Days of the Dead.pdf - Upgrade Systems

and then it was over Creole British rulers who were educated in government and who hadn't been
brought up with the necessity of keeping an enormous population of displaced and angry Indians
as agri­cultural slaves. And a military commander with the integrity not to succumb to the
temptation of dictatorship. Even France hadn't managed that.
Around them the ramshackle adobe slums gave way to taller houses of stucco and light-red tezontl
stone. Pilasters, medallions, elaborate baroque arabesques of marble adorned windows and doors, bright
against paintwork of cherry, orange, lapis, or green. Tiles gleamed on the fronts of the taller houses;
saints stared disapprovingly down from niches. Between those tall fronts were wedged shops no bigger
than closets: pulquerias abounded, gaudy with mu­rals of flowers, bull-fights, semi-nude women, and
bearing names like The Wandering Jew and With You Until Death. As they passed the open doors,
January could smell the mild, yeasty pungence of the beverage, and saw figures sprawled on the benches
or amid peanut-hulls on the floor.
And everywhere, brilliant color under the brilliant sun. When they stopped at last before the offices of
the diligencia company, January asked the young priest Padre Cesario where the Calle Jaral lay. There
Hannibal's latest known inamorata, the opera singer Consuela Montero, had her house.
"You cannot mean to walk there, surely?" asked the priest, shocked.
"If it is not far," said January. "We can hire porters. . . ."
"By all means, hire porters," agreed the priest as quickly and as self-evidently as if the question were
whether January should wear trousers. "But hire also a hack and a driver," he said, and he nodded across
the street to the several decrepit-looking mule-drawn coaches waiting on the other side. "Understand,
Señor, that in Mexico a man is treated according to how those about him perceive him being treated by
others. Even you-if you will pardon me for mentioning your race-even negros, who are every­where
treated with scorn in my country, a part of that at least is that they have no money, no family, no
influence. Influence is everything here. But you and your lady are well dressed, and have money. If you
lower yourself to walking, men will say, `See, in spite of his fine clothes he is only a negro on foot-and he
may have stolen the clothes.' If you ar­rive in a hack, to show that you are not poor, all will be different."
January nodded. He had already observed something of the kind in vera Cruz, and had slipped the
customs offi­cials at the barrier an enormous bribe not to search his baggage last, which he guessed they
ordinarily would have done. It could, he supposed, be called an investment. "Thank you," he said.
"Moreover," the priest added, "it is several streets to the Plaza Mayor-the Cathedral square-and the
Calle Jaral lies beyond it. The léperos are everywhere, and will be upon you like flies on meat if you are
afoot."
"Léperos... lepers?" He used the French word, lepreux, and the padre shook his head.
"Not actual lepers, no. But this is what the beggars of the capital are called, leperos pelados-as filthy
as lepers, and more dangerous." Padre Cesario sighed, genuinely dis­tressed. The priest was a man of
fair complexion and European features, almost certainly full-blooded criollo-­Creole Spanish. He had a
small parish church in the city, he had said on their journey; he looked far too well fed and well clothed to
be living off that income alone.
"These are men driven from the villages by poverty and starvation, and by fear of being drafted into the
Army, where conditions are truly terrible, Señor. Day laborers when they can get work, who starve when
they cannot. With the fighting that has raged over my country all these long years, they have flocked to