The speed with which Celso went on his way was not caused by his worry about the letters. He could easily have waited until the following morning. But that was exactly what he wanted to avoid.
As Don Apolinar had said, it was not likely that there would be any caravan to the monterías in the next two or even four months. But one could never tell. It might just as well happen that within the next six hours a small patache or even a caravan might arrive in town on its way to the monterías. In that case, Don Apolinar would call Celso, take back the letters and the box, give him twenty centavos for his trouble and entrust the letters and the box to an arriero of the caravan. The arriero would receive a tip of three pesos which he would consider a welcome present, since he had to go to the monterías anyway, and the letters as well as the box would not make the slightest difference to the caravan.
But once Celso had an advantage of two hours in leaving town, Don Apolinar might send the fastest horse after him but it would not be able to catch up with him. Don Apolinar could not send his horseman too far, because that would be expensive. Celso wanted badly to go to the monterías and earn a handsome sum on top of it.
He hurried to get out of town. Nobody knew for certain whether or not he would take the way which Don Apolinar had outlined for him. Along that route a horseman sent after him would discover him soon enough. So Celso took a trail of his own. He had to get safely to the last settlement at the edge of the jungle, to follow from there the only open trail to the monterías. But which way he got to that settlement was his own affair. After all, he was perfectly capable of getting to the settlement without Don Apolinar’s penciled sketch.
But no caravan of Syrian or Lebanese peddlers arrived in Jovel on its way to the monterías. And so no mounted messenger was sent after Celso to call him back.
The nearer Celso came to the jungle, the more he realized the difficulties and dangers awaiting him. Because this jungle was quite different from the jungles where he had planted coffee and cleaned weeds from around the coffee trees. Those had been cultivated jungles, with clear and cleaned paths.
When Don Apolinar had talked about the jungle, Celso had thought of the cultivated jungles in the cafetales. He imagined the great jungle as having a slightly thicker overgrowth and greater distances from one established finca to the next, but he still retained the idea that other human faces, voices and actions would be within easy reach.
Yet along his march to the last settlement he had met Indians who knew “la selva grande” and several of them had made the trip to one or another of the various monterías. While passing the night in the huts of Indian peasants, he heard from experienced men all sort of details about the march through the big jungle.
Everyone told him: “You can’t make that march alone. Nobody can make it alone. That’s the reason why the monterías are so sure of their workers, once they are there.” And every other advisor set forth different reasons why a single individual, even though an Indian, could not make the trip by himself. People who seemed to have his good in mind warned him very seriously against undertaking the march, because it was certain that he would perish in the jungle and his body, perhaps still partly alive, would be eaten by wild beasts, buzzards and ferocious ants.
He had accepted the commission to deliver the letters and the little box to the montería Agua Azul. But to nobody, not even to his own tribesmen whom he met, did he mention the letters. He never spoke of anything but the box with medicine which he had to take to the monterías for the sick people there. He knew nobody would ever steal medicine. If the sick people died because of lack of medicine they would surely, in the form of evil spirits, make life in this world hellishly disagreeable for the thief.
All along the way the people whom he consulted told him the most terrifying stories about the jungle. These people, however, had never been in the jungle themselves; they had not even approached the thicket at the outer edges. All of them recounted merely what others had seen or lived through.
But the various stories related to Celso all contributed, without exception, to inspire in him a terrific fear of the vast jungle. Nobody of course had any definite intention of making Celso desist from his task. Nobody really cared whether Celso perished in the jungle or not. The narrations were made mostly to enjoy the changing expressions of an interested listener, to pass the time away and to get excited over one’s own story. Ghost stories, tales of spooks, are not told at night to make someone desist from crossing the cemetery if that is his road home. They are told to spend a pleasant evening by watching with delight the terror-stricken faces of one’s audience.
Now a march through the jungle is by no means a holiday hike. The facts came very close to the terrifying narrations of its terrors. Most people with whom Celso came in touch on the road, or in whose huts he spent the nights, were Indians and they were not in the habit of highly exaggerating certain tasks which, in themselves, were natural and which had to be done anyway. Some admitted it might be possible to make the trip alone, but that the difficulties were so considerable and the chances of getting through so slim that it would be far more prudent not to attempt the trip unaccompanied.
