CHAPTER VIII
NEXT morning the cathedral bells roused Strawbridge with dreams of fire-alarms. He thought he was in a burning house and he struggled terrifically to move a leg, to twitch an inert arm. Somewhere in the sleeping bulk of the drummer a strange, insubstantial entity sent out desperate alarms. At last a finger flexed, an eyelid trembled, then suddenly something in the sleeper's brain expanded, flowed out through and identified itself with the whole body. It was reinstated as a traveling salesman with trade ambitions who pursued devious ends through ways and means imposed on him by custom and training. The drummer opened his eyes and sat up. He wiped the sweat from his face and damned the bells for waking him. The fact that by some strange means he had been cut off a moment or two from his body, that he had engaged in a terrific struggle to regain its control, did not suggest a mystery or provoke a question in his mind. He had had a nightmare. That explained everything. He often had nightmares. To Thomas Strawbridge's type of mind anything that happens often cannot possibly contain a mystery.
Nevertheless his experience left him in a dour mood. He turned out of bed, shoved his feet into some native alpargatas, and shuffled to the bath which adjoined his chamber.
The bath-tub was a basin of white marble, rather dirty, and built into the tiled floor. It was a miniature swimming-pool. Overhead was a clumsy silver nozzle on a water-pipe. The drummer turned it on, and the water which sprayed over him was neither cool nor very clean. The roaring and banging of the cathedral bells continued as if they would never leave off. As Strawbridge soaped and rubbed he recalled somewhat moodily his engagement to go with General Fombombo's force; to San Geronimo. At this hour of the morning the adventure did not appeal to him. It was rather a wild-goose chase, and he decided he would tell the general he had changed his mind, and have Saturnino remove his name from the lists.
The bells continued their uproar. They did not stop until the drummer had finished his bath and was back in his room. Then their silence brought into notice a distant watery note. This came from the cataracts in the Rio Negro somewhere below Canalejos. The disquietude of the water was rumored through the room, over the city, and it spread across the llanos for miles and miles. It held a certain disagreeableness for Strawbridge. He liked a quiet morning. Somewhere on the street a native donkey-cart rattled. The cathedral bells started again, but this time not for long— merely to gather in the faithful their previous tumult had awakened. But it all struck Strawbridge on raw nerves.
In fact, every morning Strawbridge was subject to what he called his grouch. He got up with a grouch on. It was a short daily reaction from his American heartiness, his American optimism, his tendency to convert every moment into a fanfare and a balloon ascension. This early morning depression continued until he had had his coffee and the fife-and-drum corps of his spirit started up their stridor again. It is just possible that the American flag, instead of stars, should bear forty-eight coffee beans rampant.
A woman in black passed the barred windows of Strawbridge 's room. The drummer, after the manner of men, moved slowly about his window to keep her in sight as long as possible. He fussed with his tie as he did so. He watched her cross the plaza. She passed under a row of ornamental evergreen trees which looked as if they had dark-green tassels hung at regular intervals on perfectly symmetrical limbs. The grace of the trees somehow lent itself to the girl wh passed beneath thun. At the sama moment an odor of frangipani drifted in through the bars, out of the morning.
When any man is looking at a woman, any odor that comes to his nostrils automatically associates itself with her—a relic, no doubt, of our animal forebears, during their mating seasons.
Strawbridge watched the girl intently until at last he had his face pressed against the bare to get a final glimpse of her at a difficult angle.
When he straightened from this rather awkward posture and returned to his tie, he became aware that the maid had entered his room with his morning coffee. She was a short girl, of dusky yellow color, and was evidently half Indian and half negro, or what the Venezuelans call a griffe. She also had moved about the window to its last angular possibility, and when Strawbridge saw her she was peering with very bright black eyes to see who had been the gentleman's quarry.
At this the drummer became acutely aware of every movement he had made. He frowned at the griffe girl. “Here, give me the coffee! Don't stand all day staring like that!”
The girl started and nervously handed her salver to him. “Why n't you knock when you came in!” demanded Strawbridge.
“I did, señor, bot I thought you were asleep,” she said, a little frightened.
