We were speaking in Spanish. Did they speak English?
'Enough,' said Mario, in Spanish, and chattered out his laugh.
'I know enough,' said Alfredo, in Spanish. 'I was in Arrisboorg for two months- studying English.'
'Pennsylvania?'
'Meeseepee.'
'Say something in English.'
Alfredo leered at me. 'Titty,' he said. Then he uttered several obscenities which, in his terrible pronunciation, did not sound at all offensive.
'Spanish is better than English,' said Mario.
'I think that is true,' said Alfredo.
'Nonsense,' I said. 'How can one language be better than another? It depends on what you are trying to say.'
'For all things,' said Mario. 'Spanish is a more amplified language. English is short and practical.'
'Shakespeare is short and practical?'
'We have Shakespeare in Spanish,' said Alfredo.
Mario stuck to his point. He said, 'We have more words in Spanish.'
'More words than English?'
'Lots more,'he said.
The railcar had halted to take on passengers. Now we started and not far from the track was a hairy mottled pig ploughing grass with its snout. Mario gestured at the pig.
He said, 'For example, take "pig" - we have five words for pig. How many do you have?'
Hog, sow, piglet, swine. I said, 'Four.'
'Listen,' he said, and counted on his fingers. 'Cuche, tunco, maraño, cochino, serdo. What do you think of that?'
'And two words for "dog",' said Alfredo. 'Chucho and can.'
'We have about seven words for children, or child,' said Mario. 'In Honduras they have eight!'
Alfredo said, 'How many have you got for dog?'
Puppy, mutt, mongrel, cur. 'Four,' I said. 'That is more than you have.'
'Well, we have four for bull,' said Mario.
My God, I thought, what a ridiculous conversation.
Mario listed the words for bulclass="underline" novillo, buey, tórrete, guiriche.
'You win,' I said. The railcar stopped again, and while Alfredo and Mario went out to buy Cokes I dug my Spanish dictionary out of my suitcase and checked some of the words. When the railcar resumed its jangling progress I said, 'Buey does not mean bull. It means "ox".'
'It is the same animal,' said Mario.
We argued about this until Alfredo conceded, 'Yes, in the United States the ox is different from ours. I have seen them in Arrisboorg.'
We were passing through lovely mountains, very steep and volcanic. On many of the lower slopes were coffee bushes. We were not very far from Guatemala even now, and it struck me as amazing that landscape could change so quickly from country to country. This was not only greener and steeper than what I had seen just over the border in the Motagua Valley, but had a cared-for look, a rustic neatness and a charm that made it quite attractive. I did not know then that El Salvador imported most of its vegetables from Guatemala, and yet El Salvador was clearly the busier-looking of the two, the better integrated. Its real burden was its size: what claim could such a small place make? I had heard that it was run by fourteen families, a melancholy statistic suggesting ludicrous snobberies and social jostling as well as an infuriated opposition to them, Marxist students sweating with indignation. Mario and Alfredo confirmed that this was true.
'I do not like to talk about politics,' said Alfredo. 'But in this country the police are cruel and the government is military. What do you think, Mario?'
Mario shook his head. It was obvious that he preferred to talk about something else.
At about three-thirty we came to the town of Quetzaltepeque. Seeing a church, Mario and Alfredo made the sign of the cross. The women in the railcar did the same. Some men removed their hats as well.
'You are not a Catholic?' said Alfredo.
I rapidly made the sign of the cross, so as not to disappoint him.
Alfredo said, 'In English, what is the meaning of huacha?'
What was this, some Nahautl word? Alfredo giggled - no, he said, there were no Indian languages spoken in El Salvador. Huacha was English, he insisted, but what did it mean? I said I was not familiar with it - could he use it in a sentence? He cleared his throat and hunched and said in English, 'Huacha gonna do when da well rons dry?'
'English,' said Mario, with a derisory snort.
Although they were both travelling salesmen, they hoped to rise in their firms and, one of these days, be promoted to a desk job in San Salvador. Mario worked on a straight commission, Alfredo's profit was based on a credit system which I could not understand - he had a salesman's knack for long opaque explanations, exhausting the listener into submission without allowing comprehension to occur. I said that they both seemed very ambitious. Oh, yes, said Alfredo, Salvadoreans were much cleverer than other Central Americans.
'We are like Israelis,' said Alfredo.
'Are you going to invade anyone?'
'We could have taken Honduras a few years ago.'
'I have an ambition,' said Mario. He said the salesman in his company who sold the most boxes of Rinso that year was going to win a free trip to San Andres Island. He thought he had a good chance of winning - he had sold thousands of boxes.
The valleys were deepening, the mountains growing shadowy in the setting sun. The railcar was small, but at no time was it full, and I guessed that it would not be long before it was removed and the railway service suspended except for shipments of coffee. Towards late afternoon we passed through dense forest. Alfredo said there was a swimming pool nearby, fed by a waterfall; it was a wonderful place for picking up girls. He would be glad to take me there. I said I had to be moving along, to Cutuco and Nicaragua. He said he would not go to Nicaragua for anything in the world. Neither Alfredo nor Mario had ever been to Honduras or Nicaragua, which were next-door.
San Salvador remained hidden. It lies in a bowl, surrounded by mountains which trap the air and keep it smoggy. To our right was a highway-the Pan-American Highway. Alfredo said it was a fast road, but had its dangers. Chief among these was the fact that, ten miles out of San Salvador, the Pan-American Highway is sometimes used as an emergency landing strip for planes. I said that I would rather be in this railcar pottering gently through the coffee plantations than in a bus careening towards a taxiing plane.
What were these two going to do in the capital? Business, they said, see the manager, file orders. Then Mario said a bit hesitantly that he was also going to see his girl-friend - he did not yet have a girl-friend in Santa Ana and was being driven to distraction by the provincial morality of the place. Alfredo had two or three girl-friends. His main reason for this trip to San Salvador ('please do not tell my manager!') was to see the football game that night. It promised to be one of the best games of the year - El Salvador was playing Mexico at the National Stadium and, as Mexico was scheduled to play in the World Cup in Argentina, it was El Salvador's chance to prove itself.
I had read about Latin American soccer - the chaos, the riots, the passionately partisan crowds, the way political frustrations were ventilated at the stadiums. I knew for a fact that if one wished to understand the British it helped to see a soccer game; then, the British did not seem so tight-lipped and proper. Indeed, a British soccer game was an occasion for a form of gang-warfare for the younger spectators. The muscular ritual of sport was always a clear demonstration of the wilder impulses in national character. The Olympic Games are interesting largely because they are a kind of world war in pantomime.
'Would you mind if I went to the game with you?'
Alfredo looked worried. 'It will be very crowded,' he said. 'There may be trouble. It is better to go to the swimming pool tomorrow - for the girls.'
'Do you think I came to El Salvador to pick up girls at a public swimming pool?'