Banana Republic

by Rawson, Eric;

  He had made the mistake of pursuing a higher education in New York. At Columbia his classmates, and even some wits among the professoriate, called him Frankie Flowers in egregious lilting tones. The American student body struck him as a mishmash of ignoramuses and arrogant pricks, more interested in picking up floozies than studying the liberal arts. When they were not tormenting anyone who spoke with an accent, they turned their energies to devising novel ways to cheat on exams and bully freshmen into writing their essays so that they could get hammered on camphor-laced rum at McGurk’s Suicide Hall for six cents a shot. Entire Saturdays they dedicated to football, a pastime that produced mudbaths, torn clothing, broken bones, and head trauma, a version of stone-age warfare in which the victors gained neither spoils nor territory. Although he joined in the crowd’s roaring approbation of the football team’s violent, homoerotic public displays, come Monday morning Frankie Flowers found himself, once again, the target of that same crowd’s abuse. He learned that the worst insult that could be hurled at him—even worse than “sodomite” or “anarchist”—was “Jew.” He was not Jewish. Neither was he an anarchist nor, technically, a sodomite. It was grossly unfair: he was an intelligent chap, good looking, with wavy hair, all of his teeth, and what he thought of as the aristocratic build and temperament of a medieval champion.

  He had enrolled with the intention of studying political science with Richmond Mayo-Smith. His goal, vague, was to one day topple the corrupt Terencio, who had sent Francisco Flores’ family into exile and confiscated their coffee holdings. Flores found Government as an academic subject intolerably elementary, dedicated to forms rather than means. The only good thing about his coursework had been adding French, German, and English to his repertoire of Latin and Spanish, offering him a great swath of European literature, none of which reflected his personal experience and was thus a golden avenue of escape from his wretched life in Manhattan.

  His one friend had been Holly Strop. She was a pouchy, thick-waisted, childless widow with a gap-toothed smile who ran a boarding house on Madison Avenue for young men who had been banned from the YMCA or had been picked up for loitering with intent or were simply too fond of fraternizing. It was Holly Strop who had taught him the art of petit-point embroidery. Every stitch he made in his candle-lit quarters in the Presidential Palace reminded him of his years in her house. Holly Strop and he had passed many frosty winter nights in the parlor with a coal fire glowing in the grate, while upstairs some of the boys practiced their dance routines.

  Not one of the other boarders was a student. A couple of them worked in a magazine office, but, as far as he could tell, most of them survived on mysterious trickles of income. Older gentlemen in cashmere overcoats called regularly, provoking temper tantrums among the rivals. Mealtimes at Holly Strop’s were a noisy mess of squabbling and tears, and the American food was disgusting: greasy globs of sausage, soggy potatoes, rye bread, pus-flavored milk, corn on the cob, fatback, gooseberry jam, saltines, pickles, celery, canned oysters, some kind of radish called chow-chow, and, the most execrable of all, sour apple pie in a lard crust. If he had found a restaurant with more appetizing fare, he would have eaten out.

  Aside from Holly Strop, whom he adored, the bright spot during these dark times had been the yellow-brick Italianate heap of the Metropolitan Opera House. His sophomore year, he paid nearly his entire allowance for a seat from which he had an unobstructed view of the Vanderbilts and the Goulds and the Cruikshanks in the Diamond Horseshoe boxes. Holly Strop was willing to defer his rent, but Columbia wanted its $150 tuition—now. When he wired to Madrid for emergency funds (the family had fled to Spain during the coup of 1891), his father ordered him to leave New York. Before he could book passage, both his parents died in the cholera pandemic. His sister, Marielena, wired him the sad news. Then she too died—of a hemorrhage—and he discovered that the family was deeply in debt, living on the mercy of minor Spanish aristrocrats who were themselves deeply in debt. He had to go to work, meeting his expenses by translating racy French novels for a shady publisher on Tompkins Square.

