It intrigued Ben to note how often the subject of the festival entered their conversations. It was also frustrating to observe that every time he mentioned his business, his reason for being in Santo Stefano, Blas would gracefully turn the talk into other channels. He wondered if this had been Burleson’s experience. Burleson was a testy man with a one-track mind devoted entirely to Seaways’ interests. A little too much of this graceful conversational detouring, of this fixation on the fine art of public hangings, might have set him off with a bang and ruined all chances of getting any contract for Seaways. That was a fine prospect. It meant that not only would some Indians hang themselves at the festival to appease their gods, but that he, too, would be hanging himself as high and tight to appease the restless spirit of James O’Harragh. And if he was going to be offered a knife to cut himself free, he had yet to know about it.
That was the most frustrating thing to contend with, the sense of time passing and nothing being done. Since the day of his arrival when he had spent a few hours with Bambas-Quincy, he had not seen the man again. Nor had he seen Jerome, Adams, or anyone else with whom he could at least discuss negotiations. He had not even been able to see Ian Kipp who was supposed to be an ally. In the office of the Port Buchanan, Huanu Blanco and Córdoba Railway he had been assured by a young man who might have been Blas’ twin that Mr. Kipp was pleased with his arrival and would soon get in touch with him. In Santo Stefano, Ben learned, soon did not mean very soon. He was still waiting to hear from Kipp.
This had a nightmare quality in the dark hours when he would try to find sleep in a strange room redolent with the odor of guano and orange blossoms. It was not so bad during the day when he was sightseeing with Blas. The daytime air of Port Buchanan was clean, salty, and sunlit; Blas was the most amiable of companions; and the city itself was a novelty. Under these conditions, one could, at least, pretend to himself that he was a tourist.
He also took what comfort he could from Blas’ earnest assurance that there was good reason for the inability of Bambas-Quincy and Kipp to meet him at present. The reason was El Niño, the warm current which had now set in. It was a strange thing, El Niño. Apparently, no splitting of the atom could set off more of a chain reaction than it did. When the cold water suddenly turned warm, the microscopic food that the fish ate all died. Then the fish went away to search for food beyond the far limits of Santo Stefano. Then the sea birds which lived on the fish had to go elsewhere to search for their food. Then the supply of guano which, of course, was provided by the sea birds would stop. And so the Republic of Santo Stefano which lived on the guano would also stop.
That is why, said Blas, obviously pleased with himself at having been able to put the matter so neatly, there was much work with arranging the slowdown of the plants in Huanu Blanco and the shipping here in Port Buchanan, the laying off of help, the rearranging of railroad schedules, and so on. These first days of El Niño always meant confusion, because no one could tell in advance exactly when they would be. But after that would come the holiday, and the easy time here in the city, and finally the festival on the Victorica.
Meanwhile they went sightseeing, first making a tour in the noisy Fiat that Blas had borrowed from Jerome, and then walking the city from the Hotel Buchanan in the west end to the wharves at the east end, where the muddy expanse of the Rio Xares emptied into the Pacific. The hotel was not far from the Plaza de Hermanos. The streets in that vicinity were broad and clean; the plaza itself, with the handsome presidential palace and the dramatic pile of the cathedral facing each other across a green expanse, was unquestionably scenic.
The Avenida Hermanos ran from the hotel past the plaza. As one continued eastward along it he found the side-streets narrowing, the buildings fronting it growing more and more dismal. At a point where masts and funnels could be seen rising above the distant docks, the avenue itself narrowed and wound through a congeries of alleys and slums, full of small, dark, taciturn people and naked children. And the smell there, Ben found, was even more acute than the night smell of Santo Stefano. Guano was mild stuff against this compound of frying food, rotting fish, and decaying garbage.
The one green spot in the midst of this blight was the Plaza República de Santo Stefano, a patch of faded grass and stony dirt which occupied the angle where the avenue crossed the Calle Contenta. This plaza also had its statue, the battered marble image of a robed figure holding a cross upraised, the patron saint of the island. The damages to the image, Blas explained, the missing nose and ear and many of the chips and cracks in the robe were the work of the whaling crews long ago.
