Bridge in the Jungle

by B. TRAVEN

We had arrived at Sleigh’s hut. In one corner of the large room, the only room the hut possessed, the girl had arranged her bedding on the earthen floor. It consisted of a petate, a sort of bast mat. An old blanket full of holes—her cover—lay on the mat. Over this simple bed a mosquito bar was hung.

  Hardly had we entered when Sleigh again left to see if the missing cow had come home.

  The girl, not minding my presence at all, squatted on the floor, pulled down her dress almost to her hips, and let her baby drink. As soon as the baby was satisfied, she pulled her dress up again and, holding her baby in one arm, crawled beneath the mosquito bar. From the movement of the netting I judged that she was undressing. Then I heard her stretch out her limbs while she uttered a long sigh, by which she obviously meant: “Well, folks, I think I deserve my rest, so leave me alone.” The fact was that the work she had done during the day had been so easy that a child could have accomplished it. To her it meant nothing whether the world outside her mosquito bar was heading for a gay night with music and dancing or for a tragedy. She had her baby, her eats, and a dry place to sleep in. That was all she wanted on earth.

  5

  It was dreary in the hut. The little lamp—a tin container filled with kerosene, with a strip of wool stuck in it for a wick—smoked and gave only a spark of light, which made this gloomy, primitive room seem ghostly—a place that gave you no hint that there was civilization somewhere in the world. Any minute I expected to see phantoms of dead Indians and strange animals appear. Everywhere in the hut there were little shadows dancing about, as the smoking flame fluttered in the soft breeze that came in through the walls. I thought I saw big spiders, tarantulas, and huge black scorpions crawling along the wooden rafters on which the palm roof rested.

  Frequently the flame got so low that through the walls I could see the flicker of lights in the near-by jacales. The knowledge that there were other huts inhabited by people close by did not make me feel easier in the least. I did not know these people. They all were Indians and if, superstitious as they were, they thought I might bring them or their children harm, they would sneak in and kill me, then throw me into the river; and before Sleigh returned, every trace of what had happened would have been washed away.

  Beetles, moths, mosquitoes, and night butterflies bigger than my hands entered the open door. Flying around the little lamp, they deepened the ghostliness of the room rather than brought life into it.

  Now and then a gurgling or a gulping sound would come from the river, whose bank was less than twenty yards away. Not only the air around me, but also the ground seemed to be filled with a never tiring sobbing, whistling, whining, hissing, fizzing, whimpering. A burro brayed plaintively in the prairie. A few others answered him, as if they wished to encourage him against the dangers of night. Then a cow mooed. A mule came running close to the open door, chased by a real or perhaps an imagined enemy. On looking into the hut and seeing a human being sitting quietly inside, it recovered from its fear or dream or whatever it was, sniffed at the earth, then calmly walked back to the pasture.

  Now and then I heard fragments of speech and hushed voices. A shrill laugh cut the night, reached me, and vanished at the same moment. From another direction came a woman’s yell. For a second her yell hung in mid-air, then fell to the ground and was swallowed by the whining jungle. It left behind it a deeper night, a more intense gloom. A few trembling notes from a fiddle floated on the breeze. They came as if they were dancing through the night, but before they actually came close to me they were adrift again.

  And there, suddenly, like a shadow, Sleigh stands in the entrance to the hut. All I can see of this shadow is the face. His sudden, silent appearance makes me gasp. I am glad in a way that he cannot see my face at this moment.

  “Hell, I wonder if that lazy piece of a girl has left me a gulp of coffee.” His words give me back my breath. “The devil, I am thirsty.”

  The girl, that lazy piece, knows no English, but coffee she has understood and from the questioning tone in his voice she knew what Sleigh wanted.

  So from under the mosquito bar she says: “There is some left on the fire on the hearth.” Of course, she answers in Spanish.

  While Sleigh was away she had slept profoundly, as I gathered from her deep, quiet breathing. Nevertheless, with the excellent hearing of an Indian, she had been aware of Sleigh’s coming, while I, fully awake and facing the entrance, had heard nothing.

  “De veras?” Sleigh says. “That’s almost as good as a diamond found on the prairie.” In a tired manner he goes to the back of the hut where the enameled pot full of coffee had been left on the smoldering ashes of the hearth.

  “How about you, Gales? Have ’nother cup of coffee?”

  “No. Thanks just the same.”

  The girl snores already. As quickly as she had come out of her dreams, so quickly had she returned to them.

  Sleigh sat before me. After a time during which he seemed to doze he said: “Damn the whole outfit. I can’t find that devil of a cow. Not for a thousand dollars could I bring her home. She has got her calf here in the corral, that damn devil has. Every evening she comes home all right without any trouble. Also at mid-day when it gets too hot and the cattle are plagued by horseflies, she comes in with all the others to lie down under the trees. I’m plumb sure we’ve got a lion around. Maybe even a couple of lions. Perez, one of the neighbors, he has a fine goat, a milker, she hasn’t come home for days. He too is sure we’ve got lions. The fact is that goat will never come home again. It’s gone for good. The cow has always been very punctual, almost like a clock. Something is queer about the whole damn machinery, that’s what I tell you. Well, we’ll see tomorrow. Now, in such pitch-dark night, I can do nothing about it, not a thing.”

  A minute later he’s asleep. In spite of his being asleep he nods, frowns, murmurs, smiles at what I say, just as if he were awake.

  “Hi, you!” I shout suddenly. “Listen, you, if you wish to sleep, all right, then, sleep, only don’t let me talk here to the walls.”

  “Asleep? Who is asleep? I asleep?” he yells as if I had insulted him. “I’m never asleep. I don’t sleep at all. That’s just the trouble here. I haven’t got no time to sleep. I’ve heard every word you said. That thief Barreiro you are talking about. Gee, I’ve known him for years. Didn’t I know him when I was on that cocoa plantation down near Coacoyular? He’s a thief all right, and a killer too, if you ask me.”

  “What’s the matter with that dance?” I ask him. “The whole day long we’ve heard nothing else but the dance tonight. Is there a dance or is there? If not, well, I’ll turn in. I’m sick of that babble about a dance which never happens.”

  “All right, all right, don’t get upset about that dance. Here we take our time and don’t hustle. Let’s go once more to the pump and see how things are. I’m sure the pump-master has got the problem solved. He doesn’t want to be stuck with his beer and his soda.”

  Without hurrying, Sleigh pulled down his leather pants, looked around until he found a broken comb, combed his hair as butchers and saloon-keepers used to wear it twenty-five years ago, put on a pair of yellow cotton pants, and then said: “Well, I’m all set now for the dance. Let’s go. If I only had the faintest idea where that damned cow might be!”

  When we passed Garcia’s home I noticed that the lantern was still hanging on the post in the portico. Garcia, though, was no longer sitting on the bench. Nor did I see the two boys. Through the wall I got a peep at Garcia’s wife, making up by the dim light of a lamp like Sleigh’s.

  “Well, well!” I said to him. “There will be a dance all right. The señora is putting on her very best for the great event.”

  6

  The night is thick with blackness. None of the stars that are so bright in the tropics is visible.

  At the river-bank we have to feel our way to the bridge. From the opposite bank the pump-master’s lantern gave us a vague indication of our way. After some groping, more with our feet than with our hand
s, we finally hit the heavy planks.

  “Christ!” I suddenly yelled. “That surely was a narrow escape from a bath in the river. Seems to me, one has to be as careful here as if walking a tightrope. Only an inch to the left and I would have toppled off that damn bridge.”

  Sleigh showed no excitement about my adventure. He only grumbled passionlessly: “Yes and God knows you have to be extremely careful at night trying to make the bridge. If you’re drunk you have no chance. There is no rail you know.”

  “How deep do you think the river might be here near the bridge?”

