VIII
Floor of copper, floor of gold.... Beyond the custom-house door, ajar the street at sunrise seemed aflame.
“Have you nothing, young man, to declare?”
“... Butterflies!”
“Exempt of duty. Pass.”
Floor of silver, floor of pearl....
Trailing a muslin net, and laughing for happiness, Charlie Mouth marched into the town.
Oh, Cuna-Cuna! Little city of Lies and Peril! How many careless young nigger boys have gone thus to seal their Doom?
Although the Sun-god was scarcely risen, already the radiant street teemed with life.
Veiled dames, flirting fans, bent on church or market, were issuing everywhere from their doors, and the air was vibrant with the sweet voice of bells.
To rejoin his parents promptly at their hotel was a promise he was tempted to forget.
Along streets all fresh and blue in the shade of falling awnings, it was fine, indeed, to loiter. Beneath the portico of a church, a running fountain drew his steps aside. Too shy to strip and squat in the basin, he was glad to bathe freely his head, feet and chest: then stirred by curiosity to throw a glance at the building, he lifted the long yellow nets that veiled the door.
It was the fashionable church of La Favavoa, and the extemporary address of the Archbishop of Cuna was in full, and impassioned, swing.
“Imagine the world, my friends, had Christ been born a girl!” he was saying in tones of tender dismay as Charlie entered.
Subsiding bashfully to a bench, Charlie gazed around.
So many sparkling fans. One, a delicate light mauve one: “Shucks! If only you wa’ butterflies!” he breathed, contemplating with avidity the nonchalant throng; then perceiving a richer specimen splashed with silver of the same amative tint: “Oh you lil beauty!” And, clutching his itching net to his heart, he regretfully withdrew.
Sauntering leisurely through the cool, Mimosa-shaded streets, he approached, as he guessed, the Presidency. A score of shoeblacks, lolled at cards, or gossip, before its gilded pales. Amazed at their audacity (for the President had threatened more than once to “wring the Public’s neck”), Charlie hastened by. Public gardens, brilliant with sarracenias, lay just beyond the palace, where a music-pavilion, surrounded by palms and rocking-chairs, appeared a favourite, and much-frequented, resort; from here he observed the Cunan bay strewn with sloops and white-sailed yachts, asleep upon the tide. Strolling on, he found himself in the busy vicinity of the Market. Although larger, and more varied, it resembled, in other respects, the village one at home.
“Say, honey, say”—crouching in the dust before a little pyre of mangoes, a lean-armed woman besought him to buy.
Pursued by a confusion of voices, he threaded his way deftly down an alley dressed with booths. Pomegranates, some open with their crimson seeds displayed, banana-combs, and big, veined watermelons, lay heaped on every side.
“I could do wid a slice ob watteh-million,” he reflected: “but to lick an ice-cream dat tempt me more!” Nor would the noble fruit of the baobab, the paw-paw, or the pine, turn him from his fancy.
But no ice-cream stand met his eye, and presently he resigned himself to sit down upon his heels, in the shade of a potter’s stall, and consider the passing crowd.
Missionaries with freckled hands and hairy, care-worn faces, followed by pale girls wielding tambourines of the Army of the Soul, foppish nigger bucks in panamas and palm-beach suits so cocky, Chinamen with osier baskets their nostalgic eyes aswoon, heavily straw-hatted nuns trailing their dust-coloured rags, and suddenly, oh could it be, but there was no mistaking that golden waddle: “Mamma!”
Mamma, Mammee, Mrs. Ahmadou Mouth. All in white, with snow-white shoes and hose so fine, he hardly dare.
“Mammee, Mammee, oh, Mammee....”
“Sonny mine! My lil boy!”
“Mammee.”
“Just to say!”
And, oh, honies! Close behind, behold Miami, and Edna too: The Miss Lips, the fair Lips, the smiling Lips. How spry each looked. The elder (grown a trifle thinner), sweet à ravir in tomato-red, while her sister, plump as a corn-fattened partridge, and very perceptibly powdered, seemed like the flower of the prairie sugar-cane when it breaks into bloom.
“We’ve been to a Music-hall, an’ a pahty, an’ Snowball has dropped black kittens.” Forestalling Miami, Edna rapped it out.
“Oh shucks!”
“An’ since we go into S’ciety, we keep a boy in buttons!”
Mrs. Mouth turned about.
“Where is dat ijit coon?”
“He stay behind to bargain for de peewee birds, Mammee, fo’ to make de taht.”
“De swindling tortoise.”
“An’ dair are no vacancies at de University: not fo’ any ob us!” Edna further retailed, going off into a spasm of giggles.
She was swinging a wicker basket, from which there dangled the silver forked tail of a fish.
“Fo’ goodness’ sake gib dat sea-porcupine to Ibum, Chile,” Mrs. Mouth commanded, as a perspiring niggerling in livery presented himself.
“Ibum, his arms are full already.”
“Just come along all to de Villa now! It dat mignon an’ all so nice. An’ after de collation,” Mrs. Mouth (shocked on the servant’s account at her son’s nude neck) raised her voice: “we go to de habadasher in Palmbranch Avenue, an’ I buy you an Eton colleh!”