Bridge in the Jungle

by B. TRAVEN

  Her face, which only a quarter of an hour ago was so full of smiles and happiness, and ten minutes ago looked rather businesslike, had by now taken on an expression of worry and uneasiness. Yet it was not fear. She raised her eyebrows, opened her eyes wide, and with those staring eyes she gazed at us, searching the face of every one of us. And for the first time since I saw her, there appeared in her eyes a suspicion that we might know something or imagine something, and that we might be withholding our knowledge from her for some reason or other, perhaps out of sheer pity for her.

  Helplessly, like a wounded animal that is down and can’t get on its feet, she looked at us again, almost piercing our faces with her burning eyes. Finding nothing, she shook her head and folded her hands against her breast.

  Another change came over her eyes. The slight foreboding she had felt only a few seconds earlier had now become half a certainty. With all her power she tried to fight off that feeling, but she couldn’t.

  Well! The Great Music-Master had arrived. Here at last! He was ready to play. The dancing that all had been waiting for would begin. It would be a wild and whirling dance, to be sure. It would be a dance at which the trumpets and fanfares of Judgment Day would blare.

  Slowly the dancers began to take their positions.

  “Don’t you worry, Carmelita,” the pump-master said in a fatherly way. “That kid got tired out, so he has laid himself down somewhere as kids will do. There’s nothing strange about that.”

  “He isn’t at home. I’ve looked everywhere. I’ve searched every nook and corner.”

  “He’ll be in another choza with other kids; sure, that’s where he is.”

  “No. I’ve asked everywhere in all the jacales.”

  “Don’t get hot, Carmelita. Perhaps he has crawled beneath a blanket or a petate or hidden in a heap of old sacks. He may have climbed up on the roof, where it is cool, and fallen asleep there.”

  The Garcia admits she has not thought of the roof. Frequently he climbs the roof of their hut or that of another, alone or in company with other boys. Why, only last night he slept on the roof. It is not comfortable to sleep on an inclined roof, but then, boys have their own ideas about comfort.

  Hope entered the woman’s mind. She hurried back across the bridge to the other bank.

  The pump-master woman returned with the lantern. She hung it up again and once more the square was bright and the shadows retreated to the jungle.

  10

  Garcia fiddled. He was not troubled by what was happening around him. A hundred times before, the kid had failed to come for his supper. And a hundred times he had had to search for him in the most unthinkable places where little boys may hide themselves. A dozen times if not more the boy had taken a burro and ridden away just for the fun of it. And he had done so knowing perfectly well that on returning he would be greeted with a good spanking.

  Those womenfolk, hell, they always have their buttocks full of fear for no reason as soon as they haven’t got their brats hanging at their skirts! Damn it! Although nobody tried any more to dance to his fiddling, he did not feel offended. Not at all. If someone thinks he can play any better why doesn’t he show up? That’s just it. There is nobody here who can play better. He would willingly and with pleasure lend him his fiddle, Garcia would. But there is no one. He alone can play. He knows all the foxtrots, all the one-steps, all the danzones, all the bostons and blues. They are, sorry to say, all mixed up a bit, one with another. You have to listen carefully for a while before you can make out what he is playing or what he means to play. If after hearing a dozen notes you are convinced he is playing a waltz, you realize that in fact he is playing a two-step. Never mind that, it is music all the same.

  Now and then somebody played a mouth-organ again. You couldn’t see the player. But you didn’t have to see who it was that was performing in the darkness to know that the mouth-organ was going from one mouth to another, because between tunes you could hear the voices of the players. Often one heard what they were saying: “Caray, you burro, let me have it, you know nothing of music, a dumb ox plays better than you, you don’t even know how to hold it the right way.”

  The boys on the bridge were singing no longer. From where I was standing I couldn’t see whether they were still sitting on the bridge. Perhaps they were telling stories to one another. It might be that they had been attracted by the mouth-organ players and that they had joined them to try their skill as musicians.

