Tramp Royale

by Robert A. Heinlein

  The other half is that the thing so many foreigners relish about this investigation is not the issue of communism, not the personality of McCarthy, but the fact that it gives an excuse to take a slap at the Fat Boy . . . Uncle Sam-Us. It is easy to hate the rich and the powerful; those who sneer at us for "McCarthyism" are just as ready to sneer at us for our inside plumbing-I have heard both sneers combined in one sentence.

  The point of this aside while our party drives through beautiful new Lima is that the political institutions of another country are hard to understand. Outside the United States very few people comprehend the nature of a congressional investigation and it is almost impossible to explain it to them. They have it mixed up with the Inquisition, with Senator McCarthy having all the functions and powers of Torquemada. The idea that a private citizen can answer or refuse to answer a series of questions put to him by a senator, such that the record shows clearly that the citizen being questioned is now or has in the past been actively engaged in treason against the United States-and then get up and walk out a free man-is so foreign to most other people that they simply cannot believe it.

  Furthermore, if they did believe it, they would be even more contemptuous of us for being so soft than they now are for "McCarthyism" as they comprehend it, i.e., which they conceive to be a policy of take-him-away-and-lock-him-up-I-don't-like-his-politics. Our extreme leniency, if they understood it, would strike them as preposterous, asinine.

  The institution of political refuge as practiced in South America is almost as hard for us to understand. It is as if Adlai Stevenson had found it healthy to hole up in the French Embassy immediately after election day in 1952, for this is approximately what Señor Haya did. He ducked into the Colombian Embassy and stayed there for five years. The Peruvian government never gave up its contention that Haya was a common criminal charged with a capital crime; Colombia, which itself passed through three changes of government by revolution during the five years, never swerved from its determination to give asylum even though the various Colombian governments were not in sympathy with Haya's politics. But, bitter as the issue was, Peru never attempted to remove the refugee by force from the utterly undefended embassy; the principle of asylum was too precious even though Peru declared that Haya was not entitled to it.

  Asylum is a necessary part of politics as practiced in South America. When bullets are used as commonly as ballots it is comforting to know that, if you find yourself out of power tomorrow, there are a couple of dozen safe spots right in your own capital where your successor's soldiers cannot arrest you, or possibly shoot you while "attempting to escape." This is as ameliorating an influence as our own Fifth Amendment.

  (By the way, I have never heard of one of Senator McCarthy's so-called "victims" choosing to take refuge in the Russian Embassy.)

  But why should politics in South America be such a rough and sometimes deadly game? I will spare you a 10,000-word essay on historical background, racial types, traditional institutions, and so forth, and admit that I do not know. But I do know that our northern political attitudes cannot readily be exported to South America. Our Latin neighbors are unanimously agreed on one point: they do not want Uncle to tell them how they must behave. Most South Americans are both intensely patriotic and fiercely individualistic. Most of them do not dislike us-we are probably better liked and for less reason in South America than anywhere else in the world. But while they will accept United States capital, products, and engineering, if offered with decent respect for their dignity, they will not accept any "do-gooding" from us in internal politics. They hate Yankee intervention much more than they hate their political opponents.

  I suggest that in this they may be right. It took us a long time to achieve political stability; there are those alive today who remember the fratricide of 1861-'65. Political philosophy is still a long way from being a science, revolution is still the refuge and the natural right of the oppressed, and I contend that it is very hard to be sure who are the "baddies" and who are the "goodies" in any overturning of a government south of us . . . at least at the time it takes place. Chile and Uruguay are proof that they are not incapable of achieving stability without our busybody help. In the meantime, a policy of hands-off combined with a warm willingness to help when and how they want help seems to me to be the best we can do.

  As we passed the Colombian Embassy we saw two armed soldiers on guard outside. Señor Haya was not in sight, but he was there; his long wait for safe conduct to exile had still four months to run.

  The country club at Lima would have been a credit to any city of comparable size in the States and its kitchen would almost certainly have surpassed the comparable ones; we had a wonderful lunch at the ridiculous prices made possible by the exchange. A wedding reception party was gathering as we left; the señoras and señoritas were elegantly dressed and most of them were remarkably attractive, some were very beautiful. For my taste the señoritas south of here live up to the propaganda about them. True, they do have a slight tendency to be broad-shouldered across the hips, but, as the chief mate of the Gulf Shipper pointed out, in these parts two axe-handles across the hips is considered about right. The gringo liking for narrow hips is probably a passing fad if history is any guide. Besides that, girdles are terribly difficult things to manage in hot climates, so I have been told.

  All of the women wore hats, just as they do in the British Commonwealth. But the hats of these ladies were brilliantly imaginative and frivolous whereas most British hats for women look like something built by birds in a tree and then abandoned.

  Ticky was not wearing a hat and received a few surprised glances, but she carried it off with cold dignity. She had a hat with her on the trip (the one she uses for weddings and funerals at home, her only hat), but she declined to be intimidated into wearing it once she found out about a dispensation which permitted her to enter churches without one.