It was the maid's custom to find her master's guests asleep, to steal in noiselessly, awaken them, and administer in a tiny cup two tablespoonfuls of Venezuelan coffee, black as the pit and strong as death.
The incident of the, servant-girl counteracted, to a certain extent, the heartening effect of the coffee. Strawbridge looked out on the brightening morning and wondered if by any chance her gossip might affect his landing General Fombombo's order for rifles, because he knew that the girl in black he had been watching at such inconvenience was the Señora Fombombo. He felt sure the griffe girl knew it also. But he decided optimistically that she would say nothing about it, or, if she did, it would have no influence on his sale.
The big, somber bedroom to which General Fombombo had assigned his guest was a good observation point, and no doubt the dictator had chosen it for this very reason. The scene at which Strawbridge was looking might have aroused enthusiasm in a more susceptible man. At an angle it gave a view of the Plaza Mayor and a glimpse of the cathedral seen through the trees. Straight east a bit of paved street showed, and beyond that a garden with a side gate facing Strawbridge's window. A heavy hedge divided the garden from the plaza. Beyond the garden rose the walls and buttresses of the rear of the cathedral, and this was a handsome thing. In the soft morning light it was an aspiration toward God.
Beyond the cathedral, the wide river stretched eastward. Two hundred yards down the river bank rose another low, massive building, more heavily built and gloomier even than the palace. In the uncertain light Strawbridge thought he discerned two or three figures on the flat roof of this building.
A little later the sun's limb cut the far eastern reach of the river. Distant quivering reflections marked the rapids whose subdued turmoil brooded over the city and the llanos. The light increased momentarily. Against its widening-flame blinked tiny black native boats, like familiar demons traversing the fires of some wide and splendid hell.
None of this interested Strawbridge. He stared at it through the same mechanical compulsion that causes a moth to head toward light, but he did not see it. The first thing that really caught his attention was a bugle blowing reveille; the next breath, from the top of the low building came the flash of a cannon, faintly seen against the brilliant east. After an interval came a brief, hard report.
The concussion not only startled Strawbridge but did some obscure violence to his sensibilities. It did not roar and rumble and so suggest the pomp and panoply of war. The flatness of the llanos lent no echo. The shot was just a hard, abrupt blow, a smash, then silence. There was something dismaying about it. Then Strawbridge could see the figures on the flat roof leaving their cannon and descending.
Like all good Americans who observe a foreign military demonstration, Strawbridge thought:
“That's nothing. An American army with big American guns could blow that little toy right out of existence.” Nevertheless he continued to be depressed and somehow dismayed by the hard and savage suddenness of the sunrise gun, and in his heart he determined firmly that he would not go with the army to San Geronimo. In his mind Strawbridge uttered these thoughts resolutely, and he felt himself to be one of those strong-willed men who, having once settled on a program, never vary from it, no matter what chance befalls.
A gong announcing almuerzo brought the drummer out of his reverie and moved him toward the breakfast table. As he went he shook off his mood, and resumed, as if he were putting on a suit of clothes, his quick American walk, his optimism, and his dashing business manner. As he moved briskly down the great hallway, a guard with a rifle directed him to the comidor.
The palace was divided into an east and a west wing, by a series of patios, and the breakfast-room proved to be a little place latticed off from one of the smaller patios. The lattice was overgrown with vines. In this retreat Strawbridge found a small basketry table laid with snowy linen, on which were oranges, sweet lemons, rolls, and coffee.
Thanks to Strawbridge's quick movements, he was the first person here. He sat down at the table and enjoyed the sunshine glinting at him through the vines. Through an end door of the breakfast-room he could see the kitchen. Its principal furnishing was a Venezuelan cooking-range. This was a great stone table punctured with little iron grates each holding a handful of charcoal fire. Above the table spread a big sheetiron canopy, to convey away the gases and fumes. Ranged on the little fires were pots and pans and saucepans. At the farther end of the kitchen a wrinkled old negress was on her knees on the earthen floor, pouring boiling water into an old stocking leg filled with ground coffee. The beverage dripped out into a silver pot which sat on the ground in front of the crone. Beyond the negress, in the sunshine, stood a meat block with a machete stuck in it and a joint of meat lying on it. Around the meat the flies were so thick that they appeared to Strawbridge as a kind of wavering shadow over the block.
