'How long will you be here, Abelardo?' I asked.
'A year,' he said, and glanced at the others, shaking his head. Without much conviction he added, 'It is not too bad.'
Napoleon said, 'All the ruins ! Interesting !'
I said, 'Are you interested in ruins?'
'No,' said Napoleon. I could tell from their laughter that he spoke for all of them.
'What do your wives think of your being away for so long?' I asked. It was the question everyone asked me. I wondered whether they had a clever reply that I might use later on.
'We are not married,' said Gustavo. 'Do you think married people would go to places like Cuzco and Quillabamba?'
'I am married and I went to Huancayo.'
'That is your affair, my friend. If I was married I would stay home.'
I said, 'I do - more or less.'
'More or less!' screamed Gustavo. He was shaking with laughter. That is really funny.'
Abelardo said, 'It is only single fellows like us who get sent to the terrible places, like Iquitos and Puerto Maldonado.'
'Isn't Iquitos in Ecuador?' I asked.
'Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't,' said Gustavo, laughing. These days it is.'
'I was in Maldonado,' said Napoleon. 'It was awful - hotter than Brazil.'
Abelardo said, 'Lima is nice. Did you like Lima? Yes? There is always something to do in Lima.'
It was clearly going to be a long year for him in Quillabamba.
'But think of all the ruins in Cuzco,' said Napoleon.
Abelardo uttered an obscenity, something like, 'Oh, piss on God's balls!'
'What other countries do you know?' asked Gustavo. 'What about France? Look, how much would I need to live in Paris? How many dollars a day?'
I said, 'About forty.'
He looked discouraged. 'How about London?'
'Maybe thirty,' I said.
'Go to Lima,' said Abelardo. 'It will only cost four.'
'Go to Maldonado,' said Napoleon. 'It will only cost one.'
'And the girls in Lima,' said Abelardo, mournfully.
'There are plenty of girls here,' said Gustavo. 'American, German, Japanese. Pretty ones, too. Take your pick.'
'You will be all right,' I said.
'Certainly,' said Gustavo. 'We will be happy in Quillabamba. We will exchange ideas.'
The small boy and the old man had been playing sad twanging music. It seemed so melancholy, this barefoot boy singing in such a low-down place. The music stopped. The boy took off his cloth cap and went among the tables, collecting coins. We gave him some. He bowed, then returned to his songs.
'He is poor,'I said.
'Seventy percent of Peru is poor,' said Gustavo. 'Like that boy.'
We continued to drink, but at this altitude alcohol has a paralyzing effect. I felt leaden and stupid, and refused a third bottle of beer. The others began to eat plates of fried meat. I tasted some, but I saved my appetite for later; I had been in Cuzco long enough to know that I could get a good steak and a stuffed avocado for a dollar fifty. I left the men discussing Peru's chances in the World Cup. 'We are not very good,' said Napoleon. 'I think we will lose.' I did not argue with him; the only way to handle a Peruvian is to agree with his pessimism.
After dinner, I felt too ill to go for a walk. I went back to my hotel -which was not a hotel but only a few rooms above the plaza; and nosing around the dining room I found an old phonograph. It was literally a Victrola, a 1904 Victor, and near it was a stack of 78 rpm records. Most of them were cracked. I found one that was not cracked and read the labeclass="underline" Ben Bernie and the Lads, it said, Shanghai Lil (Warner Bros., 'Footlight Parade'). I turned the crank and set the disc in motion.
I've travelled every little highway,
I've climbed every little hill;
I've been looking high,
I've been looking low,
Looking for my Shanghai Lil.
There were lights on in the plaza. The leper I had seen that afternoon shuffling on bleeding feet, like the Pobble who had no toes, was curled up near the fountain. On the far side was the beautiful Jesuit church, and beyond that the Andes as black and high-crowned as the hats of the Indians who were also bunking down in the plaza.
I've been trying to forget her,
But what 's the use -1 never will.
I've been looking high,
I've been looking low-
It was cold. My leather coat was not enough, and I was indoors. But it was quiet: no honking horns, no cars, no radios, no screams; only the church bells and the Victrola.
Looking for my Shanghai Lil.
At four o'clock every weekday morning the Cuzco church bells ring. They ring again at 4:15 and 4:30. Because there are so many churches, and the valley is walled-in by mountains, the tolling of church bells, from four to five in the morning, has a celebratory sound. They summon all people to mass, but only Indians respond. They flock to five o'clock mass in the Cathedral, and just before six the great doors of the Cathedral open on the cold cloudy mountain dawn and hundreds of Indians pour into the plaza, so many of them in bright red ponchos that the visual effect is of a fiesta about to begin. They look happy; they have performed a sacrament. All Catholics leave mass feeling lighthearted, and though these Indians are habitually dour -their faces wrinkled into frowns - at this early hour after mass most of them are smiling.
The tourists wake with the Indians, but the tourists head for Santa Ana Station to catch the train to Machu Picchu. They carry packed lunches, umbrellas, raincoats and cameras. They are disgusted, and they have every right to be so. They were led to believe that if they got to the station at six, they would have a seat on the seven o'clock train. But now it was seven and the station doors had not opened. A light rain had started and the crowd of tourists numbered two hundred or more. There is no order at the station.
The tourists know this and they hate it. They were woken early yesterday for the Cuzco flight and found a mob at the airport. They were woken early for the Machu Picchu train, and this mob is worse. They do not jostle or push. They stand in the grey dawn, clutching their lunches and muttering. Most are on a twelve-day tour of South America; they have spent much of the time just like this, waiting for something to happen, and they don't like it one bit. They don't want to complain because they know Americans are famous for complaining. But they are disgusted. I stand in the mob and wait for a cháncete say I don't blame y ou.
'You'd think they'd at least open the doors and let us into the station,' says one of the Goodchucks.
'That's too simple for them. They'd rather keep us waiting,' says Charles P. Clapp.
'I'm awful sick of this,' says Hildy, who really does look ill. The poor woman is over seventy and here she is in the middle of the Andes, standing behind the filthy Cuzco market on the steps of the station. At her feet is an Indian woman with a crying child, selling Chiclets and cigarettes, and another pitifully dirty man with a pile of bruised peaches. Hildy is from -where? A neat suburb in the mid-West, where the trains run on time and polite people offer her their seat. She did not know how hard it would be here. She has my sympathy, even my admiration; at her age this counts as bravery. 'If they don't open the doors pretty quick I'm going straight back to the hotel.'
'I don't blame you.'
She says, 'I haven't been right since La Paz.'
'Marquette got beat,' says Morrie Upbraid, a stout man from Baton Rouge, who talks with his teeth locked together.
'Texas got a real good team this year,' says Jack Hammerman.
'What happened to Notre Dame?'
They talk about footbalclass="underline" wins, losses, and the coloured fella who is over six foot eight. This is contentment of sorts and takes the curse off waiting in the drizzle in Cuzco. Men talk to men; the women stand and fret.