VII
I was inclined to doubt the General’s story.
He was manifestly a poseur. He possessed, among other qualities, an inordinate desire to attract attention. He knew, for instance, that he was handsome, and would spend hours combing his dark hair, or powdering his face. He loved to be stared at by the young girls in the plaza. He basked in admiration and reveled in adulation or flattery.
His vanity manifested itself also in a desire to be photographed. If I wished to snap a landscape or a street scene, Eustace had almost to hold him, lest he arrange himself artistically in the immediate foreground. Upon his return from the red light district that morning, he announced that he had promised its inmates to bring us there with our camera for a group picture.
He led us to the outskirts of town to a region where several slatternly brown females sat upon the curb in negligée, smoking cheap cigars, and introduced us in a speech which seemed more elaborate than such an informal occasion required. The ladies, surprised as Mexicans always are when some one keeps an agreement, begged that we wait while they beautified themselves, and we waited for over an hour. They appeared eventually, in silk finery, with an eighth of an inch of powder laid upon a facial coating of glycerine.
Then ensued the difficulties that confront every photographer in Latin America. They protested against venturing into the sunlight. Sunlight would ruin the complexion! When, in response to explanations, they did step out from the shade, they kept raising their hands to shelter their faces. And finally, when we had them properly grouped with the General in the center, some one exclaimed that she must be holding her doll, and while she searched for the doll, the group broke up and scurried out of the sunlight.
At length, the picture being taken, they all clamored to see it at once. To my statement that it had to be developed by a photographer, they listened with suspicion. Their familiarity with the itinerant tin-type man had bred a distrust of my slow methods. Yet they, with the politeness that extends in Latin America even to the underworld, did not voice the suspicion. And when, in the afternoon, we returned with what we considered an excellent picture, they rushed excitedly to view it.
There was a disappointed silence. They did not intend to be rude, but their grief escaped them.
“I’m not smiling!”
“My face came out dark!”
My camera, being a Gringo camera, had insulted them by its blunt frankness. But they tried to conceal their disappointment. They thanked us profusely. And they carried away the film, to destroy it as soon as our backs were turned.
“You were very foolish,” said the General afterwards. “You did not have to take a real picture. You should have pointed the camera and clicked something else. It would have pleased them.”