The Mensú · II

Autumn was coming to an end, and the sky, locked in a dry spell with five-minute squalls, finally broke down into steady bad weather whose humidity swelled the shoulders of the mensú. Podeley, free until then, felt one day such a listlessness upon reaching his log that he stopped, looking around to see what he could do. He had no heart for anything. He went back to his shed, and on the way felt a slight tingling in his back.

He knew very well what that listlessness and that shivering prickle meant. He sat down philosophically to drink mate, and half an hour later a deep, long chill ran down his back beneath his shirt.

There was nothing to be done. He lay down on the bed, shivering with cold, doubled up like a trigger beneath his poncho, while his teeth, uncontrollable, chattered for all they were worth.

The next day the attack, not expected until twilight, returned at noon, and Podeley went to the storehouse to ask for quinine. So clearly was the ague denounced in the mensú’s appearance that the clerk brought down the packages almost without looking at the sick man, who quietly tipped that terrible bitterness onto his tongue. Upon returning to the bush, he ran into the foreman.

“You too,” the latter said to him, looking at him, “and that makes four. The others don’t matter... small deal. You’re a dependable one... How’s your account?”

“There’s not much left... but I won’t be able to work...”

“Bah! Cure yourself well and it’s nothing... Until tomorrow.”

“Until tomorrow,” Podeley walked away, quickening his pace, because in his heels he had just felt a slight tingling.

The third attack began an hour later, leaving Podeley flattened in a profound lack of strength, and his gaze fixed and opaque, as if it could not reach beyond one or two meters.

The absolute rest he gave himself for three days—a specific balm for the mensú, due to its unexpectedness—did nothing but turn him into a chattering bundle huddled over a tree stump. Podeley, whose previous fever had had an honest and periodic rhythm, did not augur anything good for himself from that gallop of attacks almost without intermission. There is fever and fever. If the quinine hadn’t cut off the second attack right at the root, it was useless for him to stay up there, to die curled up in a ball at any turn of the trail. And he went down to the store again.

“You again!” the foreman greeted him. “That doesn’t look good... Didn’t you take quinine?”

“I took it... I can’t manage this fever... I can’t work. If you’ll give me my fare, I’ll pay you back as soon as I’m well...”

The foreman contemplated that ruin, and did not value the life remaining there very highly.

“How’s your account?” he asked again.

“I still owe twenty pesos... On Saturday I made a delivery... I feel very sick...”

“You know well that until your account is paid, you must stay. Down below... you can die. Cure yourself here, and you’ll settle your account right away.”

Cure oneself of a pernicious fever right where it was contracted? No, certainly; but the mensú who leaves may not return, and the foreman preferred a dead man to a distant debtor.

Podeley had never failed to fulfill anything, the only haughtiness a mensú of stature allows himself before his boss.

“I don’t care whether you’ve fulfilled things or not!” replied the foreman. “Pay your account first, and then we’ll see!”

This injustice toward him logically and swiftly created the desire for revenge. He went to settle with Cayé, whose spirit he knew well, and both decided to escape the following Sunday.

But the next day, Friday, there was unusual movement in the logging camp.

“There you have it!” shouted the foreman, running into Podeley. “Last night three escaped... Is that what you like, huh? Those ones were dependable too! Just like you! But you’ll burst here before you leave the loading dock! And watch out, you and everyone else listening! You already know!”

The decision to flee, and its dangers, for which the mensú needs all his strength, is capable of holding back something more than a pernicious fever. Sunday, moreover, had already arrived; and with false maneuvers of washing clothes, feigned guitar playing in the hut of one or another, the vigilance was able to be mocked, and Podeley and Cayé suddenly found themselves a thousand meters from the stationhouse.

As long as they didn’t feel pursued, they wouldn’t leave the trail; Podeley was walking poorly. And even so...

The peculiar resonance of the forest brought them, distant, a rough voice:

“Aim at the head! At both of them!”

And a moment later, emerging from a bend in the trail, the capataz and three laborers came running. The hunt was beginning.

Cayé cocked his revolver without stopping his advance.

“Surrender, you viper!” the capataz shouted at them.

“Let’s go into the bush,” said Podeley. “I don’t have the strength for my machete.”

“Come back or I’ll shoot!” another voice reached them.

“When they’re closer...” Cayé began. “A Winchester bullet whistled past down the trail.”

“Get in!” Cayé shouted to his companion. “And sheltering himself behind a tree, he unloaded the five shots of his revolver in that direction.”

A sharp shouting answered them, while another Winchester bullet made the tree’s bark fly off.