  It was in a typical state of despondency, poverty, and inchoate longing that on the night of November 22, 1894, he first laid eyes on Isabel Eames in a production of Carmen. The auditorium still smelled faintly of smoke from the blaze that had gutted the building in ’92. He was suffering from a severe sinus headache. The wretched Goulds loomed nearby, flashing their diamonds and rustling their silks and kindling his resentment of all those who could afford the grand tier, those who painted him as an effeminate anarchist kike, those who sent their idiot sons, too dense even to be bribed into Princeton, to Columbia, there to personally torment him, an orphan, an intellectual, a stranger in a city cold and gray.

  But when Isabel Eames took the stage, all of his resentment and loneliness melted like snow on a springtime meadow. A freshet of hope bubbled through his soul. She was fabulous. She was divine. She was his Guinevere, his Isolde, his Dulcinea.

  He stood outside the stage door for an hour, smoking handrolled cigarettes, the slush soaking through his shoes, hoping for a glimpse. He wanted to fling roses at her feet, but he had only words, in four living languages, none of them adequate.

  As the prima donna, wrapped in ermine, swept through the stage door on the arm of a gentleman wearing a top hat and cape, Flores tried to speak but was struck dumb. The gentleman, who had a face like a carved Bavarian nutcracker, helped her mount the hansom cab waiting on Broadway.

  Flores attempted to unlock his tongue. Instead he unleashed a tremendous sneeze. The diva paused on the step of the cab. She turned so that the light from the gas lamps caught her hair and illuminated her profile.

  “Gesundheit,” she said and handed him the crumpled ball of her handkerchief.

  Then they were gone, in a pounding of hooves and the cracking of a whip.

  He pressed the wrinkled handkerchief to his face. It smelled of some ripe organic substance, like the sea at low tide or an uncleaned cage at the zoo. He breathed the essence of the diva.

  It was her voice that had been playing on the phonograph in his presidential suite: Marguerite in Faust. Sometimes he wondered if the motivation behind his toppling of Terencio’s government did not lie in his thwarted desire for Isabel, for the purity and vitality that rang through every scratchy syllable of the worn-out phonographic discs. How many years, in how many dark, lonely rooms, had he worshipped at the altar of her voice, imploring God to deliver her, somehow, into his arms? Had he believed that as the ruler of a country he might conjure her presence? Lo and behold, three years ago she had, indeed, appeared on his shores, the imposter bride of the banana king.

  He was aware that the import duties he had imposed on the materials for the Vesuvius Fruit Company’s railroad project might be his way of punishing Walter Whitaker as a proxy for the bullies who had made his New York years miserable and, at the same time, of demonstrating his potency to Isabel, whose Marguerite lived forever in his heart.

  The President of the Republic tightened the final stitch and held up the embroidery hoop for inspection. The cloth bore a remarkable likeness of Isabel Whitaker, née Eames, in three-quarters profile. He released it from the hoop and gently folded the fabric. He got up and crossed the room and opened a small cedar box in which he kept his many portraits of the diva, safe from moths and unfriendly eyes.

  

  Porter did not saunter; he did not stroll. No fidgeting or fussing. He pushed through the doorway of the Hotel de los Estranjeros, where the Game Four fiesta was in full swing, Salcedo Brothers roaring brassily, New Century women waltzing lustily, Cornelia Anderson pouring white-eye as fast as the baseball fans could gulp it down. In the portico several men were dragging aside the former Louisiana state treasurer, his suit streaked with vomit, to sleep off a drunk.

  Porter strode across the plaza to the custom house, a cold bottle in each hand, shouldering past the workers who were unloading boxcars on th
e wye. A buckboard rattled by, so close that the wheel nearly took off his kneecap. Two soldiers slouched outside the shack, guarding the day’s receipts. They watched him dangerously as he stepped through the open doorway.

  “Evans, I need your telephone.” He thunked a bottle down on the drafting table. Rivulets ran down the brown glass.

