A jungle hair-cut
It grew monotonous, but so does life under the best of conditions. Moreover, whatever gloom our surroundings created was more than offset by the German. Not that he was gay, nor, indeed, cheerful under adversity. But the genuine comedian, like an Italian Hamlet, has no inkling of his humor. Konanz was at his best when he fancied himself most tragic, putting me frequently to excruciating labor to preserve outwardly that solemn gravity that was indispensable to peace between us. He insisted on speaking “English.” This astounding tongue he had concocted by the simple rule of learning the corresponding English for each German word, and jealously retaining the German grammar and form; all this with so guttural an accent that the hearer could not distinguish “lake” from “leg.” Thus I was informed that “He put it his hat in,” and “He set him by a boat the river over.” Our snow-white pack-mule was of that affectionate nature that craves constant companionship. But the Teuton had no affection to spare, and whenever the animal chanced to stray a yard from the spot in which he had left her, he fell upon the poor brute with a bellow of rage:
“Oh, py Gott, Mr. Mool! Ven I don’t hat to lug myself der loat all to San Yozay, I rhight avay shoot her der head through. To-morrow, py Gott, I bind her der dree on, der ...”
At sunset we waded through a barred gate into the pascana, or tiny natural clearing, of Cañada Larga, the first of the four fortines. Five miserable thatched huts, some without walls and the others of open-work poles set upright, were occupied by eight boyish soldiers in faded rags of khaki and ancient cork helmets of the same color, and a slattern female belonging to the lieutenant. The latter was a haughty fellow of twenty-five, sallow with fever and gaunt from long tropical residence, a graduate of the Bolivian West Point in La Paz, and permanently in command of all the garrisons of the Monte Grande. The others were two-year conscripts between nineteen and twenty-one, assigned to the forts for a year, usually to be forgotten by the government and left there months longer.
Our official paper ordered the commander to “give us all facilities, wood and water, and to sell us food—provided there was any.” He waved a hand in a bored, tropical way, and two of the handsomest children in uniform brought us wood, and soon came lugging a huge bucket of water on a pole across their shoulders. What food could he sell us? Not a thing. Some yucas, at least? Señor, we have only half rations of rice for ourselves. But the prefect said we could depend.... The prefect, señor, has not sent us any supplies for more than a month. There was nothing left but to cook some of our own rice and charqui, and try to be thankful for even that miserable substitute for food. Its staying powers were slight. Twice during the night I ate a large plate of it cold, and spent most of the time hungry at that. Not that I got up to eat; much of the night I wandered up and down the pascana, fighting the mosquitos and a tiny gnat whose bite was out of all proportion to its size, and which the fine gauze mosquitero designed for the purpose by no means kept out, though it did effectually any breeze that stirred.
The lieutenant insisted on sending along a soldier to “protect” us from the savages. He was a girlish-looking boy of Indian features, armed with an ancient Winchester of broken butt, thick with rust inside and out. Most of the day he lagged far behind, for the sun-dried stretches of road between the swamps and mud-holes hurt even his calloused feet. We tramped unbrokenly for seven hours, the endless forest-wall close on either hand, without sighting another human being, until the jungle opened out slightly on the little pascana of Tres Cruces. The sergeant in command dragged himself out a few yards to meet us, a rifle-shot having warned him of our approach. He had four soldiers and a gnat-bitten female. They called the bucketful they brought us from a swamp, “excellent water.” It was clear, to be sure, and a decided improvement on what we had drunk from the mud-holes during the day, the swampy taste not quite overwhelming. But it was lukewarm from lying out under the sun, and had at least a hundred tadpoles swimming merrily about in it. One dipped up a cupful, picked out the tadpoles gently but firmly, and forced as much of their vacated bath as possible down the feverish throat.
The gnats of Tres Cruces quickly got wind of the arrival of fresh supplies and attacked us in battalions. The previous camp had been gnatless compared to this. Known to the natives as jejenes, they are almost invisible, yet they can bite through a woolen garment or a cloth hammock so effectively that the mosquito’s puny efforts pass unnoticed in comparison. Wherever they alight they leave a red spot the size of a mustard-seed that itches and burns for days afterward. What such a host of them had hoped to feed on, had we not unexpectedly turned up, I cannot guess; surely they were taking long chances of starvation here in the unpeopled wilderness. Under no circumstances did they give us a moment of respite. Even the soldiers, tropical born and long accustomed to them, ate their supper plate in hand, marching swiftly up and down the “parade-ground” and striking viciously at themselves with the free hand. We could not leave off fighting them long enough to lift a kettle off the fire, without a hundred instantly stinging us in as many distinct spots. In bookless Santa Cruz I had had the luck to pick up a paper edition of Nietzsche in Spanish, but even in that tongue the journey through an entire sentence was impossible. I could not write a word or speak a sentence without pausing to slap savagely at some portion of my anatomy. My notes of those days are all short and choppy. A long sentence was impossible. It seemed unbelievable so tiny a thing could bite so. The mosquitero was useless. They could bite through sheet-iron. A real dinner would have been a joy, but an hour’s relief from these incessant pests would have outdone a week of banquets. One wanted to run and dance and scream, but tired feet forbade. Much as we needed rest, we must keep walking swiftly up and down the pascana, wondering how long a man would last on charqui and rice, walking day and night. “Oh, py Gott!” cried Konanz, attempting in vain to slap himself between the shoulder-blades. “In China py der Boxer der mosquito he pinch is very much, aber here!”
Tramping doggedly back and forth in the dusk, I heard the sergeant in his hut singing and apparently happy. I raced to his door. Eureka! Necessity is the mother of invention, even among the uninventive. He was swinging swiftly back and forth in his hammock. I grasped a pack-rope and was soon rushing swiftly through the half-arc of a circle. The relief was startling. But to work incessantly with the arms was little better than tramping the pascana. If only the inventor of perpetual motion had not put his invention off so long. The relief from torture quickly made me drowsy. But if the swinging flagged for an instant, the jejenes at once brought me wide awake. Before long, too, a few hardy gnats solved the problem of catching their prey on the fly, like experienced “hoboes.” More and more learned the trick, until I gave up in despair and took once more to tramping the parade-ground; kept it up, indeed, most of the brilliant, moonlit night.
In the morning I found that ants had eaten into decorative fringes the edges of my leather leggings. Vampire bats had smeared our white mule with her own blood. For a long time I could not make the German understand what had happened to the animal, until I dug up out of the depths of memory the word “Fledermaus.” To watch him pack was always amusing—also a torture. He had learned to do everything in the German style of systematized routine, in which the longest way round is always the shortest way between two points; and he knew nothing of “efficiency,” of that dovetailing of work in such a way as to hasten the process. Instead of lighting a fire first and having his breakfast ready by the time he was dressed, he must be entirely garbed before touching a stick or a pot; and so on clear through the loading. However often he made up the pack, each detail must be laboriously thought out again, and as he could never think of more than one thing at a time, the operation was endless. Bring him what he needed to load next, and he stared stony-eyed at me, as if wondering why I was trying to disturb his meditations. Though we rose at dawn, we were fortunate to be off before the sun had surmounted the jungle tree-tops.