Filled up to his scalp with stories, opinions and good advice, Celso arrived at the last settlement. During the second half of the last day he had already been able to obtain an impression of what awaited him. The settlement was located about half a day’s march into the jungle, and this part of the road marked a transition from one type of landscape to another. Here and there one saw enough jungle to indicate what the genuine jungle would be like. During the last half day’s trip, Celso had not met a single human being, but now and then he had found the footprints of several very large tigers, and on a stout branch of a tree he had seen a large wildcat.
Shortly before noon, he passed through the last hamlet on his march. It was a hamlet composed of only five huts and one adobe house. Right in back of the hamlet Celso waded across a wide river, the water of which reached no higher than a few inches above his knees.
On the opposite side of the river the jungle came into sight. At the beginning it was open and clear, like overgrown land that had been cultivated some fifty years ago and then abandoned. Slowly but definitely noticeably, it grew ever thicker, darker, more imposing and more menacing the farther Celso advanced.
He loped along at the typical light trot of the Indians, expecting to arrive at the last settlement before nightfall. Just before coming near the settlement, when he could already hear the dogs barking, he had to wade across another river, somewhat narrower but rather deep in the middle, so that, feeling with his feet and his stick, he could sound his way through without swimming. That this river was the abode of a considerable herd of alligators was not known to him since nobody had told him. And since he knew nothing about the alligators infesting this river he waded fearlessly through. Quite obviously the alligators were entertained at the moment by something more important farther down or up the river and therefore paid no attention to Celso.
When Celso finally arrived at the settlement, he told the mayordomo in charge of the place: “This afternoon I got a fair impression of the jungle; an ugly, horrible trip.”
The mayordomo crossed his legs, looked at Celso, rolled himself a cigarette into a maize leaf and remarked casually: “This afternoon? Why certainly, you got yourself a fair idea of the jungle, quite so. Only the truth is that where you have been marching through, that’s no jungle, that’s our recreational park, where we take a walk on Sunday afternoons to stretch our legs. Two days march from here, there one meets a region where I usually say: now, this is where the world starts to be a bit closed in and not quite open to look through. But, my boy, don’t get frightened. You see, generally tigers don’t attack during the day, because that’s when they take their nap. They are seriously interested in a good-looking boy like you only when you toss around in your sleep. But I know quite a lot of people who’ve never been bothered by a tiger. Of course I have to admit that all the others had no chance to tell their stories.”
He licked his cigarette, lit it, and then went on. “I don’t know anything of you, Chamula, but should you ever happen through here again, then perhaps you’ll tell me how you got along with the tigers or how the tigers got along with you. And then if we have an opportunity to chat in a friendly way, I’ll count you among the people who have not been bothered by tigers.”
Recreational park for Sunday afternoons! It was now almost dark. Celso took a look around him. Barely thirty paces back of the mayordomo’s primitive hut, the jungle lifted its steep wall of trees which covered the sky to such a height that if he wanted to look at the stars, he had to twist his head back at almost right angles to his neck. It was dark and tightly closed, inaccessible, apparently with no opening.
“What will you need for the road, Chamula?” asked the mayordomo. “I have some hard toasted tortillas, a special kind that will not become specky or moldy. You can’t use any others. I also have rice, beans, raw sugar, freshly ground coffee and limes. I can also let you have fresh pozol. But only if you order it half a day in advance, so that it is fresh and won’t get sour and moldy so quickly. And if you roll your own cigarettes I have sufficient fresh tobacco leaves, which are better and cheaper than wrapping paper, which I don’t have anyway. Of course, I can let you have some cigarette paper. But I noticed that you smoke cigars and roll your own, so you don’t need paper. Anyway, it will be better for you to spend tomorrow here and wait. We’ll knead you some extra good pozol. You’re in no hurry, are you? In this place it is like that; he who has to go through the jungle must not be in a hurry. It won’t do him any good. Especially not if he finds himself in the middle of the grand selva insufficiently prepared. Take your time. The jungle won’t run away, and the bridges won’t be carried away, because there aren’t any.”
