We tried the cinematograph’s recreations, once or twice. How strong is habit! We could not settle down to these performances of single films; nor to the box-like halls. A cowboy film of eight acts comes back to my recollection from those evenings. It was full of miracles. The operator believed, like the hero, in lightning speed. The hero on horseback was far too speedy for the villain who dragged off the heroine into his car and did his best to break records. These heroes will one day assume the proportions, in the dark world, of the pleiosaurus in natural history.
But we had our reward. In a more expensive theatre, we found The Kid. We had come out to see a much trumpeted film of a bullfight–Mead for one set of reasons, I for another; but it was of yesterday, and we had no difficulty in consoling ourselves. One Chaplin, we acknowledged, was better than many toreadors.
And then, we had a glimpse of the Carnival. In our wonted quarter of the town, that where the seafaring man mostly rested, it took the form of some processions of hobbledehoys and urchins, beating as their kind do on drums and things like drums. The next evening we took the same dreary cobblestone walk as usual, but did not limit ourselves to that. We took a tram, indeed, to more fashionable haunts and at last came into the great Avenida and all its garish illuminations; its paper ribbons were as multi-coloured as the lights, and, flung from the upper storeys of the hotels, in some places they were thick enough to form a fantastic and absurd cascade. Here the Carnival was in mid sprout. We got what we came for–a diversion.
The pavements, broader here than in the generality of the streets we knew, were chock-a-block with folks, the cafés overflowing, the towering hotels gleaming with bright dresses on every balcony, and all this was the accompaniment of the gorgeous procession that moved slowly along the highway. Its vehicles of every kind, but their kind hidden from passing observation by their curtains and festoons of flowers, trooped along in the unreal glare. Here, ladies of most aristocratic air came by, with the blackest of masks above the whitest of countenances; there was a girl in the dress of a bull-fighter, driving her own light carriage; next, a set of laughing “gipsies” apparently advertising a brand of cigarettes; then, a collection of men with Cyrano disguises and attempting Cyrano humour to the gods–
All these and more came flocking.
But the privilege of gazing unrebuked upon the profusion of beauty, upon raven hair and great deep-burning eyes, upon the pale cheeks of wintry moons, the privilege of hearing the disjointed music of the fu-fu bands and the verbal crackers of harlequins of the moment, was not without its points of misery. The pavements represented a scrum on the largest scale, in the forefront of one battering ram whereof Mead and myself were securely wedged in for an hour or two. In this state of things, the usual individual turned round to ask Mead “who he was pushing?”–the sense of his remarks being obvious though couched in another tongue. Unable to move the arms, and scarcely free to flicker the eyelashes, we were borne compressedly and gradually on, until at last we were beyond the main pleasure-ground; by this time even Mead had had enough of pleasures which we had noticed others than Englishmen taking seriously. We took our ease in our inn, and reflected.
The newspapers reported that the Carnival was declining year by year. Perhaps the reporter, like ourselves, had corns and was caught in the scrimmage.
XVII
I borrowed a Shakespeare from the second chaplain at the Mission to escape from what seemed the dullness of our stay in South Basin, Buenos Aires. Mead had taken over my own copy of the Tragedies, and by this time had most of Hamlet and Macbeth by heart, so that our conversation frequently ran by tags. Of Bicker we saw little. Highly favoured, he would depart on most afternoons to the English suburb, where he had friends; and it was impossible not to regard him, as he regarded himself, as a man of superior rank, who had personal friends in this town. Once or twice in the evenings, nevertheless, he came with us to our accustomed table in that convenient but inglorious place the British Bar; and while there, he did his best to annoy one of the waiters with the oft-repeated slur, “Yah, Patagonio,” or “You b— Patagonian Indian,” or “Patagonio no bonio.” The fellow bore it at first with grinning patience; but one evening suddenly danced with fury, and rushing out summoned the greasy little proprietor, who came in scowling and snarling, took stock of us–and went out again. The alleged Patagonian was after this understood to be meditating a fearful revenge.