  “Go away,” Evans said without looking up from his work.

  “I know you don’t drink beer, so I brought lemonade.”

  “I don’t drink lemonade.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I only drink water,” he said.

  An extended family of cockroaches had taken up residence in the shack, roaming across the walls and drafting table. There was a big specimen perched at the top of the ledger book, waving its antennae. Evans paid it no mind. His pen scratched on paper.

  Porter tried again. “Cornelia won’t let me use the telephone at the hotel, on the grounds that she refuses to aid and abet a man’s suicide.” He tried to sound jocular, but his taste for humor had worn thin since the firebombing. “I thought I might use yours.”

  “Not interested in your problems. Not interested in you. I have three ships anchored offshore.”

  Porter looked at the balding top of the customs agent’s head. The man was as dry as a cactus. Porter imagined that if he tossed a bucket of water on him, he would soak it up like desert sand. “Be a sport, Evans. One gringo to another.”

  “Who are you going to call?”

  “Who in blazes do you think! I can get hold of Buck Geddie by hollering at his window, and the telephone in the firehouse is a burned-up stub.”

  “So go holler. If you want to call Whitaker’s house, Geddie has a phone you can use.”

  “You know I can’t set foot in the consulate.”

  “You believe Vesuvius had something to do with your printing press burning up?”

  “That’s right, I do.”

  “Even though Walter Whitaker is out of the country.”

  “That’s what I aim to find out.”

  “Isabel’s at the hotel every afternoon. You won’t need a bloodhound to find her either,” he said and snickered to himself.

  The sound of cheering wafted across the plaza.

  “You must’ve missed the Game Three jamboree, Evans. Isabel Whitaker’s gone into seclusion.”

  Since the fire and the news of his wife’s passing, Porter had not seen or heard from Isabel. Where there had been the rattle of her red motorcycle on the Calle Grande every afternoon at four o’clock, there was now silence. The children sat in the school house, carving up the desks and drawing rude pictures of Señor Gerardo, waiting hopelessly to be dismissed. Mozos and mothers forgot to prepare the evening meal. The barflies at the Hotel de los Estranjeros remarked her absence and expressed fondness for the familiar smell that had emanated from her end of the bar.

  “Like I said,” Evans said, “I have three ships, all with inbound cargo.” He glanced up speculatively. “I can’t imagine she’d go anywhere. A woman with no means.”

  Porter experienced a flicker of hope: “So I can use the telephone?”

  “Official business only.”

  “No exceptions for your friends in the press?”

  “Go away.”

  At that moment, the telephone rang. Without a glance in Porter’s direction, the customs agent lifted the receiver: “Evans here.” He listened for a moment. “Thank you, Miz Anderson,” he said in a civil voice and hung up. It was then that Porter noticed the scorecard next to the big ledger on the roach-infested drafting table.

  Evans penciled in the news from the hotel.

  “So?”

  “Three up, three down, end of the eighth. A real pitchers’ duel.”

  “That’s official business?”

  “I’m the official,” Evans said, and Porter could not argue with that.

  

  Butch Higbee had several favorite spots around the city of New Orleans, but the Vesuvius headquarters on Camp Street was not one of them. It was a rough rectangle the color of a lung infection, piled to the rafters with mold-blackened wooden pallets, crates, and tarps, stinking of cargo holds and far-off places. A high row of soot-begrimed windows admitted an attenuated sunlight and the muffled sounds of street commerce. A sparrow had found its way into the building and was banging around in the rafters and stirring up dirt, which drizzled down through the dank air. There was a bloodstain on the floor the size and shape of a matador’s cape. Higbee was sitting on a painted iron café chair, his left leg thrown over his right knee, pocket watch on his lap, waiting for the man who figured critically in his plans—an experienced machine-gunner.

