By the time I was city-dressed, the subprefect, pomaded and be-frocked within an inch of his life, fluttered into my boudoir to ask, in breathless oratorical periods, if, inasmuch as he had just been married last week, or during the night, and mother down on the coast was dying to know what the new acquisition looked like and there were no photographers in Cajabamba and it was a pity Peru was so backward, would I not have the fineza to take fifteen or twenty pictures of him and his novia and deliver a few dozen finished and mounted prints for him and her and their relatives and friends and compadres and associates within an hour or two? As the carelessness of my American agent had left me almost filmless, this was neither the first nor the last time I was put to the unpleasant necessity of “faking” a picture. To have refused his request, even with humble apologies and laborious explanations, would have been to win the ill-will of Cajabamba’s ruler and all his dependents, had it not resulted in the trumping up of some transparent excuse to turn me out and refuse me official assistance in finding other lodgings. A photographer speaking some Spanish could pick up much silver down the crest of the Andes; it would have been a kindness if he had made the trip a few days ahead of me. To be sure, these official requests were always useful, in a way. While the powdered and perfumed “authorities” were puffing themselves up to the requisite pomposity, the town was sure to gather alongside, and as neither the fancied nor the real subjects were well enough versed in mechanics to know whether a kodak operates endwise or sidewise, I caught many a nonchalant pose of some really worthwhile bystander that I might have begged for in vain. On this occasion the novia, having spent a few hours in completely disguising herself, as women will under the circumstances the world over, appeared at last, deathly pale with rice powder, and the pair assumed a score of fetching poses under my direction. True, it was dark by that time. But the subprefect saw no reason why a photograph should not be taken by the light of three sputtering candles. He preferred it, indeed, to embracing his newly-won treasure in the public glare of day. But the night had grown aged before he feigned to understand the impossibility of immediate delivery, and he accepted only sulkily my promise to send the finished portraits back from the next city, “if they turned out well.”
During my morning stroll about town I was accosted in English from the zaguan of a building of dilapidated adobe splendor. So often had I heard a laborious “Goot mawnin, seer, how do yo do?” from some silly youth whose knowledge of foreign tongues began and ended with that phrase, that I nodded and passed on. I have too much affection for my mother tongue to hear it gratuitously maltreated; moreover, it had lain so long idle that to speak it had come to seem an affectation.
This time, however, the speaker continued with faultless fluency:
“I hear you are an American.”
“Just so.”
“I am Carlos Traverso, at your service; graduate of an American university.”
“Which one?”
“Michigan.”
“Indeed! So am I.”
“Válgame Diós!” gasped the youth, betrayed by astonishment into his native tongue for a moment. “Can’t you come around to my room, your own house, as I should say in Peru. You probably haven’t seen the latest copy of the ‘Alumnus’?”