“Is this Mr. ——?” I asked in English.
“It is.”
“Well, I just happened to be in town and thought I’d.... But no doubt you are very busy....”
“Yes, I am busy,” came the reply, in a bona fide missionary voice, “but don’t let that keep you from coming in—if you want to.”
Naturally I grasped so urgent an invitation with both hands.
“Oh, no,” I protested, “I wouldn’t think of disturbing you. I’ll stay out here and look at the scenery.”
“Yes, look at the scenery,” replied the urgent gentleman, as he and the hymn-book disappeared behind the closed window.
Inside arose sounds not unlike a Methodist meeting, and I had begun to wander stealthily away when the door opened and the missionary’s more cordial better half informed me that they were not “holding services.” Reassured, I entered the cozy parlor. Two women and a man were gathered about a diminutive melodeon, singing mournful hymns. Naturally, at sight of me the musicians lost their nerve, and the cheerful pastime came to a standstill. In due time I discovered that the youthful organist had just been shipped down fresh and untarnished from a Canadian theological seminary, to “bring the poor Peruvians to Christ.” His qualifications for that feat were that he had not, up to his arrival, seen a printed page of Spanish, had never heard of Quichua or Pizarro, and though he did remember the name Prescott, he “didn’t know he had written about foreign countries.” I found that Peyrounel, he of the maidenly hair, chestful of medals, and andarín reputation, had lived a month at the mission the year before, having posed as a poor persecuted Huguenot among bloodthirsty Catholics. He had filled the scanty imaginations of the group with so many wild tales of the road that I could not refrain from giving my own inventiveness vent, and at the end of a dozen bloodcurdling episodes the fresh young product of the seminary remarked in a ladylike voice, “That must have been quite interesting.” Looked at from that point of view, perhaps he was right. In the early days of their mission the ladies had been received and called on socially by the haughtiest of their sex in Cuzco. But they had soon been ostracized, not because of their religion—or, from the Cuzco point of view, lack thereof—but because, having been detected in the act of sweeping out their own parlor, it was concluded that they were cholas in their own country and not fit to associate with gente decente.
Unless the time of my stay there was exceptional, suicide is à la mode in Cuzco. Almost on the day of my arrival one bold youth of twenty-five decided to die because Señorita Fulana scorned his attentions. He wrote a long poem explaining to the disdainful damsel, and the world at large, why he was leaving life so early—it afterward graced the contribution page of one of the local journals—and fired four revolver shots. One grazed his chest, a second tore a hole in the tail of his frock-coat, the third smashed a lamp on the mantelpiece, and the fourth scared the family cat off the divan. The date of the wedding was soon to be announced when I left Cuzco. Among the host of disciples of this heroic and enviable deed among the excitable juventud of Cuzco were several youth of like age, who attempted to imitate it from equally absurd motives. All carried the act to a more or less successful conclusion, except one who, either because he took the matter too seriously, or neglected to practice beforehand, or because he was not a native cuzqueño, or had been reading Ibsen, shot himself through the temple.
The subject of suicide leads us naturally to the cemetery. That of Cuzco celebrated a sort of “Decoration Day” during my stay. Placards announced that “for reasons of hygiene” the alcalde permitted no one but actual mourners to visit it; but it is always easy to find something to mourn over in Peru. An endless stream of humanity was pouring in through the gate by which I entered, while a score of soldiers on guard stood drinking chicha, gambling, and making love. As in all Spanish countries, the corpses were pigeon-holed away, bricked in, and marked with the date on which the rent would fall due. With unlimited space about the city, it is hard to understand why the dead must be tucked away in this expensive fashion, except that the priests refuse to sprinkle with holy water those planted elsewhere. At the gate was posted a long list of corpses whose rent had run out, with the information that unless it was paid by the end of the month the contents would be dumped in the boneyard.