The Bridge in the Jungle

by B. TRAVEN

  Since the bottle was out of his hip pocket and since it had been so hard to get it out, old man Garcia thought the occasion very opportune and he too whipped a fine shot down his throat. Fiestas must be celebrated on the day they fall.

  The coffin-maker dragged a hammer out of one pocket and out of another two thick rusty nails. He considered this gesture more suggestive than a speech about what he was now going to do.

  The Garcia immediately understood the meaning of that gesture. She went up to the coffin, took off the cloth, and looked at what was still left of the face which had only yesterday been so full of life and joy. She stared in horror and covered the face hastily.

  She stood there for a minute as if she were waiting for something. Then she walked with quick steps to the little shelf on which the picture of the Holy Virgin was standing, removed the little ukulele, and put it in the coffin beside the kid. Then she pondered again over something she wanted to remember. Once more she returned to the shelf, gathered together all of the kid's playthings — the battered tin automobile, the fishhook, the strings, the broken cork, and the few other silly items which her boy had treasured so highly — carried them to the coffin, and put them in too. And in a very low voice she said: 'He mustn't feel lonely, he mustn't.' And after standing there a few seconds more, she said: 'Adiós, Carlitos! Adiós, Carlosito mio!'

  Nobody in the hut moved, nobody said a word, nobody mumbled, nobody even seemed to breathe while the mother was talking to her baby.

  She bowed her head, turned around until her back was to the coffin, and walked towards the wall through which she could see the bonfire outside.

  Quickly the coffin-maker put the lid on the box and with a few light blows of his hammer nailed it loosely so that it could be taken off again before the burial.

  32

  From now on, everything happened in a hurry. Four youngsters, each about fourteen years of age, lifted the coffin, and the funeral train was on its way.

  Men, women, children followed the pall-bearers. The women carried their babies on their backs wrapped in rebozos.

  In no time the train had reached the spot on the bridge from which the kid was supposed to have tumbled over.

  Here the pall-bearers instinctively halted.

  All the men took off their hats. The Garcia wept bitterly, but she did not yell. Her tears stirred the hearts of all the mourners more than her yells had, honest though they had been. The pump-master woman kissed her. 'There, there, now,' she said, 'weep if it helps you. Here, blow your nose in this.' The pump-master woman pressed her handkerchief against the mother's swollen face.

  The pall-bearers marched on again.

  Sleigh had stopped on the bridge with the others for a minute. Then he turned around and went home as soon as he saw the procession move on. He did not say so, but I was sure he had to find a cow which had strayed.

  The crowd left the bridge and passed the pump-station. On this rough, occasionally swampy trail through the bush, it would take almost the whole afternoon for the procession to reach the little cemetery.

  Naturally, the mourners did not march in good order.

  Garcia staggered between two friends who had difficulty keeping him on his feet, especially since they themselves were no longer very sure of their faculties.

  The mother walked beside the pump-master woman, on whose right arm she was hanging. She still wore her sea-green gauze dress and apparently she did not know it. Aside from her week-day rags she had nothing else to wear on such a great occasion. The dress was streaked with blood and mud. It had many holes in it and was ripped wide open at various places.

  The flowers had fallen off, but the safety pins by which they had been fastened were still there.

  The pump-master woman, like practically all the other women, also wore the dress she had worn the night before, but her dress and those of the other women were less soiled and not torn.

  After the people had left the bridge they all began to feel more comfortable. A new world opened before them and that sinister bridge would soon be forgotten.

  After having walked in silence for a quarter of an hour, the crowd slowly began to get lively. A heavy burden seemed to have been removed from everyone's chest.

  The musicians — one fiddler and one guitar-player, both Indians — lifted their instruments. They did not know that there were such things as funeral dirges, death marches, and nocturnos which allure ghosts to come out of their chimneys and attics and dance before a pleased audience. That hymns existed they knew because they had heard them in church. Yet they could not play them, and for some unexplainable reason they would not have played them even if they had known how. What in the world were the American jazz compositions for if not to be played any time and on any occasion, whether a wedding, or a baptism, a saint's day, a dance, or a funeral? Music was music anywhere and to have different tunes for different occasions was silly and befitted only people who knew no better — perhaps because they had degenerated and needed a rough-fisted bolshevism to put them out of their misery. Be this as it may, the little boy had to be buried with music, and any music would do, since he was already on his way to heaven.

  I was afraid that they might play something like Home, Sweet Home or My Old Kentucky Home. But no, these good Indian musicians were not that far away from the path of civilization. They were far nearer to us. I could see here very clearly that international borders and the colours of skins weren't barriers against the spread of our mighty culture. The dynamic force of our crooners, torch singers, and night-club hostesses had actually made it possible for our Vallees, Berlins, Whitemans, and Crosbys to reach even the depths of American jungles. Over this trail blazed by our dance songs, there would soon arrive Fords, vacuum cleaners, electric refrigerators, air-conditioned grass huts, jungle-coloured bathrooms, windmill-driven television, canned alligator stew, and pulverized hearts of young palm trees.

  So it was that the tune played (as befitted the sailor suit) was 'Taintgonnarainnomo,' which was the latest around here.