“It was all very stupid,” he said. “They would get drunk in the cantinas on the Calle Pescadores and then look for trouble. Only afterward, when some of them married and had families here, they stopped the others from doing this. Captain Quincy was one of the first of them to become a citizen of Santo Stefano. There is a model of his ship, the Maid of New Bedford, in Mr. Victor’s house. You will find it interesting.”
“I look forward to it eagerly,” said Ben.
A few blocks past the plaza the Avenida Hermanos met the Calle Pescadores, the waterfront street, and that was the end of it. After that were the docks with a few rusty tubs moored to them, a row of fishing wharves that extended to the mouth of the Rio Xares, and beyond them the two hundred miles of Pacific Ocean between here and Peru.
All this was the old city. The new city was the suburb across the Rio Xares, a sort of tropical housing development of small, uniformly designed, pastel-colored houses fronting quiet streets, the homes of whatever middle class Port Buchanan could boast. The sports club was there, too, and it was at the club that Ben found Bambas-Quincy had spoken more in truth than jest when he referred to the festival of the rope as a national obsession.
The club itself looked like any country club in Florida or California, a spacious stucco building surrounded by swimming pool, tennis courts, and a well-kept golf course. In most ways, the young men Ben met at lunch there were the kind of young men one would expect to meet in such a club. He had already been given a fair idea of their names and occupations by Blas—Jorge Taliaferro and Julio Salazar who worked for Bambas-Quincy along with Blas; Gil Alden-Aragone who had dreams of political glory, he had been nominated by the Radical Party as one of its candidates for the Chamber of Deputies and would be running for election in March; and Cris Santa Cruz who had inherited from his father the fine clothing store on the Paseo de James Monroe near the hotel and who was, Blas shrugged, a bit of a wild one.
All of them wore dark glasses, white shirts and tennis shorts, smoked cigarettes imported from the United States—Ben discovered with embarrassment that he was the only one at the table who had a pack of Conquistadores before him—and all shared a camaraderie which very soon extended to him. It was Taliaferro who broke the ice by asking him where he had gone to college.
“Tell him Harvard,” Santa Cruz advised. “Jorge went to Stanford. The only thing on earth they respect is a Harvard man.”
“Sorry,” said Ben. “It happened to be North Kansas State. Strictly freshwater. You probably never heard of it.”
“Sure I heard of it,” said Taliaferro. “They had a great basketball team my last couple of years in college. National championship, wasn’t it?”
“Almost,” said Ben, “but not quite.”
“Trust Jorge to know the scores,” jeered Santa Cruz. “That’s all they do at Stanford: study hard, exercise their sweaty bodies, and take cold showers. Thank God, things were never like that at good old California, were they, Gil?” He winked at Alden-Aragone who said soberly, “Thank God, they never were.”
“Don’t mind those two,” Taliaferro said to Ben. “For the last five years they’ve been trying to convince the world that the University of California is a hotbed of sin, and they were its leading sinners. Unfortunately for them, I’ve known them all their—”
“I beg your pardon,” Santa Cruz remarked severely, “but I must ask you not to excuse your own d
eficiencies by suggesting that I share them.”
“That goes for your old schoolmate, too,” said Alden-Aragone. “By the way, where is our friend Jerome?”
“Where do you think this time of the season?” said Blas. “At Huanu Blanco.”
“Taking inventory,” Salazar put in. He darted a finger in the air, counting aloud. “One bird, two birds, lift your tails and work, birds. Three birds, four birds, what we want is more, birds.”
“Five birds, six birds,” chanted Santa Cruz. “You still haven’t worked out that one, have you, Julio?”
“And you still haven’t brought in the evidence that birds lift their tails when they work,” said Alden-Aragone. “I tell you, you’re thinking of horses.”
“Very funny,” said Blas.
