The Bridge in the Jungle (11 page)

All over the place people began to hustle, scattering in all directions. It was obvious they had a definite purpose in spite of the fact that they looked like ants running around aimlessly. Most of the people, however, did not know the cause of all that liveliness, because it seemed that those in the know had no time to stop and answer questions. People asked one another what was going to come out of that sudden agitation.

While no one mentioned it, everybody realized that the kid was the centre of the noise and bustle.

The two men who, a little while ago, had started fishing again were now working faster than ever. Two others joined them at this moment.

At the pump-master's choza I heard the old Indian say to the woman: 'Yes, senora, a thick candle it must be.'

'Sorry; I've only a few thin ones, but you are welcome to them,' the pump-master woman answered.

'That won't do.' The old Indian looked around and asked: 'Who might have a thick candle around here? Does anybody here have a good thick candle?'

'I don't think that anybody has that sort of candle,' the woman said; 'they are all thin ones, the same as I offered you. Of course, I know they are not of much use, since they bend over so quickly because of the heat.'

'If we could only get a good strong candle that would stand up,' the old Indian repeated, looking vaguely around as if he expected such a candle to fall out of the skies.

'Olla, wait a minute,' the pump-master woman shouted triumphantly. 'I'm sure I've got a good strong candle. It's only,' she added in a sad voice, 'it's only that this candle is a consecrated one, one specially blessed by the senor cura. I've kept it in the house since the Corpus Christi celebration in Rio Lodoso.'

'A consecrated one?' the old Indian gasped. 'A consecrated one, a real consecrated one! Woman, be thanked, that's exactly the very one I'm looking for. Now we can't fail. Bring it! Quick! Hurry! Please let me have that candle, senora!'

The pump-master woman took a lantern from the post and disappeared in her hut. The old Indian explained to the men: 'A consecrated candle is a thousand times better than any other, no matter how beautiful it may look or how costly it is. But this one, being blessed, will work in no time.'

He looked around and discovered a wooden case. It was an ordinary box in which canned milk or soap might have been shipped, but it was weather-beaten, so its exact origin could not be made out.

The old man drew the box into the light of the lantern. Carefully looking it over, he finally selected a board which he broke off. It was half an inch thick and perhaps twenty by ten in area.

He pulled out all the nails. Then he balanced it, held it up to the light, and judged its evenness, for, as he explained, all four corners had to be exactly on the same level; if the board were bent even slightly, it would be useless. After looking at it from every angle he said: 'This board will do, if any.'

The pump-master woman came out of her house holding in her hand a fairly thick candle half burned down and adorned with a little cross of gold paper. It was the sort of candle which the children of the poor carry to their first communion. The children of the rich carry thicker and longer candles, richly decorated to show the Lord and His Virgin Mother, who otherwise might not know that the parents of these children can afford to be more generous — so far as candles are concerned, for in other things it does not matter, because nobody can see it.

Having laid the board on the ground, the old man took the lantern the pump-master woman was holding and put it beside the board. With his fingernails he marked the exact centre of the board. Then he lifted it up, put the tip of his forefinger at the marked centre, turned the board upside down and balanced it on his forefinger. Satisfied with this test, he again laid the board on the ground.

He lit the candle, allowed a few drops of the hot paraffin to fall on his centre mark, placed the candle firmly on these drops, waited a minute, and then touched the candle to see whether it would stand. He worked with great patience and still greater care. From all sides and angles he looked at the candle to be sure that it was standing absolutely straight. 'If it were inclined towards one side even only slightly, success would be doubtful,' he explained while admiring his job as an artist would.

A score of men and women watched every move the old Indian made. The longer they observed what he was doing, the more they showed an expression of awe in their faces. They might lose all their fear, even all reverence towards their Catholic priests. But they could not lose their deep-rooted fear, reverence, and awe for anybody of their own race who was considered gifted with divine powers and with a knowledge of nature's secrets. If the old man had said: 'Now I need the bleeding heart of one of you,' half a dozen men and youngsters would have stepped forward to offer it. Not so much out of sheer joy or of a faint hope of becoming saints in the hereafter, but merely because they had lost their own free will and had become spellbound. None of them would offer his heart or even a hand to please a Catholic priest. Their brujos and medicine men still held immense power over their souls and minds — in most cases for their own good.

Everybody knew without asking that all of the old man's strange and mysterious manipulations had something to do with the missing kid. No one spoke. No one interrupted the old man with questions. The more patiently he worked and made his tests, the bigger became the circle of people surrounding him. But they were no longer standing close, in their neighbourly intimacy, as they did half an hour ago. The old man was growing into something which made him seem different and difficult for them to comprehend. Everybody was sure that he was trying to get in touch with the beyond on behalf of the child.

He now lifted the board from the ground. As carefully and devotedly as a priest carries the monstrance, he carried the board towards the river-bank. All the people followed as if it were a procession.

Those who were still on the bridge remained there to watch and learn what it was all about. The few who were still fishing with hook and pole also took notice and ceased working. They dropped their tools and came slowly forward.

18

An old, old Indian woman with a thousand wrinkles in her face, who was surely more than a hundred years of age, was squatting on the bridge. Like all the others, she watched the procession, but she showed little interest, let alone curiosity. She was smoking a thick cigar and puffed away with great gusto. Seeing her calm and philosophic serenity, I realized that it must be a very great thing to be a hundred years old and not an inmate of an institution for the aged, but rather the honoured and respected chief of a family or a clan.

After each puff she contemplated her cigar, apparently brooding over the sad fact that everything good on this earth must end sooner or later, even a good cigar. And a good cigar it was, no doubt, because its leaves had not been cooked, cured, toasted, perfumed, cooled, sweetened; and a shipload never coughed as long as you left it alone. From her lack of interest I conceived the idea that besides the old man she was the only one who knew what was going to happen.

I squatted Indian fashion beside her.

'Caray!' I said to her. 'That cigar of yours is a good one. It smells like paradise.'

'You're telling me, me who made it! And besides, my young man, mind your own goddamned business. Get me?'

It was too late to mind my own goddamned business. I could take it. So I went on: 'What are they doing there with that candle on the board? '

She looked at me with half — no, with almost fully closed eyes, and the wrinkles on her face trebled in number. Then, obviously satisfied with my bearing, she blew out a huge cloud of smoke, brooded over the loss of tobacco, and then said: 'If you must know, damned gringo, if you must know how we do our things without asking your advice or permission, well, they're searching for that good-for-nothing bastard of that lousy hussy — lazy bitch that she is — and if she had looked in time for her brat and what he was doing, we would not have to look for him now and call heaven and God and the devil for help. Never mind, young man, they will get him all right. Now they will get him out of the dirt and mud, now that at last they're searching the proper way, as they should have done four hours ago and not waited until he is eaten up by the crabs.'

'How do you mean, senora, searching the proper way?'

'Searching. Yes, that's what I said, searching. If that brat is in the river and nowhere else, they'll have him in a quarter of an hour, provided there is not much current.'

'How can he be in the river, senora? We have searched the river for hours and we have not found him.'

She grinned at me ironically. Her teeth were thick, large, and of a brownish-yellow colour. The gums had retreated so far that her teeth were laid bare to the roots, which made them look even longer. 'What did you say? Oh yes, you said you searched for hours. What people call searching in these days, that's what you have done and nothing better. How smart and clever you are, all you people of today! Talking of superstition and never knowing a goddamned thing about what is behind the world you see with your eyes — or you think you see while in fact you see nothing because you are blind and deaf and dumb and you can't even smell. That's the trouble you people suffer from. The way you and the others have been searching, well, my young man, you may be sure that you could search that way for seven days and you wouldn't find the brat if he didn't come up by himself. If you had waited until the morrow, there wouldn't have been much of him left to show his father, that damned drunkard, when he comes back from that useless trip which anyway he made only to get booze. Every sane person knows that the little devil is in the river and nowhere else. The trouble is, there is not one single sane person around, myself not excluded, because I am just as mad and crazy as all the others. I tell you, my young man, they are all crazy here, waiting for the music to come and none realizing that the music has been here and playing for hours already. But they are deaf and blind, that's what they are.'

