Prevod

In a very large river, in a deserted land where no human being had ever been, there lived many caimans. There were more than a hundred, or more than a thousand. They ate fish and creatures that came to the river to drink, but mostly fish. They took their afternoon naps on the sandy bank, and sometimes played in the water on moonlit nights.

They all lived peacefully and happily. But one afternoon, while they were taking their nap, a caiman woke with a start and raised his head, because he thought he had heard a noise. He listened, and far, far away, he did indeed hear a low, deep rumble. Then he called to the caiman sleeping beside him.

“Wake up!” he said. “There’s danger.” “What is it?” the other replied in alarm. “I don’t know,” answered the caiman who had woken first. “I hear a noise I’ve never heard before.”

The second caiman heard the noise too, and in a moment they had woken all the others. They were all frightened and ran back and forth with their tails raised.

And they had good reason to be uneasy, for the noise grew louder and louder. Soon they saw what looked like a little cloud of smoke in the distance, and heard a chug-chug sound on the river, as though something were beating the water far away.

The caimans looked at one another. What could it be? But a wise old caiman, the oldest and wisest of them all, an old caiman who had only two sound teeth left at the sides of his mouth, and who had once traveled all the way to the sea, suddenly said:

“I know what it is! It’s a whale! They’re big, and they spout white water through their noses! The water falls behind them.” At this, the little caimans began shrieking madly with fright and diving headfirst into the water. And they shouted:

“It’s a whale! Here comes the whale!” But the old caiman gave the nearest little caiman a flick with his tail. “Don’t be afraid!” he shouted. “I know all about whales! They’re afraid of us! They’re always afraid!”

This reassured the little caimans. But they were frightened again at once, because the gray smoke suddenly turned black, and now they could all hear the chug-chug-chug on the water very loudly. Terrified, the caimans sank into the river, leaving only their eyes and the tips of their noses above the surface. And so they watched that enormous thing go past them, pouring out smoke and beating the water. It was a paddle steamer, making its first voyage up that river.

The steamer went past, moved away, and disappeared. Then the caimans came out of the water, very angry with the old caiman because he had misled them by telling them it was a whale.

“That’s not a whale!” they shouted in his ears, for he was a little deaf. “What was that thing that went past?” The old caiman then explained that it was a steamer, full of fire, and that the caimans would all die if the ship kept coming past.

But the caimans burst out laughing, because they thought the old fellow had gone mad. Why should they die if the steamer kept coming past? The poor old caiman really was quite mad!

And since they were hungry, they began looking for fish. But there were no fish. They could not find a single one. They had all gone away, frightened by the noise of the steamer. There were no fish left.

“Didn’t I tell you?” said the old caiman then. “Now we have nothing to eat. All the fish have gone. Let’s wait until tomorrow. Perhaps the steamer won’t come back, and the fish will return when they’re no longer afraid.”

But the next day they heard the noise on the water again, and once more they saw the steamer go past, making a tremendous racket and pouring out so much smoke that it darkened the sky.

“Well,” the caimans said then, “the ship came past yesterday, it came past today, and it will come past tomorrow. There won’t be any fish left, or any creatures coming to drink, and we’ll starve to death. So let’s build a dam.”

“Yes, a dam! A dam!” they all shouted, swimming toward the bank as fast as they could. “Let’s build a dam!” They set to work at once. They all went into the forest and felled more than ten thousand trees, mostly lapachos and quebrachos, because their wood is very hard. They cut them down with the sort of saw that caimans have along the tops of their tails, pushed them into the water, and drove them into the riverbed all the way across the river, a meter apart. No ship could get through there, big or small. They were sure that no one would come to frighten the fish away. And since they were very tired, they lay down to sleep on the sandy bank.

The next day they were still asleep when they heard the steamer’s chug-chug-chug. They all heard it, but not one of them got up or even opened his eyes. What did they care about the ship? It could make all the noise it liked; it wasn’t getting through.

Sure enough, the steamer stopped while it was still a long way off. The men aboard looked through binoculars at the thing stretching across the river, and sent a boat to see what was blocking their way. Then the caimans got up and went to the dam, peering between the logs and laughing at the steamer’s dismay.

The boat drew near, saw the tremendous dam the caimans had built, and returned to the steamer. But then it came back to the dam, and the men in the boat shouted:

“Hey, caimans!” “What is it?” the caimans replied, poking their heads between the logs of the dam. “That thing is in our way!” the men went on. “We know!”

“We can’t get through!” “That’s just what we want!” “Take down the dam!” “We won’t!” The men in the boat spoke quietly among themselves for a while, then shouted:

“Caimans!” “What is it?” they answered. “You won’t take it down?” “No!” “Until tomorrow, then!” “Until whenever you like!” And the boat returned to the steamer, while the caimans, wild with joy, gave tremendous slaps on the water with their tails. No steamer was going to get through there, and there would always, always be fish.

