IX
At the time of my sojourn in Managua, there was a temporary lull in such attacks, for the city was indulging in its semi-annual outburst of culture.
The aristocrats of Central America are very fond of theatrical entertainment, and some of the republics have built national theaters, but such is the expense of bringing artistes from Europe that performances are rare, and usually subsidized by the government.
Frijolita, who had danced before all the crowned heads of Europe, had recently been performing in Tegucigalpa. The Honduran government, having paid her expenses to the country, had allowed her to get out as best she could, wherefore she was now about to dance in the neighboring capitals. All Nicaragua felt honored. Every poet in the country tuned his lyre, and prepared to sing her praises.
In Central America nearly every one who can write is a poet. The composition of verses is a universal indoor sport among the young men. On Sunday each newspaper devotes a page to the unremunerated labors of the local bards. Guests at the hotels, seeing me scribbling in a note book, always inquired whether I were writing verses. Every one who can afford the luxury, prints privately his musings, which no one else ever seems to read. When it became known that Frijolita would dance, the editors themselves took a crack at versification, and published their outpourings neatly boxed on the first sheet.
I shared my hotel room with Bosco, the tenor, and Maestro, the orchestra conductor. Frijolita, stopping at the most expensive hotel, had dispatched them to the sort of hostelry where itinerant travel-writers were forced to stay, and they were much incensed. But to our room came the minor devotees of art from the Nicaraguan population to bask in their glory, and both Bosco and Maestro entertained them with stories of Frijolita’s absurd temperament, and with sly comments upon her age, suggesting that she had not really danced before a crowned head since Napoleon Bonaparte went into exile.
Bosco was a cheerful person. He was small and rotund, but he sang divinely, and was not stingy with his accomplishment. In the early morning he poked a bleary countenance from his mosquito-net and greeted the Indian servant-maid with an aria. Then he would stroll out into the patio in his pajamas, carrying his guitar, to serenade the other ladies of the establishment.
Maestro was a withered, elderly person, once famous but fallen into obscurity. He was taciturn and unsociable. His one love was his fiddle. He would stroll away by himself to the back regions of the hotel, where he found inspiration in the banana trees and the rubbish heap, and there he would evoke weird squeals from his instrument in an effort to perfect what he described as a new technique.
Frijolita remained at the more expensive hotel, giving out daily interviews to the press about the many royal scions who had committed suicide because she could not respond to their love. Her husband sometimes came to call upon us. He was a dapper little fellow; his hair was very long; his face was always neatly powdered; his smile was endearing. He would greet us with a gentle wave of the hand or a gesture of his cane; ask after our health; and withdraw gracefully, a vision of dainty, silken-clad ankles, leaving a trail of haunting perfume behind him.
A week elapsed. Maestro devoted it to informing his acquaintances that Frijolita was treating him like a dog. Then came the much-awaited début.
The theater was a shabby structure of European design, its two balconies consisting of boxes and loges, where sat the ladies of society. The unattached men filled the pit, many with their hats on, craning their necks to stare aloft. We waited an hour and a half for the President. He finally arrived. Every one rose. The orchestra played the national anthem. It was greeted with vast applause. Little withered Maestro turned and bowed. Then the orchestra played again—that piece about daybreak or springtime or something wherein the trapdrummer usually toots upon a bird-whistle. Here the trapdrummer had no bird-whistle. But the curtain went up just the same, revealing a conventional backdrop, and a huddled mass of plumes in the foreground which proved to be none other than Frijolita herself, apparently asleep.
More applause! Thunderous applause! It awakened Frijolita. Very slowly she arose from the floor and commenced to undulate. At some time in the distant past, one sensed that she had been a great dancer. Nowadays one felt that she had reached the stage where she ought to interpret only the classics. She was just a bit too heavy to do popular stuff. But she was game. She undulated faster and faster. She flitted and romped and turned somersaults. Applause became a roar of approval. The music ceased. She bowed, leaped behind the curtain, emerged in a Spanish shawl, unwound it and threw it away, leaped back behind the curtain, emerged in another shawl—
There were fourteen shawls to be unwound, while the roar grew to a tumult. Then she was gone. Bosco, who was not singing to-night, came out of the wings, and hurried through the auditorium with a preoccupied air to let the public know he was connected in some way with the troupe, while Maestro acknowledged with grateful genuflections the approval of the spectators. It was an exhibition such as might be seen in any second-rate vaudeville house on Broadway as a curtain-raiser, but it was an event in Managua. Most of the Nicaraguans recognized it as an inferior performance, but outwardly they maintained an air of joyous appreciation largely patriotic.
Frijolita had no supporting troupe. There was a brief intermission; then she broke loose again. This time she displayed an elephantine pair of bare legs, and the roar of approval increased. Again and again she danced, interpreting thereby—according to the program—the latest wiggles of every land from Egypt to Japan. She came finally to her masterpiece, the genuine Hawaiian hula-hula. And then occurred the unexpected climax. Maestro, either by accident or malicious design, stopped his music too soon, leaving her with one foot in the air.
Frijolita flew into a rage. Her far-famed temperament burst all bounds. Rushing to front-stage, she screamed revilement at the musician. All Managua cheered her. Rising in his wrath, Maestro screamed revilement at her. And all Managua cheered him. Frijolita was outraged. She seized such pieces of scenery as were not nailed down, and commenced to hurl them. The President, feeling that the whole affair was beneath his dignity, took his departure. Frijolita’s husband came teetering forward to mediate.
“Qué pasa?” he inquired pleasantly. “What’s the trouble?”
Frijolita glared at him.
“What sort of man are you? Why don’t you defend me?”
He fled before another shower of scenery, and Frijolita fled after him. Managua carried the little Maestro out upon its shoulders, and treated him to champagne, delighted at the unanticipated entertainment he had offered.
But the next day the local papers did not mention the incident. Perhaps the editors felt that they must maintain appearances, and that Managua’s semi-annual outburst of culture should pass off—in the press at least—with éclat. Or perhaps they had already composed their poems, and could not deny themselves the satisfaction of publishing them. For the verses appeared, neatly boxed on the first page, eulogizing the performance of the incomparable artiste, Frijolita.