Bridge in the Jungle

by B. TRAVEN

  Swaying dangerously, he stares at the mother. His eyes get moist and with an energetic twist he turns around and runs away. His companion, the friend of the Garcias, wakens from his torpidity just long enough to note the teacher’s retreat and he yells after him to come back immediately and keep his promise like a real he-man and look the goddamned world bravely in the face. As the teacher does not heed his yells, he starts to swear terribly, until he is stopped by two men who slap him straight upon his hatchway, which censure astonishes him so much that he forgets what he was doing and why he was yelling.

  A few other drunks take up the call and holler to the teacher not to be a deserter of the poor and ignorant. Sober men try to quiet the unruly shouters, telling them to pardon the teacher, as they could see what a state he is in. This fails entirely, and one of the drunken callers, just to show the crowd that nobody on earth, not even that goddamned son of an old hussy—the president of the whole damned republic—can tell him what to do, he now roars like an angered bull and insults the teacher in the most filthy manner.

  Well, it is about to become a lively funeral after all.

  The sober men, seeing no other way to calm the drunks, and too decent to give them a well-deserved thrashing right here in the graveyard, go after the teacher and beg him, please, to come back and just say a few little palabras, muy pocas palabras, which will do all right, and never mind the condition he is in, because everybody understands that and all of us are human and nobody thinks himself fit to blame or reproach his fellow men.

  The teacher cannot answer audibly. He only jabbers incoherently. Turning around, he struggles clumsily to free himself from those who want to bring him back. While still struggling, he suddenly sees the weeping mother, who silently and tearfully looks straight into his eyes. He immediately stops his struggle and stares at the mother as if he were awakening from a dream. Perhaps just because his brain is befogged, he detects something in the stare of the mother which others cannot see. For a few seconds he stands still as if listening to something which speaks to him from the inside, while his eyes are firmly fixed upon the mother’s face. Then he goes slowly to the grave.

  Once more he stands in front of the hole, his body swaying in every direction. Both his arms gesticulate for a while before he opens his lips. Still holding the twig in his right hand, he looks savagely around as if he were going to fight an invisible enemy who is defending himself with a sword. His dull and glassy eyes gaze into emptiness. The hundred or more faces before him must surely be making a horrible impression upon his numb mind. He apparently sees in this lake of faces a monster creeping towards him, because his features are distorted with terror.

  It cannot be stage fright, for I have heard him speak on a national holiday, and from that occasion I know that he is a fairly good orator who is not afraid of speaking before a crowd.

  And now all of a sudden he throws both his arms up, opens his mouth, and then closes it almost automatically. This he does several times. It seems he thinks that he is speaking, yet not one word can be heard.

  Now he shouts with great force: “We all assembled here are very sad. Very, very sad indeed, that’s what we are, all of us who are gathered here, God and men know why and what for.”

  These words he shouts so loudly that if there were six thousand people present, all scattered over a wide plain, they could be heard by everybody.

  Again he yells, and this time as if speaking to twenty thousand: “The little boy is dead. He is completely dead. I am sure of that. We’ll never see him again. We shall never, as long as this world may exist, never more hear his innocent and happy laughter.”

  Tears swell in his eyes.

  All this was nothing. He now lifts his voice as if he had a good mind to split open the skies: “The mother of that little boy of ours is very sad too. Yes, you folks, believe me, she is very sad, because she is the mother and she no longer has her baby with her to play with.”

  He looks over all the people without seeing one in particular and he yells: “I tell you, folks, the mother is grief-stricken. She weeps. You can see that for yourself. She has been weeping all through this terrible night, the mother has, and you people, you have to believe me.” While thus shouting, he grasps his twig firmly and whips it through the air with all his might as if he meant to slay anyone who dared doubt that the mother is very sad and that she weeps for her baby.

  That stroke at his invisible enemy, whom he apparently considers the mother’s enemy also, was well meant and it surely was an honest stroke. But it was too much for his wavering body. He tumbles over, straight into the hole in front of him. He does not quite reach the bottom, though, thanks to the two poles laid across the hole on which the coffin should be standing. Fortunately for him, it had not yet been put there. Owing to the long fight to get the teacher back to the grave, this part of the ceremony had been overlooked and the box is still on the opposite edge of the hole.