  After lunch we visited the art institute and Jirón de Unión, the shopping center. Lima has gone all out for modern architecture but the modern trends in painting have not made a dent. Nowhere did we find a painting looking like two fried eggs, one addled, or perhaps jackstraws in a high wind. The instructors actually required the students to learn anatomy, perspective, and draftsmanship-very reactionary, of course. I liked it.

  Jirón de Unión is the collective term for a narrow shopping street each block of which has its own separate name. This must be confusing to the postman; the tourist does well to ignore the street signs and simply keep an eye out for landmarks. The shops are quite well stocked but not equal to those of cities of the same size in the States, except for silver articles of all sorts, much of it of great grace and imaginative beauty and made remarkably cheap by the ridiculous rate of exchange. Ticky showed remarkable restraint, for it would be easy indeed to go wild and spend oneself broke there. Shortly we had to hurry back to the ship in order not to miss it.

  As soon as we left Callao we started running across the furrows and the ship bounced for a couple of days down to Arica, northernmost point in Chile. A roll can be unsettling but a pitch really shakes up the stomach; the Gulf Shipper was moving around like a cayuse trying to get rid of a rider. I can now testify that Dramamine actually does stop seasickness, at least for this deponent. I am subject to seasickness and certainly would have been disgracefully and miserably ill without the drug; as it was I missed no meals and ate heartily. But I will never grow fond of excessive motion in a ship. It is annoying to have your soup in your lap, irritating to have to hop madly for balance when caught with trousers half on, not restful to fight the motion of the ship in your sleep.

  But anything is better than seasickness. I include drilling for gum-line cavities without Novocain.

  Arica has no harbor, only an open roadstead; the Gulf Shipper anchored and tied to a buoy, thus mooring her against swinging but leaving her still subject to the swells that bounced her around on the way down. Cargo was loaded and discharged by lighters which tied up around the ship li
ke pigs around a sow. Ticky and I watched the first boat load of stevedores come aboard and were struck by their extremely colorful and piratical appearance; we kept expecting them to break into the habanera. But it was appearance only; so far as our own experience serves, Chilenos, all of them, are the gentlest and most kindly people in the world.

  Sadly, many of them are wretchedly poor. The reason is obvious: it takes heroes to wrest a bare living out of much of Chile. The land back of Arica is as bare as the mountains of the Moon-I mean the ones on our satellite, not the mountain range in Africa. What we call desert in our own southwest is verdant jungle by comparison; there is nothing on these hillsides, not a weed, not a blade of grass, not even cactus. Yet the soil is not poor; where they have managed to bring water down from the mountains the ground crops beautifully.

  Back of the desert shore the great wall of the Andes was clearly in sight for the first time, majestic and incredible, range on range of snow-covered peaks, awesome at any time, breath catching at sunset. It was decidedly worth while to hurry through dinner and rush up to the flying bridge to watch it, while the bosun birds and guano birds wheeled around the ship and discussed us.

  The guano birds used to be a major source of wealth to Chile and to Arica in particular, until artificial nitrates reduced the importance of the trade for fertilizers and for explosives. There are islands at this port that are white with their droppings and any shift of the wind will bring positive, odorous evidence that the birds are still keeping up their end of the business despite new competition. But they are victims of technological unemployment; their end product is no longer indispensable.

  Arica, although in Chile, is the great Bolivian tin port. A railroad runs from here to La Paz and Chile has granted Bolivia extraterritorial rights for a dock, a customs shed, and railroad terminus. The dock is not yet in operation but Bolivian tin comes out nevertheless, tin ore being the principal item the Shipper loaded there. The precious stuff is handled in small, tight sacks, sealed, marked with serial numbers, weight, and name of owner.

  Arica is the site of the only United States sea battle fought on dry land. More than a century ago the U.S.S. Wateree was beached here five miles inland by an earthquake tidal wave. When the waters receded the stranded ship was attacked by Indians and the ship's company fought them off from the decks for several days. The boiler of the Wateree can still be seen, lying on its side; the rest of the ship has long since been carried away.

  Ticky and I went ashore by company boat, by ourselves as the others decided not to risk getting into a small boat from a gangway in the continual heavy swells. It is an easy way to break an ankle if one is not used to it; the knack lies in getting promptly and without any hesitation into the boat just as it rises highest at the gangway, there being then a second when boat and ship are almost stationary relative to each other.

  We made it okay, albeit clumsily, and the ride in to the landing was pleasant-a passenger in a liner never has a chance to get close to the water. There were no formalities at customs; an officer smiled at us and saluted and waved us on through. Arica is a town the same size as Buenaventura (14,000) but it has none of the "tough waterfront" quality of many seaports; you are at once in parks and shaded streets. There are two beautiful parks downtown, impressively large for so small a place, and for a place where irrigation water is so valuable.

  The thing that struck us first and with greatest delight was the singing of birds. The parks were loaded with birds singing their hearts out. I have never heard before or since so many birds singing at once. So great was the volume of sweet sounds that we could hear it long after we had left the parks behind.

  It does not take long to see all of Arica. There are a few business streets down near the water and a church or two; the homes spill down the rather steep hills back of the business district. It is a clean and pretty town but poor; only a few of the houses would have been considered middle-class homes in the States. As is usual in Chile every householder raised flowers, even if the opportunity was limited to a few pots in the window.