'I think you are right, senora. Only you see I can't understand the meaning of that board with the candle on it. We have looked and searched with torches and huge bonfires for light. If we couldn't find him with so much light, how do they expect to find him with that little candle?'

'Borregos, yes, that's what you are, muttonheads. You and your iron hooks and poles and sticks and lanterns, which are good for a dog but not for a human. The candle alone will find him as surely as it's night now and there'll be day tomorrow. All the old man has to do is watch where the candle goes, and wherever it stops, there below is the kid.'

'How can the candle find him if we didn't?'

She puffed her cigar, blew out huge clouds, contemplated the cigar with dreamy eyes, and then scanned me all over from top to bottom to see whether I was worthy of being talked to any longer. It had all come out in bits which I had had to arrange in the right order myself to catch what she wanted to say. That was difficult because she mixed her words of the Indian idioma with her poor Spanish. But she accompanied her words with vivid facial expressions and with an occasional gesture, so it was not so hard after all to understand her. Her eyes often opened wide and then they would sparkle like those of a young woman telling her intimate girl friend of her honeymoon experiences.

All my attention was now concentrated upon the activities at the river-bank. I forgot to ask the old woman more questions, but I was aware that she was watching me, catlike, to learn what I might think of the strange performance I was witnessing. I was sure she was taking note of every move or gesture I made. No doubt I was gaining her confidence every minute. The fact is I was taking the whole rite, or whatever it was, very seriously; I would under no circumstances make fun of it or joke about it. After all, every religion is right and proselytism is always wrong.

On the bank, a score of men were again forming a circle around the old Indian. He held the board with the candle on it before him. The flame of the candle was on a level with his eyes. I think the old Indian priests of the ancient Aztecs and Toltecs must have looked as he did at that moment if one forgot his simple peasant clothes. About him there was the dignity and the aloofness of the high priest who is about to celebrate a mysterious rite. Perhaps he would evoke the gods whom he knew and recognized in his heart, for the Lord to whom he and everyone of his race prayed in church dwelled on their lips only and never reached their hearts.

From the corners of my eyes I saw that the old woman did not cease watching me. And still I had no reason to disapprove of what those men were doing. It was their business, not mine.

The old woman, guessing correctly what I was going to ask her, suddenly said: 'The kid is calling all the time. Can't you hear it?'

Perhaps I dreamed those words. Yet there they were. Rather dazedly I said: 'I am sorry, senora, I can't hear him calling. Did you say the kid is calling?'

'That's exactly what I just said. And you don't have to be sorry that you can't hear him calling. I can't hear it either, the way we hear ordinary things. No human ear can hear him calling the ordinary way. It is the light of the candle which is hearing his calls. We can only watch and see the calling, but not hear it ourselves.'

'The light of the candle? Did you say the light of the candle?' I was still not sure that I wasn't dreaming. Or perhaps I did not really understand what the old woman was saying in her corrupt Spanish mixed with Indian lingo. So I asked once more: 'Do you really mean to say the light hears the kid calling?'

'Yes, and don't make me believe you are too dumb to understand plain language. I'll tell you something else. So far no one knows if the kid is actually in the river. But if he is, and I am sure he is, then he'll call the light close to him. The light will follow his calling and it will come to him as sure as there is a God in heaven. And the light will stand by because the light has to obey his calls and it cannot do anything on its own account or of its own free will. Not in such a case.'