The mayordomo got to his feet and went into the hut, where he tried to get the smoke-soiled lantern to function properly. Night had closed in completely.
In the yard in front of the hut a sleepy fire was burning, spreading some light, enough to see as far as the picket fence around the yard.
Celso was sitting on a beam on the ground. The beam was the trunk of a tree with the bark partly peeled off. Nobody had taken pains to peel it off properly. In many places, the beam showed deep scars. These cuts had been made by people standing or sitting around with nothing else to do but play with their machetes.
“Take your time, you’re in no hurry.” This remark of the mayordomo came back to Celso now in the darkness of night. To him it sounded more like a warning and at the same time like a possible solution to his problems.
During the last two days he had been more and more influenced by the many stories he had heard and he had begun to look at his jungle march from an entirely different point of view. He had ceased to think of the two-peso reward for extra speed in delivering the letters. He busied his mind in searching for a solution by which his task might turn out less dangerous to him.
The instinct of self-preservation would not allow him to gamble recklessly with his life. He knew that he had only one life; and he felt it his duty not to risk this one life for papers and a few silver pesos reward.
He argued with himself thus: “I undertook to deliver the letters and the box, but if I perish in the jungle the letters will be lost, together with the box, and I can deliver to Don Eduardo neither the letters nor the medicines. Now, to be able to deliver the letters safely, I must protect my life. The surest way to protect it is not to march through the jungle alone but to wait instead for someone going the same way.”
Consequently the strongest support of his reasoning was the mayordomo’s remark: “Take your time, boy. Don’t be in a hurry. Wait here.”
When the mayordomo finally appeared with the smoking lantern, Celso was in a state of mind as calm as if he had to march only the well-known road from his native village to Jovel.
He scratched his bare feet, pulled out a thorn or two, examined his toes in search of niguas, those terrible sand fleas, tearing a dozen ticks, called garrapatas, out of his skin and rubbing the mosquito bites with a piece of camphor. All this he did with the philosophical calmness of the wandering Indian who won’t have to march on the following day but is going to put in a rest day instead.
Once finished all these hygienic tasks, he took a jícara from his pack and asked the mayordomo where he could get some water.
The mayodomo was swinging lazily in a homemade hammock suspended from two beams of the porch, passing the time until supper was ready.
With a toe peeping out of his burst boot he pointed in a certain direction and said: “Right over there you’ll find a brook-pure, clear, healthy and almost ice-cold water.”
Celso disappeared into the darkness. He washed his hands, threw water in his face, drank out of his gourd, filled it again to the brim and went back to the long trunk where he settled down once more.
He withdrew a few paces from the porch, so as to put a greater distance between himself and the table set up on the porch, where the mayordomo would have his evening meal. Pulling his pack close to him Celso commenced to fumble in it.
Out of its depths he fished some rolled-up tortillas which were about to grow moldy. He produced some black-reddish dried meat that looked like fresh leather, then a fistful of black beans, cooked to the consistency of a mash and wrapped up in fresh banana leaves. That was followed by coarse-grain salt, carried in a dry corn leaf held together by a thin fiber string. A few green chile pods and a handful of green leaves were added to give his meal its accustomed taste.
He piled all that on a small mat of woven fiber, then stood up and stepped to the fire in the yard. The fire was always, day and night, at the disposal of the traveler, be he an Indian or a ladino, unless the host needed it temporarily for himself.
Celso pushed the embers around, put on some more wood, and yard and hut immediately lit up. Against this sudden lighting, the black wall of the jungle looked all the more threatening.
Leaning the tortillas against the fire, Celso turned them, blew off the ashes and turned them over again. When they commenced to get crisp, he laid them upon hot embers pulled from the fire to keep them warm.
On a pointed stick he speared the dried meat and placed the stick on two forked branches driven into the ground. The beans he left in their banana leaf, but he placed the leaf also on the hot embers next to the tortillas.
