Tramp Royale (17 page)

I risked my pretty business suit and tried the gaucho saddle. The horse turned out to be neck-reined, but he did not speak English and the gaucho uses both quirt (
rebenque
) and heavy spurs so I did not stay up long. The gaucho saddle is nothing like a western "rocking chair" stock saddle; instead of sitting down in it you sit up on top of it and it is built like a feather bed, with layer after layer of blanket, sheepskin padding, and leather. There is so much between the rider and the cayuse that it is hard to feel the beast. I like to be more intimately in touch with a horse if he and I are expected to form a close committee, not separated from him by an inner-spring mattress.

The saddle had stirrups, big metal disks with boot-size holes in them, but I could not see that they did much good; they seemed simply to let the gaucho know where his feet were. They are derived from a much simpler stirrup, a rawhide thong tied around a small stick. The gaucho of the early days placed his toes over the stick with the thong between his big toe and the second toe; it served as a stirrup but it did not look as if you could put much weight on it in a pinch.

Herman pointed out this old-style stirrup on a statue titled
El Gaucho
which stood in a little park in front of the main entrance of the stockyard. It was a beautiful piece of work, comparable in artistic quality and style of execution to "The Scout" or "The End of the Trail." The sculptured horse looked like the same wide-shouldered, chunky little animal that had just patiently let me try him, but the gaucho portrayed was of an earlier century with a strong, hard-bitten Indian face unmodified by European blood.

Herman pointed out his boot, which came all the way up his calf but did not cover his toes at all. "When a horse died the gaucho would make two circular cuts in the hind leg above and below the hock, then he would strip off the hide as an unbroken cylinder the way you would peel off a stocking. Then he would put it on his own leg, with his heel at the hock joint and let it dry and shrink in place; this made him a new pair of boots."

Ticky examined the statue. "But how would he take it off?"

"He didn't, not until he cut it off to replace it with a new one. Those old-timers lived very much the way the animals themselves did. They slept on the ground in all sorts of weather, they never washed, they never took off their boots. They were a tough breed."

Ticky looked at the portrayed boot with the splayed toes sticking out, wrinkled her nose and turned away-Ticky used to bathe fourteen times a week until her doctor made her cut it down to once a day. I myself was wondering just what sort of athlete's foot would be incubated inside a rawhide boot that was never removed, but decided that the tough hombre sitting up there would never have noticed anything short of gangrene.

That afternoon Herman took us to see a very special sort of school, Escuela Pedro de Mendoza. It is the home and studio of Maestro Benito Quinquela Martín, possibly the greatest living Argentino painter; it is also an art museum, a grammar school, and an art school. Señor Quinquela was a very poor boy in the waterfront neighborhood, a wharf rat. From his paintings, now sought by all galleries everywhere, he has become wealthy, but he lives and works in the poor neighborhood where he grew up. The
escuela
is a beautiful modern six-story building by the water; the Maestro owns it, pays the expenses, pays the salaries of the staff of teachers. The poor children of the neighborhood attend free.

A child who attends is not especially likely to become an artist; it is in most respects simply a well-run grammar school. But a pupil there who happens to display artistic talent has every opportunity to study art under a renowned master. Señor Quinquela named the school for the artist who gave him his chance, Maestro Pedro de Mendoza.

One of the pleasant things about the place is that the museum is loaded with works of other living Argentino artists, purchased by the Maestro. Besides that, he has named each classroom for some earlier artist of the Argentine. We did not get to meet Señor Quinquela (although he is readily at home to casual visitors and tourists) because he was away, but his benign personality was everywhere. His favorite subject is still his own poor waterfront neighborhood and so high is the regard in which he is held by his neighbors that all around us we could see that shopkeepers and warehouse owners and householders had painted their properties in bright colors-because the Maestro likes to paint bright colors in his pictures!

Each classroom has a mural done by the Maestro-a feature that may be more impressive if I add that his pictures bring twenty to thirty thousand dollars in the open market. Each grade is decorated appropriately for the age level, starting with Bugs-Bunny-Mickey-Mouse things in the kindergarten. For these small children each door in the part of the school they use is done in a different color, so that a child too young to obey, "Go to room nineteen," can be told, "Go see Señorita Gomez in the room with the red door." We left the place feeling happy.