  Since we—Sleigh, the pump-master, another man, and myself—were standing between the bridge and the pump-master’s, it was only natural that anybody coming from the bridge should pass us on the way to the hut. When the Garcia returned from her search and walked up to talk to the pump-master woman, she saw us and stopped.

  Her face had taken on the shimmer of fear. It was no longer mere anxiety, as it had been ten minutes before. Her wide-open eyes were fixed upon us questioningly. There was a tiny last flicker of hope still somewhere in the corners of her staring eyes. She did not want to ask the question lest that last shred of hope flutter away. She expected to hear from us that while she had been back at her hut we had learned something new about the whereabouts of the kid. None of us could resist her questioning gaze any longer. It almost pierced my very soul.

  I avoided her eyes and looked at her head. Her beautiful hair, combed and neatly done up when I had seen her first, was now deranged. She had climbed the roof and she had obviously crawled through shrubs near the hut.

  “He isn’t on the roof either, señores.” We felt relieved of her eyes and we now breathed again as she spoke: “The neighbors also have searched for him in their homes. They haven’t found him.” This she said with the peeping voice of a little girl about to weep. “No, he isn’t over there on the other bank.” These last words were spoken as if each were weighted down by a heavy load.

  For a few seconds she seemed not to know whether to expect an answer from us or not. She took a deep breath and walked over to her husband. Her steps had become less youthful.

  While he fiddled unceasingly she talked to him with excited gestures. Suddenly she stopped and looked at him, anxiously awaiting his opinion.

  He drew a last long stroke. Then, still holding the fiddle pressed against his breast above his heart (which is where every Indian musician holds his violin), he turned his head, and with his great, sad, dreamy eyes stared at his woman.

  Suddenly his whole body grew tense. An Indian, considerably older in life and experience than she, he saw in her eyes far more than she wanted to let him see. She did not want to appear ridiculous before her man. It would be against the nature of an Indian woman. But he knew now what she could not and would not say. He opened his mouth and his lower jaw dropped as a dying man’s does. Slowly, apparently without knowing what he was doing, he took the fiddle from his breast and let it rest on his left knee. And while he was putting down his fiddle he saw the Great Music-Master come and take it out of his hand. Garcia knew there would be music now, more music than he could stand.

  The kid had been missing less than one hour. Many times he had been away from home for half a day, and for hours and hours nobody would know where he was roaming during that time. Yet never before had Garcia seen his woman with so much fear in her eyes.

  “Manuel!” the woman called out.

  Manuel came right away, shouting a few jolly remarks back to his laughing girl.

  With laughter still in his voice he asked: “What is it, mother dear?”

  “We can’t find Carlos,” she said with trembling lips. She looked sternly into his eyes, hoping to hear from him the only word that could relieve her of the growing pain in her heart.

  The big smile on Manuel’s face became a few degrees brighter when he said: “Why, mother, I saw him only a short while ago.”

  “Where?” the mother cried out, her face immediately lighting up as if a wreath of a hundred thousand sun-rays had fallen upon it.

  “Where?” Manuel repeated. “Where? Why, right h
ere. He wanted to blow his nose in my silk handker. He did it all right. Then he pushed it back into the hip pocket of my pants. Here, it’s still there. Then he beat my legs with his fists, jumped with his new shoes on my toes to make me angry and make me box with him, and right then he was off again swift as a young coyote.”

  “You said only a short while ago, Manuelito.”

  “Of course, mother. Just now—only a few—I mean—just—wait. Or—”

  “Or what? Or what? Speak up, Muchacho.” The woman shook him violently by his arm. He was half a head taller than she.

  “Or—wait—well, come to think of it, it might have been ten minutes, I should say, or fifteen.”

  The woman fixed her eyes on his lips to catch every word quicker than her ears would get them.

