I haled me a woman from the street,
Shameless, but, oh, so fair!
For several minutes, the fat man was silenced, but when Andy finished he piped up again.
'Not only sheenies,' he said. 'Anyone with a few bucks. They've ruined the place. I'll tell you one thing - Carazo just got elected, and he's going to kick them all out. They'll all be back in New York, where they belong. The trouble is, the hookers won't come back.' His hand went to the bowl and scrabbled. Now he looked down. The bowl was empty. He said again, 'The hookers won't come back.'
Andy said, 'Where are you from, sir?'
'Texas.'
'I knew it. Know how I knew it? Cause I could tell you were interested in poetry, Tex. Yes, I did. Now, listen, I know you're not a redneck - '
'That's the beer talking,' said the fat man. His hand, without peanuts, foraged on the bar, a large greedy lump of fingers looking for food.
' - but I wonder if you could do me a favour?'
'Yeah?'
'Just an application,' said Andy. He was perched on his bar-stool. His voice was matter-of-fact, but he sipped between phrases and broke up his sentences. 'I wonder if you could get me, um,' he sipped his beer, 'an application to, um,' he sipped again, 'join the, um,' now he sipped and smacked his lips, 'Ku Klux Klan.'
The fat man hoicked phlegm and spat on the floor.
Andy said, 'Could you do that little thing for me?'
'You can wash the sheets,' snarled the fat man.
'I knew he had a sense of humour,' said Andy. That Tex is a real fun guy, and I tell you, I'd like to sit here all night just swapping jokes with him. But, Paul, I think I've had enough beer.'
Andy climbed off his bar-stool and trying to stand started to topple. He balanced himself against the bar, blew out his cheeks and said, 'Yep, if you can't stand up you've had enough. Now tell me, what's the name of that hotel I'm in?'
After Andy had gone, the fat man said, 'He's lucky I'm in a good mood. I could snap his arms off.'
The fat man's name was Dibbs. He had been a policeman in Texas, but he had quit, and he hinted that his reason for quitting was that policemen were not allowed to be violent enough. Dibbs? Well, two or three times he had wanted to blow people's brains out; but you weren't supposed to do that sort of thing. He could have done it easily and called it resisting arrest. And he had been taunted by punks he was not allowed to shoot. He became a construction worker, operating a bulldozer, and then he had quit because everybody else was collecting social security money, so why not him? Now he was a personal bodyguard ('to a sheeny') and a courier.
'What exactly does a courier do?' I asked him.
'They carry things. Me, I carry money.'
In the past few weeks he had been to Mexico, Panama and Honduras. He had carried fifty thousand dollars' worth of pesos to Montreal, and eighty thousand Canadian dollars to Honduras and Panama. He worked for a certain man, he said. When I asked why these large amounts of currency were being shunted back and forth across national frontiers, he laughed. But he did say how the money was carried - in a suitcase.
'A big suitcase.'
He said, 'You'd be surprised how much money you can get into a little suitcase. It's easy. No country checks your baggage when you leave. And customs people in the States and Canada don't care if they open a suitcase and find it filled with pesos. Sometimes they don't even open it. But when they do, they shit. They've never seen so much money in their life.'
It was clear to me why Dibbs had been hired for this job. He was strong; he was as big as a house; he was fairly stupid and completely loyal. He would not go into detail about his employer or the reason for transporting the money, and he said at one point, 'Maybe my name's Dibbs and maybe it ain't.' He had a fantasy of self-importance; carrying these sums of money fed his fantasy. He was proud of the fact that no one had ever succeeded in mugging him. 'Guess why?'
I said I couldn't guess.
'Because I'm an alcoholic,' he said. He picked up his glass. 'See that? It's a Coke. If I drink anything stronger, I'm finished. So I don't drink. Can't drink. Drunks get mugged. You - you'll probably get mugged. You've been drinking beer all night. I could carry fifty grand through the worst part of Panama City and nothing would happen to me.'
'You'd be sober.'
'Guess why else?'
'Can't guess.'
