A typical shop of the Andes. On the right, eggs and chancaca, the brown blocks of crude sugar wrapped in banana-leaves; in the doorway, pancake-shaped corn biscuits; on the left, oranges, green in color though ripe, and the wheat-bread only too seldom to be had even in this form
Two days of stony going, now between hedges of ripe tunas, now over high ridges, gashed and tumbled, by a trail thirsty despite the frequent fording of luke-warm streams gray with decomposed rock, brought me to San Marcos in a tropical and fruitful valley withered by a long drought. On the façade of the little drygoods shop and government salt-store of the absent gobernador hung a huge sign beginning “SOCORRO PEONES,” implying that the owner was also a “hooker” of workmen for a German-owned sugar estate down on the coast. When I presented my order from the prefect of the department, the wife of San Marcos’ chief “authority” ordered her cholas to prepare me dinner at once.
“I did not come to the gobernador that he should personally furnish me accommodations,” I protested. “I only want him to use his authority with those who make a business of lodging strangers.”
“There is no such place in San Marcos,” replied the woman, locking up shop and leading me into her parlor, musty with disuse, “but all travelers are welcome here.”
Behind the divan to which she motioned me stood a life-size figure of the Virgin, flanked by another of Saint Somebody. In honor of the arrival of a stranger, perhaps, the matron soon reappeared with several serving-women and, stripping the “Madre de Diós” to her bamboo-structured nudity, reattired her in four gowns, each of which was far more costly than those worn by any of the living beings present. Then she set a newly polished crown on the head of the image and, falling on her knees before it, began to rock back and forth imploring her intercession in a monotonous singsong. With dusk appeared the gobernador, accompanied by two traveling salesmen, and having ordered the three mules picketed, he spent a long evening bewailing with them the rising cost of commodities “of first necessity, even our very aguardiente and pisco, señores.” In the act of looking over my papers, his eye was caught by a typewritten document in English.
“Ah, los yanquis!” he cried. “They are so up-to-date they even avoid the labor of writing by having their letters printed. But how can they afford it?”
“Una máquina para escribir,” I explained.
“A writing-machine!” he gasped. “Is there such a thing? I must have one at once, for I never can spell things right.”
The village church having lost its roof, most of the old women in town gathered with my hostess in the adjoining parlor and droned for hours before her bamboo saints. For a long time the gobernador gave no heed to the uproar, though it forced him to raise his voice almost to a shout. Then suddenly he broke off an enumeration of prices with an angry:
“Hágame el favor!” (In the Andes the expression corresponds closely to our colloquial “What do you know about that?”) “Por Diós, those beatas would pray a man insane!” and dashing into the parlor, he broke up the meeting forthwith, and sent the manto-wrapped women scurrying out through the zaguan like startled crows.