  “Between eight and fifteen feet. The banks are low. On the average I should say it is eight feet deep. Right in the middle of the stream, if you want to call that lazy current a stream, it is about fifteen feet.”

  “Deep enough to disappear forever,” I said, “and even suppose you are a good swimmer, if it is as pitch dark as it is tonight, you can swim around in a circle without realizing it and never reach either bank.”

  Talking to Sleigh and thus not paying much attention to how I was walking, I had marched straight ahead, when all at once I saw right beneath the tips of my boots another light. This surprised me so much that I halted with a jerk to examine that great marvel of a light in the water. However, my surprise was shortlived, for I quickly realized that the light in the water was but the reflection of the pump-master’s lantern. My right foot had struck the rim, which was about six inches wide and six inches high—just high enough to prevent a truck from gliding off the bridge when the planks were covered by slimy mud during the rainy season. Had I walked a bit faster I would undoubtedly have lost my balance on striking the rim and I would have tumbled over and into the river.

  On reaching the end of the bridge we found several Indian youngsters sitting on the planks. They were singing Mexican songs, and also American ones translated into Spanish. Their legs dangled over the edge, swinging in time to the tunes they sang. Mostly they stayed within a range of only seven notes. Yet presently and without warning their voices jumped up two full octaves. As they could not sing notes that high, they shrilled them at the top of their voices. Anywhere else under heaven such singing would have sounded insane. But here in a warm tropical night, surrounded by a black and forever threatening jungle, noisy with thousands and thousands of voices, whispers, melodies, and tunes blended with the gentle sound of the river, their singing seemed proper and in harmony with the whole universe.

  To the left of the bridge was the pump-station. To the right was a wide, open sandy space, with very coarse grass trampled down in patches. A pack-mule caravan had arrived only ten minutes before and was now camping on this site. It consisted, as I learned later in the evening from one of the mule-drivers, of sixteen pack mules, three riding mules, and one horse. The caravan brought merchandise from the depot to villages in the jungle and in the sierra beyond the jungle. The muleteers were Indians, of course. There were three of them, who at the time we arrived were unloading the mules, while a boy of twelve was building a fire.

  The pump-master’s place looked a bit more colorful and lively than it had an hour ago. The pump-master was cleaning another lantern and when he thought it fine enough he hung it to a second post of the portico.

  The music had not arrived. Every hope that it might still come had vanished by now. In the meantime, though, many men, women, and girls had appeared.

  All the women were gaily dressed in bright-colored muslin gowns of the cheapest kind. They all wore stockings and high-heeled shoes, although on their way through the jungle they had taken off these fancy garments. None wore a hat. Yet most of them carried shawls, rebozos, or thin black veils to wrap round their heads on their way home in the cool and misty morning.

  The men were clothed as always. Many were barefooted, a few had shoes, a few wore shabby puttees, while most of them had the ordinary home-made huaraches or Indian sandals on their feet. All their children had come with them.

  Since these people had come for a dance, or at least to spend a jolly time, something had to be done.

  Garcia had found an audience at last. Sitting on one of the few improvised benches outside the portico, close to a post from which a lantern was hanging, he fiddled continuously, going from one tune to another without any noticeable intermission. Nobody danced to the music he produced. He did not mind. He seemed fully satisfied, even happy, that there were people around who could hear him play and who had to listen whether they liked it or not. No one yelled at him to stop the almost unbearable scratching and squeaking of his fiddle.

  Everybody was waiting, but no one could say what he was waiting for. It looked as though all were expecting a great musician to arrive, who would provide a motive for an assembly of so many people, for the presence of these visitors now seemed without reason or sense.