“Surrender or I’m going to leave you your head...!”

“Go on then!” Cayé urged Podeley. “I’m going to...”

And after another discharge, he entered the bush.

The pursuers, stopped for a moment by the explosions, rushed furiously forward, firing, blow after blow of the Winchester, at the probable route of the fugitives.

One hundred meters from the trail, and parallel to it, Cayé and Podeley moved away, doubled over to the ground to avoid the lianas. The pursuers suspected it; but since inside the bush the attacker has a hundred chances to one of being stopped by a bullet right between the eyes, the capataz contented himself with Winchester salvos and defiant howls. Besides, the shots missed today had hit a nice target Thursday night...

The danger had passed. The fugitives sat down, exhausted. Podeley wrapped himself in his poncho, and leaning against his companion’s back, suffered through two terrible hours of ague, the counter-blow of that effort.

They continued their flight, always within sight of the trail, and when night finally came, they camped. Cayé had brought chipas, and Podeley lit a fire, notwithstanding the thousand inconveniences in a land where, besides the peacocks, there are other beings that have a weakness for light, not to mention men.

The sun was very high already when the next morning they found the stream, the first and last hope of the escapees. Cayé cut twelve bamboo poles without any more meticulous choice, and Podeley, whose last strengths were dedicated to cutting the lianas, barely had time to do so before curling up to shiver.

Cayé, then, built the raft alone—ten bamboo poles tied longitudinally with lianas, with a crosswise one at each end.

Ten seconds after finishing it they embarked. And the little raft, dragged along by the drift, entered the Paraná.

The nights are excessively cool at that time, and the two mensú, with their feet in the water, spent the night freezing, side by side. The current of the Paraná, which arrived laden with immense rains, twisted the raft in the roiling of its whirlpools, and slowly loosened the liana knots.

Throughout the following day they ate two chipas, the last remaining provision, which Podeley barely tasted. The bamboo poles bored through by wood-boring grubs were sinking, and as night fell, the raft had descended to within a quarter of the water level.

On the wild river, hemmed in by the gloomy walls of forest, deserted of the most remote cry of pain, the two men, submerged up to the waist, drifted spinning upon themselves, stopping for a moment motionlessly before a whirlpool, following once more, barely supporting themselves on the nearly loose bamboo poles escaping from their feet, in a pitch-black night that their desperate eyes could not pierce.

The water was already reaching their chests when they touched land. Where? They didn’t know... a marshy grassland. But right on the shore they remained motionless, lying on their backs.

The sun was already dazzling when they awoke. The pampas-grass meadow stretched twenty yards inland, serving as a shoreline to both river and forest. Half a block to the south flowed the Paranaí stream, which they decided to ford once they had recovered their strength. But strength did not return as quickly as might have been desired, given that bamboo shoots and grubs are sluggish fortifiers. And for twenty hours the rain transformed the Paraná into white oil, and the Paranaí into a furious torrent. Everything was impossible. Podeley suddenly sat up, dripping wet, leaning on his revolver to raise himself, and took aim. He was burning with fever.

“Pass, devil!...”

Cayé saw that he could expect little from that delirium, and leaned over stealthily to reach his companion with a stick. But the other insisted:

“Get into the water! You brought me here! Ford the river!”

The livid fingers trembled on the trigger.

Cayé obeyed; he let himself be carried away by the current, and disappeared behind the pampas-grass, which he managed to reach with a terrible effort.

From there, and from behind, he watched his companion, picking up the dropped revolver; but Podeley was lying on his side again, with his knees drawn up to his chest, beneath the incessant rain. As Cayé approached, he raised his head, and without scarcely opening his eyes, blinded by the water, he murmured:

“Cayé... buddy... Very great cold...”

It rained all through the night still upon the dying man, the white, muffled rain of autumnal deluges, until at dawn Podeley remained motionless forever in his water grave.

And in that same patch of tall grass, besieged for seven days by the forest, the river, and the rain, the mensú exhausted every possible root and grub; little by little he lost his strength, until he remained seated, dying of cold and hunger, with his eyes fixed upon the Paraná.

The Sílex, which passed by there at dusk, picked up the almost dying mensú. His happiness turned to terror when he realized the following day that the steamer was heading back up the river.

“I beg of you!” he whimpered before the captain. “Do not put me ashore at Puerto X! They’re going to kill me!... I truly beg of you!...”

The Silex returned to Posadas, carrying back the mensú still drenched in nocturnal nightmares.

But ten minutes after stepping ashore, he was already drunk, with a new contract, and staggering off to buy extracts.