrew Bobadilla, Gloria Cepeda, Arianna Davalos, Ben de Santiago, Cecile Diroll, Aaliyah Escobar, Thanh Ho, Samson Le, Nate Leizerowicz, Anastasia Manvelyan, Rose Naveed and Justin Tran, in the context of Spanish 4 Course taught by Gonzalo Díaz-Letelier at University of California Riverside, section Capitalism and Colonialism in the 19th Century: Gold Rush in California, Coal Rush in Chile (Fall Quarter 2024).
BALDOMERO LILLO
In a low, narrow room, the foreman on duty sat at his work table, with a large open register in front of him, watching the workers descend on that cold winter morning. Through the doorway, the elevator could be seen waiting for its human load, which, once complete, disappeared with it, silently and quickly, through the damp opening of the mine.
The miners arrived in small groups, and as they took down their already lit lamps from the hooks attached to the walls, the clerk kept a penetrating glance at them, tracing a short horizontal line with his pencil besides each name. Suddenly, turning to two workers who were hurrying towards the exit door, he stopped them with a gesture, saying:
ꟷYou, stay.
Surprised, the workers turned around, and a vague uneasiness appeared on their pale faces. The youngest, a boy barely twenty years old, freckled, with abundant reddish hair, to which he owed the nickname of Copperhead, by which everyone designated him, was short, strong and robust. The other one, taller, somewhat thin and bony, was already old, with a weak and sickly appearance. Both held the lamp in their right hands and in their left their bundle of small pieces of string, at the ends of which they had tied a button or a glass bead of different shapes and colors; they were the tantos or signs that the miners attach inside the coal carts to indicate the origin of the minerals to those who received them above.
The bell of the clock on the wall slowly struck six. Now and then a panting miner would rush through the door, take down his lamp, and in the same hurry leave the room, casting a timid glance as he passed the table at the foreman, who, without taking his lips off, impassive and severe, marked the name of the straggler with a cross.
After a few minutes of silent waiting, the employee motioned to the workers to come closer, and said to them:
ꟷYou are carters from the Alta, aren’t you?
ꟷYes, sir ꟷreplied those being questioned.
ꟷI’m sorry to tell you that you’re fired. I have orders to reduce the staff in that vein of the mine.
The workers did not answer and there was a deep silence for a moment. Finally, the oldest one said:
ꟷBut will we be employed elsewhere?
The individual slammed the book shut and, leaning back in his seat in a serious tone, replied:
ꟷI see it difficult; we have plenty of people in all the mine sites.
The worker insisted:
ꟷWe accept any work that is given to us, we will be turners, formwork prop installers, whatever you want.
The foreman shook his head negatively.
ꟷI have already said it, there are too many people and if the coal orders do not increase, we will have to reduce the exploitation in some other veins as well.
A bitter and ironic smile contracted the miner’s lips, and he exclaimed:
ꟷBe frank, Mr. Pedro, and tell us once and for all that you want to force us to go to work at Devil’s Pit.
The employee, outraged, sat up in his chair and protested:
ꟷNo one is forced here. Just as you are free to refuse work that you do not like, the Company, for its part, is within its rights to take the measures that best suit its interests.
During that tirade, the workers with their eyes downcast listened in silence and upon seeing their humble demeanor the foreman’s voice softened.
ꟷBut, although the orders I have are strict ꟷhe addedꟷ, I want to help you out of the situation. There are two vacancies for miners at the New Tunnel, or the Devil’s Pit, as you call it, you can fill them right now, because tomorrow it would be too late.
The workers exchanged intelligent glances. They knew the tactics and knew in advance the result of this skirmish. However, they were already resolved to follow their fate. There was no way out. Between dying of hunger or being crushed by a landslide, the latter was preferable: it had the advantage of speed. And where to go? Winter, the implacable enemy of the helpless, had converted the feeble streams into torrents, leaving the fields desolate and barren. The lowlands were full of swampy waters and, in the hills and mountain slopes, the leafless trees displayed the nakedness of their branches and trunks under the eternally opaque sky.
In the peasants’ huts, hunger showed its pale face through the faces of its inhabitants, who were forced to knock on the doors of workshops and factories in search of the piece of bread that the withered soil of the exhausted countryside denied them.