“And bulls,” said Santa Cruz. He nodded at Ben. “When you stopped over on the continent, did you have any chance to see the bulls?”
“You mean the bullfights?”
“Yes.”
“No, I didn’t. Even if I did, I doubt if I’d have the stomach for them. Back where I come from is all cattle raising country. You develop a tender affection for bulls there.”
“Just as well,” said Salazar. “There isn’t an honest bullfight being held anywhere in the world today.”
“I’ve seen a couple that looked honest,” said Taliaferro.
“From where you sat. How can you tell how much they shortened the horns or how much damage they’re doing with the pics?”
“I can’t tell,” said Taliaferro amiably. “I’m happy with what I see.”
“Some aficionado,” said Salazar. “You’re as bad as those North American tourists who sit there with their eyes popping out, yelling olé every time a half dead bull tries to find a way out of the ring.”
“Olé!” cried Santa Cruz and flapped his napkin over his head. They were having lunch in the patio of the club, a shaded spot with the sound of a fountain nearby making it seem cooler than it was. Other tables were around the fountain, and their occupants turned to look at Santa Cruz.
“Will you please not make a spectacle of yourself,” said Blas in a furious undertone, and Alden-Aragone said, “Cris, dear boy, think of what you’re doing to my political prospects.”
“But how do you fake a bullfight?” Ben said to Salazar. “Even a farm bull is dangerous if you twist his tail.”
“But not if you shorten his horns so that he can’t do more than butt you with the stumps, and then pic him so deep that he can’t even lift his head to do that. I don’t deny that some matadors get hurt and a few of them get killed at the game—”
“Art,” said Santa Cruz in mock horror. “Art.”
“—at the game,” said Salazar. “But any big animal can be dangerous if you shove your belly at him when he’s charging past you. The fact is, it’s the man who makes bullfighting dangerous, not the bull.”
“The brave bull,” said Taliaferro.
“The brave bull is a sick animal,” said Salazar, “the man is wetting his fancy pants, and the moment of truth is a beautiful fake. I can tell you. I have people in my family operating bull rings all over the continent.”
“Watch it,” said Santa Cruz. “You’ll pop a blood vessel.”
“Julio’s right about the tourist aficionados though,” said Taliaferro. “When I was at college I went down to Mexico City one summer with some of the boys, and we saw the bulls there. And you should have seen those nice Yankee classmates of mine try to outdo Hemingway. It was a better show than the bulls. Ah, la fiesta brava. The beauty of it. The magnificence of it. The universality of its tragedy. The exquisite study of movement and color. Everything except the sad truth that watching a man torture an animal can give some people a nice sadistic glow in the liver.”
“Is that what you feel at a bullfight?” Ben asked.
“You can’t ask him that,” said Santa Cruz. “He used to pull the wings off flies when he was a kid. He’s not a fair subject.”
“I read an article by a psychiatrist who was one of those aficionados,” said Alden-Aragone. “He said that the matador was a man who was insecure about his own masculinity, so he must dominate the bull, just for reassurance.”
“The only thing any matador is insecure about,” said Salazar, “is his bank account.”
“Still, he’s got a point,” said Alden-Aragone. “There is sexual significance in bullfighting. It’s too obvious to overlook.”
“There’s sexual significance in everything,” said Santa Cruz. “You’ve seen what the festival of the rope does to the women there. There isn’t a girl watching who wouldn’t like to go into the woods with you afterward.”
“If papa would let her,” said Taliaferro.
“Disgusting,” said Blas coldly.
“You mean,” said Ben, “they make family parties of it?”
“If they can afford to,” Taliaferro said. “It’s an expensive trip to the Victorica for anyone who doesn’t own a car. By the way, has Blas showed you old Ajaxa yet? It’ll give you an idea of—”
“And how can you compare the rope to the bulls?” demanded Blas of Santa Cruz. “That is a ridiculous comparison.”
“I wasn’t comparing them. I was merely pointing out what each of them did to the girls. You know what girls are, don’t you, Blas? Or haven’t you found out yet?”