The meat began to roast and he spread his entire meal on the little mat, which was placed near the fire. Now he turned the meat over a few times, took it off the stick and started eating.
Taking up a pinch of salt, he shoved it directly into his mouth. He ate his meat and the beans by tearing off a piece of tortilla, picking up the meat or the beans as though the piece of tortilla was a sort of little napkin, rapidly rolling the piece of tortilla into the form of a small cone and pushing this cone, filled with meat or beans, into his mouth.
Now and then he took a drink of water from the gourd which he had filled at the brook. He ate unbelievably slowly. Like all tired workers, he considered the meal part of his rest from hard work.
While he was still eating, an Indian maid began laying the table on the porch. Once the dishes, plates and tin cups had been set on the rough, shaky and unplaned mahogany table, the mayordomo’s wife made her appearance. Fat and clumsy, she waddled like a duck. She was barefoot and on her body hung a long thin cotton skirt that touched the ground. It showed signs of considerable wear, as did the threadbare cotton blouse, half open at her breast.
As soon as the woman appeared on the porch, Celso got up from the fire, approached her, bowed and said: “Buenas noches, patrona.” The woman replied lazily to his greeting with a short nod and, just to say something, asked: “Where you from, Chamula?” But when the youth answered she no longer listened, because it was a matter of complete indifference to her where the muchacho lived. She sat down on a very low, small stool. There were only two chairs. But the low stool seemed to appear more comfortable to the woman than any ordinary chair. And since she sat so low that her eyes just looked over the table, she took the plate into her lap.
When the woman started to eat, the mayordomo let out a loud and sonorous yawn, wriggled in his hammock, then got up, groaning as if, after a good long sleep, he had to undertake some disagreeable task.
Knives and forks were absent from the mayordomo’s table. There were only a few spoons which, ages ago, might have looked like imitation silver, but which by now had been scraped and sanded so much that the leaden-looking tin was all that remained visible. The mayordomo’s wife ate with her fingers, just as Celso did. She tore off a piece of hot tortilla, picking up the meat or the beans or the chile or the rice, doubled the little rag like a napkin over the food and shoved the whole package into her mouth.
The mayordomo would have loved to eat in the same way. But since he felt that, as a mayordomo, it was his duty to be different from all other mortals and command their respect, he used his pocket knife, picking up the food with it and lancing it into his wide-open mouth. Occasionally he used a spoon, but whenever he thought himself unobserved, and even his wife was not watching, he ate in exactly the same fashion as Celso.
The servant girls farther back, somewhere in the dark, were sitting on their haunches around a glowing fire on the ground. They could not be seen, but their talk and giggling could be heard. When they got too loud, the woman shouted at them: “Damn you, you bitches, shut up or I’ll club you on the head. Let’s eat in peace.”
For a while the girls would be scared and keep quiet. But after a short while they would start to giggle again until finally the woman took whatever she had at hand and threw it at them with a juicy oath.
When the girls started to take away the dented coffeepot, the mayordomo shouted: “Ven, Chamula, have some coffee.”
Celso approached the table with his now empty gourd and the mayordomo poured the entire remains of the coffee into the gourd. “Gracias, patroncito,” Celso said and went back to his fire, carefully balancing the gourd which was filled to the brim.
The coffee was black but it had been boiled together with brown crude sugar.
The woman got up from her stool. It demanded a tremendous effort on her part to rise to her feet. First she leaned over in front so that her nose practically touched her knees, then swung back rapidly, using this momentum to get up.
The mayordomo went back to his hammock and began to swing. He let his legs hang down on the sides of the hammock, his folded hands back of his head serving him as a cushion, and noisily sucked his teeth. Whenever he thought fit to help his digestion, he grunted and belched with satisfaction. Whether it was just out of pure well-being or out of a physical necessity, or just to tell his wife in this way that she was a good cook, was hard to tell. One might not be greatly mistaken if one assumed that he did so because he felt at home where he was the mighty sovereign who did not have to worry about pleasing anybody.