It was therefore necessary to submit to filling the gaps that the fateful corridor constantly opened in his ranks of defenseless and helpless, in perpetual struggle against the adversities of fate, abandoned by all, and against whom all injustice and iniquity was permitted.
The deal was done. The workers accepted the new job without objection, and a moment later they were in the cage, falling straight down into the depths of the mine.
The Devil’s Pit gallery had a sinister reputation. Opened to give way to the ore from a recently discovered vein, the work had initially been carried out with the required care. But as the rock was dug deeper, it became porous and inconsistent. The leaks, which were rather scarce at the beginning, had increased, making the stability of the roof very precarious, which was only supportable by solid coverings. Once the work was finished, as the immense quantity of wood that had to be used for shoring increased the cost of the ore considerably, this most essential part of the work was gradually neglected. It was always covered, yes, but loosely, economizing as much as possible.
The results of this system were not long in coming. Continuously it was necessary to extract from there a bruised person, a wounded person and sometimes a dead person crushed by a sudden collapse of the roof without enough formwork support, which, treacherously undermined by the water. It was a constant threat to the lives of the workers, who, frightened by the frequency of the collapses, began to avoid work in the deadly passage. But the Company soon overcame their reluctance with the lure of a few cents more in wages and the exploitation of the new vein continued.
Very soon, however, the increase in wages was suppressed, yet this did not halt the work, the method put into practice by the foreman that morning being sufficient to obtain this result.
Copperhead arrived at his room later than usual that evening. He seemed serious and pensive, responding in monosyllables to his mother’s affectionate questions about his day’s work. In that humble home there was a certain decency and cleanliness, uncommon in those lodgings where, in repulsive promiscuity, men, women, children and a variety of animals mingled, each of those rooms evoking the Biblical vision of Noah’s Ark.
The miner’s mother was a tall, thin woman with white hair. Her very pale face held a resigned and gentle expression, which softened even more the gleam of her moist eyes, where tears seemed always ready to fall. Her name was María de los Ángeles.
Daughter and mother of miners, terrible misfortunes had aged her prematurely. Her husband and two sons had died, one after another, from cave-ins and gas explosionsꟷa tribute her people had paid to the insatiable greed of the mine. Only that young boy remained, for whom her still-young heart lived in constant dread. Always fearful of a misfortune, her imagination never strayed a moment the darkness of the coal seam that consumed that existence that was her only good, the only bond that held her to life.
How many times in those moments of contemplation had she thought, without being able to explain it, about the reason for those hateful human inequalities that condemned the poor, to the greater number, to sweat blood to support the magnificence of the useless existence of a few! And if only one could live without that perpetual anxiety about the fate of loved ones, whose lives were the price, so often paid, of the daily bread!
But these thoughts were passing, and, not being able to decipher the enigma, the old woman drove them away and returned to her chores with her usual melancholy.
While the mother gave the last hand to the dinner preparation, the boy sat by the fire, stayed silent, lost in his thoughts. The old woman, anxious by this silence, prepared to interrogate him, when the door turned by its hinges and a face of a woman stuck out from the opening.
ꟷGood evening, neighbor. How is the patient? ꟷMaría de los Ángeles asked caringly.
ꟷThe same ꟷthe woman replied, entering the roomꟷ. The doctor says that the bone in his leg hasn’t healed yet and that he should stay in bed without moving.
The newcomer was a young morena face woman, emaciated by vigils and deprivations. She held a tin bowl in her right hand and, as she responded, she tried to divert her eyes from the soup steaming on the table.
The old woman reached out and took the jug and while she was emptying the hot liquid into it, she continued asking:
ꟷAnd did you speak, daughter, with the bosses? Have they given you any help?
The young woman murmured with discouragement:
ꟷYes, I was there. They told me that I had no right to anything, that they had done enough by giving us the room; but that if he died, I should go and get an order for four candles and a shroud to be delivered to me in the office.
And with a sigh she added:
ꟷI hope in God that my poor Juan will not force them to make that expense.
María de los Ángeles added a piece of bread to the soup and put both gifts in the young woman’s hand, who headed for the door, saying gratefully:
ꟷThe Virgin will repay you, neighbor.