“There’s something wrong with your theory, Cris,” Alden-Aragone remarked sadly, “if Blas is the evidence. Look at him. Middle-aged and still green on the vine. Now, if he’d only treat himself to one night at Madame Sophie’s, just an hour of scientific investigation—”
Ben caught the warning shake of Santa Cruz’s head. He observed that Alden-Aragone heeded the warning instantly. “Madame Sophie’s place,” he remarked lightly to Ben, “is the best in town, but I wouldn’t recommend it seriously. Its merchandise is not guaranteed.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Ben said. He nodded at Taliaferro. “Yes, I’ve already seen the statue of Ajaxa. And I’ll be going to the festival with the Bambas-Quincys. My only worry is whether I’ll be able to take it or not. Jerome made it pretty clear that the first time out is hard to take.”
“Because it is really the moment of truth,” stated Blas. “When a man puts his rope on the gallows there is no faking at all.”
“None at all,” said Taliaferro solemnly.
“But what if he cuts himself down as soon as he’s up?” asked Ben.
“I’ve seen that happen, too,” Taliaferro said. “All it means is that the man understood immediately that his flesh was stronger than his spirit. It’s no discredit to him. Nobody will ever remind him of it afterward.”
“Would he be allowed to try again next year?”
“If he were physically qualified, why not? What he would try to do during that year is condition himself so that the spirit would weigh more in the balance than the flesh. You see, the rope is much more a spiritual test than a physical. Anyone who tries it without understanding that is in trouble from the start.”
“The Indians understand it,” said Blas, “but our own people find it hard to comprehend. That is why we have only had two champions in all this time.”
“We used to think Blas would be the third one,” said Santa Cruz, “until he started to put on weight.”
“What did you mean,” Ben asked Taliaferro, “when you said someone might have trouble from the start? What kind of trouble would that be?”
“The kind that kills,” said Taliaferro. “You want to raise the knife to the rope but you can’t. Then you start to twist and kick, and that’s when some people turn their heads away. It’s a—”
Salazar cut in impatiently, “The truth is, the rope really does have all the mystique that bullfighting pretends to have. The rope is the ultimate test. It has no feelings, no fears; it does not have to be tormented into trying to kill you. It will kill you, because that is its function. It is there like God. When a man puts his rope on the gallows he is seeing into his soul for the first time
. Each second he hangs there brings him that much closer to the truth about himself. As the Indians say, every man is part animal and part god. The animal is afraid, but the god is fearless because it lives on the other side of death anyhow. The rope will tell you which you are closer to—animal or god.”
“Olé!” Santa Cruz whispered loudly.
“You can laugh about it,” Blas told him, “but you know you will be there with everyone else.”
“Of course I will,” said Santa Cruz. “Blas, sometimes you remind me of Father Bibieni. You two may be on opposite sides of the fence, but there is a strange resemblance between you.”
“Did you hear about his sermon last Sunday?” asked Alden-Aragone.
“I didn’t know Blas was delivering sermons on Sundays now,” said Santa Cruz. “I thought that was his day off.”
“You clown, you know who I mean. It seems that the good father really cut loose this time. The festival is no longer a near occasion of sin. It is a mortal sin. It conspires at suicide.”
“Yes, I know,” said Alden-Aragone. “I also heard that the archbishop had him in for a long heart-to-heart talk and tried to explain in words of one syllable that the man who enters the festival is no more guilty of suicide than a matador or auto racer or anyone else who engages in rough sports. And the word is that the archbishop lost every round.”
“Where’d you pick that up?” asked Taliaferro, and Santa Cruz said, “Trust a politician to know everybody’s private business.”
“Does this Father Bibieni have much support here?” Ben said. “Could he really put a stop to the festival?”
“Hardly,” said Alden-Aragone. “Outside of a few well-meaning innocents, his support is all lunatic fringe. Our nadaistas—you have to see them to believe them—and some local radicals.”
The Panama Portrait Page 5