Bridge in the Jungle

by B. TRAVEN

  He eyed me as if he had not heard me well.

  “Yes, I mean the water you have in that bucket.”

  “Well, my eyes, such a question! That water? I guess it’s big enough for you to see where the water came from.”

  “You don’t mean to tell me that you get the water out of that river?” I repeated the question, spoke very clearly, because I saw him staring at me as if he doubted my sanity.

  “And what do you think? You don’t expect me or anybody here to order water in sealed beer-bottles from Kansas City or by air mail from Yosemite Valley, do you? You shouldn’t ask such a dumb question because I always believed you were a guy with some brains—sometimes, I mean, not always. Don’t misunderstand me. Look here, wise guy, when I met you the first time down at that stinking pool in the jungle where I had to stick you up to save my skin from a jungle-mad greeny, didn’t I see you lap up that stinking water as if it were ice-cold beer, or did I? That time you didn’t ask who had spit in it or what mule had let go into it only half an hour before. You drank it all right, and you were pretty happy to have found that muddy hole with some water still in it!”

  “All right, all right, you win. But now how about the water for our coffee out of that river?”

  He grinned at me. “All the water you have drunk since you came here was from the river. You don’t expect me to boil the water first or, as you would call it, deseenfaict it before we drink it? Don’t make me laugh.”

  “You know pretty well what I’m talking about. I’m not referring to the water I drank yesterday or today. I’m talking of the water in which only a few hours ago and only a hundred or a hundred and fifty yards from here that kid was drowned.”

  “And what of it? Was that kid poison or what? His mother drank the coffee we brought, didn’t she? And she liked the coffee, didn’t she? Well, she didn’t ask me that damn foolish question of yours—where I got the water for the coffee she drank! She knew what water that coffee was made of, and if she, the mother, can drink the coffee, you aren’t too good to criticize it. We’re thankful to the Lord for giving it to us and that we have water all the year round, while there are hundreds of thousands of families in this republic who have no water for months and have to leave their homes and fields in search of it, taking along all their chickens and goats and what have you.”

  Sleigh was right. He might not be interested in reading a full column in a newspaper at one sitting, but he was right. I should not have thought of that little spongy body and of the blood dripping out of his mouth, his nose, and his skull.

  After a long silence Sleigh said: “God, I say all this doesn’t interest me a damn bit. Water is water, and as long as I can drink it without getting cramps in my belly, I consider it good water and I thank God for it, if He wants me to, even on my knees. No, it isn’t that. What interests me about that water is quite another thing. What I mean is that board with the candle on it. That’s what got me shivering all over. I’m still not feeling very comfortable along my spine, frankly speaking. It’s a remarkable thing, that board and the candle on it. My woman has told me about it before. They also do it where she comes from. She belongs to another region and another sort of people or what you may call another tribe. But they do it just like here. And I tell you, man, that candle always finds the drowned.”

  “Always?”

  “Always, that’s what I say. My wife has told me that the board can even sail upstream against a very strong current if the drowned man lies in that direction.”

  “I doubt that and nobody can make me believe it.” I meant it. “No Indian can do anything more than we can do, and no Indian knows more than we. No colored man, no man of any other race, no Chinese, no Hindu, no Tibetan can perform miracles we cannot perform. That’s all nonsense. We think other races mysterious only because we don’t understand their language well enough and we don’t understand their customs and their ways of living and doing things. It’s because of this lack of understanding them that we believe them capable of performing all sorts of miracles and mysterious acts. I personally have found out that on a long march through the jungle or the bush I can stand thirst and hunger just as easy as my Indian boys, and many times even better.”

