The Havana señoras generally made purchases from samples sent to their houses; if they visited the shops at all, it was after early morning mass, or the evening drive on the paseo, when goods were brought to the volante for their inspection. They were quite as critical as any other shoppers; so the obliging merchant often brought to the narrow side-walk, where there was scarcely room for a person to pass, roll after roll of elegant goods, and patiently waited while the ladies with calm complacency examined them.
At Miro y Otero’s (our grocers) I often found the whole establishment at breakfast. A long table was spread down the middle of the store, the members of the firm and every employé, including the porters and cartmen, were seated around the board; if a customer entered, some one would rise, wait upon him, and then resume breakfast. There were no dining-rooms or lunch-counters where business men and clerks “stepped out” at meal-times. In offices, ware-rooms, banks, commercial houses, and stores, meals were served to all employés. Numberless little bodegas, and cheap, dirty shops were scattered about the purlieus and back streets, where white and colored laborers side by side ate fried fish or garlic stew, and drank aguadiente (native rum) or red wine. In some of the bodegas of the lower order asses were kept tied to the counter, to be milked on the spot, for invalids and people of delicate digestion. The coffee served at these very bodegas was rich and delicious. Often after we moved to the country and visited Havana, I fortified myself for the early start home on the train, at one of these places, with a cup of coffee, “fit for the gods,” and a sovereign preventive of headache so sure to follow three hours’ ride in a close car filled with tobacco-smoke. Smoking is so universal that every car is a “smoking-car.”
All Saturday the streets were thronged with beggars, many of them dirty, diseased, deformed, and repulsive; a few, healthy in appearance and handsomely attired, were followed by attendants carrying bags to receive alms. They visited shops, and were invariably rewarded with contributions mostly of small wares, a spool of thread or cheap handkerchief. One mendicant, with his license conspicuously exposed (all beggars in Havana are licensed), passed frequently up our street ringing a small bell. Servants came out from the various houses, and, by giving him a piece of money, had the privilege of kissing a blest but dirty picture that hung on his breast. I was frequently surprised by a call at my veranda-window, from an elegantly dressed lady, her flowing train, of fine linen lawn, decorated with elaborately fluted rufflings, and her stylishly dressed hair partly concealed by a scarf of rich Spanish lace. I was utterly at a loss to understand a rapid formula she repeated in a low, musical voice. To my perplexed look and shake of the head, she always bowed and gracefully moved away—only to return and repeat the performance the following week. Subsequently I learned she was a licensed mendicant. Every Saturday—the only day they were allowed to ply their calling—she was in the habit of leaving her two nicely dressed little boys at the house of a count on the cerro, and begging.
In the courts of many aristocratic and wealthy houses, food was distributed in generous quantities to all who applied, and even comfortable seats were provided for those who desired to rest while they ate. This was generally done in fulfillment of a vow made to the Virgin or a saint in time of distress. A lady living near us, when her children were ill, made a vow to keep the cerro church in perpetual repair, if their lives were spared. It was the daintiest of little churches, all pure white and gold inside, with an elaborate altar of marble decorated with flowers and tall silver candlesticks, and a noticeable absence of tawdry display and wretched daubs of pictures which disfigure so many Catholic churches. Although the family was subsequently exiled from Cuba for political reasons, and for years resided in Paris, the vow made long before was religiously kept. Though now restricted in means, their great wealth squandered and confiscated, no doubt the church still receives their careful attention. I had a fine opportunity to admire it.
Vaccination, like baptism, is compulsory in that much-governed country; while the former, performed by surgeons appointed by the government for that especial service, is absolutely gratuitous, the minimum pay for the latter is two dollars, the church rendering no service without an equivalent. The morning papers each day announced the church where vaccination was to take place, as our journals furnish the weather indications.
At the appointed day for the cerro church, Martha and I presented our baby at the vestry, where were already four little darky babies. The surgeon was kind enough to quiet any anxiety I might have evinced by announcing that he had white virus and black virus, and he never got them mixed. Our addresses were registered, and we were told to report the following week at same time and place. Martha and I, after the operation, followed the colored party into the church, and as the French express it, “assisted” in the baptism of the little Africans. I was nervous about the white virus and black virus, and was greatly relieved to find it did not “take”; but the next week the polite official presented himself at our door. He was kind enough to believe we did not appreciate the importance of vaccination, and when the second application of the lancet proved successful, our little lady was furnished with a formidable certificate necessary for admission into any school in Cuba.
CHAPTER XV.
A POLYGLOT—ZELL—BEATRIZ’S SCHOOL—IGNORANT GUAJIROS.
Henry went to a little school a few doors off, kept by a Danish woman, who conversed readily in their native tongue with the French, German, Russian, Italian, and English consuls, all of whom lived in the neighborhood. There Henry, now nine years old, was taught to read in French and Spanish, and, with the quickness of intelligent childhood, soon learned to speak the latter quite fluently. Zell did our cooking and ran on errands, and, as the darky also readily acquires a foreign lingo, it was not long before he could master enough Spanish for any occasion. He was considered such a savant that he applied for permission to give English lessons at the corner bodega. “Dey’ll give me four dollars a month jist to go dar and talk evenings,” he explained; “tell em de names of things, jist like I was a-buying.... I jist go dar and look at it and say, ‘What’s price dat ar coffee?’ or I p’int at de box and say, ‘What you ax for dat sugar?’ and den tell ’em what to say back.” Zell did “go dar,” though I never knew the result of his teachings, pecuniarily or otherwise. He prided himself on his attainments, and once was heard to tell a man—who, hearing him speak both languages, inquired where he learned to speak English—that he was an Englishman!
In time he mentioned his need of a watch, and at Christmas found a big silver one in his stocking, which he ostentatiously sported when in full dress; but on several occasions my husband warned him that it was being left carelessly about the kitchen, where it was liable to be stolen. Zell came to me one morning in considerable agitation. “Miss ’Liza, you seen my watch? Well, it’s done gorn. I left it on dat nail, and now somebody is tuk it.”
“What’s that? Your watch gone, Zell?”