by B. TRAVEN
The mysterious performance of which I am a witness, the crowd’s belief that the miracle will happen, the dim light of the lanterns in the pump-master’s portico, the licking flames of the bonfires, the torches held by boys on the bridge, the floating board with the lighted candle in the river, that huge body of excited beings who are not my race, at this moment breathing as one, their eyes gazing without winking and each with a tiny star in it, the gloomy silence of that mass of men, the never ceasing whining of the jungle—all this depresses me and makes my heart heavy. My throat is parched. My tongue feels as though it were wood. Where is the world? Where is the earth on which I used to live? It has disappeared. Where has mankind gone? I am alone. There is not even a heaven above me. Only blackness. I am on another planet, from which I never can return to my own people. I shall never again see green meadows, never again the waves of wheat fields, never again shall I wander through the forests and around the lakes of Wisconsin, never again shall I ride over the plains of Texas and breathe the air of desolate goat ranches. I cannot come back to the earth, my true mother, and never shall I see the sun rise. I am with creatures I do not know, who do not speak my language, and whose souls and minds I can never fathom. One, only one out of this crowd has to stand up at this moment, only one has to point his finger at me and yell: “Look at that man! Look at him! He is the white, who has not been invited to come here, but he came nevertheless. He is the guilty one. By his blue eyes and by his skin of the pale dead he has brought the wrath of our gods upon us poor people. He is a gringo. He has brought us misfortune and sorrows. He has come only yesterday and today our little boy had to leave us, driven away by that white man and making the kid’s mother weep like the skies in the rainy season. He has been here only two days and the river, which hates him, has robbed us of our beloved little child. Look at his eyes and you will see that with those eyes he is poisoning our children and bewitching all of us!”
If I never come back again, if I am sacrificed here and now, tonight, nobody, no consul, no ambassador, no government, will ever know what has become of me and where my bones are bleaching under the sun. The buzzards won’t leave anything of me that could be identified. “Disappeared on a trip through the jungle.” Or perhaps: “Caught by alligators on a fishing trip in swampy territory.” This will be the last the old folks at home will hear of me.
Why do I feel uncomfortable? There, only a few yards away, there stands Sleigh, my fellow citizen, white of color like myself, thoughts the same as mine, brought up in the same traditions, speaking the same language. He is standing behind the men who are kneeling on the bridge, and he too has his eyes fixed upon the board slowly floating on the river. Suppose this crowd, stirred up by somebody gone mad, were to jump at me to make me pay for the lost kid, Sleigh would be my guardian angel, my life-saver; he would protect me with his very body. Certainly. Most certainly. Because he is my fellow citizen, singing with me the Star-Spangled Banner. He would save me. He would cock his hat slightly, with a lazy gesture, and he would say: “Why, now, see here, you folks, you can’t do that. That is stupid. He didn’t throw the kid in the river. I’m plumb sure he didn’t. He is a mighty good fellow and nobody can deny that.” Having said this, he would turn to me and say: “You must excuse me, I’ve got to look after that goddamned cow. Christ, if I only knew where to find that damn bitch. Perhaps she has come home at last. I’ll go and see.” So he would go and leave me alone with that frenzied mob. After I have been torn to pieces he would return and talk to the neighbors, telling them that the cow has not come home yet and that surely a pair of tigers or lions must be roaming in the vicinity. Then, on seeing the last ragged shreds of me, he would say: “Well, you men, you shouldn’t have done that. It isn’t right. I told you so before. Anyhow, who would have thought that of him? He seemed to be a fine chap. I don’t think he threw the kid into the river. You shouldn’t have done that. Well, well, who would have thought such a thing of him?”
Sleigh. Who is Sleigh? What is he to me? He was born in the same God’s great country I was. Nevertheless he is farther away from me than our president. Sleigh. He has lived more than half his life among these Indians. He is married to an Indian woman. His children don’t speak one word of American, they know only Spanish and quite a few phrases of the Indian idioma. Sleigh. The meals he eats are Indian, and he eats as the Indians do, without using a fork, shoveling up his meat, beans, and gravy with a torn-off bit of tortilla, wrapping the whole thing up and pushing it into his wide-open mouth, swallowing the food and eating the tortilla-made spoon simultaneously. He lives in an Indian jacal on an earthen floor under a grass roof. He would feel most uncomfortable in a house or a bungalow. Without moving an eyelash he would stand by and look on should this crowd become infuriated and hammer me into a pulp. I am absolutely alone among these people. And I also know perfectly well that whatever might happen to me, no battle-cruiser will steam into this jungle with a crew yelling: “Hip, hip, hi! Everything is under control, we have the situation well in hand!” It is a very good thing to know that. One thus becomes a fatalist. The more fatalistic I become, the closer I get to understanding these people. They could not bear life were they not all fatalists.
20
The board is some fifteen feet from the river-bank. It stops for half a minute. Now it begins to whirl slowly and, still whirling, drifts farther towards the middle of the river, gradually nearing the slow current. For five feet or so it moves along that current. Then it stops again. And again it whirls as if it were trying to get out of the stream.