A sound behind the drummer caused him to turn, and he saw the Señora Fombombo, in her religious black, evidently just returned from early mass. The sight of her gave Strawbridge a certain faint satisfaction, but at the same time it brought back the vague embarrassment he had felt on the previous evening. He returned her salutation of “Buenos dias,” and was pondering something else to say, when she expressed a fear that the sight of a Venezuelan cocina (kitchen) would be disagreeable to him. She had heard how spotless were American kitchens.
The salesman began a hasty assurance that the kitchen was very interesting, but the señora called to a servant to close the shutter. The same griffe girl whom Strawbridge had seen that morning answered the call, and before she retired she gave the señora and the salesman a certain understanding look, which linked up in Strawbridge's mind with what the girl had seen an hour or two earlier.
The señora herself was proceeding with her table talk. “We can get only native servants here in Canalejos,” she was saying in the faintly mechanical manner of a hostess who has an uninteresting guest, “and they prepare everything in the native way.”
Strawbridge said he liked Venezuelan cooking.
“It is monotonous,” criticized the señora. “The chicken is always cooked with rice, and the plantains are always fried.”
Strawbridge started to say that he loved chicken and rice and fried plantains, but even his imperfect sense of rhetoric warned him that he had already overworked those particular phrases. So he checked that sentiment, cast about for a substitute, and finally fished up:
“I saw you going to early mass this morning, señora.”
The girl glanced at him, agreed to this, and continued peeling her orange with a knife and fork, in the Venezuelan fashion. The drummer wanted strongly to follow this opening with something brisk and lively to compel her attention and interest, but his head seemed oddly empty. His embarrassment persisted and made him a little uncomfortable. He wondered why. It was irritating. Why didn't he tell her a joke, one of his parlor jokes? Strawbridge knew scores and scores of obscene jokes, and perhaps half a dozen parlor jokes which he kept for women. Now, to his discomfiture, he could not recall a single one of his parlor jokes. For some reason or other, he told himself, the señora crabbed his style.
She was a smallish woman with a rather slender, melancholy face, and her eyes had that slightly unfocused look which is characteristic of all pure-black eyes. Her eyebrows and lips were engraved in black and red against a colorless face. Her nun's bonnet and the white cloth that passed beneath it across her forehead concealed the least trace of hair. And Strawbridge speculated with a sort of apprehension whether or no she really had shaved her head nun fashion. If so, the Virgin had exacted a bitter price for her sister's recovery.
During these meditations, however, the salesman was not dumb. He automatically started one of those typically American conversations which consist in a long string of disconnected questions asked without any object whatever. Strawbridge himself regretted these questions. He had hoped to do something amusing and rather brilliant.
“Have you lived here long, señora ?”
“About two years. I came here immediately after I was married to General Fombombo.”
“Then you were not married here?”
“No, in Spain.”
“Then you are a Spanish girl?”
“Yes, I lived in Barcelona.”
“How do you like it here?”
“Very well.”
“I suppose you miss the stir. I hear Barcelona is the livest town in Spain.”
“I believe it is,” she agreed a little uncertainly.
“What do they export? Anything besides olive-oil? I understand they export a lot of olive-oil.”
Señora Fombombo touched her slender fingers to .her lips a moment and then said she believed they exported olive-oil.
“I suppose the girls go in for business over there, too—bookkeepers, you know; stenogs, clerks, cash girls…?”
“Ye-e-es.”
“What was your line before you married ?”
The señora came awake and looked at the drummer.
“My line?”
“Yes,” said Strawbridge, becoming a little less of an automaton and a little «more of a human.“ What was your job before you hooked up with the general?”
The señora almost stared at the American. Then she drew in her under lip and seemed to compress it rigorously, thoughtfully, perhaps to assist her in recalling what her line was before she hooked up with the general. Then she said:
“I… I did a little music.”