  We hired a car and were driven out into an irrigated valley hidden from the sea. Here there were truck farms, citrus trees, figs, cherimoya. The last is a delicious fruit almost unknown in the States, even though there is a Cherimoya Street in Hollywood. It tastes a little like a pineapple, a little like a cantaloupe, but mostly like itself; it is a favorite dessert in Chile and quickly would become a favorite with us, were the trees to be grown on commercial scale here.

  The valley was not very extensive and there was no place else to go. The land was green precisely as far as irrigation had progressed and no farther; a foot beyond was the utterly bare and depressing desert. But a new, wide road was being built back into the valley and it was evident that reclamation was to continue. Most of the roadwork was being done painfully by hand and human sweat, but there was a "Plan Marshall" powered scraper. "Plan Marshall" is a term used with approval all up and down the west coast of South America; here, at least, we have been able to help without being kicked in the shins for it and called names.

  There was a fine new school in the valley and an older one, although the apparent population seemed to call for no more than one small one. All through Chile we were impressed by an almost feverish pursuit of knowledge. Schools are everywhere, bookstores seem to be more numerous than grocery stores (probably a mistaken impression, that one). Students are everywhere, sitting on park benches, studying, or strolling slowly with noses buried in books, eyes fixed on print.

  On the way back we detoured to the top of a small mountain which overlooks the city and the port. The road stopped half way up and the driver, with complete aplomb, turned off onto a railroad track and continued on up. The view from there was magnificent and the odor of guano almost overpowering. We could pick out the Gulf Shipper from the others in port. Far below us, it was a toy ship fit for a bathtub.

  A flag there marks the spot where a Peruvian general, defeated in battle, suicided by riding his horse off the cliff. The driver and I discussed it and decided that a mule would have had more sense. Looking back, I do not know how we discussed it, for the driver had no English at all and the Spanish I know could be written on a postcard without crowding the stamp; it is suitable only for ordering dos cervezas in a cantina. But I recall the conversation clearly even though I don't know how we talked. Somehow, two human beings can always talk with each other if both want to.

  We got back to town with a half hour to spare and again looked around the shops and listened to the birds. We came across a boy and a girl, perhaps five and seven, with their noses pushed against the window of a toy shop. By their clothes, it seemed unlikely that they would ever get closer than looking and longing, so Ticky took them inside and told the proprietor to let them each have the item each was staring at. The kids did not take advantage of us; the doll the girl wanted was the one she had loved from through the glass, not the most elaborate and expensive one, and the boy simply had his eye on a large ball, not at all expensive.

  They thanked us gravely, coached only a little by the proprietor, and went away looking soberly happy. Ticky and I, having set up our own Marshall Plan, went back to the ship in the warm glow that comes only from playing Santa Claus. One of the real magics in life is the fact that wealth can always be multiplied by dividing by the age of the owner.

  (Now if that gent in the back row who just made the snide remark about American tourists who love to flash their money in the faces of people less fortunate will step out in the alley with me, I will try to find out how tightly his teeth are set in his head. With Ticky's help, that is-she has studied judo.)

  The next port was Valparaiso, our destination. We were anxious to do something before we left to show our appreciation to the ship's officers for many kindnesses and much hospitality; a party seemed in order. We talked it over with the Markhams and Mr. Tupper and planned one. It had to be held at sea, which meant that some of the watchstanders would be able to make only token attendance
and the Captain would not participate in the whole-hearted fashion which was his wont ashore, but there was nothing else for it as Ticky and I would be leaving the ship immediately on docking at Valpo.

  Martinis in water tumblers seemed a little rugged for a party held at sea and anyhow Ticky wanted to serve French Seventy-fives. As everyone knows, the French "75" is a small, obsolete weapon, ineffective in modern times. Its namesake is also innocuous, being composed of lemon juice, sugar, cognac, and champagne. The lemon juice supplies vitamin C and thereby helps to prevent scurvy, always a menace at sea, and the sugar gives quick energy. As for the other ingredients, they are so thinned out by the lemonade and cracked ice that they do no more than impart a pleasant flavor. In fact, unless advised, you would never believe that it was anything but a soda fountain drink-at first, you would not.

  The exact formulation is a matter of taste. Some like it not too sweet, some like it not too sour, some think that too much ice is bad for the stomach. But it needs plenty of champagne to provide bubbles and cognac to give it body.

  Cognac was not available so we had to fall back on pisco, which is a grape brandy, too, although made (I believe) from very large grapes. Real French champagne was hardly to be expected but Chile makes excellent champagne-type sparkling wines. I do not know what proof they are. The purser acted as purchasing agent for us before we left Arica. At two hundred pesos to the dollar the total bill was about ten dollars-the bottle alone should have cost more than that, empty.

  We stocked up also on assorted nuts and olives and such like munching food and sent out formal invitations, from all the passengers inviting all of the officers to an emergency session of the Horse Latitudes Philosophical Society and D.M. Club. Everybody accepted.