“I need it to-day,” I protested, knowing it was only a question of insisting, to overcome the racial apathy.
“Then I will give you my bed and sleep on the floor!” cried the subprefect.
In that pompous moment, with a large delegation of huancabambinos looking on, no doubt he would, but such Andean self-sacrifice quickly fades away, once the limelight is switched off.
“I prefer to rent a room of my own,” I persisted.
“Ah, now that is impossible. But to-morrow—”
I bowed my way out, throwing over my shoulder the information that I would go down to the bank of the river and sleep on the ground. It would be softer, and there were bathing facilities. Horror spread over all faces. A man, an estranjero who came with the recommendations of great governments! Impossible! The city of Huancabamba could not permit it! When word of it reached the outside world...! Soldiers were sent scurrying in all directions—and two minutes later one of them found a room for rent in the home of one of the “best families,” exactly across the street from the subprefectura.
It can hardly be that I was the first stranger to enter Huancabamba since Hernando de Soto was sent by Pizarro to reconnoiter the region after the capture of the Inca. Yet one might have fancied so. Whether it was due to some canine sense of smell we of less favored lands lack, I never succeeded in getting within ten yards of a huancabambino before he was staring at me with bulging eyes and hanging jaw, all work, movement, and even conversation ceasing as I drew near. If I passed behind a group on a street corner, their necks went round with one accord, like those of owls, and they stared after me in unbroken silence as long as I remained in sight. Men and women, well-dressed and outwardly intelligent, dodged back into their house or shop as I appeared, to call wife or children as they might for a passing circus parade. The few sidewalks were really house verandas, sometimes roofed, and on all ordinary occasions pedestrians strolled along the center of the street. Now there was a stranger in town, virtually all took pains to cross to my side of the way, and though it required a distinct exertion to climb up to and down from this few yards of raised sidewalk, every inhabitant seemed to find some excuse every few minutes to wander by my door at a snail’s pace in his noiseless bare feet. If I began any species of activity,—to write, load my kodak, read, or even to wash my hands, the human stream was clogged like a log-raft against a snag and the population stacked up about my door until a well-aimed anything broke the keystone log, and gave me again for a moment light and air. It was the hospitable huancabambino custom to give me greeting, even when I was busy well inside the room, and to repeat the phrase in a louder and louder voice until I acknowledged it. Those few who passed on the further side of the street never failed to shout “Buenos días” across at me, though they might have looked in upon me a bare two minutes before. Now and then a more friendly member of society wandered complacently into the room, to peer over my shoulder, or to handle with the innocence of a three-year old child such of my possessions as took his fancy. Some drifted in even at night, long after I had retired, for, there being no other opening, to have closed the door would have been to smother.
In the far recesses of the Andes the simplest matter may become complex. My flannel road-shirt had at last succumbed to its varied hardships. Now, buying a shirt may seem too trivial an experience to be worthy of mention; in the wilds of Peru it is a transaction of deep importance. Huancabamba is overstocked with cloth-shops; but what Latin-American shopkeepers honestly believe a “very heavy shirt” would fall to pieces in three days under the exertions of a society darling. One garment promising moderate endurance I did find, but the combined jangling of all the bells of Quito was as nothing compared to its color scheme. Beside it the good old American flag would have looked dull and colorless. I set out to find a woman willing to make a new shirt on the pattern of the old. Most of them did not wish to; most of the others were too tired; two or three had less commonplace reasons, such as being in mourning, or having a pan to wash before Sunday, or a son to be married next week, or not having gone to confession recently. Toward noon I caught a shoemaker’s wife unawares, and had her promise to undertake the task before she could think of a plausible excuse. She thought a just price, I to furnish the cloth, would be twenty cents!
I canvassed the shops for heavy khaki. The stoutest on sale was flimsy as a chorus-girl’s bodice, its color plainly as evanescent as her complexion. I chose at last from a bolt of cloth designed for afternoon trousers, adding a spool of the strongest thread to be had. Experience had long since taught me that the tailors of Latin America use a thread so fine that a deep breath is almost sure to burst a seam or two. I delivered the materials and retired for a belated almuerzo in the mud hut where the daily cow sacrificed to Huancabamba’s appetite is sold in half-real nibbles. Now and then an urchin entered, clutching a nickel in one besmeared fist, to say in the uninflected monotone of a “piece” learned in school:
“Media carne, media vuelta,” (2 cents worth of meat, 2 cents change), to which the answer was almost sure to be: