The Bridge in the Jungle by B. Traven Read Free Book Online Page A

achieved. Her lips were painted a shade less than dark red. While many of the other women powdered their faces startlingly white, this woman had used ochre-coloured powder. But like all the others she carried with her the heavy odour of the strongly perfumed soap bought from Syrian peddlers.
    'Have you seen Carlosito?' She asked the question lightly, unconcernedly, as though she were not in the least interested in our answer and was asking it only to say something friendly. 'He hasn't had his supper yet. He is too much excited because of Manuel's being here for the week-end. The kid forgets eating and everything.' She laughed loud when she recalled the boy's fervour and she tried to imitate the way he acted. She waved both her arms through the air, and her feet were tripping and dancing on the ground. 'Buenas noches, mamasita!' and 'Adiosito, mamasita!' and 'Cômo estas, mamasita linda, cielito?' and 'I've got to run after my hermanitito Manuelito!' ... 'So he comes, so he goes, so he runs hither and thither, not for one minute remaining quietly in the same place. Off like the wind. I can't catch him and I can't grasp him. Well, that's the way kids are. Only he ought to have his supper, but he won't die if he skips it, will he?' She laughed not only with her face but with her whole body. 'A happy mother if there is any,' I said to myself.
    The pump-master yawned, openly bored by the woman's fuss about her brat. He said: 'He wasn't around here. I've not seen him since late in the afternoon when he came over to the wife to buy one centavito's worth of green chile.'
    'Yes, that's right. I sent him over to get chile. That was long ago. He has been in the house since then twenty times or more. I'll catch him, never mind.'
    Sleigh looked around as uninterestedly as the pump-master did when he said: 'I reckon he was here chasing other boys. Perhaps he wasn't. Well, the fact is I haven't noticed him, what with so many brats about.'
    'Never mind, caballeros, never mind at all. It isn't very important anyhow. When he's hungry he'll come home all right. He knows where he finds his beans ready waiting for him. It was only to say something. Forget it, caballeros.'
    The woman leaves us with a happy smile on her face.
    A man walked slowly up to us, greeted us, and started to talk about the new boiler that had been promised the pumpmaster two years ago and which had not come yet and would probably not come for another two years.
    Gazing after that pretty woman, I noticed that she was going to Manuel, whom she spotted standing with his girl a short distance away from us. He listened to her and I saw him shake his head. Paying no further attention to the casual interruption, he talked again to his girl, whose happiness over having him for her companion did not diminish.
    Without asking Sleigh, I now knew that this young pretty woman was the Garcia woman, the mother of the little Carlos and the stepmother of Manuel, who was only three or four years younger than she.
    She walked over to the portico where her man was still sitting on the bench. He was not playing his fiddle at this moment, but was rolling himself a cigarette. He listened to her unimportant question with the mien of a man who has to listen to the same question a hundred times every day. While wetting his cigarette he shook his head, as if to say: 'Don't bother me about that kid now, I've got other things to worry about at present.'
    For a minute the woman stood outside the portico, under one of the lanterns. She was obviously undecided what to do or where to go next. From the stillness of her body I judged that she was brooding over something, no doubt recollecting where and when she had seen the kid last, what he was saying or doing or telling her as to where he meant to go.
    Now she slowly moved on, mixed with the crowd, looked this way and that, fixed her eyes on the boys of the age of Carlosito.
    The farther away from the weak light of the two lanterns the men and women were,