  Sam “the Fighting Jew” Dreben, booby-trap specialist and frequenter of the Carousel Bar, knew a killer from Pershing’s outfit in Mindanao, a kid named Leonard Vaught, who was a master of the machine gun. He promised to send him over to Camp Street with a letter of introduction. Higbee had been spending a lot of time at the Carousel, recruiting ex-soldiers, Irish street workers, and members of the criminal underworld for the expedition to overthrow Francisco Flores.

  If the machine-gunner came from Charles Street, he could enter through the back of adjoining building next door and then cross into the fruit-company office via a doorway that appeared to have been bricked up but was, in fact, wood painted to look like brick. In this way Leonard Vaught could escape the notice of the Secret Service agents who had planted themselves across Camp Street. The agents had been there for several days, and they made a point of being noticed. They had no chance anyway of blending with the mobs that infested the neighborhood. In their somber derbies and government topcoats they stuck out like Sunday school teachers in a Storyville fleshpot.

  All this cloak-and-dagger stuff annoyed Higbee. Why couldn’t Whitaker’s people meet up in the St. Charles Hotel like everybody else? Even Francisco Flores’ spies, ridiculous in their tall cowboy hats, hung out in the lobby. Everyone and his brother knew exactly what was happening. In that morning’s The New York Times he had read that New Orleans had become the hotbed of revolution and the Mecca of filibusters. Never before have there been so many people of known revolutionary designs in New Orleans as there are now, and they are leading a score of secret service agents of this and other countries on a merry chase, although the keenest eye could not locate a mention of Walter Whitaker or the Vesuvius Fruit Company in the journalistic gossip.

  Higbee was bored. He was irritated. He watched the sparrow flying around. He read another story in the Times. Then he read a story in the Picayune, byline William S. Porter. Lately, Higbee was reminded way too often of the slick Texan who had scooted with his game-bank. Every time he folded back the front page, there was another humorous dispatch from points south. The man was on the A.P. wire now, which meant that folks from Sacramento to Miami were chuckling at his inane ramblings twice a week over their morning java. Today’s story was about the burning of the Coralio firehouse while the local lushes who constituted the volunteer brigade watched their equipment go up in flames. The article implied that Vesuvius Fruit Company had a hand in the ridiculous conflagration. In fact, William S. Porter seemed to take delight in throwing darts at Vesuvius, Walter Whitaker, American foreign policy, and the banana-eating public in general.

  Seeing the man’s name in print made Higbee grind his teeth in rage. When he got back down there, first thing he was going to do was track down Porter and shove a tightly-rolled newspaper up his sphincter. Then, since Mr. Slick thought he could gamble, they’d have themselves a little game of chance with his Luger pistol.

  That’s when he turned the page and saw the drawing of the banana mule.

  Higbee guffawed in spite of himself. He pictured Walter Whitaker, upon seeing the cartoon, tearing himself in twain. This was the sort of public ridicule the boss did not need.

  

  Walter Wh
itaker stared at the Vesuvius mule chomping on a bunch of fruit and evacuating on the grinning face of the man who occupied the White Office. He looked at the attribution: William Sydney Porter.

  At first, what appeared before his eyes did not register on his brain. Then a crackling shock ran through him. His face turned purple. He staggered to his feet, upsetting the breakfast service on the floor, blindly found his jacket, and bolted from the room, tie-less and hat-less, leaving the door open.

  In a daze of disbelief, Whitaker made his way down the sweeping staircase to the lobby. The fat little desk clerk blinked at him and then dropped his eyes.

  “Look at me, you quisling,” Whitaker snarled.

  The desk clerk looked at Walter Whitaker’s nose. “Do not send the newspapers with my breakfast ever again.”

  “Sir?”

  “No papers. Ever. Again.”

  “Very well,” making a note on a pad below the level of the polished counter. The clerk was an old hand and knew to make notes on pads when the guests bellyached.

  “Now give me the telephone,” Whitaker said in a savage voice.

  “Room number, please?” The clerk put on a cheerful face meant to make the trials of existence a little more bearable. People liked that.