by B. TRAVEN
Whenever one of the boys telling the story stopped or hesitated, the other one took up the tale and went on with it. From all appearances the story seemed to be true. Two boys of their age are not able to tell a false story the way these two boys were narrating it.
The Garcia searched the boys' faces. The boys looked into her eyes with frankness. Then the Garcia looked at the faces of the people standing by, glancing from one to another although their faces could not be seen clearly.
Manuel arrived at our group. A few boys had gone after him and told him there was news at the pump-master's.
The Garcia woman looked at him. Then she turned violently round to the two boys and said, almost yelling: 'I don't believe it!' Again she shouted: 'I don't believe it. Carlos does not ride away from home, not when Manuel is here and when he knows that Manuel has to leave early Monday morning. He will not miss a minute to be with Manuel. And if he really wanted to go to Tlalcozautitlan he would have come first to Manuel and told him so and made him go with him.'
'But it is true, senora, he rode away with that big boy,' the elder boy insisted.
'Who was that boy?' the Garcia asked suddenly.
'We don't know.'
'Is that so? You don't know him, you don't even know that boy?'
'No, we don't know him, senora,' the elder boy repeated. And the younger answered: 'I saw him once pass by here with a loaded burro, but he didn't stop here, not even for a drink of water did he stop, as all the travellers coming this way do.'
The pump-master came close and asked: 'What did the boy on the horse look like?'
Up to now the two boys had been very clear about everything they had been describing. But in trying to answer this new question they became more and more confused and even contradicted each other. Neither remembered exactly what that boy looked like. Asked if he was an Indian boy or a Mexican or a white, they said they had not looked closely enough and it was too dark to see whether he was Indian or white, and that they had looked more at the beautiful horse than at him. They could not, when questioned further, even describe the saddle on which he was sitting. The younger boy insisted the horse had no saddle, while the elder said it was saddled. Nor could they say anything about how the boy was dressed. Then again, the time they gave as to when the boy invited Carlos for the ride, fitted into the time when the kid had last been seen. According to the two boys, it was now one hour since Carlos rode away. This would mean it had been eight o'clock. And it was exactly eight when the child left the hut and ran as fast as a weasel towards where he knew Manuel and his father were. Since that moment his mother had not seen him again.
All those present save the mother believed the story of the two boys, especially since a dozen men declared that they had seen several men riding by, some of them riding in the direction of Tlalcozautitlan. Everybody added that the two boys had no reason whatever to tell such a story and in so serious a situation, that they gained nothing by telling it except maybe a good thrashing if they were found out to be lying deliberately.
Garcia wakened from his lethargy. He looked for a horse to take him to Tlalcozautitlan. It was quite possible that the boy on the horse was travelling farther than just to that little town and on reaching it he might have left Carlos there all by himself. Boys play such tricks on other boys, especially smaller ones. They never think of the consequences of such tricks. All the stores in that town were closed by now and there was never any light in the streets. Little Carlos was perhaps at this moment sitting in a dark corner, forlorn and either crying or asleep. If perchance he were picked up by good people he couldn't even tell where he lived. Because this settlement had no name and was not to be found on even the best map. It was just 'Huts by the River', and of such places there are thousands in the republic.
Garcia's activity — saddling the horse, mounting it, listening to a score of opinions as to which was the shortest and best trail, for there was no road — filled the Garcia woman with new hope. At least she thought it was hope, while in fact it was only that for a few minutes her thoughts were moving in another direction. She felt easier knowing that her man was on the way to find the boy at the place where everybody assured her he was. She sat down with other women on a bench and soon she joined their talk about everyday things.
Manuel leaned against a tree-trunk. He, at least for the present, had no desire to mix with the girls, as all the other boys were doing now that the excitement was over. But after ten minutes he walked slowly back to his pretty girl, and both soon disappeared where the shadows were deepest.
