By Hanns Heinz Ewers 1907 (Die blauen Indianer)Copyright 2009 by Joe E. Bandel
Translated by Joe E Bandel
Protected under United States Copyright Law as a derivative work of a foreign Author originally published prior to 1923
He certainly had a traveling companion and not just for one day. Don Pablo dragged me around through Mexico for a month like one of his twenty-seven suitcases. He was a drummer for Remscheider. Over there the people know what that is but the people reading this book don’t know at all therefore I need to explain what that is.
He is a traveling salesman for the Remscheider export firm, speaks all languages and all dialects. He has been in every city in America from Halifax to Punta Arenas, is a good friend and a god-father. He knows exactly how much credit he can give each merchant. His employer is over there as well and pays him 50,000 Marks a year and is well satisfied because he gets back ten times as much in return. His employer will certainly make him a partner sooner or later.
He is a traveling hardware store. His suitcases are so full of samples they fill two wagons and include garters, portraits of Saints, cooking pots, toothbrushes, machinery parts and all kinds of things. He knows the way things are, knows his wares as well as the land he travels in.
When you travel with him you don’t need a travel book, he knows everything, what is going on in each location and a great deal more. My drummer was named Paul Becker but I will write Don Pablo because all the Mexicans call him that and so does he.
It was late when I got to the train station. I jumped onto the train at the last minute and tore my suspenders. Don Pablo gave me a new pair courtesy of his company. Then he scolded me because I had bought a ticket. He had given the conductor an old table knife instead.
He first took me with to Puebla, then to Tlascalai. We traveled around in all the states, Yucatan, Sonora, Tamaulipas, Jalisco, Campeche and Coahila-
As long as we could travel by train it went well but when you had to load twenty-seven heavy suitcases on mules and ride up and down mountains it soon became an ordeal.
I wanted to go on strike many times but then Don Pablo would say in exasperation:
“What! You don’t want to see the ruins of Mitla?”
That went on for a couple of weeks. There was always something else that I needed to see.
Once Don Pablo said, “Now we are going to Guerrero.”
I told him that he would be riding alone. I had seen more than enough of Mexico. But he insisted that I must absolutely by all means become acquainted with the Indians in the state of Guerrero. Otherwise my picture of Mexico would not be complete. I stubbornly refused saying that I already knew over one hundred Indian tribes and was entirely indifferent about visiting one more.
“Dear Sir,” cried Don Pablo. “That doesn’t matter. You must see. There are things you will most certainly want to speak with them about. Namely the Guerrero Indians are-“
“Very dumb,” I interrupted him. “Like all the Indians.”
“Naturally,” said Don Pablo.
“And horribly lazy.”
“Of course.”
“Are good Catholics and don’t in the slightest follow the old ways any more.”
“Entirely correct.”
“Then why in heaven should I go there to see them?”
“You have to see this for yourself,” said Don Pablo importantly. “There is a tribe there that is blue.”
“Blue?”
“Yes, blue.”
“Blue?”
“Yes, blue. Blue! As blue as the gown of the virgin in my madona portraits, bright blue, Easter egg blue.
* *
*
Good enough. We bought new horses, donkeys and mules. Then we rode from Toluca up over the Sierra Madre. We made a couple of stops to show our samples. While Don Pablo visited Tixtla I had the honor of calling on customers in Chilapa.
On the whole the trip went very fast. After three weeks we were already on the Pacific in Acapulco, the capital of the state in a real hotel. I searched hard for the blue Indians but didn’t find any even though Don Pablo had said we would find them here. He called out to the Italian innkeeper as Crown witness and the innkeeper confirmed that the blue Momoskapan tribe did indeed occasionally come into the city.
It had been a few months now but two French Doctors from Ystotosinta, the dwelling place of the tribe, had just left. They had stayed there for half a year to study the blue disease. The blue color was considered a strange skin disease. The two doctors had told him that in addition to their blue color the Momoskapans displayed a downright amazing memory that reached straight back to early childhood. It was the result of a severely restricted diet of only eating fish and crustaceans that extended through the tribe back to time immemorial.
Now I wanted to go there myself. The tribe lived where the Momohuichic flowed into the ocean. It was scarcely a ten days ride. Don Pablo rewarded me with some trading goods. It seemed to him that I might be able to make some good bargains there. He was not going.
So I rode alone. I had only three Indians with me. One of them was an Usama and the other a Toltec out of the Sierra Madre that understood a little Islapekish. They were from the neighboring area and I was under the assumption that one or the other of them would to a certain extent find a way to understand the speech of the blue Indians.
What I really wanted to see of the Momoskapans I saw in a quarter of an hour. I confirmed that they really were blue just like what hundreds of others before me have said. The foundation color was really the white-yellow of all Mexican Indians. Yet on this was always a handful of spots, frequently on their faces and other parts of the body where the blue color had become dominant.
It was different from the tiger Indians of Santa Marta in Columbia. With them the original yellow color remained strong with the large rust brown places prevailing only in certain areas. Nevertheless it appeared to me that there must be some type of natural connection between them both. The Santa Marta Indians also lived right on the ocean.
Unfortunately I understood little more of skin diseases than a German Kaiser’s ambassador understands of diplomancy. Still while I have not discovered anything new about the blue skin of the Momoskapans, I have put together a couple of observations that are certainly well made.
I can only open my eyes wide and say, “Hmm, that’s strange!”
While on the way to elementary school in sixth grade I always encountered the banker Löwenstein. He was coming back from his morning ride wearing a cap, spats and swinging a whip. He was small and fat, wore a monocle in his left eye. The entire right side of his face was covered with a large blue-violette strawberry mark.
I said to myself, “That’s why he wears a monocle. If he wore a Pince-nez and there was some jolt the entire blue side of his nose would rub off. I was tormented with the thought that if I got too near him my jacket button would get stuck on his face and if I tried to pull it off his whole face would pop off! I dreamed of it during school hours and at night in bed. Finally I made a big detour and went to school down another street just to avoid him.
The blue Indians were that blue, deep violet blue like the strawberry mark of the banker Löwenstein and from the first moment I saw them I was seized again with that twenty-five year old forgotten idea, that my jacket button might get stuck and rip everything off.
This childish influence was so very strong that not once in all the weeks I stayed with the Momoskapans was I able to touch one of these spots. Nevertheless I saw very well that this was no strawberry mark. The skin was tight, smooth and beautifully healthy with no interruption where the bright mark began and ended. I only had to overcome my own mania that restrained me and get used to it.
I resolved that since I was now in Ystotasinta and not able to add anything at all new to the blue phenomenon I could at least work a little with the other puzzle, the one the French doctors had told the innkeeper about in Acapulco.