After a few minutes it again follows the current for a short distance. Then it stops abruptly. It begins whirling again. At first it does so very slowly, then quicker and quicker still, and at the same time it starts moving back towards the bridge and now, as can be clearly seen, it moves contrary to the current. I personally cannot see any miracle in that, because all rivers have currents of two or more different directions, although usually only for short stretches.
Nor does the crowd regard it as something miraculous or even strange that the board is moving against the current. Only they have a different reason for being calm about it. To them it is something long anticipated. It convinces everybody that the kid is in the river, that he is calling the light, and so the light has to answer his call. Further, it is proof that the body has not been washed downstream.
Which of us, the crowd or I, will be right in the end?
The board floats towards the bridge. It sails so slowly that its movements can be judged only by watching the candle against a fixed mark on the opposite bank.
Now it stops and wobbles on the surface. Apparently it has been caught by a plant or a shrub in the water. That at least is my explanation. Strange as it may seem, the board struggles to free itself.
The crowd is watching that struggle with more tension and excitement than they would a cockfight. Many faces show disappointment. One young man gets ready to wade into the river and help the board out of the tangle. The old Indian commands him to leave the board alone. “No shrub, no branch, nothing that grows or lives in the water can keep the board from going where it has to go. Mind that, muchacho,” he counsels him.
The old Indian has told the truth. A few minutes after he spoke the board wobbles faster, begins to whirl, twists itself out of the entanglement. Slowly it sails nearer to the bridge.
It now has reached the bridge and here it touches the seventh post. That post repulses it and, while keeping directly under the rim, it wanders towards the sixth post, where it stops for several minutes.
“There, now it’s stopping for good! There is the boy! That’s the sign!” A score of men are shouting excitedly.
“Hold it! Hold it!” the old Indian cries. “Go easy, you folks. Let’s wait and see first before we make any mistake and stir up the water and lose our best chance. The light is not perfectly quiet yet. I’ll give you the word!”
Hardly has he said that when the board starts wriggling. It moves away from the sixth
post and sails, whirling all the while, towards the fifth post, still remaining under the rim of the bridge. On the way it is caught by the slight current and carried out for a foot or so. But each time it pulls itself out of the current and struggles back under the rim as though forced to do so by some strong power.
It has reached the fifth post. It hangs on for a few minutes. Then, still clinging to the post, it moves around and sails away from it straight under the bridge for about one and a half feet.
The people kneeling on the rim lean far over and stick their heads under it to watch the board’s movements. Everyone in the crowd now thinks himself very stupid for not having fished for the kid under the bridge instead of only along its edge. Several men crawl over to the upstream side of the bridge and put their heads down there. Others lie flat on the planks and watch the miracle through the joints and knotholes.
The board in the meanwhile has wandered farther under the bridge, but always in a right angle to the fifth post. Now it is under the middle of the bridge. From here it sails towards the fourth post, though only for about a foot.
And here it stops as if it were nailed to the water. It does not mind the current nor the light breeze that sweeps softly across the surface of the river. The manner in which the board has halted is entirely different from that in which it stopped before. Now and then it trembles slightly, as if something were breathing against it from below. But it no longer whirls.
In fact, its behavior is so clear, so definite, that nobody can doubt any longer that the board has found its final destination.
A long-drawn-out groan comes from the crowd as if from one mouth. A hundred heavy sighs fill the air and almost drown out the million voices of the jungle. Many men and women seem covered with thick pearly sweat, while the sweat runs in streams down the faces and bodies of the others. No one bothers to wipe it off. Here and there whispered words float through the night.
The board begins softly to dance as if impatient. It seems that it wants to be relieved of its torture. It wriggles, swings about itself, though it does not move as much as two inches. One might think it is trying to go down to the bottom.
The old Indian watches the board like a hawk watching a mouse. He has an infinite calmness of manner. Four or five minutes more he waits, and now he gives the long-expected signal. “There, you may dive now. There is the little one. He is in the river all right. Poor mother, may God save and bless her!” He goes a few paces nearer the bridge.
It is a spot nobody has thought of. Who would have thought that a boy who has tumbled over the rim should be looked for under the middle of the bridge? It seems impossible.
Perez is already in the river. Two men follow him. He is the first on the spot. He pushes the board gently aside so as to have room to dive.
Only a few seconds he is under the water, then he comes up, spits, and says in a thick, sad voice: “He is there! The kid is there! I’ve touched his little body.”
The people on the bridge look at Perez. He has swum to the fifth post, to which he clings with one hand while with the other he wipes from his face the water dripping down from his hair. His face, dimly lighted by the flickering bonfires on the banks, shows an expression of horror mixed with mental pain. He looks up to the bridge and lets his eyes wander over the whole crowd. Everybody knows that he is looking for the Garcia woman, yet none calls her.