Sleigh had shown little interest in the whole affair. I wondered what could get him aroused to some sort of enthusiasm. Sometimes I thought him just brain-lazy. Then again I thought him a wise man who had learned that nothing matters, not even his own death. He was interested in his cattle. That was true. But I often doubted even that interest, for he probably showed concern about the cattle only because he was hired to attend them. Yet maybe he really loved the cattle and did not wish anybody to know it. When the excitement was at its peak he said to me that he had better go to his house to see whether the missing cow had come in. He returned in time to hear the two boys telling their story. After this he helped Garcia fetch a horse and saddle it.
Now he was again standing with me, telling me in his slow drawl that the goddamned cow had not come home yet and that he would give anything to know where that cow might be at this time of night.
12
A boy called for Manuel. After a while Manuel came out of the dark and I went closer to hear what the boy wanted of him.
'It isn't true at all, Manuel, that Carlos rode to Tlalcozautitlan,' the boy said. 'I know that Carlos and another boy have ridden to Pacheco, and they did not ride a horse, but just a burro.'
'Did you see that? ' Manuel asked sceptically.
'Sure, I saw it or I wouldn't be telling about it. Do you think me a liar, or what?'
'Why didn't you tell it before?'
'Simply, I didn't know that those two boys had told you Carlos had ridden to Tlalcozautitlan.'
The Garcia heard his last words. She jumped up and ran over to us.
Shaking the boy wildly by his shoulders, she cried: 'What did you say right now?'
The boy repeated his tale and swore by all the saints that he had seen Carlos riding away with another boy on a burro and that they had taken the trail which leads to Pacheco.
The Garcia let her head sink between her shoulders. Her whole body shrank. Her mouth was wide open and her eyes flickered like a madman's.
The pump-master grasped her by the arm and shook her. He said: 'Now, don't you get excited over nothing Carmelita, please, calm down. Don't let your worry eat you up. Wait until your man is back from Tlalcozautitlan. There is nothing, absolutely nothing you can do until he has returned.'
The woman said nothing. It was obvious she had heard not a word.
One of the mule-drivers who were camping there said: 'I know the way to Pacheco. It's an awful trail by day and ten times worse at night. If you don't know it very well, you have no chance to return at night. Now, I say, if somebody will lend me a mule — a horse won't do — I'll ride over to Pacheco and look for the kid. Our mules are tired, they can't make it, not that trail, tired as they are.'
A mule was offered immediately. When he mounted, a boy riding a burro came up and said that he wished to accompany him because he, too, knew the trail.
'Have you guys enough matches?' the pump-master yelled after them. They would have to make torches to light them across difficult stretches on that hard trail.
'We've plenty,' they shouted.
The Garcia looked into the darkness into which those two had just disappeared. She dug her fingers into her hair and turned round to face again the pump-master's hut. The little shred of hope she had had for a few minutes, when everybody was so confident that the kid must be in Tlalcozautitlan, was gone entirely. Her hope was never very strong anyway. That certainty she had had the first minute she misse
d the boy seized her again. What nobody else under heaven could know, she, his mother, knew right away, that the boy was never coming back. Her heart and her instinct, that instinct of a primitive, of an Indian mother, told her the truth. Everybody else here might doubt, but she no longer doubted. In fact she had never doubted. She had only been playing so as to keep herself from going mad.
And now, being certain, she became herself once more. The flickering disappeared from her eyes. She pulled herself together as if by a resolute decision. There was work to do now. She had to do something for her baby. She had to get busy. Whatever might have happened, she had to see her darling once more, once more she had to hold him in her arms, press him against her heart, and cover his sweet little face with kisses. She had to get him, even if she should have to drag him out of the clutches of hell. But she had to get what was left of him.
With firm steps she hurried across the bridge back to her hut. One minute later she was crawling with a lantern in her hand among the shrubs along the opposite bank of the river. Now she disappeared deeper into the bush, now she returned to the bank. With the lantern dangling from her hand she stretched her arm over the river to light up the muddy water. She called her baby by the sweetest names she could think of or her heart was able to invent. Seen from this side, where I was standing, every move she made looked ghostly. Everybody expected soon to hear a cry which would be horrible and gruesome.