  “Let me think, mother. I was talking all the time to Joaquina. And considering how much we talked in the meanwhile, well, it might be half an hour since I’ve seen the kid. Perhaps even longer. I believe, yes, I do believe it is longer still. Even an hour. Since then I haven’t seen him. Not around here anywhere. That’s right, mother, it may well be almost a full hour.”

  The face of the woman darkened. Then it seemed to shrink as if it were about to wither. Now her words tumbled out of her trembling lips: “After he had been here with you he came over once more. He gave me the thread I asked him for to tie up this little bunch of flowers on my dress. This happened after you had seen him.”

  In her growing fear she forced herself to think clearly and sum up every little detail she could remember and she tried to fit each into its proper minute, believing perhaps that by so doing she might find the exact minute when the kid had slipped away, as if knowing that exact minute might make it possible to find him. “Yes, yes, yes, this was afterwards. I know for sure it was later. Because he told me that he had pulled your handker out of your pocket and that he would have liked very much to steal it from you because it is such a beautiful silk handker and that he surely would have stolen it were it not that you are such a very good Manuelito whom he loves too much to steal anything from.”

  Manuel looked around the square, hoping to see his kid brother pop up that very second from the depth of the darkness to make faces at them. So vividly was the kid in Manuel’s mind that he could not believe that anything serious had happened to him. Something so lively and so full of pep as that kid couldn’t disappear like a feather. There must be a trace or a fight or a yell or something.

  Garcia stood up slowly. For a while he did not know what to do. He had laid his fiddle on the bench. Feeling something in his right hand he looked down and saw that it was the bow. He turned around and laid it close to the fiddle. Then he stared with empty eyes into the night.

  The pump-master woman came up to Manuel and his stepmother. A few women followed her, and two men walked up to hear what had happened. So far only Garcia’s family and we four men knew that the kid was missing.

  The pump-master woman reasoned with the Garcia. She had children herself, she said, and there was not a day in the year when she didn’t have to work to find one or the other, and more often than not in places where no Christian soul would ever think a child might be. Why, they had even been found inside of hollow trees, and no one on earth knew how they wriggled in, since the hole was too small and they had to be cut out with an ax. “Children, dear me, don’t tell me anything about children, least of all about little boys. Once we found our Roberto inside the boiler and it was only by a holy chance that the boiler was inspected before water was poured in and the fire started.”

  Other women, all mothers, made fun of the Garcia woman’s fear, telling her she wouldn’t worry so much if she had a dozen brats and not just this one. “Don’t tell me anything about these little rascals,” one woman said; “these little vermin and good-for-nothings return home always. That’s just the trouble with them. I wish some of mine would stay away for good and look out for themselves. Don’t you get excited, Carmelita. As soon as he gets hungry he will be back and will make a big row if he doesn’t find his frijoles and tortillas ready for him. A boy like that can’t just fly off like a mosquito, seen by nobody. You’ll see him soon enough and then give him a good whipping so that he knows where he belongs. They are like puppies, that’s what they’re like.”

  Manuel had walked away. After a few minutes we heard him calling in the darkness: “Carlos! Carlosita! I’ve got candy, Carlosito! Where are you? I got candy, Carlos. Carlosito!” His voice went farther into the night and finally was heard no longer.

  Talk ceased. Everybody listened for an answer from the kid. Yet there was only the whining, the singing, the chirping, the humming from the jungle, at intervals interrupted by Manuel’s distant shouts.

  Stirred up by Manuel, other groups on the square became interested in what was going on. They all began to move, to fall in line for the dance to which the ghostly music was playing faster every minute.

  The pump-master went to the open shed where the pump and the boiler were located. With lighted matches he peered into every corner. Those who were near him watched his every move and expected him any minute to drag out the boy from some hidden retreat behind or under the pump. On seeing him return empty-handed, everybody thought it very silly to have believed the kid to be under the pump or inside the boiler or in the ash pit.

