The Bridge in the Jungle (4 page)

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 senora 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 hands, 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 place, 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 colourful 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-coloured 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 themselves in the finest garb they owned, although their gauze dresses were the cheapest the Syrian peddlers carried — in spite of the fact thaat 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 favoured 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. 'How deep are you down now? ' Sleigh asked. 'About twelve hundred feet, I think.'

At that depth there is no reason why they should cement the hole.' The pump-master, who in fact knew nothing about oil, wished to impress us with his wisdom. He had picked up a few phrases which he had heard from oilmen passing by, so he went on bravely: 'Why should they cement at twelve hundred? There are holes where they drill down to four thousand feet.'

'You're telling me,' Ignacio said, with the firmness of an old expert. He had been working with the oilmen only about three months and his principal job had been carrying iron pipes on his shoulders. 'But, believe it or not, they are going to cement Monday or Tuesday. On that I'll bet any of you guys.'

Garcia was still scratching his fiddle, but nobody paid any attention to his plaintive invitation to dance.

The singing of the boys on the bridge was getting thin, as if some voices had fallen out or as if all of them had at last become tired.

And at that moment something strange happened. I had the feeling that the air was invaded by a mysterious power which hovered over us like a huge winged beast. A kind of lethargy overcame the crowd. People began to yawn. And, as if by command, everyone suddenly stopped talking and laughing. There was a sense of tiredness and depression about us.

'You'll never make me understand why they should cement at twelve hundred feet.' The pump-master brought up the question once more. To me it seemed that now he was not at all interested in what the oilmen were doing here or anywhere else in the world and that he was talking only to break that strange silence which was spreading around us.

None in our group accepted the pump-master's invitation to talk. The air was heavy, burdened as it is just before the break of a thunderstorm.