  The teacher had grasped one of these poles and now is hanging from it helplessly. With his legs he struggles ridiculously to reach the edge and climb out. His fight proves vain, and if at this precious moment brotherly assistance had not come to his rescue, he would have fallen down to the bottom, from which he could never have got out until the next morning.

  And now a very strange thing happens.

  The fall of the respectable teacher, his pitiful and clumsy struggle to get out again, his hanging on that pole like an old, lame monkey—all happening at such a moment—makes the funniest show I can imagine. But not a single person, man, woman, girl, or boy, laughs at the teacher. I, for one, usually have great difficulty keeping from laughing. It has happened to me more than once, that I have had to leave a church quickly to avoid a scandal, because practically every minister, with his pretended dignity and his silly sermons, makes me giggle and after a while break out into open laughter. I cannot help it that I see most things in a funny way, and if I fail to see fun in supposedly sacred performances or speeches, then I can see only the irony in them. And yet here I do not laugh; even were I tickled I would not have laughed, for I can see neither fun nor irony in the situation. Instead, it makes me cry for the first time since the kid was fished out of the river. Years have passed since those twenty-two hours when the Great Bandmaster was down on earth to play the music for one of the wildest and hottest dances I have ever seen. And still to this day I cannot laugh at this apparently funny situation. No one laughed. I know today as I knew then why no man laughed. Nobody laughed; neither did I, because I was one of them, and it was my boy who was to be buried just as he was the child of everybody present. No teacher was struggling to come out of a grave into which he had fallen. I saw only a great brotherly love for his fellow men which had dropped into the grave and was struggling so hard to get out again. I can laugh at a thousand things and situations—even at the brutalities of fascism, which as I see them are but a ridiculous cowardice without limits. But I can never laugh at love shown by men for those of their fellow men in pain and sorrow. This love I witnessed was coming straight from the heart; it was honest and true as only love can be for which no one expects thanks because every one of us gathered here, not excluding the teacher, had lost a beloved baby.

  And the teacher once more stands at the grave, the twig still in his right hand. Even while he struggled he had not let go of his twig, which seems to be the staff on which he leans for his safety in a cruel world.

  He stands there looking as if all that had just happened had nothing to do with him, but had happened to somebody else whom he does not know, and he stands there as if he were waiting for the disturbance to cease so that he can go on with his speech.

  Yelling much louder than before, he says: “The father who is with us on this unlucky day is also very, very sad. Yes, my friends, believe me, the father is very sad and he weeps as does the mother. You have to believe that, folks.”

  Again his twig slashes the air. But this time he has taken better care of himself. He stays about three feet away
from the grave, far enough so that if he should trip again, he would not fall in. Besides, this time he does not whip forward. He has learned from his first mistake. This time he whips along his right side as if he were sitting on a horse. So he does not fall towards the grave, but merely whirls around a few times. Then he gets set firmly on the ground again.

  He faces the crowd. Nobody laughs.

  “The little boy had to die so soon,” he yells, and whips the air. “The good little boy had to die so very soon, and he is dead. We have all loved him very much. We have been happy when he was with us. Now he is gone. For this we feel very sorry and blame none. It had to be. He is dead. Now we will bury him. Adiós, my little boy, adiosito!”

  Would that the buzzards had taken the whole funeral somewhere else. I weep and howl like the old watchdog of a haunted castle in Scotland at midnight when visited by the ghost of an old duchess who had been changed into a rattling lamppost. I weep and howl and the whole crowd weeps and howls; the whole crowd, men, women, children, and even the crumbs of the dry soil shed tears and blubber. It is no longer the shrieking of the night. It is a mournful weeping as if it were over something which had happened centuries ago and was now recalled to mind by a well-written narrative.

  What do I care about that kid? An Indian boy whom I hardly noticed, whom I have known only for a few hours. None the less I weep over him. Perhaps he is my own boy after all, my boy as well as the boy of all the others here, my boy as well as the boy of every mother everywhere on earth. Why should he be somebody else’s boy? He is my boy, my little brother, my fellow man, who could suffer as I can, who could laugh as I can, and who could die as I shall die some day.

  36

  Two men try to lower the coffin with lassos, but the poles on which they are standing shake, wobble, and roll over and there is some difficulty getting the lassos straight.

  On seeing this confusion a man jumped into the grave.

  “Give me that box,” he says in a businesslike manner to those standing above.

  The man climbs up again.

  Mother and father are throwing handfuls of earth into the grave.

  Manuel then does the same, but he has very little soil in his hands.