At this moment, coming from nowhere at all, the Garcia walks with heavy dragging feet along the bridge to where Perez clings to the post. Everybody steps back to let the woman pass freely. She has heard Perez. Her mouth is wide open. She wants to yell, perhaps she even thinks that she is yelling. But somehow she cannot do so, because her throat is tight as if in a cramp. She raises one hand, makes a fist, and stuffs that fist into her open mouth as deep as it will go. Horror haunts her eyes. Fear flutters over her face with jumping shadows as if huge unseen birds were flying around her. She is trembling with fear of the final sentence. She wishes to hold fast to the last little bit of hope and doubt. Perhaps Perez has erred. Perhaps he has felt only a pack of balled grass. Would to Almighty God that he has erred as have all others before him! Her eyes are slowly moving upwards to heaven. Yet half-way she turns them into the direction of Tlalcozautitlan, where her husband has ridden and where her last glimmer of hope now rests. The kid has surely gone to Tlalcozautitlan with that boy on the white horse. It must be so or the world cannot be right and there can be no God in heaven.
Nobody says a word. Only a shuffling of feet on the bridge is heard. And the singing of the jungle.
Perez has dived again, accompanied by one of the other two men. Soon both come up, their hands filled with wet and rotten shrubs and branches and twigs all dripping with water. They push them away, and down again the two men go.
Bubbles boil on the surface. Torn water plants, branches, bits of shrubs rise and float on the water. One of the two men comes up. One cannot see who he is because only part of his face is visible and that is covered with his matted, dripping hair.
A few seconds later something black is seen rising to the surface. It comes up slowly until it can be identified as the thick hair of Perez. Now his head is fully out. He shakes it as a dog shakes his pelt to free it of water. He blows, breathes heavily, swallows, and rises farther, treading the water with all his power. He is not using his arms this time. In his arms he holds the little Carlosito, whose knees are seen before anything else. His knees protrude high above the rest of his body because they are bent in an unnatural angle so that the heels are only a few inches away from the small of his back. One might think that the kid had been sitting on his heels all during the time he was on the bottom.
Strange. The new American shoes on his little feet draw everybody’s first look in a verily obtrusive and arrogant manner, as if they were the most important part of the whole body.
Perez does not look up to the bridge. Partly swimming, partly wading, he makes for the bank.
“Chiquito mio! My baby!” the Garcia yells. She darts to the bank and awaits Perez.
Perez walks up the low slope of the bank. Entirely naked he now stands before the young mother. Still in her cheap sea-green gauze dance dress, with fire-red wild flowers in her hair, on her breast, and in her girdle, she receives Perez with arms stretched out towards the little burden he is carrying.
With an indescribable nobility and solemnity, and in his eyes that pitiful sad look which only animals and primitive people possess, he steps slowly forward. And Perez, the man whose daily task it is to fell the hard trees of the jungle and convert them into charcoal, lays that little water-soaked body in the outstretched arms of the mother with a tenderness that makes one think of glass so thin and fragile that a single soft breath could break it.
21
At this moment many women uttered a shrill, plaintive wail full of reproach.
That wail, which pierced the blackness of the night as if it meant to break through and rise to the sun in the sky, swelled until all the women fell in. Then it sank and became a low moan. The women wrapped a piece of cloth, be it a rebozo, a black veil, or a shawl, around their heads. Their faces hidden, they wept bitterly.
It was no longer only the death of the Garcia woman’s child that they bewailed. By his untimely death the little boy had become every mother’s baby. Only a mother knows how a mother feels. No one else, not even God in heaven with all His immaculate wisdom, with all His stern serenity, can feel as a mother does when her baby has been taken away from her.
The Garcia held her baby in her left arm against her breast. With her right hand she squeezed his wet and already shriveled little hands.
Perez stole away from her. He no longer wished to be seen by her, as though he were guilty of an unforgivable crime.
A middle-aged Indian walked up to the mother, bowed his head, and spoke to her. She handed him the little body; he received it very gently. Then he stepped back a few paces. Resolutely and unsentimentally, like an old country doctor, he now grasped the kid fi
rmly by his feet and held him up with the head hanging perpendicularly. He shook the body several times. Only watery blood dripped out of the kid’s mouth.
The body was already stiff. In spite of the weight of the body hanging by its feet, the knee joints stretched very little.
While the kid still hung upside down, a thick bruise became visible on the forehead above the left eyebrow. The nose and mouth were swollen and the upper jaw was partly smashed in.
I went near and lifted his head slightly because I wished to see his eyes by the light of a lantern. Holding his head in the palm of my hand, I felt, with the tip of my middle finger, a little hole in the back of his skull. I turned the head round to the light, and from its size I decided that this hole was caused by a fairly thick nail.
The Indian who was holding the body by its feet winked at another man. This man pressed the little body between his hands, moving from the belly down to the chest inch by inch. Even then surprisingly little water came out of the kid’s mouth. Yet there was still that trickling of thin blood.
Huge pearls of tears formed in the eyes of the mother, and when her eyes could not hold them any longer, they tumbled down, running down her cheekbones, over the corners of her mouth, down her chin, finally dropping upon her breast. They fell upon the flowers she had fastened on her dress slightly above her heart.
She snorted as though pushed from the inside of her chest, and through her nostrils she blew violently a loud hiss which, it seemed, she had suppressed for hours and which now at last was released in a second. Her nose was running. She looked around vaguely. Then she looked down along her own body, lifted up her green dance dress, and blew her nose in it.