  Why, all the women had gone through really arduous pains for the occasion. They had washed themselves with perfumed soap; for hours and hours they had combed and brushed their hair; every rag they wore was clean; they had dressed themselves in the finest garb they owned, although their gauze dresses were the cheapest the Syrian peddlers carried—in spite of the fact that they cost so much that for many months the Indians would have to economize on everything. Then they had adorned their dresses and their hair with the most beautiful, the rarest flowers they could find. And then, to top it all, there had been the long, hard trip on mule or burro for five, six, eight miles through the steaming jungle, crossing swamps and wading rivers. And now all this seemed to have been in vain! It simply could not be. Everybody wanted to go home in the morning with many things to talk about for two months, it is so very lonely in those little settlements and hamlets hidden deep in the bush and jungle.

  No one blamed the pump-master. He could not help it. He had done everything in his power to get the music. Besides, it would do nobody any good to blame anybody or anything for the failure of the party. It had to be: destiny’s orders.

  7

  The married women sat around on benches, on planks, on old sleepers, on gas drums, chatting and laughing.

  The girls were giggling, watching the boys pass by, criticizing them, making fun of them, telling stories and exchanging bits of scandalous gossip about them. Now and then two or three girls would get up to stroll after some favored pair of boys, or they would pretend to pay no attention to them and walk in a different direction, knowing quite well that the chosen boys would follow them. After a while the girls would return and take their seats again. And when they sat down, other girls would arise to play the same game, the oldest in the world and the one that is still best liked, with or without motor cars and campuses, radios and night clubs.

  The children were fighting, running around, rolling on the ground, chasing one another, crying, howling, watching the muleteers in their camp. A boy who had thrown stones at the others and hurt them was called by his mother; and he received a thrashing in public. While he got his ointment he howled so much that the people around thought he was going to be butchered. No sooner was he set free than he hurried away to knock down the boys who had complained about him. This time, however, he kept out of reach of his dear mother’s voice.

  The bigger boys, those between twelve and fifteen, sat in groups, boasting of their strength and their abilities in general, and also about the size of the snakes, tigers, and lions they claimed to have met in the jungle when looking for stray goats or burros. Then they showed each other remarkable tricks—what they could do with their fingers, hands, arms, and bodies, how they could twist and contort them. Some were admired because they could turn their eyes in their sockets so that only the whites could be seen. Others told gruesome stories to the younger ones of how they had been swimming in the river and while diving had been caught by the leg by a bull alligator, and then they showed by throwing themselves on the ground and rolling about how they had freed themselves and what sort of fight they had had to go through before they found safety on the bank.

  Everybody was smoking, men, women,
children. But not the girls, because the boys say that a kiss from the tobacco-stained lips of a sweet girl is the ugliest thing in love. They smoked cigarettes made by rolling black tobacco in corn leaves. Mothers with their babies at their breasts blew tobacco smoke into the babies’ faces to protect them against the mosquitoes.

  The men lounged around in smaller groups, talking, laughing, boasting, and occasionally buying a bottle of beer for themselves and a lemonade for their womenfolk. They always had one eye on their women and daughters.

  With Sleigh, the pump-master, and an Indian who worked with the oilmen, I stood mid-way between the bridge and the pump, slightly nearer to the river than to the pump-master’s hut. I looked towards the river, but I could see neither it nor the bridge because of the blackness of the night.

  From where I stood, by turning my eyes to the left I could see the fire of the mule-drivers’ camp, where the boy at this moment was throwing coffee into the tin kettle by the fire while the men were toasting tortillas and cutting cheese and onions.

  Dim lights shimmered through the brush on the opposite bank. As the soft breeze moved the shrubs, these little flickers now appeared, now disappeared in quick succession. These were mostly lights from the huts yonder where the women were making up for the dance, but some came from the big, tropical fireflies which were everywhere about us.

  The boys sitting on the bridge at this end were still singing. Their stock of songs seemed inexhaustible, but the tunes seemed to be always the same. There were differences, though, and the Indians recognized them.

  Wherever I looked there was animation and laughter and the noise of children at play.

  8

  “I tell you, they are going to cement again, and they’ll do it next week,” Ignacio said importantly. He was the man who worked in the oil camp and was now standing with Sleigh and the pump-master and myself.