Lee tried to come on like a scientist. "I want to investigate the properties of this drug," he said. "I am willing to take some as an experiment."
Cotter said, "Well, I could take you down to Canela and talk to the Brujo. He will give you some if I say so."
"That would be very kind," said Lee.
Cotter did not say any more about going to Canela. He did say a lot about how short they were on supplies, and how he had no time to spare from his experiments with a curare substitute. After three days Lee saw he was wasting time, and told Cotter they were leaving. Cotter made no attempt to conceal his relief.
Epilogue:
Mexico City Return
Every time I hit Panama, the place is exactly one month, two months, six months more nowhere, like the course of a degenerative illness. A shift from arithmetical to geometrical progression seems to have occurred. Something ugly and ignoble and subhuman is cooking in this mongrel town of pimps and whores and recessive genes, this degraded leech on the Canal.
A smog of bum kicks hangs over Panama in the wet heat. Everyone here is telepathic on the paranoid level. I walked around with my camera and saw a wood and corrugated iron shack on a limestone cliff in Old Panama, like a penthouse. I wanted a picture of this excrescence, with the albatrosses and vultures wheeling over it against the hot gray sky. My hands holding the camera were slippery with sweat, and my shirt stuck to my body like a wet condom.
An old hag in the shack saw me taking the picture. They always know when you are taking their picture, especially in Panama. She went into an angry consultation with some other ratty-looking people I could not see clearly. Then she walked to the edge of a perilous balcony and made an ambiguous gesture of hostility. Many so-called primitives are afraid of cameras. There is in fact something obscene and sinister about photography, a desire to imprison, to incorporate, a sexual intensity of pursuit. I walked on and shot some boys—young, alive, unconscious— playing baseball. They never glanced in my direction.
Down by the waterfront I saw a dark young Indian on a fishing boat. He knew I wanted to take his picture, and every time I swung the camera into position he would look up with young male sulkiness. I finally caught him leaning against the bow of the boat with languid animal grace, idly scratching one shoulder. A long white scar across right shoulder and collarbone. I put away my camera and leaned over the hot concrete wall, looking at him. In my mind I was running a finger along the scar, down across his naked copper chest and stomach, every cell aching with deprivation. I pushed away from the wall muttering
"Oh Jesus" and walked away, looking around for something to photograph.
A Negro with a felt hat was leaning on the porch rail of a wooden house built on a dirty limestone foundation. I was across the street under a movie marquee. Every time I prepared my camera he would lift his hat and look at me, muttering insane imprecations. I finally snapped him from behind a pillar. On a balcony over this character a shirtless young man was washing. I could see the Negro and Near Eastern blood in him, the rounded face and café-au-lait mulatto skin, the smooth body of undifferentiated flesh with not a muscle showing. He looked up from his washing like an animal scenting danger. I caught him when the five o'clock whistle blew. An old photographer's trick: wait for a distraction.
I went into Chico's Bar for a rum Coke. I never liked this place, nor any other bar in Panama, but it used to be endurable and had some good numbers on the juke box. Now there was nothing but this awful Oklahoma honky-tonk music, like the bellowings of an anxious cow: "You're Drivin'
Nails in my Coffin"— "It Wasn't God Made Honky Tonk Angels"—"Your Cheatin' Heart."
The servicemen in the joint all had that light-concussion Canal Zone look: cow-like and blunted, as if they had undergone special G.I. processing and were immunized against contact on the intuition level, telepathic sender and receiver excised. You ask them a question, they answer without friendliness or hostility. No warmth, no contact. Conversation is impossible. They just have nothing to say. They sit around buying drinks for the B-girls, making lifeless passes which the girls brush off like flies, and playing that whining music on the juke box. One young man with a pimply adenoidal face kept trying to touch a girl's breast. She would brush his hand away, then it would creep back as if endowed with autonomous insect life. A B-girl sat next to me, and I bought her one drink. She ordered good Scotch, yet. "Panama, how I hate your cheatin' guts," I thought. She had a shallow bird brain and perfect Stateside English, like a recording. Stupid people can learn a language quick and easy because there is nothing going on in there to keep it out.
She wanted another drink. I said "No." She said, "Why are you so mean?" I said, "Look, if I run out of money, who is going to buy my drinks? Will you?"
She looked surprised, and said slowly, "Yes. You are right. Excuse me."
I walked down the main drag. A pimp seized my arm. "I gotta fourteen-year-old girl, Jack. Puerto Rican. How's about it?"
"She's middle-aged already," I told him. "I want a six-year-old virgin and none of that sealed-while-you-wait shit. Don't try palming your old fourteen-year-old bats off on me." I left him there with his mouth open.
I went into a store to price some Panama hats. The young man behind the counter started singing: "Making friends, losing money."
"This spic bastard is strictly on the chisel," I decided.
He showed me some two-dollar hats. "Fifteen dollar," he said.
"Your prices are way out of line," I told him, and turned and walked out. He followed me onto the street: "Just a minute, Mister." I walked on.
That night I had a recurrent dream: I was back in Mexico City, talking to Art Gonzalez, a former roommate of Allerton's. I asked him where Allerton was, and he said, "In Agua Diente." This was somewhere south of Mexico City, and I was inquiring about a bus connection. I have dreamed many times I was back in Mexico City, talking to Art or Allerton's best friend, Johnny White, and asking where he was.
I flew up to Mexico City. I was a little nervous going through the airport; some cop or Immigration inspector might spot me. I decided to stick close to the attractive young tourist I had met on the plane. I had packed my hat, and when I got off the plane I took off my glasses. I slung my camera over my shoulder.
"Let's take a cab into town. Split the fare. Cheaper that way," I said to my tourist. We walked through the airport like father and son. "Yes," I was saying, "that old boy in Guatemala wanted to charge me two dollars from the Palace Hotel out to the airport. I told him uno." I held up one finger. No one looked at us. Two tourists.
We got into a taxi. The driver said twelve pesos for both to the center of town.
"Wait a minute," the tourist said in English. "No meter. Where your meter? You got to have a meter."
The driver asked me to explain that he was authorized to carry airline passengers to town without a meter.
"No!" the tourist shouted. "I not tourist. I live in Mexico City. ¿Sabe Hotel Colmena? I live in Hotel Colmena. Take me to town but I pay what is on meter. I call police. Policía. You're required by law to have a meter."
"Oh God," I thought. "That's all I need, this jerk should call the law." I could see cops accumulating around the cab, not knowing what to do and calling other cops. The tourist got out of the cab with his suitcase. He was taking down the number.
"I call policía plenty quick," he said.
I said, "Well, I think I'll take this cab anyway. Won't get into town much cheaper. . . . Vámonos," I said to the driver.