For half a minute she stood still by the bank, thinking of what had to be done. Her arms were hanging motionless. In her right hand she held the lantern. It lit up her dress. But her face was partly in shadow, and it resembled no face I ever saw before. It might have been a face created by an insane sculptor who had tried to outsmart nature.
On this side people were gathered close to the bank, looking at the lonesome mother who, with a lantern, wanted to get back her baby. Two enemy camps divided by the river, two worlds opposed to each other. One world was in deepest sorrow and pain, the other world ready to help yet none the less happy, in a way, that it was the other world which had been floored by a merciless fate.
A few men crossed the bridge to join the lonely mother. Aimlessly they crawled through the shrubs and brush. They didn't really believe they would find the kid there. They merely wished to show the mother that they were willing to do all in their power to lessen her sufferings.
The mother came back towards us. As she crossed the bridge she held the lantern over the river, but the light hardly penetrated the muddy yellow water.
The pump-master woman walked over to her, put one hand upon her shoulder, and said: 'Let's wait, Carmelita dear, and see first before we worry so much. Come, sit down by me on the bench and don't worry and break your head to pieces. The kid has really ridden away with that boy, I'm sure of it. We may worry later a good deal if the men come back without having found a trace of him. Yet they'll find him all right. With all that worry now we can do nothing. Just wait and see.'
'Carlos hasn't ridden away,' the Garcia said, firmness and conviction in her throat. 'He does not ride away when Manuel is home.'
'Tut, tut, Carmelita! There, there! Children, dear me!' The pump-master woman laughed loudly. 'You have got only that one. What do you know about these brats? I know better, I've five. What you never dream of, that's exactly the first thing they'll do.'
The Garcia put her lantern on the ground by her feet. She turned her head towards the river and with tired, heavy eyes looked into the darkness. Then she faced again the group of women she was standing with, and looked from one to another without saying a word. Though she was in the midst of neighbours and friends, she felt utterly alone in the world. Her head drooped and she closed her eyes for a few seconds. Then suddenly her body stiffened and she cried out: 'The boy is in the river! The boy has been drowned!'
Everyone present stood aghast, as if lightning had struck near by. Some women crossed themselves. The pump-master woman fought to catch her breath, and finally gasped: 'Carmelita, for heaven's sake, by the Most Holy Virgin and Her Holy Child Jesu Cristo our Lord and Master, don't commit such a horrible sin against God. How can you say such a terrible thing? Have you gone mad, woman? Come to, come to, woman!'
The Garcia uttered a deep sigh. She felt relieved of the thick lump in her throat which had been trying to choke her for the last half-hour. She stretched her neck and moved her head round in a wide circle to free herself still more from that nightmare. Her eyes became sober, almost brutally sober. She was at last herself.
While everybody was still dumbfounded, the Garcia started explaining, so clearly and fluently that one might think she had memorized it. She was getting rid of all her anxiety by talking fast, by summing up all her thoughts concerning the whereabouts of her baby.
