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By Root 594 0

would save us a day. I didn't want to spend one more hour in Mexico than I had to, so I said that suited me. Where we were going I had no idea, except that we were going a long way from Havana, but where we were booked for was Guatemala. That seemed to be a kind of a terminus, and to go on from there we would have to have more papers than they could furnish us with at Havana. She got sick as a dog as soon as we took off, and I, and the steward, and the pilots thought it was airsickness. But when it still kept up, after we got to the hotel in Vera Cruz, I knew it was the vaccination. She was all right, though, the next day, and kept looking down at the country we were going over. We had the Gulf of Mexico under us for a little while after we hauled out of Vera Cruz, and then as we were working down toward Tapachula we were over the Pacific. She had to have all that explained to her. She had never got the oceans quite straight, and how we could leave one, and then pick up another almost before we had time to look at the pictures in the magazines, had to be blue-printed for her, with drawings. To her, I think all countries were square, like a bean patch with lines of maguey around it, and it was hard for her to get through her head how any country, and especially Mexico, could be wide at the top and narrow at the bottom.

At Guatemala, we marched from the plane into the pavilion with a loud speaker blaring the Merry Widow waltz, a barefoot Indian girl gave us coffee, and then after a while an American in a flyer's uniform came and explained to me, in some kind of broken Italian, what I would have to do to go on down the line, if that was what I expected to do. I thanked him, we got our luggage, and went to the Palace Hotel. Then I got to thinking:

***

Why are we going down the line? Why is Chile any better than Guatemala? Our big danger comes every time we fool with papers, and if we're all right so far, why not let well enough alone, and dig in? We couldn't stay on at the hotel, because it was full of Americans, Germans, English and all kinds of people, and sooner or later one of them would know me. But we might rent a place. I sent her down to the desk to ask how we went about it, and when we found out we didn't have to sign any police forms, we went out and got a house. It was a furnished house, just around the block from the hotel, and the gloomiest dump I ever laid eyes on, with walnut chairs, and horse-hair sofas, and sea shells, and coconut shells carved into skulls, and everything else you could think of. But there was a bathroom in it, and it didn't look like we would find one any better. The lady that owned it was Mrs. Gonzalez, and she wanted it understood that she didn't really have to rent the house, that she came of an old coffee family, that she preferred to live out of town, at the lake, on account of her health. We said we understood that perfectly, and closed at a hundred and fifty quetzals a month. A quetzal exchanges even with a dollar.

So in a couple of days we moved in. I found a Japanese couple that didn't speak any English, Italian, or Spanish, and we had to wigwag, but there was no chance of their finding out too much. I was practicing Spanish morning, noon and night, so she and I would be able to talk in front of other people without using English, and I tried to speak it with an Italian accent, but I still wasn't sure I was getting away with it. With the Japs, though, it was safe around the house.

So then we breathed a little easier, and began to shake down into a routine. Daytime we'd lay around, mostly upstairs, in our bedroom. At night we'd walk down to the park and listen to the band. But we'd always sit well away from it, on a lonely bench. Then we'd come back, flit the mosquitoes, and go to bed. There was nothing else to do, even if we had thought it was safe to do it. Guatemala is the Japan of Central America. They've copied everything. They've got Mexican music, American movies, Scotch whisky, German delicatessens, Roman religion, and everything else imported you can think of.