CHAPTER XXIII—I RESUME THE NARRATIVE. THE PORTATE ULTIMATUM
THE city of Portate, on the west coast of South America, when I knew it, had already a distinct flavour of enterprise. Two Northern companies had much to do with its affairs. One of them, The Union Electric, had the trolleys and the street lighting; the other had been longer on the ground, was called The Transport Company, and owned the inland railroad and the principal line of steamers in the harbour. I had charge of The Union Electric plant. Both were large companies operating in numerous South-American cities.
There is a river called the Jiron, which runs down from the mountains, and makes a green strip through a desert land, and so on through Portate to the sea. Even from the sea you can make out the white caps of the Andes; but in the heats of Portate, you decline to believe that the white is snow.
Portate is the seaport of the country. There is a telegraph line running inland to the capital. The monkeys do gymnastics on the wires, and the natives steal sections of it to tie their roofs on with, on the theory that the thing is plain foolishness, and the enterprise of fools is the profit of the wise. Then you go around and lam the native and take the wire, but he stays by his own opinion, and the Government wants to know what you mean by allowing official messages to be interrupted; for, they say, monkeys and roofs are not in the contract, and call it improper frivolity to mention them: “Why tie on roofs with official messages? Why improperly submit important business to the gymnastics of creatures without intelligence?”—till you come out of it by swearing yourself blood relation to all the monkeys on the Jiron, which seems as satisfactory as anything, being put down to the inherited madness of the Northerner. There are several varieties of monkeys on the Jiron.
In the city of Portate there are wharves, which float off to sea in freshets, and have to be pursued and brought back in disgrace. The trolley line goes from the wharves to the Plaza, and then visiting about town. The telephones and electric lights are the pride of the enlightened, but the unenlightened think they are run by connection with that pit of the sinful about which Padre Rafael is an authority.
“For, observe! It is not as wood that it burns. Madré de Dios, no! It is the wrath of the devil on the end of a stick.”
The Union Electric had the contract for the whole outfit of the lights and trolleys, and sent me down to handle it. I had good nerve then. I thought electricity was king, and that a man could do anything he set out to do. He can, but my nerve is not so good now.
Now The Union Electric Company's contract was to furnish the city of Portate so many arc lights, at so much a month per light, with monthly payments, but there was more politics in it than I was used to. It took me some time to see that if the Mayor bought a set of gilt furniture on the 28th, and the paymaster a span of horses on the 29th, it wasn't reasonable to bring them a city lighting bill on the 30th. But they thought it unreasonable, and after awhile I came near thinking so too. I had to get five signatures to each bill, and the signatures took turns going off into the country between the 30th and the 15th. After that they generally came with protests in parentheses, that arc No. 53 had been observed by respected gentlemen to sputter improperly, and that arc No. 5, on a certain night, had refused to burn, in contempt of authority,—which was because a native had heaved a stone into it, out of religious scruples. They were always in arrears.
They liked it that way. They said it was delay in tax-collecting. It was very warm. Did the Senor suffer from the heat? Alas! the tax collector was too fat. It had been represented to his Excellency that tax collectors should be thinner. They were thirty thousand dollars behind. It seemed to me that the city of Portate was too happy. It didn't have troubles enough.
I went to see the Mayor, what they call the “Jefe Municipal.”
He was a puffy old man, of about the fatness of the tax collector, but smaller, and wore a white moustache and imperial in such a way that it seemed to be his symbol of authority.
I said, “Mayor, the city owes me thirty thousand dollars.”
“Is it possible!” he cried, holding up his hands. “But we do pay you too much. How does the city owe you so much if it is not too much?”
That was good tropical logic. Tropical logic always confused me.
“My friend,” he said, “is it not in your country also that the corporation oppresses the people?”
“The Union Electric,” I said, “doesn't do business for love of humanity, and it didn't send me down here for my health.”
“Alas! No?” sighed the Mayor, wiping his forehead. “The corporations are without souls, pitiless. I read it in a newspaper, that also of the United States. But if the Senor's health is delicate, a trip to the hills—-”
“I give you till Wednesday night.”
He brightened up.