ꟷPoor Juana ꟷsaid the mother, tending to her son, who had pushed his chair up next to the tableꟷ, it will be almost a month since they pulled your husband out of the pit with a broken leg.
ꟷWhat was his job?
ꟷHe was a driller miner at the Devil’s Pit.
ꟷAh, yes, they say that those who work there have their lives sold!
ꟷNot so much, mother ꟷsaid the workerꟷ, it’s different now, a lot of shoring work has been done. There have been no accidents for over a week.
ꟷPerhaps that is what you say, but I could not live if you worked there; I would rather go begging in the fields. I do not want them to bring you back one day like they brought your father and your brothers.
Thick tears slid down the old woman’s pale face. The boy was silent and ate without lifting his gaze from his plate.
Copperhead left for work the next morning without telling his mother about the change of duty that had been decided the day before. There would always be plenty of time to give her the bad news. With the carefree attitude that comes with his age, he did not attach much importance to the fears of an old woman. Fatalistic, like all his comrades, he believed it was useless to try to escape the fate that each one had already designated.
When an hour after the departure of her son, María de los Ángeles opened the door, she was delighted by the resplendent clarity that flooded the fields. It had been a long time since her eyes had seen a morning as beautiful. A golden halo surrounded the disk of the sun that rose over the horizon, sending its vivid rays in torrents onto the damp soil, from which blueish and white vapors were released everywhere. The sunlight, soft like a caress, brought down a breath of life on the still-life nature. Flocks of birds crossed the calm blue sky in the distance, and a rooster with iridescent feathers, from the top of a mound of sand issued a strident warning every time the shadow of a bird slid next to him.
Some old men, leaning on canes and crutches, appeared down the dirty corridors, attracted by the glorious glow that illuminated the landscape. They walked slowly, stretching their numb limbs, eager for that warm heat that flowed from above. They were the disabled of the mine, the defeated by the work. They were very few who were not mutilated or already lacked an arm or leg. Sitting on a wooden bench that receives the sun’s rays, their exhausted pupils, sunken in their sockets, had a strange fixity. Not a word passed between them, and from time to time, after a short, deep cough, their closed lips parted to give way to a spit black as ink.
It was approaching noon and, in the rooms, busy women were preparing the lunch baskets for the workers, when the brief ringing of the alarm bell made them abandon their work and rush out of the rooms in panic.
In the mine the ringing had ceased and nothing foreshadowed a catastrophe. Everything there looked ordinary and the chimney let out, without interruption, its enormous plume that widened and grew, carried by the breeze that pushed it towards the sea.
María de los Ángeles was placing a bottle of coffee in a basket meant for her son, when she was startled by the sound of the alarm and, dropping those objects, she rushed to the door, past which groups of women with their skirts raised were rushing, followed closely by hordes of children who ran desperately in pursuit of their mothers. The old woman followed their example: her feet seemed like they had wings, the sting of terror galvanized her old muscles, and her whole body was shuddering and vibrating like a bowstring at its maximum tension.
Very soon she was in the front row, and her white head, wounded by the sun’s rays, seemed to draw and rush after it the somber mass of the ragged flock.
The rooms were deserted. Their doors and windows opened and closed impulsively from the wind. A dog, tied in one of the corridors, sat on its hind legs, raised its head and let out a mournful howl as if to respond to the plaintive clamor that reached him, waning over the distance.
Only the old men had not left their sun-warmed bench, and mute and motionless, they remained in the same attitude, with their murky eyes fixed on an invisible beyond and oblivious to anything other than that fervent radiation that infiltrated into their stiff organisms a little of that energy and that warm heat that revived life in the desert fields.
Like chicks, which, suddenly perceiving the swift descent of the hawk, run around chirping desperately, seeking refuge beneath the ruffled feathers of their mother, these groups of women with disheveled hair, whimpering with terror, soon appeared beneath the fleshless arms of the derrick, pushing and pressing together on the damp platform. The mothers pressed their little children, wrapped in dirty rags, to their half-naked bosoms, and a clamor that had nothing human about it issued from their half-open mouths contracted by pain.
