There was a figure lurking near my door: a moustached man with a suspicious-looking box.
He said: 'Want a chocolate cookie?'
And the spell was broken.
'No thanks.'
'Go ahead. I've got plenty.'
To be polite I took one of his chocolate cookies. He was tall and friendly and said his name was Pepe. He was from Veracruz. He said he could tell that I was an American, but quickly added that it was not a reflection on my Spanish but rather the way I looked. It was too bad I was only going to Veracruz now, he said, because the carnival had just ended. I had missed a very wonderful thing. Bands — very loud bands! Dancing — in the streets! Parades — very long ones! Music — drums, horns, marimbas! Costumes — people dressed as princes and clowns and conquistadors! Also church services and eating of wonderful food, and drinking of fantastic tequila, and friendship of all kinds.
His description removed any sense of regret I might have had about missing the Veracruz carnival. I was relieved that I would not have to endure the vulgar spectacle, which I was sure would have depressed and annoyed me, or in any case kept me awake.
But I said, 'What a shame I missed it.'
'You can come back next year.'
'Of course.'
'Want another chocolate cookie?'
'No thanks. I haven't eaten this one yet.' I wanted him to go away. I waited a moment, yawned and said, 'I am very married.'
He looked oddly at me.
'Very married? Interesting.' But the look of puzzlement did not leave his face.
'Aren't you married?'
'I am only eighteen.'
This confused me. I said, 'Married — isn't that what you are when you want to go to bed?'
'You mean tired.'
'That's it.' The Spanish words sounded similar to me: casado, cansado; married, tired.
Yet this double-talk did the trick. He obviously thought I was insane. He said good-night, put his box of cookies under his arm and took himself away. I saw no other people in the sleeping car.
'The journey from Veracruz [to Mexico City] is to my mind the finest in the world from the point of view of spectacular effect,' writes the diabolist Aleister Crowley in his Confessions. Go to Veracruz during the day, people told me. See the cane fields and the Orizaba volcano; see the peasants and the gardens. But Latin America is full of volcanoes and cane-fields and peasants; at times, it seems as if there is little else to see. It struck me as a better idea to arrive in Veracruz at dawn; the Jarocho Express was a comfortable train and I had heard that my next connection, to Tapachula and the Guatemala border, was in a sorry state. I would have an extra day in Veracruz to prepare for that. And I would be prepared. The Jarocho Express was one of those trains — rarer now than they used to be — which you board feeling exhausted and disembark from feeling like a million dollars. I happened to be drunk in this Mexico City suburb; but the train was moving slowly: I would be sober in the morning in Veracruz.
The compartment was hot and steamy when I awoke; the window was fogged, and when I rubbed it I saw that dawn here was a foamy yellow light and the thin drizzle on the sodden green of a marsh. The clouds were mud-coloured and low and ragged, like dead hanks of Spanish moss. We were approaching the Gulf Coast; there were tall palms on the horizon, silly umbrellas in the rain.
The silence was perfect. Not even the train made a sound. But it was my ears — they hurt badly, and the feeling was that of having landed in a poorly pressurized plane. We had been at a very high altitude and, asleep, I had not been able to compensate by swallowing. Now at sea-level my eardrums, deaf to any chirp this morning, burned with pain.
Anxious to be away from the dirty window and the stuffy compartment, and believing that some deep breathing would be good for my ears, I went to the rear of the sleeping car. The vestibule window was open. I swallowed air and watched the slums go by. My ears cleared: now I could hear the drumroll of the train.
'Look at those people,' said the conductor.
There were shacks by the line, and wet chickens and sombre children. I wondered what the conductor would say next.
'They have the right idea. Look at them — that's the life!'
'What life?' All I saw were shacks and chickens and men whose hat brims were streaming with rain.
'Very tranquil,' he said, nodding in condescension towards the hovels. Truly patronizing people usually adopt a very sage tone when considering their victims. This Mexican squinted wisely and said, 'Very tranquil. Not like Mexico City. It is too rapid there — everyone going this way and that way. They do not know what life is all about. But look how peaceful this is.'
I said, 'How would you like to live in that house?'
It was not a house. It was a shack of cardboard and rusty tin. Holes had been punched in the tin to make windows, and broken bricks held bits of plastic over the leaky roof. A dog sniffed at some garbage near the door, where a fat haggard woman in a torn red sweater watched us pass. We had a glimpse of even greater horror inside.
'Ah!' the conductor said, and looked crushed.
I was not supposed to have asked him that. He had expected me to agree with him — yes, how tranquil! This tiny shack — how idyllic! Most Mexican friendliness seemed to depend on to what extent you agreed with what they said. Disagreement, or simple argument, was taken as a sign of aggression. Was it insecurity, I wondered, or that same mistrust of subtlety that made every painting into a four-acre fresco and every comic book into a violent woman-hating pamphlet. My Spanish was not bad, but I found it hard to hold a conversation with any Mexican that was not pure joshing or else something completely straightforward. One hot afternoon I hailed a taxi just outside of Veracruz, but before I gave him my destination, the driver said, 'Want a whore?'
'I'm tired,' I said. 'I'm also married.'
'I understand,' said the driver.
'Besides, I'll bet they're not pretty.'
'No,' he said, 'not pretty at all. But they're young. That's something.'
I had arrived in Veracruz at seven in the morning, found a hotel in the pretty Plaza Constitución and gone for a walk. I had absolutely nothing to do: I did not know a soul in Veracruz, and the train to the Guatemalan border was not leaving for two days. Still, this did not seem a bad place. There are few tourist attractions in Veracruz; there is an old fort and, about two miles south, a beach. The guidebooks are circumspect about describing this fairly ugly city: one calls it 'exuberant', another 'picturesque'. It is a faded seaport, with slums and tacky modernity crowding the quaintly ruined buildings at its heart. Unlike any other Mexican city, it has pavement cafés, where forlorn children beg and marimba players complete the damage to your eardrums that was started on the descent from the heights of Orizaba. Mexicans treat stray children the way other people treat stray cats (Mexicans treat stray cats like vermin), taking them on their laps and buying them ice cream, all the while shouting to be heard over the noise of the marimbas.
Finding nothing in my plaza to divert me, I walked a mile to the Castle of San Juan de Ulua. Formerly an island — Cortes landed here during Holy Week in 1519 — the harbour has silted up so thoroughly it is now part of the mainland, with a connecting road and the greasy factories, the hovels and graffiti that Mexico appears to require of its urban areas. The Castle contains a permanent exhibit of Veracruz's past, a pictorial record of invasions, punitive missions and local military defeats. It was that most Mexican of enthusiasms — humiliation as history. If the engravings and old photographs showed how cynical and aggressive other countries — but mainly the United States — had been towards Mexico, the prominence of the exhibit in Veracruz invited the Mexican to a morning of wound-licking and self-contempt. Veracruz is known as 'the heroic city'. It is a poignant description: in Mexico a hero is nearly always a corpse.