I
A little brown cochero pounced upon me and took me aboard a dilapidated hack drawn by two mournful-looking quadrupeds.
“Hotel Americano?” he inquired.
“No. Hotel distinctly Mejicano.”
He whipped up his horses, and we jogged away through narrow streets lined with the massive, fortress-like walls of Moorish dwellings, past a tiny palm-grown plaza fronted by an old white cathedral, to stop finally before a one-story structure whose stucco was cracked and scarred, and dented with the bullet holes of innumerable revolutions.
The proprietor himself, a dignified gentleman in black, advanced to meet me. Were there rooms? Why not, señor? Whereupon he seated himself before an immense ledger, to pore over it with knitted brows, stopping now and then to stare vacantly skyward in the manner of one who solves a puzzle or composes an epic poem.
“Number sixteen,” he finally announced.
“Occupied,” said a servant.
Another period of intellectual absorption.
“Number four.”
There being no expostulation, a search ensued for the key. It developed that Room Number Four was opened by Key Number Seven, which—in conformity to some system altogether baffling to a Gringo—was usually kept on Peg Number Thirteen, but had been misplaced by some careless servant. The little proprietor waved both hands in the air.
“What mozos!” he exclaimed. “No sense of orderliness whatsoever!”
A prolonged search resulted, however, in its discovery, and the proprietor himself led the way back through a succession of patios, or interior gardens, the front ones embellished with orange trees, and the rear ones with rubbish barrels, to Room Number Four, from which the lock had long ago been broken.
It was a large apartment, with brick floor. It contained a canvas cot, a wobbly chair, and an aged bureau distinguished for its sticky drawers, an air of lost grandeur, and a burnt-wood effect achieved by the cigarette butts of many generations of guests. The bare walls were ornamented only by a placard, containing a set of rules—printed in wholesale quantities for whatever hotels craved the enhanced dignity of elaborate regulations—proclaiming, among other things, that occupants must comport themselves with strict morality.
“One of our very choicest rooms, señor,” smiled the proprietor, as he withdrew. “It has a window.”
A window did improve it.
From the narrow street outside came the soft voices of peons, the sing-song call of a lottery-ticket vender, the tread of sandaled feet, the clatter of hoofs from a passing burro train laden with bullion from distant mines, the guttural protesting cry of the drivers, all in the exotic symphony of a foreign land.
A BURRO TRAIN LADEN WITH BULLION FROM THE MINES
Yet there was a calm, subdued note about the chorus. In Mexico, a newly arrived Gringo expected melodrama. It was disconcerting to find only peace.
An Indian maiden, straight as an arrow, swung past with the flat-footed stride of the shoeless classes, balancing an earthenware jar upon her dark head. A fat old lady cantered by upon a tiny donkey, perched precariously upon the extreme stern. A little brown runt of a man staggered past under a gigantic wooden table. Another staggered past under the influence of alcohol. Women on their way to market stopped to offer me their wares. Did I wish to buy a chicken or a watermelon? Would I care for a bouquet of yucca lilies? Or an umbrella? If not an umbrella, a second-hand guitar?
“No?” They seemed surprised and disappointed. But they smiled politely. “Gracias just the same, señor! Adios!”
An ice cream vender made his rounds with a slap of leather sandals, balancing atop his sombrero a dripping freezer. He stopped before a patron to dish the slushy mixture into a cracked glass, pushing it off the spoon with a dirty finger, and licking the spoon clean before he dropped it back into the can. From one pocket he produced bottles and poured coloring matter over the concoction—scarlet, green, and purple. Then he swung his burden aloft, and continued on his way, chanting, “I carry snow! I carry snow!”
Even the cries of a peddler were soft and gentle here. I was about to turn from the window, when around the corner came a strange procession of mournful men and wailing women, led by three coffins balanced, like every other species of baggage in this country, upon the heads of peons. Mexico was Mexico after all! Here was evidence of melodrama! Excitedly I hailed the proprietor.
“A bandit attack, señor? No, indeed. José Santos Dominguez had a christening at his house last night. Purely a family affair, señor! Nothing more.”