The Bridge in the Jungle Read Online Free PDF Page B

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