'Because I know karate. I could snap your arms off.' Dibbs leaned forward. He looked as though he wanted to snap my arms off. He said, 'Also, I'm not stupid. People who get mugged ask for it. They're stupid. They go to the wrong places. They get drunk. They don't know karate.'
Also, I thought, they weigh less than three hundred pounds.
Dibbs struck me as being a very sinister character, and without Andy Ruggles around to distract Dibbs's attention I felt rather defenceless. Dibbs had one passion: hookers. He liked to take them two or three at a time. 'I just lie there- they do all the work.' He boasted that he never paid them. They liked him; he walked into a brothel and they were all over him, clamouring, fighting to go to bed with this mountain of meat. He didn't know why this was so. 'Maybe it's because I'm so handsome!'
He wanted to take me to what he said was the only good brothel in San José. It was too late, I said, nearly midnight. He said midnight was the best time - the hookers were just waking up. 'How about tomorrow?' I said, knowing that tomorrow I would be in Limón. 'You're a chicken,' he said, and I could hear him laughing as I descended the stairs to the street.
There are two railways in Costa Rica, each with its own terminal in San José. Their routes dramatize Costa Rica's indifference to her neighbours: they go to the coasts, not to any frontier. The Pacific Railway travels down to Puntarenas on the Gulf of Nicoya; The Atlantic up to Puerto Limón. The Atlantic station is the older of the two, and part of its line has been in operation for almost a hundred years. Outside that station there is a steam locomotive mounted on blocks for travellers to admire. In El Salvador such an engine would be puffing and blowing up the track to Santa Ana; in Guatemala it would have been melted down and made into anti-personnel bombs for the White Hand.
A Limón train leaves the Atlantic station every day at noon. It is not a great train, but by Central American standards it is the Brighton Belle. There are five passenger coaches, two classes, no freight cars. I had been eager to take this train, for the route has the reputation of being one of the most beautiful in the world, from the temperate capital in the mountains, through the deep valleys on the north-east, to the tropical coast which, because of its richly lush jungle, Columbus named Costa Rica when he touched there on his fourth voyage in 1502. He believed that he had arrived at the green splendour of Asia. (Columbus tacked up and down the coast and was ill for four months in Panama; cruelly, no one told him that there was another vast ocean on the other side of the mountains - the local Indians were deaf to his appeal for this information.)
The most scenic of Central American routes; but I had another good reason for wanting to take this train out of San José. Since arriving in Costa Rica I had spent much of my time in the company of hard-drinking American refugees - Andy Ruggles and the diabolical Dibbs were but two. I was glad of their company; El Salvador hadn't been much fun. But now I was ready to set off alone. Travel is at its best a solitary enterprise: to see, to examine, to assess, you have to be alone and unencumbered. Other people can mislead you; they crowd your meandering impressions with their own; if they are companionable they obstruct your view, and if they are boring they corrupt the silence with non-sequiturs, shattering your concentration with Oh, look, it's raining and You see a lot of trees here. Travelling on your own can be terribly lonely (and it is not understood by Japanese who, coming across you smiling wistfully at an acre of Mexican buttercups, tend to say things like Where is the rest of your team?). I think of evening in the hotel room in the strange eity; my diary has been brought up to date; I hanker for company: what to do? I don't know anyone here, so I go out and walk and discover the three streets of the town and rather envy the strolling couples and the people with children. The museums and churches are closed, and towards midnight the streets are empty. Don't carry anything valuable, I was warned; it'll just get stolen. If I am mugged I will have to apologize in my politest Spanish: I am sorry, sir, but I have nothing valuable on my person. Is there a surer way of enraging a thief and driving him to violence? Walking these dark streets is dangerous, but the bars are open. Ruggles and Dibbs await. They take the curse off my boredom, but I have a nagging suspicion that if I had stayed home and lingered in downtown Boston until midnight I would have met Ruggles and Dibbs in the Two O'Clock Lounge ('20 Completely Nude College Girls!!). I did not have to take the train to Costa Rica for that.