  “That may be so. Anyway, it has little if anything to do with what I’m talking about,” Sleigh said. “I’ve got my experiences too, and as far as I know, you are right in what you speak about. We’ve got more energy, or, better, more strong will—still better, we’ve got a better-trained will than the primitive. These people don’t think it worth while to have a strong will. They ask why have it if it’s only a nuisance and extra work. It’s only we, who want to exploit them, who wish to train their wills and energies so that we can enslave them easier and get better workers and force them into the trap of installment slavery so that they are never free and have to do our bidding because we’ve got the better-trained will and energy. But to come back to the point, you’ll admit that there are Indians who let themselves be bitten by a rattler half a dozen times, or let themselves be stung by scorpions or what have you, and it doesn’t do them any harm. On the other hand if a rattler bites you or the red scorpion gets you, there is a dead guy in less than twenty hours.”

  “Not every one of them is immune against such poisons. I’ve seen Indians die of snake-bites as quickly and surely as any white man.”

  “Right. That’s because not every one of them knows the proper medicine.”

  “Exactly. That’s just it. If we knew the proper medicine we would be as immune as some of them are or pretend to be. And you know that they die from calenture and other fevers and diseases in most cases quicker than a white man who just takes ordinary care of himself.”

  Sleigh nodded pensively. “Why not, I ask. Why not? They’re humans, or ain’t they? So they have to die somehow or other.” He stood up, went to the fire, stirred it up, blew at it, and pushed the pot closer to the flames.

  Having sat down again, he said: “All right, all right, if you wish to insist that no mysterious and hidden powers have worked in this particular case—I mean powers and mysteries which only the natives know about and can command—then perhaps you can explain why that board sailed to the kid and actually found him where no man had looked.”

  “I admit I don’t know. Not yet. Perhaps I can find an explanation some time later. I have to think it over. I only deny any mystery whatever behind it. It is absolutely natural, the whole thing. So far I don’t even know in which direction to go to find out the truth.”

  While vaguely thinking about where I could find an explanation of how the board was made to sail towards the body, there came to my mind another method by which a drowned man could be found, which I remembered having seen once back home in the States.

  So I said: “Look here, Sleigh, I’ll tell you that we are not so much dumber than the Indians. I remember a time, when I was a boy, that a drowned man was found in a way which at first looked very mysterious to me. Later, however, when I had time to think it over, I found the explanation. It seems a man had drowned in a lake when fishing. His canoe had turned over. The lake was searched for two days and the body could not be found. So on the third day cans filled with dynamite were let down in the lake and blown up. The body soon came to the surface. I still remember that everybody talked of supernatural powers which had been at work to give the body back to his family for a Christian burial. The minister didn’t overlook the chance to mention it in church, telling the congregation that the finding of the body was the visible result of the ardent prayers of the bereaved family and that the mighty and merciful hand of the Lord could easily be seen in that mysterious occurrence. The people explained it in a different way. They said that the lake likes to be quiet and calm, so when it is stirred up violently, it will immediately spit out the body to get back to its quiet condition. When I became older I learned the truth. Any drowned human or animal body, even a dead fish if it is big enough, will and must come to the surface sooner or later, sometimes inside of twenty
-four hours, though sometimes it may take three days. But if that body is held down by water plants or shrubs or by heavy clothing, or if it is stuck in the mud, it cannot come up. In that case if the bottom of the lake is stirred up by a bomb, the body is freed and comes up.”

  “Well,” Sleigh said, “there is no mystery about that. Anyone can see that. I could have told you so before you explained it. Dynamite will blow up anything under heaven, even huge mountains and rock, so why not a human body? Don’t tell me bedtime stories. In this case here, man, it won’t be so easy for you to explain why that board sailed to the kid as if a captain were sitting on it. And you may believe me, Gales, I’ve lived long enough among these natives—now a generation, I would say—and I’ve seen things, my God, remarkable things and strange things which no professor of any American or even Bolshevik college could ever explain, no matter how smart and learned he may say he is. I won’t tell you all the things I’ve seen here. It would be a waste of time, since you wouldn’t believe any of them, as I know you don’t believe in anything. You are one of the wise guys. Why, I’m sure you don’t even believe in ghosts. I do and I could tell you lots about them. But what’s the use with a guy like you? The mother of my woman can speak with her dead relatives. What do you say now?—It’s no use. Forget it. Want another cup of coffee? Help yourself. There’s plenty of it.”