  It was a long time since I had heard that tune. And since the time that tune was the rage back home, we Americans, tough guys that we are, have happily survived weddings of painted dolls, sonnyboys, and mammies crooned by poor devils suffering from St Vitus's dance; we had also had to swallow the strange news that only God can make a tree, a fact which none of us ever knew until we were told so by night-club entertainers. Then there was the coming (two hundred times every day and night) of the moon over the mountains with my mem'ries of you. Then we took our sugar to tea, asked for just one more chance, and incorporated the little innocent cucaracha, which used to be sung by Mexican revolutionists under the fire of machine-guns, but was sung by us under the fire of booze.

  Everything in its right place and the world will be a better location to live in. No, it won't rain any more. This elegant song was played by Indians who for nine months had had no drop of rain and by whom rain was considered God's greatest blessing.

  We reach these people so easily with our sailor suits, with our polished shoes and our yeswehavenobananas. Would that we tried once in a while to reach them, not with puffed rice and naked celluloid dames going with the wrong man in the right bed, but with the Gettysburg address, which next to God's rain would be the greatest blessing to all these so-called republics if we would take the trouble to make the people understand the true meaning of the greatest, finest, and most noble poem any American has produced to this day.

  Yet the simple fact that the taintgonnarainnomo tune was played here as a death march was ample proof that this vomit of our civilization had, at least in this part of the world, met a wall it could not break. Death is understood by these people, but the hypocrisy with which we, the followers of Christ, bury our dead they cannot understand. Therefore American dance tunes could not confuse their feelings, while hymns and nearer-to-thees would only upset them as something not quite befitting that great mystery which is the extinction of life.

  What does it all
matter anyhow? What does the sun above us care about the dead, about weeping mothers, about funerals, about American foxtrots and hair-removers? What does it care whether there is genuine culture or faked civilization, whether good music or noise with brass tubes? That glorious sun doesn't give a rap for anybody's anger about the white man's dumping the contents of his ashcans over the heads of people he believes inferior. Whatever woe, pain, and sorrow we may have, real or imaginary, the sun stays mighty and dignified in the universe. It is a god, it is the only god, the redeemer, the saviour, the only visible one, the always present, the ever young, the ever smiling god, forever an exulting song of eternal creation. It is the creator, the maintainer, the begetter, and the producer. It gives and wastes at the same time, never ceases to bless the earth with fruit and beauty, yet never asks for prayers or worship, nor for thanks. And it never threatens punishments.

  What did the sun above us care about our funeral? It stood directly above and its flames struck us. We staggered along our dreary way, stumbled over roots and logs, fell into holes, and sank into swampy furrows. We squeezed ourselves through thorny brushes and beat our way through the high, wiry prairie grass.

  For hours and hours we marched in this blazing heat. The crowd was chatting, laughing, yelling, squeaking, singing, whistling. Now and then the music played. Foxtrots, one-steps, two-steps, blues. Occasionally they played the Jesusita en Chihuahua and the Reina de mi jacal and Amapola del camino and Adelita for recreation, because these tunes they could play in their sleep. But if they had gone on playing these beautiful songs, the mourners would have believed them old-fashioned, and so that they should not be thought narrow-minded, doing only what their grandfathers did, they discarded their fine folk-music to show the crowd how Americanized they were. And there came floating through the boiling air the sounds of that musical glory of the century, the great American Te Deum, Taintgonnarainnomo.

  The coffin swayed dangerously on the shoulders of the youngsters who carried it. If now and then one of them tripped over a stone or a root or sank into a hole, the entire crowd yelled: 'La caja, la caja! The box, the box!'

  Those walking near it jumped closer and supported the case, for otherwise it might easily have gone down the scarp which bordered the trail. I did not wish even to imagine what might happen if that coffin had really gone down there and burst open.

  On both sides of our trail buzzards accompanied us, some flying ahead of us, others following, some of them dropping into a tree or a bush to perch there for a minute, then arising again and coming close to us. They never came very close — just close enough so that we could clearly see their hungry eyes and their dry beaks.

  We came up to a row of termite-eaten fence posts. From a few of them pieces of rusty barbed wire were dangling. A dozen buzzards took possession of this row and perched on the posts. It was a ghastly sight, considering that we were going to bury a dead child, for these buzzards sat in a file like sentinels. A mourner tried to make a wisecrack and remarked: 'With their black frock coats they look like undertakers.' Another one said with a giggle: 'That one there looks exactly like our cura, who baptized our brats last fall.'

  I too thought they looked more like ministers than undertakers — like ministers who could never forgive an error and who were at their best when preaching of hell-fire and Satan's sadistic pleasures.

  In front of the coffin the second brother marched. He was surrounded by a bunch of shouting and shrieking kids. One of the boys was constantly swinging a thick stick, the end of which burned slowly, to keep it aflame so that it could be used to light the firecrackers which were exploding every minute.

  When the first crackers went off like rifle-shots, the buzzards got frightened and left our procession to hide in the depths of the bush. But now they were accustomed to the noise and they went with us all the way. Nobody throws stones at buzzards here or hurts them intentionally. The law protects the birds. But even if there were no law for the preservation of buzzards, the people would protect them, for they know them to be their health department, which disposes of carcasses.