But the next day the steamer returned, and when the caimans looked at the ship, they were speechless with astonishment: it was no longer the same ship. It was another one, a mouse-gray ship, much bigger than the first. What was this new steamer? Did it want to get through too? It wasn’t going to, no indeed. Not this one, or another one, or any other one!

“No, it won’t get through!” shouted the caimans, rushing to the dam, each to his place among the logs. The new ship, like the first, stopped a long way off, and, like the first, lowered a boat that came up to the dam.

In it were an officer and eight sailors. The officer shouted. “What is it?” the caimans replied. “Won’t you take down the dam?” “No.” “No?” “Very well,” said the officer. “Then we’ll blast it to pieces with our cannons.”

“Go ahead!” answered the caimans. And the boat returned to the ship. Now, that mouse-gray ship was a warship, an ironclad with terrible cannons. The wise old caiman who had once traveled all the way to the sea suddenly remembered, and had barely enough time to shout to the others:

“Hide underwater! Quickly! It’s a warship! Look out! Hide!” In an instant the caimans vanished beneath the water and swam toward the bank, where they stayed submerged with only their noses and eyes above the surface. At that very moment, a great white cloud of smoke rose from the warship, a terrible boom rang out, and an enormous cannonball struck the dam, right in the middle. Two or three logs flew into pieces, and at once another cannonball struck, and another, and another, each blasting a section of the dam into splinters, until nothing was left of it. Not a log, not a splinter, not a scrap of bark. The ironclad had blasted it all to pieces. And the caimans, submerged with only their eyes and noses out of the water, watched the warship pass, its whistle blaring at full blast.

Then the caimans came out of the water and said, “Let’s build another dam, much bigger than the first.” And that very afternoon and that very night they built another dam, using immense logs. Then they lay down to sleep, utterly exhausted, and were still asleep the next day when the warship arrived again and the boat came up to the dam.

“Hey, caimans!” shouted the officer. “What is it?” the caimans replied. “Take down that other dam! We’ll blast it to pieces with our cannons, just like the first!”

“Blast it to pieces… if you can!” They spoke so proudly because they were sure that not even all the cannons in the world could destroy their new dam.

But a little later the ship was once more wreathed in smoke, and with a dreadful boom the shot burst in the middle of the dam, for this time they had fired an explosive shell. The shell burst among the logs, blasting, shattering, and splintering the enormous timbers. The second burst beside the first, and another section of the dam flew into the air. And so they went on destroying the dam. And nothing was left of it, nothing, nothing. Then the warship passed in front of the caimans, and the men mocked them, covering their mouths.

“Well,” the caimans said as they came out of the water, “we’re all going to die, because the ship will keep coming past and the fish won’t return.”

And they were sad, because the little caimans were crying with hunger. Then the old caiman said, “There’s still one hope of saving ourselves. Let’s go and see the SURUBÍ. I traveled with him when I went to the sea, and he has a torpedo. He saw a battle between two warships, and brought back a torpedo that hadn’t exploded. Let’s go and ask him for it. Though he’s very angry with us caimans, he has a good heart and won’t want us all to die.”

The fact was that once, many years before, the caimans had eaten a little nephew of the Surubí’s, and since then he had refused to have anything more to do with them. In spite of everything, though, they hurried off to see the Surubí, who lived in an enormous cave on the bank of the Paraná River and always slept beside his torpedo. Some surubí catfish grow as much as two meters long, and the owner of the torpedo was one of these.

“Hey, Surubí!” all the caimans shouted from the mouth of the cave, not daring to go in because of that business with his little nephew. “Who’s calling me?” the Surubí answered.

“It’s us, the caimans!” “I have nothing to do with you, and I don’t want anything to do with you,” the Surubí replied crossly. Then the old caiman ventured a little way into the cave and said:

“It’s me, Surubí! Your friend, the caiman who traveled with you to the sea!” At the sound of that familiar voice, the Surubí came out of the cave. “Ah, I didn’t recognize you!” his old friend said warmly. “What do you want?”

“We’ve come to ask you for the torpedo. There’s a warship that comes along our river and frightens the fish away. It’s a warship, an ironclad. We built a dam, and it destroyed it. We built another, and it destroyed that one too. The fish have gone away, and we’ll starve to death. Give us the torpedo, and we’ll sink the ship.”

When the Surubí heard this, he thought for a long time. Then he said, “Very well. I’ll lend you the torpedo, though I’ve never forgotten what you did to my brother’s son. Who knows how to make the torpedo explode?” None of them knew, and they all remained silent.