  He was right, Sleigh was. It was no use discussing such things with him. He had been living too long with these people and so he had accepted all their beliefs. He believed anything strange he saw or heard of, the same way the Indians did. He wanted to believe them and he never tried to find any sort of natural explanation. That was why such arguments with him moved in a circle and never got beyond. The fact is I was not interested in explaining what I had seen that night. All the events were clear to me. No mystery of any sort. I was under no spell and there was no auto-suggestion. I was not even sleepy or tired. I was fully awake and my mind was fresh. Of course I had no witness. Sleigh was no witness. His criticisms, as far as he criticized anything at all, did not count when dealing with affairs in which Indians were the actors. He thought all Indians possessed mysterious powers and great knowledge of the supernatural. He believed everything they told him or that he heard from his wife. He might doubt the virginity of the Lord’s mother, but he never doubted the beliefs of the Indians.

  Perhaps it was the environment. Perhaps it was his unshakable faith. I was surprised to find myself beginning to dodge an explanation and I felt a certain comfort in not trying to think things through to the end. And why should I not have let the whole matter rest? One lives easier, happier, more in harmony with the universe, if one does not work one’s brain continually about things of which the explanations and analyses cannot make us any happier, usually not even richer, if it is riches we are after. Take life as it is. Here in the jungle, perhaps all over the world, that is the whole meaning of life. What else do you want? What else do you expect? Anything else is negation of life and it is nonsense besides. It is the nonsense out of which grow every heartache, every grief, every evil in the world.

  25

  Looking up, I saw that Sleigh had left the hut and that he had taken with him the little lamp.

  In front of me, on the creaking wicker chair that was so old and shaky that it was sheer wonder how anybody could sit on it without breaking through, sat Perez, the Indian who had fished the kid out of the water. How he had come to be sitting there so suddenly, so unexpectedly, I did not know. I must have been dreaming or asleep while trying to make the world a better place to live in happily. My first impression was that by some magic Sleigh had been changed into Perez.

  “Listen, Perez, you promised me two yellowhoods, two young ones, this morning. When do I get them?”

  “I haven’t been in the bush for some time. I won’t go next week either. No time, you know, mister.” He was sitting with his legs spread wide apart and his hands dangling down between them.

  “Why don’t you go in the bush, Señor Perez? Don’t you burn charcoal any more?”

  “Well, now see here, mister, it’s this way. The gringo that is living up there on the hill where the best trees for charcoal are to be had and where I know the finest yellowhoods you’ve ever seen in all your life are nesting, well, that goddamned gringo, may he go straight to hell, well, he says, that liar says, that I’ve stolen one of his mules. That’s a lie. It’s the biggest lie I’ve ever heard in all my life. And he says that I’m a damned bandit and a bandolero and a cabrón too and that my poor mother is a damned bitch, that’s what he says, and he calls himself an educated gringo that has gone to school. But the worst of it, I tell you, mister, is that I, poor Indian as I am, I can do nothing against him, absolutely nothing. I have to suffer it. So you see here, señor, there is no chance to get you the two yellowhoods I promised you, which would learn to speak in no time. That’s why I told you that redhoods are no good. It must be yellowhoods. But it’s a big damned lie. I am no bandit. I can swear it.”

  “I don’t think you’re a bandit, Señor Perez, and I don’t believe that you ever stole a mule.”

  “That’s the naked truth, mister. And I can see that you are an educated caballero. I can swear by the Most Holy Virgin in heaven and by the Holy Child also that I know nothing of a stolen mule. If I were a bandit, I tell you, I’d go to hell myself and of my own free will. That gringo up there, he isn’t honest. He says he has seen the tracks of my feet right beside those of his mule, which he can recognize, so he says, by the iron shoes, and he says he has seen my tracks and those of his mule right together outside the fence of his pasture and he says he has followed these tracks—I don’t know where to, because he doesn’t say. Never in all my life did I ever go where he says he has seen my huaraches beside the irons of his mule. How do I know who has stolen his mule? It’s none of my business.”

