The retort suggested itself that there were other and even less pleasant proofs of that fact, but there would have been no gain in talking plainly to one of his low mental caliber. The Latin-American can always build crosses along his roads, even if he cannot build the roads themselves. Our thighs ached from the swift descent long before we passed through the suburb of San Cristobal, separated from the town proper by the crystal-clear little mountain river, Ichu, and we had all but encircled the department capital before an ancient bridge of mampostería, a mixture of mud, stones, and plaster, at last gave us admittance.
Rare is the traveler of to-day who passes through Huancavelica. As I climbed the slippery, squeaky, small-cobbled streets toward the central plaza, I was quickly reminded that I was far from the haunts of civilized man, in an isolated world where even the sight of a strange face is a rare treat, to say nothing of a foreigner in shirt-sleeves, armed with a revolver and a sheath-knife, struggling to drag with him a diminutive, shaggy mountain pony laden with miscellaneous junk. For Chusquito, bewildered by the surroundings of an unknown city, displayed an excitement and a waywardness of which I had not suspected him capable. As I entered the cobbled and grassy plaza, across which the towering western mountain-wall was already throwing its cold evening shadow, the chiefly Indian soldiers on guard before the Prefectura stared with bulging eyes, and rubbed their hands across their brows, as if wondering whether they saw aright and whether they should do anything about it. The adjoining streets were long lines of gaping faces, each new group falling suddenly silent as they caught sight of the unexpected apparition that had descended unheralded upon them, and the at best slight industry and energy of Huancavelica came completely to a standstill.
I was supplied with no fewer than six letters of introduction. The Prefectura was officially closed, which made one useless. I dragged Chusquito into the patio of Dr. Durán next door, and announced myself possessor of a recommendation to the lawyer from his best friend in Lima. He acted like a Peruvian. Not merely did he decline to step out of his office, but sent an Indian boy to demand the letter. When I presented myself in the doorway instead, he read it with fear plainly depicted on his features that he might be obliged to offer hospitality to a man who could not be a caballero, since he came on foot, and as plainly sought some loophole to avoid that necessity. He found one, too, when he turned again to the envelope. The writer had carelessly written the first name and, though he had explained the error, had not taken the trouble to change it.
“Ah, but this letter is not for me,” cried the lawyer triumphantly, “it is addressed to Felipe, and I am Enrique”—though he knew as well as I that there was not another Dr. Durán in all Huancavelica.
The open-mouthed throng that had massed about the zaguán led me en masse to a building that had once been a hotel on the further corner of the plaza. It was too much to expect the inhabitants to know already that it had ceased its ministrations to transients—the proprietor had been barely four years dead. The whispering chorus about me swelled gradually to the audible assertion that there was another establishment a few squares away which “sometimes had given accommodations to estranjeros.” At that moment a soldier, bearing a naked sword in one hand and a musket in the other, came running to say that the ayudante wished to know who I was, why, where, whence, and all the rest of it,—and that I was to report to him at once. I commandeered the messenger to lead me to the rumored hostelry. Before we reached it, however, a boy shouted to a shopkeeper, leaning out over his half-door to watch the unwonted excitement, that—a fact I had chanced to mention to some one, whereupon it instantly became general knowledge—I had a letter for Solomón Atala. The “Turk,” for such he was, dashed into the crowd and announced himself the addressee.
“Very well; you will come and live at my house,” he cried, when he had perused the note.
I protested that a public hostelry in the Andes was too rare a luxury to be lightly given up, and that it was bad enough to intrude upon private families when there was no other alternative. The “Turk” would not hear any such argument. I had been recommended by his good friend, and I belonged to him as long as I chose to remain in Huancavelica. Memories of Palestine reminded me that to men of his race hospitality has none of the hollow nothingness common to Peru. While we stood talking, a boy surreptitiously led Chusquito off down a gaping side-street to the “Turk’s” home, and I had perforce to follow. My possessions disappeared through a narrow door within a door, once through which I found myself in the littered patio of an ancient house of ample, rambling proportions. A female voice bade me mount a century-worn stairway to a sagging second-story balcony completely surrounding the yard. Barely had I dubiously set foot upon it than there popped out several slatternly women and the mightiest swarm of unassorted children I had ever yet seen in captivity. My imagination began to picture what sleeping, and writing notes, and getting the few days’ rest to which I was entitled, would be in that swarming household, and unable to think of any ceremonial excuse, I slipped down the aged stairs, untied Chusquito, and dragged him away up the slippery cobbled street.
The worst of it was that I had to pass the “Turk’s” shop again to reach the hotel. The good fellow was just locking up to come home and entertain me, and he pounced upon me at once, quite literally, throwing his arms about me and attempting to drag me off bodily, while Huancavelica stared open-mouthed upon us from every doorway. But I had set my heart on the repose of a room of my own. Beating off the affectionate “Turk” with one hand, and struggling in vain to keep Chusquito off the sidewalk and out of each succeeding shop with the other, I gradually worked my way forward, leaving my would-be host on the verge of tears, and gained at last the “Saenz-Peña Hotel.” It was a dislocated little building of long, long, ago, wrapped like a carelessly flung garment around a tiny patio, its most conspicuous feature the city billiard-room in which a half-dozen youths of sporting proclivities were gathered—at least, until they caught sight of us. Summoned from the mysterious interior, the respectful and astonished poncho-clad proprietor went in quest of a key, and unlocked the padlock of one of three small doors tucked away in as many corners of the patio—doors made of battered drygoods boxes with the lettering still upon them, so precious is lumber in these treeless heights—explaining that the other two rooms were “ocupados”—perhaps with empty bottles or guinea-pigs, certainly not with guests.
The chamber assigned me awoke my gratitude. It was, to be sure, so small that I could touch both walls at once, windowless and doorless, except for the narrow opening by which I squeezed in, gloomy and chill, after the fashion of adobe mountain rooms long closed; but it was furnished, even to a bed with real springs. Barely had I carried my traps inside, when there burst into the patio another “Turk,” who asserted in gestureful Spanish that he was the real Solomón Atala to whom I belonged during my stay in Huancavelica, the other being merely his brother, who had opened the letter in the brotherly way of Palestinians. He, too, was a believer in forcible hospitality, and the hotel proprietor looked on in helpless dismay at what promised to be a successful attempt to carry off his only guest in—the patron saint of hoteleros knows how long. A bed with springs, in a room by myself, however, was not a luxury to be given up for the mere danger of making a few Turkish enemies, and in the end the engaging Syrian, seeing no way out of it, admitted with bad grace that, as I already had my possessions scattered about the hotel room, it would be unfair to the proprietor not to retain it. I should remain where I was until morning, when we would talk the matter over. He agreed under protest, and at length gloomily took his departure.
This “friend in town” is the bugbear of hotel-keepers, or would-be keepers, in the Andes. The Arabian notion of hospitality, inherited from the Moors and mixed perhaps with the traditions of Inca days, with their free and public tambos along all the highways of the empire, still holds sway, at least superficially. The Peruvian will all his life put up with begging lodging, food, and fodder on his travels, often going without them entirely, rather than help support a hotel, considering it a sign of high rank to be housed by an outwardly delighted acquaintance, and thus cheat the struggling hotelero out of a livelihood.