His voice became louder until it was a shout. Finally, he tried Spanish.
"Where d'hell's—the bordellos—the senoritas and stuff?"
At that the cop lit up with a bright smile. He stepped off his platform and pointed the direction down the street with a lot of chatter. We shoved Philip out into the street to give Mush a hand, since he didn't seem to understand what was being told him. Philip joined them and after a few minutes of polite talk, accompanied by gracious smiles and much flashing of teeth, he bowed, the cop gave him a quick little salute, and we were off to the houses of Bahia Blanca.
"How you like that?" gloated Mush as he swaggered along. "I kin speak Spanish. That Spik cop understood when I sez bordellos—bordellos and senoritas. How you like that?"
We walked quite a distance and came to a big house with the proverbial high-lighted doorway set back from the street. That was the bordello—a big one.
There was a little cop stationed in front of that door who searched each of us before he admitted us en masse. Philip told us that was to make sure we carried no knives—to start trouble. He didn't want us fighting over any of the women. As he was giving me the once-over he grinned and mumbled some crack to Philip who had been using his Spanish on him.
It just about killed Philip and he sputtered a translation which I didn't get—something about "the only weapon the professor carries is the same as the rest of you caballeros and there's little danger"—and whatever else was said was lost in the stir when the cop opened the big door and we went into that big house.
The lobby of the place was larger than any we'd seen up in Rio Santiago and it was crowded. All the small tables were taken and we stood around waiting for one. There weren't many girls sitting anywhere—seemed they were all busy—and as soon as they returned from the patio and deposited their money at the Madame's desk, they wearily marched back into the darkness with another customer.
We finally got a table and sat around sipping black coffee. The Madame occasionally would climb down from her desk and move among the tables. Now and again she'd question some of the Argentinians and they'd bring out some official-looking papers from their inner coat pockets. Sometimes her voice would rise in anger as she'd grab some little guy by the shoulders and pull him out of his seat.
Philip told us she was checking on the under-aged kids who got past the cop outside. Those papers must have been birth certificates, or cards of identification, he thought.
We sat there smoking and quietly considering whether we ought not to try another big house the traffic cop had told Philip about. It wasn't very cheerful sitting where we were, and no one seemed eager for the girls, even Mush. The place was quiet for a little while. Then a shrill scream coming from the patio gave an added chill to that already cold lobby we sat in.
The girl who had let out that squawk let out another—then a few more in quick succession. The silence of the lobby was broken by the cackle of the high heels of the Madame and a couple of the girls as they ran across the tile floor and out into the darkness.
The screaming girl out there, between hysterical sobbing, kept repeating a few words—over and over again.
'"The woman hollers—he's too big—the man—-he killed her, she says." Philip murmured a translation of the girl's scream.
Her cries had subsided into an incoherent wailing. I looked around the lobby. None of the men sitting around those little tables had stirred. They looked pale and tense as they quietly smoked their cigarettes and looked toward the sound.
Well, here was that time-honored Joe Miller of bawdy jokes. The one Rabelais, Balzac, Boccaccio, and numberless other literary lights had tossed off so brightly—and it had been repeated in countless versions—always good for a belly laugh in every smoking car, club, stag party, barroom, barn, schoolyard, back alley, and been cleaned up again for tea parties and refined socials—here it was in the flesh. Well, it wasn't funny.
We sat there uncomfortable for a moment or two listening to the girl cry. Then we saw her, a skinny, coarse-looking woman, being supported on one side by the Madame and on the other by one of her colleagues—as they led her slowly toward us. Her face was blotched, her hair disheveled, and a lot of the girls hovered around giving her hoarse-voiced sympathy until they led and carried her through the door into the lobby.
The man had been back in the shadows. We could see him lurking there. Then he slithered along the patio wall and we caught just a flash of him as he quickly and silently came out into the light of the room, picked his way through the tables, and was gone out the front door.
He was a narrow little man who kept his hat pulled down over his swarthy face. The eyes of everyone in the room followed his quick passage. The girls looked after him too. They weren't angry with him—they seemed sorry for him. A gloomy silence settled over that big room broken only by an occasional stirring of restless feet and the whimpering of the hurt girl.
"Aw, come on, let's go someplace," said Mush. We all nodded "sure" and left that house.
22. Pink Shrimps and Sweet Caporals
JOE LIT A CIGARETTE, GAVE ME A BIG WINK and after a few drags, began to chip. I couldn't understand this deliberate masochistic choice that he'd made to red-lead the stem of the S.S. Hermanita. If he felt he had to do his duty by the ship he could have picked a lot easier one. I sat there for a few miserable minutes studying the flat stretch of cold muddy water which lapped at our heels. It was no consolation that the harbor looked pretty, with the black hulls of the bumboats and fishing smacks breaking the flat sheen of the water—their reflections streaming away from them like fluttering silken ribbons.
"And damn it, it's cold down here. What the hell you got me into this for—"
"Chip!" he ordered.
So I chipped—not a moment too soon. The Mate had stuck his head out the porthole and had strained his neck around trying to see the section we were working on. He couldn't, but he seemed satisfied we were getting something done from the intent look on both our faces and the noise our chipping hammers made.
A few minutes after the Mate had withdrawn his head, Joe quit work for the day.
He smiled and gestured toward me with the flat of his hand, a gesture that was intended to mean everything is hunky-dory and according to plan. He squinted out toward a passing bumboat and hailed the Argentinian who stood in it rowing with long easy strokes.
"Buenos dias."
The guy looked up and swung his boat toward us. When he was close by he responded, '"Buenos dias."
Joe laughed and made a crack or two in his Spanish. The guy didn't know what he was talking about. After a while, he said:
"Mucho trabajo."
I knew what that meant—too much work—we were working too hard—everybody down there said that—everybody was working too hard.
"Si, mucho trabajo y poco dinero."
Then one thing led to another and I heard vino mentioned and the guy rowed off to one of the small fishing boats, and came back in a few minutes. He pulled alongside of Joe and the big fellow loosened his bucket of paint from where it hung under his scaffold seat. The guy in the boat lifted a gallon glass jug of purple red wine. There was an exchange and a few "'gracias, senors," and some other chitchat, and then he slid off quietly with Joe's bucket of good ship's paint in his boat.
Joe grinned. "S'notbad—heh, kid?"