  Manuel marched all by himself as if he did not belong to this procession. Twice I went up to him and talked about Texas and about his job there. He answered and even tried to force a smile. When I saw how it pained him to talk, I left him alone for the rest of the way.

  Old man Garcia stopped every once in a while, dragged the bottle out of his hip pocket, and took a shot. Both his friends who were helping him reach the cemetery on his own feet also helped him finish the bottle. Now and then another of his friends came up and was served. Garcia could afford to be generous, for should this bottle give out, he carried a second one in another pocket.

  The mother walked in the midst of the crowd. Seeing her now, one would not believe her to be the principal mourner. No longer did she hang on the pump-master woman's arm for support. The heat and the rough trail would not allow it. The pump-master woman, however, still walked by her side, and a few other women were marching close by so that the mother could never feel alone, not even for a moment. They all chatted to shorten the trip and to forget the blazing sun. They were talking of a thousand different things, but not of the kid. They were walking back to ordinary daily life.

  The youngsters started to fight about whose turn it now was to carry the coffin. None of the boys wanted the honour, which before had been much coveted. The stench near the coffin had become unbearable even for the toughest of them. All had their handkerchiefs tied over their mouths and noses to protect them as much as possible from the horrible odour emanating from the box.

  It was certainly a marvel how bravely the Garcia marched among the crowd, considering that she had not closed an eye during the past thirty-six hours, that she had received the most cruel beating from fate that any mother on earth could suffer, that for twenty hours she had wept, yelled, and lamented as never before in her life, and that she had eaten nothing since late afternoon the day before. Hers is a race which has a great future, provided it is not taken in by instalment plans for buying things they can do without.

  And there was another marvel, the musicians. The whole night through they had played dances, one right after the other without any intermission. If Indians dance, then they dance — there's no sitting out, and no gazing at the moon, either. They have time enough for staring at the moon when there is no music around.

  Looking objectively at this show, I almost wondered whether anybody still considered it a funeral train. All were marching to the cemetery, no doubt, yet somehow it appeared as if the dead one had been dismissed long ago and the march now received its meaning solely from the music which was played. In spite of all my silent protests and solemn curses, American dances and torch songs had won after all, dominating all the senses and feelings of the marchers, who apparently preferred this music to that of their own land. My noble thoughts had made me but a preacher in the desert and I was positive that if I were to yell my disapproval of our night-club achievements, they would have believed me crazy from the scorching heat.

  Perhaps they were right after all. Why should anybody have thought of death and of funerals? The world around us was green and full of life. The sky was blue, the sun golden. Butterflies by the thousands, some as big as two hands and others prettier than precious jewels, fluttered against the dark walls of the bush. Birds hidden in the thicket twittered noisily. The jungle fiddled, sang, chirped so intensely that for seconds the music was drowned. Life was all around and everywhere and we maintained the silly notion that we were on a funeral march. Why didn't we leave that kid in the river, forget him, and have done with it? Why all the fuss? Wasn't he better off in the river than in a hole in the cemetery where dogs and hogs would dig him out and eat what was left of him? God gave him the river to play with, so we should have let him stay there and allowed him to be happy in his own way. Why did we interfere with the burial the Lord had prepared for him? Of course, since we had learned to be Christians we could no longer act like heathen and we ha
d to do what was considered our Christian duty.

  What the hell, if I only could concentrate on the march and not let my mind wander off all the time — and that's the reason why now I was stuck in a swampy hole and everybody was laughing at me! I wanted to be decent too; that's why I was marching and tripping over roots for a silly idea.

  Long live the world which is so very funny to live in! What meaning to the living world had that little box of decomposing flesh? None. How insignificant is man in the universe, how insignificant his worries, his wars, his struggles, his ambitions, his trying to outwit his competitors! What is left of the great Caesar? There would be one Rome just the same, Caesar or no Caesar. Perhaps it would not be on the river Tiber, but there would be one Rome. What will be left tomorrow of the dozen little Caesars of today who think that they can build up a new world and terrify mankind? What are all the wars and dictatorships and bolshevisms for if finally men always end up by doing what is best for them, great men or not? So then why not enjoy life, love, merriment? And if some day you cannot enjoy them any longer, die and be forgotten and leave no ghosts behind. That's paradise.

  33

  There, at last, the village was in sight. Huts, palm huts, grass huts, and one rotten imitation of an American bungalow. A multitude of naked children were running about. Chickens, hogs, turkeys, mules, goats, dogs in front of the huts, between them, inside them.

  The people came out of their huts and in deep silence awaited the procession. And in deep silence they let it pass them. The men took off their hats as soon as the first mourners came near. Even the naked children stopped their playing and yelling and stared at us with wide-open eyes. A woman holding a baby in her arms shrieked when the marchers passed. Another woman looked around with harassed eyes, grasped her child playing at her feet, lifted him up, and folded her arms around him as if he were to be taken away from her. Then she cried out plaintively, and many of the women marching, among them Garcia, joined her and howled in the same manner, as if they were answering calls of their kind.