“Teach?” probed the American.
“Well… no… Really, I'm afraid I didn't do anything.”
Strawbridge nodded as if some puzzle had been solved for him.
“Now, that's where you made your mistake,” he explained paternally. “A woman ought to have a job just the same as a man. She ought to be able to hold over her goods until the market is right. Now take me: suppose I had to sell my rifles right now because I didn't have the overhead to keep them ninety days longer; I'd be in a bad way. It's the same way with you girls. With no overhead, it's no wonder you married Ge—” He caught himself up abruptly, aghast at the implication to which his monologue had led him. He floundered mentally in an effort to turn it off, but all he could do was simply to moisten his lips and stop talking. He wondered chillily if the señora had caught it.
Apparently she had not. A spray of flowers swung near her from the vine. She drew a raceme to her face and began smoothly:
“I know feminism is very modern and up to date, but somehow we Spanish women don't care for it. We are as idle as these flowers.” She turned and looked at the blossoms. “This variety of wistaria grew in my garden in Barcelona; that's why I had it planted here. It reminds me of home.” She looked up at the American, smiled faintly, and added rather disconnectedly:
“It may seem strange to you, Señor Strawbridge, but once I very nearly entered a convent in Barcelona.”
By this time Strawbridge was convinced that she had not observed his false step. He was still warm, and a little shivery, but he was recovering. He said very simply and truthfully:
“Well, I'm glad you did n't. If I have to stay in Canalejos, I'm glad there is an agreeable woman in it to talk to.”
The señora expressed her pleasure if she could enliven his stay at Canalejos, and as they talked Coronel Saturnino entered the breakfast-room. He bowed to the señora and inquired of Strawbridge, in his somewhat amused voice, if he had slept well after his enlistment.
Oh, yes, he had slept like a top.
“Enlistment?” echoed the señora. “Seguramente,” smiled the colonel. “Señor Strawbridge has enlisted in the cavalry to march against San Geronimo.” Señora Fombombo seemed utterly astonished. She stared at the colonel, then at the drummer.
“You don't mean Señor Strawbridge will be in the cavalry attack on San Geronimo?”
“Yes, señora; I arranged his billet last night.” The colonel made a smiling bow.
The girl turned to the American.
“But why are you going to fight at San Geronimo, señor?” she asked.
Strawbridge hesitated, cleared his throat, glanced through the vine-grown lattice into the sunshine, then apparently came to some inward decision.
“Now, it's like this, señora,” he began, getting back the ring and confidence in his voice which had heretofore been missing: “It's like this. In order to meet your clients' needs you've got to get first-hand information.” He patted his right fingers against his left palm and looked the señora squarely in the eye for the first time. “Before you can grasp your patrons' problems, you've got to make 'em yours. Why, the first thing my old man said to me, he said: ‘ bridge, an expert salesman is first aid to the financially injured; he's the star of Bethlehem to the sinners of commerce.’ He's a cutter, my old man is. I wish you could know him, señora.”
“You mean your father?” hazarded the President's wife.
“Holy mackerel, lady! no!” cried the drummer, with a touch of Keokuk gusto in his voice. “I mean my boss, the head knocker of my firm. Great old chap, and rich as Limburger cheese. Say, he owns fifty-one per cent, of the Orion Arms stock, and he started in as a water boy. How do you like that ?” Mr. Strawbridge gave his auditors a little triumphant smile.
“Caramba! Very American, I say,” laughed fhe colonel. The señora interposed quickly:
“And very good and very fine, I say, Señor Strawbridge!” She looked at the colonel with a certain little light in her eye, then added emphatically, “I am sure I should like him.”
She was rising to leave the table.
Coronel Saturnino, who was about to seat himself, said:
“If I concede his admirable qualities, I wonder if you would stay and eat another orange, señora?”
But the girl pleaded that she must practise some music in the cathedral. Strawbridge hesitated, half-way out of his chair. He was undecided whether to stay with Coronel Saturnino or to go with the señora. He decided for the latter and walked out of the breakfast-room with her, but he was vaguely embarrassed for fear he had done the wrong thing.