“Very well,” said the Surubí proudly, “I’ll make it explode. I know how.” Then they made arrangements for the journey. The caimans tied themselves together, one’s tail to another’s neck, and that one’s tail to the next one’s neck, forming a long chain of caimans that stretched for more than a city block. The immense Surubí pushed the torpedo into the current and slipped beneath it, supporting it on his back to keep it afloat. And since they had run out of the vines used to tie the caimans one behind another, the Surubí gripped the last caiman’s tail in his teeth, and so they set off. The Surubí supported the torpedo, and the caimans pulled, running along the bank. Up and down they went, leaping over stones, running all the while and dragging the torpedo, which threw up waves like a ship because they were going so fast. Early the next morning, they reached the place where they had built their last dam and at once began another, much stronger than the earlier ones, because, on the Surubí’s advice, they set the logs close together, side by side. It was a truly formidable dam.

They had put the last log in place barely an hour before when the warship appeared again, and the boat with the officer and the eight sailors came up to the dam once more. Then the caimans climbed onto the logs and poked their heads over the other side.

“Another dam?” “Yes, another!” “Take down that dam!” “Never!” “Very well, then, listen,” said the officer. “We’re going to destroy this dam, and to make sure you don’t try building another, afterward we’re going to blast you to pieces with our cannons too. Not one of you will be left alive—not the big ones or the little ones, the fat ones or the thin ones, the young ones or the old ones—like that ancient caiman I can see over there, with only two teeth at the sides of his mouth.”

When the wise old caiman saw that the officer was talking about him and making fun of him, he said, “It’s true I have only a few teeth left, and some of them are broken. But do you know what these teeth are going to eat tomorrow?” he added, opening his enormous mouth.

“What are they going to eat? Let’s hear it!” answered the sailors. “That little officer,” said the caiman, and he quickly climbed down from his log. Meanwhile, the Surubí had placed his torpedo right in the middle of the dam, telling four caimans to hold it carefully and keep it underwater until he gave the word. They did as he said. Then the other caimans submerged near the bank, leaving only their noses and eyes above the water. The Surubí sank down beside his torpedo.

Suddenly the warship was wreathed in smoke and fired its first cannon shot at the dam. The shell burst right in the center, blowing ten or twelve logs into a thousand pieces.

But the Surubí was ready, and as soon as the gap opened in the dam, he shouted to the caimans holding the torpedo underwater:

“Let go of the torpedo! Quickly, let go!” The caimans released it, and the torpedo rose to the surface. In less time than it takes to tell, the Surubí placed the torpedo right in the middle of the gap, took aim with one eye, and, setting its mechanism in motion, launched it at the ship.

Not a moment too soon! At that instant the ironclad fired its second shot, and the shell was about to burst among the logs, blasting another section of the dam into splinters.

But the torpedo was already nearing the ship, and the men aboard saw it—or rather, they saw the swirl a torpedo makes in the water. They all gave a great cry of fear and tried to move the ironclad out of its path.

But it was too late. The torpedo reached the enormous ship, struck it squarely in the middle, and exploded. It is impossible to imagine the terrible noise the torpedo made when it burst. It exploded and broke the ship into fifteen thousand pieces, hurling smokestacks, engines, cannons, boats—everything—through the air for blocks and blocks.

The caimans gave a great shout of triumph and rushed madly to the dam. Through the gap the shell had made, they watched men drift past in the river’s current—dead men, wounded men, and some still alive.

They clambered in a heap onto the two logs left on either side of the gap, and as the men passed through, they mocked them, covering their mouths with their feet.

They did not want to eat any of the men, though the men certainly deserved it. Only when one went past who had gold braid on his uniform and was still alive did the old caiman leap into the water, and—snap!—with two bites he ate him up.

“Who’s that?” asked a little caiman who did not know. “The officer,” the Surubí replied. “My old friend promised to eat him, and now he has.”

The caimans took down the rest of the dam, which was of no use anymore, since no ship would ever come that way again. The Surubí, who had taken a fancy to the officer’s belt and cords, asked to have them, and had to pull them from between the old caiman’s teeth, where they had become entangled. The Surubí put on the belt, fastening it beneath his fins, and attached the sword cords to the ends of his long whiskers. Since the Surubí has a very handsome skin, which looks like a snake’s because of its dark markings, he spent an hour swimming back and forth before the caimans, who admired him with their mouths open.

Afterward the caimans accompanied him back to his cave and thanked him countless times. Then they returned to their own stretch of river. The fish returned too, and the caimans lived, and still live, very happily, because at last they have grown used to seeing steamers and ships carrying oranges pass by.

But they will have nothing to do with warships.