XI
Ever so lovely are the young men of Cuna-Cuna—Juarez, Jotifa, Enid—(these, from many, to distinguish but a few)—but none so delicate, charming, and squeamish, as Charlie Mouth.
“Attractive little Rose....” “What a devil of a dream ...” the avid belles would exclaim when he walked abroad, while impassioned widows would whisper “Peach!”
One evening, towards sundown, just as the city lifts its awnings, and the deserted streets start seething with delight, he left his home to enjoy the grateful air. It had been a day of singular oppressiveness, and not expecting overmuch of the vesperal breezes, he had borrowed his mother’s small Pompadour fan.
Ah, little did that nigger boy know as he strolled along what novel emotions that promenade held in store!
Disrelishing the dust of the Avenida, he directed his steps towards the Park.
He had formed already an acquaintanceship with several young men, members, it seemed, of the University, and these he would sometimes join, about this hour, beneath the Calabash-trees in the Marcella Gardens.
There was Abe, a lad of fifteen, whose father ran a Jazz Hall on the harbour-beach, and Ramon, who was destined to enter the Church, and the intriguing Esmé, whose dream was the Stage, and who was supposed to be “in touch” with Miss Maxine Bush, and there was Pedro, Pedro ardent and obese, who seemed to imagine that to be a dress-designer to foreign Princesses would yield his several talents a thrice-blessed harvest.
Brooding on these and other matters, Charlie found himself in Liberty Square.
Here, the Cunan Poet, Samba Marcella’s effigy arose—that “sable singer of Revolt.”
Aloft, on a pedestal, soared the Poet, laurel-crowned, thick-lipped, woolly, a large weeping Genius, with a bold taste for draperies, hovering just beneath; her one eye closed, the other open, giving her an air of winking confidentially at the passers-by: “Up Cunans, up! To arms, to arms!” he quoted, lingering to watch the playful swallows wheeling among the tubs of rose-oleanders that stood around.
And a thirst, less for bloodshed, than for a sherbet, seized him.
It was a square noted for the frequency of its bars, and many of their names, in flickering lights, shewed palely forth already.
Cuna! City of Moonstones; how færic art thou in the blue blur of dusk!
Costa Rica. Chile Bar. To the Island of June....
Red roses, against tall mirrors, reflecting the falling night.
Seated before a cloudy cocktail, a girl with gold cheeks like the flesh of peaches, addressed him softly from behind: “Listen, lion!”
But he merely smiled on himself in the polished mirrors, displaying moist-gleaming teeth and coral gums.
An aroma of aromatic cloves ... a mystic murmur of ice....
A little dazed after a Ron Bacardi, he moved away: “Shine, sah?” the inveigling squeak of a shoeblack followed him.
Sauntering by the dusty benches by the pavement-side, where white-robed negresses sat communing in twos and threes, he attained the Avenue Messalina with its spreading palms, whose fronds hung nerveless in the windless air.
Tinkling mandolines from restaurant gardens, light laughter, and shifting lights.
Passing before the Café de Cuna, and a people’s “Dancing,” he roamed leisurely along. Incipient Cyprians, led by vigilant, blanched-faced queens, youths of a certain life, known as bwam-wam bwam-wams, gaunt pariah dogs with questing eyes, all equally were on the prowl. Beneath the Pharaohic pilasters of the Theatre Maxine Bush, a street crowd had formed before a notice described “Important,” which informed the Public that, owing to a “temporary hoarseness,” the rôle of Miss Maxine Bush would be taken, on that occasion, by Miss Pauline Collier.
The Marcella Gardens lay towards the end of the Avenue, in the animated vicinity of the Opera. Pursuing the glittering thoroughfare, it was interesting to observe the pleasure announcements of the various theatres, picked out in signs of fire: Aïda: The Jewels of the Madonna: Clara Novotny and Lily Lima’s Season.
Vending bags of roasted peanuts, or sapadillos and avocado pears, insistent small boys were importuning the throng.
“Go away; I can’t be bodder,” Charlie was saying, when he seemed to slip; it was as though the pavement were a carpet snatched from under him, and looking round, he was surprised to see, in a Confectioner’s window, a couple of marble-topped tables start merrily waltzing together.
Driven onward by those behind, he began stumblingly to run towards the Park. It was the general goal. Footing it a little ahead, two loose women and a gay young man (pursued by a waiter with a napkin and a bill), together with the horrified, half-crazed crowd; all, helter-skelter, were intent upon the Park.
Above the Calabash-trees, bronze, demoniac, the moon gleamed sourly from a starless sky, and although not a breath of air was stirring, the crests of the loftiest palms were set arustling by the vibration at their roots.
“Oh, will nobody stop it?” a terror-struck lady implored.
Feeling quite white and clasping a fetish, Charlie sank all panting to the ground.
Safe from falling chimney-pots and signboards, that, for “Pure Vaseline,” for instance, had all but caught him, he had much to be thankful for.
“Sh’o nuff, dat was a close shave,” he gasped, gazing dazed about him.
Clustered back to back near by upon the grass, three stolid matrons, matrons of hoary England, evidently not without previous earthquake experience, were ignoring resolutely the repeated shocks:
“I always follow the Fashions, dear, at a distance!” one was saying: “this little gingham gown I’m wearing, I had made for me after a design I found in a newspaper at my hotel.”
“It must have been a pretty old one, dear—I mean the paper, of course.”
“New things are only those you know that have been forgotten.”
“Mary ... there’s a sharp pin, sweet, at the back of your ... Oh!”
Venturing upon his legs, Charlie turned away.
By the Park palings a few “Salvationists” were holding forth, while in the sweep before the bandstand, the artists from the Opera in their costumes of Aïda, were causing almost a greater panic, among the ignorant, than the earthquake was itself. A crowd, promiscuous rather than representative, composed variously of chauffeurs (making a wretched pretence, poor chaps, of seeking out their masters), Cyprians, patricians (these in opera cloaks and sparkling diamonds), tourists, for whom the Hodeidah girls would not dance that night, and bwam-wam bwam-wams, whose equivocal behaviour, indeed, was perhaps more shocking even than the shocks set the pent Park ahum. Yet, notwithstanding the upheavals of Nature, certain persons there were bravely making new plans.
“How I wish I could, dear! But I shall be having a houseful of women over Sunday—that’s to say.”
“Then come the week after.”
“Thanks, then, I will.”
Hoping to meet with Abe, Charlie took a pathway, flanked with rows of tangled roses, whose leaves shook down at every step.
And it occurred to him with alarming force that perhaps he was an orphan.
Papee, Mammee, Mimi and lil Edna—the villa drawing-room on the floor....
His heart stopped still.
“An’ dey in de spirrit world—in heaven hereafter!” He glanced with awe at the moon’s dark disk.
“All in dair cotton shrouds....”
What if he should die and go to the Bad Place below?
“I mizzable sinneh, Lord. You heah, Sah? You heah me say dat? Oh, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” and weeping, he threw himself down among a bed of flowers.
When he raised his face it was towards a sky all primrose and silver pink. Sunk deep in his dew-laved bower, it was sweet to behold the light. Above him great spikes of blossom were stirring in the idle wind, while birds were chaunting voluntaries among the palms. And in thanksgiving, too, arose the matins bells. From Our Lady of the Pillar, from the church of La Favavoa in the West, from Saint Sebastian, from Our Lady of the Sea, from Our Lady of Mount Carmel, from Santa Theresa, from Saint Francis of the Poor.