“It is a festival night. The municipal band will play in the Plaza. The people will dance. Portate is a city of pleasure, a second Paris. And you, Senor, will honour us, on the balcony of the magistrates.”
“Thirty thousand dollars by Wednesday night, or I shut off the lights. With great regret, your Excellency——”
“Senor——”
“It's an ultimatum. Allow me to express, nevertheless——”
The Mayor rose, smiling.
“Nevertheless, you will observe the festival. A delight, Senor, a panorama!”
I went over and tried to impress the paymaster, but he wouldn't be impressed either. He said arc No. 38 was shining persistently into the upper-story windows of the house of a municipal councillor, against his honour and privacy. He said the son of the municipal councillor was to marry his, the paymaster's daughter, and The Union Electric Company oughtn't to disturb such alliances. I went down to the plant as fast as possible, feeling in the mind to see people that were reasonable and steady, like the six dynamos.
Chepa was my foreman's name, and a good man he was—a half-breed of fifty years perhaps, with gray hair about his ears. I told him I was going to shut off the lights if they didn't pay up, and Chepa's hair stood on end. He said I was a distinguished gentleman, and would be shot for an anarchist together with himself.
“Mother of heaven! It will be a hot time. Behold me! I am game!”
I told him he wouldn't need any more heroism than came natural. I only wanted him to switch off, and throw the machines out of gear at nine o'clock Wednesday night, and then disappear for a day or two.
“Don't let them lay eyes on a hair of you.”
That was Saturday if my memory is right, the third of May. It came on Wednesday without any more interviews. The day was hot, and I didn't see that the tax collector was getting thinner with extra labour of collecting taxes. But the preparations for the festival were going on, so innocent and peaceful it would break your heart to see, with ridiculous strips of coloured cloth around the wax-palms on the Plaza; for a wax-palm grows a hundred and fifty feet high, and looks like a high-born lady; and red and white stripes around the foot of her, like a barber's pole, aren't becoming. I sent up a man with the bill in the afternoon, and he came back saying the Mayor was so busy with his uniform that he wouldn't look at him. I gave orders to shut off the switch at nine o'clock. About eight in the evening I disguised myself with a cloak and a villainous slouch hat, and left my house, which was a mile out of the city, though handy to the plant. The cook had run off to the Plaza, and I plugged up the telephone, so it was a house that couldn't be conversed with. Then I walked into town.
The Mayor's uniform and several other uniforms were on the balcony of magistrates, the Mayor making a speech to the effect that it was a municipality without parallel, a second Paris, which civilisation regarded universally, and exclaimed, “Behold Portate!” There was Padre Rafael, standing directly under an electric light, and it was curious to see him with that kind of saint's glory around him, and smiling like a plaster cast of Benevolence. Whoop-bang! went the brass band, with the bass drum miscellaneous, and the cornets audacious, and the trombones independent, but aiming, you might say, at a similar tune. And all the Plaza fell to dancing and conversing, with the fountain in the middle sprinkling recklessly, and the wax-palms done up in red and white bunting, and the electric light shining uncannily, with their bills unpaid.
“Come up, Padre Rafael!” shouts the Mayor presently, catching sight of his reverence, “to the balcony of the magistrates. It is a glorious occasion.” He puffed out his chest so anybody could admire that liked.
And then the lights went out, and the band ended off with a grunt and a squeal.
The Plaza was black as a hat, only for a few lights in the windows, and quite silent for a moment. I lit out when the howls began. It seemed to me they'd sound better from a distance. There were people running and shouting along the pitch-black streets. But getting into the outskirts of the city, I found there were a few stars shining, and came home without trouble. I sat down on a bench in the garden and waited. It was a hundred yards or more from the house. It was very peaceful, with all manner of tropical scents floating around. Shutting down the lights of Portate didn't seem to bother the rest of South America.
By and by a carriage drove up, and there was a deal of banging at the doors, and tramping around the house. I thought it was an under-official that threw a rock through the window, not a real dignitary. Later there was another carriage, more banging and tramping.
I went to bed after that. I don't know how long they tried to telephone from the City Hall—the telephone didn't say.