'How excited that kid was this evening and the whole afternoon! Never have I seen him like that. Wild, swift, uncatchable. I might have chained him to a post and he would have broken away, so wild he was. He had practically lost all sense of what he was doing and where he was running. I couldn't keep him in the house for more than two minutes at a time. He had to run across to Manuel again. And off he went like a whirlwind. He knows the way to the bridge, and the bridge itself, well enough — better perhaps than any one of us — because ever since he could run at all he has been running across that bridge two hundred times every day. So he ran back again without even thinking that he might ever fall off the bridge, because he could run across it blindfold. But now he had the new shoes on his little feet, those pretty shoes with polished and lacquered soles that he was so proud of. With these shoes on his feet he was not the same any more. But how could he know that? No longer was he sure about his way, and no longer did he have his feet under control the way he used to when he ran barefooted. How could he, a child, know the difference it makes to your feet when you have shoes on? Now, when I crossed the bridge tonight, I almost tumbled over. I saw the lantern hanging here at the pump-master's and went straight towards the light. Only when I stumbled against the rim and almost lost my balance did I remember that the bridge doesn't lead straight towards the choza here, but more to the right. When this happened to me, right then my first thought was that should the kid run so wildly and thoughtlessly across the bridge, as he surely did because of his excitement, there is every chance that he might tumble over the rim and fall into the river. That's why, on coming over here, my first question was about the kid. Otherwise, if this had not happened to me, I would not have thought of him, not until I saw him here again. And believe me, all of you, when I asked for the boy and nobody had seen him, I knew instantly that it was too late already, for my heart was full of a sudden pain.'
Nobody interrupted the mother in her long speech. For many minutes no one said anything. They were thinking of what they had just heard. There was so much good sense in what she had said that most of those present were beginning to believe that what had happened was just as the mother had explained it.
The pump-master woman was the first to speak. 'Now listen, Carmelita, be reasonable. What you tell us is absolutely impossible. It can't be. Somebody would have heard it when the kid tumbled over and fell into the river. There would have been a splash, sure there would.'
Tumbling over. Falling into the river. A plunge. A splash. I looked sideways and my eyes met those of Sleigh, who was looking at me at that very moment. Neither of us had any desire to say anything.
'No, no, that's quite impossible,' a man said, 'we would have heard it. If such a boy falls into the water he splashes, doesn't he? Has anyone heard such a splash? I, for one, haven't. Besides, a boy of his age doesn't tumble into the water and disappear immediately just like that. He would shout and yell like hell. He would beat and kick around and make such a terrific noise that you could hear it a mile away. No, don't tell me he is in the river, not me.'
'Naturally, he would make an awful noise,' the pumpmaster remarked. 'I know that kid, I do. There wasn't a day in the year when he wasn't in the water swimming and splashing and making such a ro
w that you would think he owned the whole river all by himself. In the water he is like a fish, the kid is. He would have got out just like that, shoes on or no shoes on. And if he had met with some difficulty he would have hollered like the very devil himself, that's what he'd have done.'
The Garcia had listened to every word; not once had she interrupted the talk. Now, however, she felt that she had to defend her boy. 'Certainly he would have worked himself out of the river, and all alone, and he would have yelled, too, if he couldn't get out. But how could he yell? He was wearing his new shoes, so he wasn't safe on his feet. Running across the bridge fast as he could and not thinking of anything but of Manuel. And so he stumbled with his shoes against the rim. Had he been barefooted, he would have got hold somehow. But the soles were smooth and polished like a mirror. Before he even realized what was happening to him he had already tumbled over and had knocked his head against the rim or against a post. So he became unconscious instantly, and before he could come to, he was already under the water with his belly full and his windpipe choked. He never got any chance to make a noise.'
Having told her story so as to make everyone see that she was not out of her mind, the Garcia had nothing more to say. Nobody could convince her that the kid might be somewhere else. She knew he was in the river and she had to get him out. That was all she was thinking of now.
13
The men and women were by no means satisfied with the Garcia's narrative. They said she was just seeing things because she was not herself any more. Someone remembered the boys who had been sitting on the bridge and singing at about the time when Carlos was supposed to have fallen into the river. These boys declared that they had seen nothing and heard nothing, and that they were sitting at the end of the bridge on this side, facing the water and thinking only of their songs; but they were positive that the kid could not have fallen in the river without their seeing or hearing it. Of course, they added, the night was so black that they could not have seen the kid if he had been half the length of the bridge away from them. They would have paid little attention to a splash because they were fully occupied with their singing. After all, fish jumping out of the water to catch flies and mosquitoes make the same noise.