“Mys cheek it is pinkes”—which had not even the doubtful virtue of being true.
“By Gosh, Huzle up!” The Jesuited instructor had no doubt often heard this hasty, unLatin-American word in the dormitories, but having never chanced to see it in print, he had chosen his own spelling, with this happy result.
“We now shall go to the exam.” The longer word for that distressing experience he seemed never to have heard.
“My watch it goes too fast.”
“At your service, John, thank you. What are the news?” Several students made the error of using a singular verb in this sentence, but they were quickly and sarcastically reminded that the noun news ends in an s, which any fool knows is a sign of the plural in English, as in Spanish.
“I shall long for you after you are gone away”; the blackboard continued, and so on, always with a distinctly home-made pronunciation. The traveler can scarcely blame himself if he does not understand his native tongue when it is shouted after him in the streets of Cuzco by the proud students of the Colegio.
The higher institution is the ancient University of Cuzco, founded nearly a half-century before our oldest, and occupying the great stone cloisters of the former Jesuit monastery. A young and enthusiastic American rector has done much to give it new impulse; but one man single-handed cannot reform the Latin-American character. Its 160 students from the four surrounding departments have increased both in numbers and diligence since the “conservative” professors were thrown out, but their point of view is still not exactly that of our own college men. Among others I attended a class on “Special Literature.” It was a third-year course, of seven students; the hour, from three to four. I arrived at 3:15 and found the professor, a Ph.D. (Cuzco) whose wide nostrils, broad face, and prominent cheek bones proved him chiefly of aboriginal blood, pacing up and down the second-story corredor smoking a cigarette. At 3:20 a white youth of about twenty-three, with a mustache, drifted languidly across the patio swinging his cane. He and the professor bowed low, shook hands, exchanged the unavoidable “Buenas tardes, señor. Cómo está usted? Cómo está la familia?” lifted their hats, and at length broke the clinch. The professor produced from his pocket a massive key and opened a cubical, whitewashed room, having installed himself in which, he began to “lecture” on Calderón de la Barca. At 3:28 a half-Indian student stamped into the room and interrupted the proceedings with a loud “Buenas tardes, señor,” causing the professor to lose the thread of his discourse for a minute or more. When the interruption had subsided, he continued to lecture, pausing now and then to look at his outline notes, more often to inhale the smoke of the cigarette he still held backward between his fingers. The white youth soon fell asleep, woke as his head dropped, spat on the floor, and then frankly and openly laid his head back against the wall and slept. The other half of the class sat with the filmy, half-closed eyes of a man who is dreaming of his cholita of not too unobliging morals in some hut on the outskirts of town. It would have been ill-bred of the professor, and galling to the “pride” of his class, to have waked them. He finished his cigarette and droned unbrokenly on. At 3:46 another haughty half-Indian, his silver-headed cane held at the approved Parisian angle, broke in upon the lecture with a greeting, which the professor interrupted his remarks to acknowledge. At 3:50 he took advantage of the awakening caused by the new arrival to begin a quiz, asking the white student something about the subject of his discourse. The usual long preliminary sparring for wind in the form of “Ah-oh-ah, Señor Don Pedro Calderón de la Garca, one of the most important authors of his epoch in Spain,” and so through a long list of stock phrases, was followed by a mumbling of some vague and general rubbish he could easily have framed up had he not known whether Señor Don Pedro was man, woman, or priest. When he had said nothing for about two minutes, one of the others was given the floor—no doubt the professor apologized later for being obliged to call upon them because of the presence of a distinguished foreign visitor—and launched forth in another set of phrases. Like the other, he did not know the title of any of Calderón’s dramas, who left only a hundred or two to choose from, though the class had “studied” several of those works during the year’s course. After each question the professor broke in upon the meaningless mumble to answer his query himself, and as he named the works one by one, the student cried out each time with a great display of wisdom, “Ah, sí, señor!” “Es verdad, señor!” as he would have done had the former inadvertently included “Quo Vadis” or “Evangeline.” At 3:56 the professor carefully called the roll to find out how many of the seven were present, entered that important fact on an official blank to be left with the rector at the end of the day, and with much bowing and ceremonious formality the class took leave of themselves, lighted their cigarettes, tucked their canes under their arms, and faded away.
Having long wished to attend a trial, I carried a note of introduction to a judge of the supreme court of the department of Cuzco.
“Trial? Certainly, señor. When do you wish to see one?”
“Any time there happens to be one.”