A strong barrier made of timber protected the opening of the shaft on one side, and part of the crowd crashed into it. On the other side, a few sullen-looking, silent, taciturn workers held back the tight ranks of the crowd, which was deafening with their cries, demanding news of their relatives, the number of dead, and the location of the catastrophe.
At the door of the engine rooms, one of the engineers, a corpulent Englishman with red sideburns, appeared with his pipe between his teeth, and with the indifference that comes with the customary, he glanced over the scene. A formidable imprecation greeted him, and hundreds of voices howled:
ꟷMurderers, murderers!
The women raised their arms above their heads and showed their fists inebriated by rage. The one who had provoked this explosion of hatred blew a few puffs of smoke into the air and, turning his back, disappeared.
The news that the workers gave of the accident calmed the excitement somewhat. The event didn’t have the proportions of catastrophes of other times: there were just three dead, whose names were still unknown. Besides, and there was hardly any need to say it, the misfortune, a collapse, had occurred in the Devil’s Pit gallery, where work had already been carried out for two hours to extract the victims, and the signal to hoist them up was expected at any moment in the engine room.
That report gave hope to many hearts devoured by worries. María de los Ángeles, leaned on the barrier, felt the pincers that were biting at her insides loosen their iron claws. Hers was not hope but certainty: surely, he wasn’t among those that were dead. And, concentrated on herself with that fierce selfishness of mothers, she heard with indifference the hysterical cries of the women and pleas of desolation and agony.
Meanwhile the hours flew by, and beneath the arches of lime and brick the motionless machine let its iron limbs rest in the gloom of the vast chambers; the cables, like the tentacles of an octopus, rose quaveringly from the deep shaft and coiled their flexible, viscous arms around the coil; the tight, compact human mass, throbbing and moaning like a bleeding and dying animal, and above, over the immense countryside, the sun, now past its meridian, continued to cast the sparkling beams of its warm rays, and a celestial calm and serenity came from the concave mirror of the sky, blue and clear, by no cloud tarnished.
Suddenly, the women’s crying ceased: a bell rang, followed by three others, slow and vibrant: it was the signal to hoist the rope. A shudder shook the crowd, who eagerly followed the oscillations of the cable that rose, at the end of which was the terrible mystery that everyone longed and feared to decipher.
A mournful silence, interrupted only by the occasional sob, reigned on the platform, and the distant howl spread across the plain and flew through the air, wounding hearts like a presage of death.
A few moments passed, and suddenly the great iron ring that crowned the cage appeared over the curb. The elevator swung for a moment and then stopped on the hooks on the upper rim.
Inside it, some bare-headed workers surrounded a black wheelbarrow blackened by mud and coal dust.
An immense clamor greeted the appearance of the funeral cart; the crowd swirled around and their mad desperation made it extremely difficult to extract the corpses. The first one of them to appear before the eager gaze of the crowd was covered in blankets and only his bare feet, stiff and stained with mud, were visible. The second one, which followed immediately after the previous one, had his head bare: he was an old man with a beard and grey hair.
The third and last one appeared in turn. From between the folds of the cloth that wrapped it, some locks of red hair appeared, which cast a reflection of freshly melted copper in the sunlight. Several voices cried out in horror:
ꟷCopperhead!
The corpse, taken by the shoulders and feet, was placed with difficulty on the stretcher that was waiting for it.
María de los Ángeles, seeing that livid face and that hair that seemed soaked in blood, made a superhuman effort to rush at the dead man; but pressed against the barrier she could only move her arms while an inarticulate sound emerged from her throat.
Then, her muscles relaxed, her arms fell down along her body, and she remained motionless on the spot, as if she was struck by lightning.
The groups moved away, and many faces turned towards the woman, who, with her head drooped over her chest, plunged into an absolute numbness, seemed absorbed in contemplation of the abyss opened at her feet.
……………………………………………………………………………………………
No one ever
knew how she crossed the barrier. Held by the level cables, she was seen for an
instant waving her bony legs in the void, and then, without a cry, to disappear
into the abyss. A few seconds later, a dull, distant, almost imperceptible
sound arose from the hungry mouth of the pit, from which puffs of faint vapours
escaped: it was the breath of the monster, sated with blood in the depths of
its lair.