  The Garcia looked pitifully from one to another. Holding one fist against her mouth, she nibbled thoughtlessly at her fingers. Her eyes were like an animal’s which sees some danger approaching and finds itself without means of defense. A certain thought entered her mind. She took her fist away from her face and hid it in the palm of her left hand. For a while she pressed both hands against her breast. With a jerk she turned around and hurried towards the bridge. After a few paces she stopped. In utter despair she let her head drop. Slowly her arms glided down her body until they dangled lifelessly. She turned away from the bridge and with heavily dragging feet she came back to our group.

  Old man Garcia was standing with us, and not knowing what better he could do, he began rolling a cigarette.

  “Carlos! Carlosito! Carluchito!” Now from this direction, then from that, sometimes nearer, sometimes far away, Manuel’s strong voice could be heard calling his kid brother.

  Only the jungle answered with its whining.

  The boys, spurred by Manuel’s anxious search, formed half a dozen groups of two and three and scattered in all directions. Soon from everywhere one heard “Carlosito!” After each call there was silence for a few seconds so that little Carlos might have his chance to answer, were it ever so faintly. It seemed that even the jungle fell silent for a moment as if it wanted to help save a little child.

  11

  “Señora! Señora Garcia! Señora Garcia!” The bright and jubilant voices of two boys broke the monotony of the calling of the child’s name. These young voices freshened up the heavy atmosphere like a cool breeze wiping the depressing glow off a treeless plain at the height of a midsummer day. And again those animated and exultant voices blared through the night like the cornets of a military band. Running like devils, the two boys, shouting and yelling all the time, were now crossing the bridge.

  “Well, well! Now, there, there! There is the boy at last,” the pump-master woman cried out, and blew a deep sigh of relief. “Haven’t I said a hundred times that a healthy boy like him can’t get lost? Well, thanks to heaven, that’s all over now!”

  All faces lost their funny distortions and became ordinary human faces again. Hurriedly uttered words were flying about all groups. Everybody wished to say something very quickly and wanted to confirm that he had said so long before. Some even went so far as to boast that they had known all the time where the boy had been hidden.

  A few youngsters and girls left the center of the square, bored now with all that noise about nothing. It was pure nonsense, the whole excitement was, for how could it be possible that a boy would disappear with a hundred people around?

  The Garcia swallowed something wh
ich had been in her throat for a long time. Then she licked her dried lips. After this she took a deep breath as if she had not breathed for an hour. Somehow, though, she was not fully taken in by the joy of relief shown by all the others. There was hope rising in her soul, but doubt remained the stronger emotion within her. So hard had she worked her mind into the certainty that her boy was lost that now she had some difficulty in giving her thoughts a new direction. She was perhaps not clear as to her true feelings at this moment. Yet deep in her heart there was something in which her doubts found nourishment. One could read it from her eyes, in which doubt and suspicion mingled with bits of hope and a slight expectation of the best.

  The two boys arrived at our group. Breathlessly they said: “Señora Garcia, you are looking for your chiquito, for your little Carlos, aren’t you, señora?”

  “Yes, yes, of course, she is. We all have been looking for him a long time.” It was not the Garcia who answered the boys; it was other women in our group who pressed the boys for a quick report. “Well, where is he? Come, come! Out with it.”

  The Garcia was staring at these two boys as if they had come from another world.

  “Carlos has ridden to Tlalcozautitlan, that’s where he has gone,” the elder of the two boys said, stumbling over his own words, so hurriedly and breathlessly were they spoken.

  “Yes, that’s true,” confirmed the younger one, “that’s absolutely true, Señora Garcia, cross my heart and soul.”

  “Well then, everything is all right now,” the pump-master woman said, slapping the Garcia on her shoulders in a neighborly way.

  “Didn’t I say so long ago?” another woman broke in. “A boy can’t fall out of the world just like that.”

  The men said nothing. Most of them left us to go back to other groups where they wanted to take up their interrupted discussions.

  The Garcia frowned as if she had great difficulty thinking. Holding both her hands against her abdomen, she looked at the two boys without speaking.