  And now earth is thrown in from all sides and from every hand.

  The musicians step up to the spot where shortly before the teacher had made his speech. Surely they will now play Ave Maria or Nearer, My God, to Thee, or something like that. I am honestly afraid that they will commit such a sin. After all, they are only Christians and are supposed to do what is considered right and decent.

  God Almighty, I thank You, because I feel relieved of a pain. The musicians have excellent taste. I knew I could trust them. They know how to press the right button at the right time. They are not hypocrites and they will do nothing which does not come out of their sane hearts. True children of the jungle, they call everything by its right name and give back to nature what belongs to nature.

  And so these admirable men are playing once more the great, immortal funeral march of mankind, Taintgonna. I frankly admit that I could embrace them.

  While they are playing the song of songs with enthusiasm and fervor, youngsters are shoveling earth into the grave. Women arrange the flowers and wreaths. The mother, softly weeping, is surrounded by a crowd of women who, one after the other, embrace and kiss her while telling her how dearly loved she is by everybody. The men cover their heads, roll cigarettes, and wait patiently. No one leaves the graveyard until the mother gives permission to do so by leaving first.

  What to do now? Something should be done while everybody waits.

  The musicians, having finished their piece, are waiting too. As the pause lasts longer than they expected, they think it would be highly appreciated by all if they played another piece until the grave is covered, the flowers all placed on it, and the mother ready to leave. So they remember the other funeral march, that of about sixteen years or so back, which was produced by exactly the same brain disease as was the first.

  Well now, let me see, isn’t that the beautiful song which was invented soon after the day when soldiers home from France tried to collect on that wonderful promise: “Your country will never forget you! Others have joined, why not U! Do it now! Your country will never never—”? So help me God, how could I forget? Because it is the song all right, the song which kept in check the angry fist which was threatening to do some face-lifting on the old world. It is the song all right. It came then at the proper time as it comes now to this Indian country. Yeswehavenobananastoday. Yea, my good man, yes, I cannot give you a job today, or food, or a coat, or anything at all; but you see I can sing you a song which will fill your belly with beans of lead should you ever try to eat without having a job. Yes, of course, we have nobananas.

  Adiós, my beloved little boy! Adiós! Worms and maggots are going to live and fatten. But you, my little boy, you had to die. Adiós! No king was ever buried the way you were. Adiosito!

  About the Author

  FOR thirty-five years, from 1876 to 1911, power in Mexico was in the hands of one man, Porfirio Díaz. Mexico’s constitution had been altered to sanction his reelections, which were assured by his appointment of state governors and other officials. Opposition was controlled by a ruthless federal police called the rurales. It was a reign of peace and prosperity for the few and dire poverty for the many—half the entire rural population of Mexico was bound to debt slavery. Big landowners and foreign capital were favored as more and more Indians lost their communal lands.

  In the final decade of Diaz’s rule, however, opposition strengthened, and before his last engineered reelection he promised a return to democratic forms—which after the election he gave no signs of honoring. In 1910 revolution broke out; independent rebel armies under the leadership of Pancho Villa, Emiliano Zapata, Francisco Madero, and others upset the power of the landlords and eventually overthrew the Díaz regime.

  In what have become known as the “Jungle Novels,” B. Traven wrote during the 1930s an epic of the birth of the Mexican revolution. The six novels—Government, The Carreta, March to the Montería, Trozas, The Rebellion of the Hanged, and The General from the Jungle—describe the conditions of peonage and debt slavery under which the Indians suffered in Díaz’s time. The novels follow the spirit of rebellion that slowly spread through the labor camps and haciendas, culminating in the bloody revolt that ended Porfirio Diaz’s rule.

  In the 1920s, when B. Traven arrived in the country, peonage, although officially abolished by the new constitution of 1917, was still a general practice in many parts of Mexico. The author observed the system firsthand in Chiapas, the southernmost province, a mountainous and heavily forested region where the Jungle Novels, as well as many other of his stories, are set.

  The mysterious B. Traven (1890–1969) was born in Chicago, spent his youth in Germany as an itinerant actor and revolutionary journalist, became a seaman on tramp steamers, settled in Mexico in the early 1920s, and began recording his experiences in novels and stories.

  Ivan R. Dee is republishing eight novels and books of short stories by B. Traven, and is publishing the first translation into English of Trozas, the fourth of the Jungle Novels.

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