  “Well, Perez, I’ve been told that Mister Erskin has said the mule he lost is worth around two hundred and fifty pesos.”

  “Bueno, señor, right there you can see what sort of liar that gringo is. Do you know what I’ve been offered for that mule? Forty pesos I’ve been offered, and not a single red centavito more have I been paid for that mule by those miserable robbers down there in Llerra. This I swear is the truth. And then this gringo tells the world the mule is worth two hundred and fifty pesos in cold cash and en efectivo. That’s the kind of gringos we have around here, who we have to suffer humiliation from. I can only laugh, that’s the only thing I can do. And now, to make things still worse, that Americano comes along and says I’ve stolen his mule. You must admit that’s no way to treat poor inoffensive people like us, and in our own country too. But what can we do? Nothing. Just suffer. That’s what we can do.”

  While he was sitting before me and talking, I could barely see him, because all the light we now had in the hut was the fire on the hearth. And that was not much.

  Perez rose, went to the fire, and lit the cigarette he had been rolling while telling me the story of the stolen mule.

  Sleigh returned with the little tin bottle lamp and an earthen pot filled with fresh milk.

  “The cow has come home at last,” he said on entering. “The damned devil may know where that poor animal has been all night.”

  From a soiled paper bag he dug out coffee with his bare hand, which was dirty from handling the cows. Two handfuls of coffee he threw into the boiling water. The coffee foamed and ran over into the fire, which sizzled angrily. He took hold of the pot with a rag and set it down on the floor beside us.

  “You’ll get my cup in a minute,” he said to Perez.

  “That’s all right by me, don’t bother,” the Indian answered.

  “Listen, Perez, was that kid lying flat on the bottom or what was his position?” Sleigh asked.

  “No, he wasn’t exactly at the bottom. He didn’t even touch the bottom so far as I could make out. His feet and hands were stuck in water shrubs. He was, in a way, sitting in the shrubs. If you ask me, I don’t bel
ieve he would ever have come up if we hadn’t dragged him out. The plants held him like the many arms of an ugly monster.”

  “How did you know, Perez, that the kid was stuck just at that place and in no other?” I asked.

  “That was very easy to know,” he said. “There was no mystery about that. The light was standing right above him. You could see that for yourself. Anyone could have fished him out after the light had settled over him.”

  “Yes, I saw the light standing there above him. Only the question is, how did the light know he was there?”

  “Nothing simpler than that, mister. The kid was calling the light to come to him and show us the way. So the light had to obey, and it came. There is nothing strange about that. It’s quite natural. Anyone can see that.”

  Sleigh laughed right out. “Well, there you heard it with your own ears. Are you satisfied now?” He grinned at me. “Any more foolish questions now? I told you so before. It’s all quite natural. Nothing strange about it. That’s the whole mystery. In fact, there is no mystery at all. Here the Indians can’t practice any more magic than you can or me. The kid calls the light and the light has to obey orders and goes to him. Everything is as clear and bright as sunlight. That’s all natural. That’s what I told you all the time.”

  No use. So I spoke again to the man who seemed still to be the saner of the two. “Well, Perez, now what about the two young yellowhoods?”

  “I don’t go up in the bush. Besides there would be no reason for going there now. They started to sit only a few days ago. I know it. A friend who had been up there told me. Why should I crawl through that damn thorny thicket if I can’t get any. Because there are none to be had just at this time of the year. Two months later it will be easy and you can have a half-dozen if you wish.”

  He had his coffee now and was sipping it slowly like a critical connoisseur of drinks. Sleigh poured me another cup and took the rest of the pot over to the Garcia’s party.