The heat had quieted the passengers. They had stopped singing, and the train had become a sleepy local clicking in and out through the woodland slopes.
. . . we had a full view of her decks. Shall I ever forget the triple horror of that spectacle? Twenty-five or thirty human bodies, among whom were several females, lay scattered about between the counter and the galley in the last and most loathsome state of putrefaction. We plainly saw that not a soul lived in that fated vessel. Yet we could not help shouting to the dead for help!
Even the locusts were louder than this engine, and the passengers hardly noticed the fruit sellers who appeared on the short platforms of the village stations.
As our first loud yell of terror broke forth, it was replied to by something, from near the bowsprit of the stranger, so closely resembling the scream of a human voice that the nicest ear might have been startled and deceived. . .
There was a family just in front of me. The mother was seated across the aisle from her two daughters, who were pretty - one about sixteen, the other a year or two older. The father was standing some distance away, swigging from a beer bottle. There was an empty seat between the two girls; on this seat was a basket. I had shut my book to rest my eyes, and then I saw a boy lingering by the rear door. At first I thought he was watching me. He came closer. He was watching the two girls, the empty seat. He crept towards them and summoning his courage said, 'Is that seat occupied?'
The girls giggled and moved the basket. The boy sat down. After an awkward interval the boy began to talk: Where were they going? What were they doing? He said he was a student. Wasn't it lucky that they all seemed to be going to Puntarenas? He had a radio with him, he said. Would they care for a bit of music?
Please, I thought, not that.
The girls only smiled. The boy had not understood that they were travelling with their parents. The father went on drinking, but the mother on the other side of the aisle was staring at the boy. She had a fat face, and it was darkening with indignation. Her fingers were knotted and she was hunched in fury. Now the boy was describing the dance halls in Puntarenas. You could have a wonderful time, he said; he knew all the good places. He began naming the night-spots.
This was too much for the mother. She stood up and began screaming abuse at the boy. And she spoke so rapidly, at such a pitch, I caught only shrill phrases of it; but I did hear her accusing him of trying to pick up her daughters, talking to them as if he had no respect. You have no right, she said. Who do you think you are? She stopped screaming. The boy grinned in shame. He did not reply, and he could not leave. He was standing his ground, according to the code of the Latin male; but he was sheepish. The girls, who had said very little to the boy, said nothing at all now.
The mother began again. She called him a pig and an intruder. She threatened to report him to the^conductor. With each accusation she inched towards the boy, putting her fat furious face very near to his. Then she brought up her arm and, feinting with her fist, jabbed her elbow against his jaw. The boy was knocked sideways by the blow, and his hand went to his mouth. He looked at his fingers: blood. Now he started to protest, but he did so timidly, expecting to be hit again.
There was more. A young girl, about eleven - perhaps another daughter - rushed forward with a bottle of Coke. She shook the bottle and sprayed foam into the boy's face. Still, the two girls said nothing. The boy pulled a hanky out of his pocket and, wiping his face, made a pleading explanation: They said the seat was not occupied . . . they said I could sit down . . .ask them, go ahead, they'll tell you . . .'
The father swallowed beer. He looked around helplessly as his wife yelled herself hoarse. I rather admired the boy for not bolting, but at last under the woman's onslaught he took himself away and hid between the cars, nursing his wound. I made a point of seeking him out. I asked him about the mother. Was she a typical Costa Rican mother?
'Most of them are like that. She is angry. She does not want me to talk to her daughters. They said the seat was not occupied! Look what she did to my mouth.'
He yanked his lower lip down and showed me his bloody gum.
'But the father - that man drinking beer - he apologized to me. He came up to me a little while ago and said, "I am very sorry about this, but what can I do?" That woman is a pig.'
. . . on his back, from which a portion of the shirt had been torn, leaving it bare, there sat a huge sea-gull, busily gorging itself with the horrible flesh, its bill and talons deep buried, and its white plumage spattered all over with blood. As the brig moved further round so as to bring us close in view, the bird, with much apparent difficulty, drew out its crimsoned head, and, after eyeing us for a moment as if stupefied, arose lazily from the body upon which it had been feasting, and, flying directly above our deck, hovered there awhile with a portion of clotted and liverlike substance in its beak. The horrid morsel dropped at length with a sullen splash immediately at the feet of Parker . . .
There was a hand on my knee. Earlier, a woman had sat next to me. Now she gave my knee a squeeze. She said, 'I will be right back. Do not let anyone steal my suitcase!' Another squeeze; and she smiled. She was about thirty-five and had two gold teeth. She walked to the rear of the car and, as she passed the ticket-collector, pinched his bottom. This excited the ticket-collector, and when the woman returned to her seat the man wandered over to flirt with her. But, uncertain of the nature of the relationship between the woman and me, he withdrew. The woman squeezed my leg again. 'You like to read that book!'
. . . I sprang forward quickly, and, with a deep shudder, threw the frightful thing into the sea . . .
'What is it about?'
'Ships,' I said.
'You will have plenty of ships at Puntarenas.'
We were passing a church. In El Salvador or Guatemala, the passengers would have blessed themselves, made a slow sign of the cross; and the men would have removed their hats. Here, the church was not an object of much interest - and it was an imposing church, with two Spanish towers like plump thermos jugs, and scrollwork, and stained glass, and a pair of belfries. It aroused no reverential gestures among the train passengers. It might as well have been a barn, though a barn that size would certainly have had the train passengers crowing with approval.
Costa Rica is considered unique in Central America; prosperity has made it dull, but this is surely preferable to the excitements and urgencies of poverty. What is remarkable is its secularity. I was not prepared for this; I had never seen this commented upon; and I naturally expected, after my church-going in Guatemala and El Salvador, to see a similarly priest-ridden society, genuflections, the poor wearing rosaries as necklaces, and Never mind those huts - look at the cathedral! Mexico struck me as both pious and anti-clericaclass="underline" priestly authority does not suit the Mexican temper. Costa Rica was neither. It seemed indifferent towards religion. I guessed that it had something to do with political pluralism - if that is the right phrase to describe the enlightened certainty that an election was rather more than a piece of fakery or an occasion to riot. The Costa Rican election had coincided with Shrove Tuesday; indeed, from what I had been told, it had supplanted it. It had been a fiesta - literally, a feast-day - full of self-congratulation and not distinguished by a high level of debate. The new president had not yet been sworn in: the holiday was still on. But a free election was like man's answer to the bossy authoritarianism of a religion that demanded humility and repentance; it seemed to prove that competition was possible without violence or acrimony. The Costa Rican's dislike of dictators had made him intolerant of priests. Luck and ingenuity had made the country prosperous, and it was small and self-contained enough to remain so.