'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.
'I want to see LSU knock the stew out of them,' says Mr Hammerman.
'You'd think they'd at least open the doors,' says Mrs Goodchuck.
At last the station doors open. There is a general surge forward. The elderly tourists shuffle but do not push. A mob is awkward, and they feel they are being tested, as if too violent a response on their part will turn them into Peruvians. Shame and disapproval make them exercise some restraint, and it is only an Argentine honeymoon couple — a dark unapologetic man and his skinny clinging wife — who shove their way to the front. It is easy for them. They elbow past the gentler Americans and are probably surprised that they are through the door so quickly.
'Just sort of lean back,' cautions Charles P. Clapp. 'That way you won't get trampled.'
Hearing this, the Americans lean back.
There were seats for everyone except three Indian women with papooses and cloth bundles, and two freebooters dressed as Indians, in slouch hats and ponchos. Thè rest of us sat with our box lunches on our laps. An hour of this, and as it passed the timid speculation as to whether the train was going to leave at all became loud discouragement. There was a general sigh of relief as the train started out of the station. It was still cloudy, the mountainsides softened in greeny mist. The motor road is high, but the train stays low, circling the mountains through a series of gorges in which rushing water runs alongside the tracks. There were few vistas here: we were too deep in the mountains to see anything but overhanging cliffs. Where a gorge floor was flat there were mud huts built near the ingenious Inca walls, the careful stonework of neatly fitted boulders, Inca terraces which had become Indian villages. The mud-block huts were recent, the Inca walls were old, and yet the walls had been built without the use of wheels, the surfaces smoothed and joined with stone tools.
Seeing this stonework, Bert Howie chants, 'Inca! Inca! Inca! Everywhere you look — Inca!'
'Now this reminds me of Wyoming,' says Harold Casey. He directs our attention to the rocky bluffs, the falling water, the green hillsides.
It reminds the Lewgards of parts of Maine. The Prells say it is nothing like Indiana and raise a laugh. Someone else says it is similar to Ecuador. The rest are annoyed: Ecuador is their next stop.
Bert and Elvera Howie listen to these comparisons and then say it is like Africa. Parts of Africa are just like this. We look out of the window and see llamas and smaller fluffier alpacas and very hairy pigs and women in tall hats and shawls and kneesocks gathering firewood. Africa! Elvera insists that it is so. She is surprised, she says, because Bert was saying that morning that their hotel — out of the window of the cocktail lounge on the top floor — reminds them of Florence, Italy: all the orange-tiled roofs, all the churches, the light.