I took advantage of where we were to ask to see slums. Buenos Aires turned out to have the cleanest slums we ever saw. They were still slums, substandard dwellings for the very poor, but they were swept and washed and painfully neat, with never an uncovered garbage can, nor a trash heap, nor a bad odor. President Perón decided that all citizens must be clean, so he made each local policeman responsible for the cleanliness of his beat, with his responsibility extending even to compulsory inspections of housewives' kitchens. A housewife can be fined for failing to wash dishes, failing to scrub floors, failing to keep her yard, or passageway, or stoop clean and neat. The results are homes which are clean and healthful and cheerful, though still poor.

I could not help wondering what would happen in tenement neighborhoods in our country if the local cop tried to inspect the kitchens. What would they do to him? Take his club away from him most likely and beat him to death with it-and good riddance, too.

There are other things more important than cleanliness.

In Buenos Aires as in all Latin American cities I have been in there is a nerve-racking din of automobile horns. I had heard that the system was that the first driver to sound his horn had the right of way, which naturally would result in endless horn-blowing and probably endless accidents.

Only it did not result in endless accidents. I asked Herman about it and was told that I did not quite understand the system; it was not a race to see who could toot his horn first. Each driver, as he approached an intersection, gave a short blast on his horn at about the same distance from the corner, around forty feet. Thus the signal of the driver nearest the corner would be heard first and cars coming at right angles to him would give way.

The system seemed to me to be chancy in the extreme but it worked, although the racket was distressing. However, Buenos Aires was quiet as a chess match at night, whereas Santiago was so noisy at night that we could not have gotten to sleep early even if the schedule had permitted it; I asked Herman about the contrast.

"Oh. See this." He flipped a switch on the dashboard. "Now the horn is disconnected and the horn ring flashes the highway lights. President Perón decided that people ought to be able to sleep at night. So at sundown we all flip this switch, drive with the dim lights in the city, and use the bright lights to signal at each corner just as we use the horn in the daytime. It's a fine if you sound your horn at night."

Herman collected parking tickets just as many American drivers do; his business almost required it. At the moment he was not paying them as there was a Christmas amnesty coming up and he expected that the slate would be wiped clean. The notion seems exotic to us; later we were to run into a much stranger use of amnesty in Brazil. In accounts of automobile accidents in Brazilian newspapers the same sentence frequently ends such news items: "Both drivers fled from the scene."

With us, leaving the scene of an automobile accident is just short of carving up your wife with an axe. Not so in Brazil. The courts are years behind in their work; if a driver is arrested on a charge of causing an accident he may wait in jail almost endlessly before he can be tried; therefore he runs away and tries to avoid arrest.

The wonderful part about it is that if he manages to keep his freedom for twenty-four hours amnesty works; he will never be arrested. I am not sure of the law or lack of it in this custom; it may be just a well-understood convention based on the common knowledge that the courts could not possibly in all eternity handle all the cases if the cops arrested everyone who deserved it. In any case, the drivers do run and hide.

Amnesty in misdemeanors and lesser crimes does not seem so out of place in cultures in which amnesties for revolutionists, political prisoners, and exiles are common and almost a necessity. The spirit of forgive and forget makes some of the fiercer aspects of Latin ways more tolerable.

We heard of one other custom much more wildly exotic. I was not able to check on it as it referred to Paraguay, a country we were not able to visit. But here it is: it is alleged that Paraguay has no law against murder, killing being considered a private matter; either the deceased is a no-good and everyone is glad he is dead, or the friends and relatives of the departed can be depended on to avenge the matter themselves.

My first impression was one of horror, but the idea has a certain wild logic about it that grows on one. Almost anyone can make up a list of people he would like to lure into Paraguay-they never would be missed.

We did not spend all our time driving around with Herman although it would have been cheaper for me. The Plaza Hotel is at one end (the more expensive end) of Calle Florida, one of the finest shopping streets in the world. During the business day it is blocked off from traffic and shoppers can wander back and forth as they please.

Ticky is the sort of girl whose eyes bug out and whose face gets flushed at the sight of bargains in a shop window-somewhat the expression that Marilyn Monroe produces in a man; it may be a related mechanism. The greatest hazard in Calle Florida is the alligators, empty ones made up into women's handbags; they are snapping and yapping at a man's financial standing every step of the way down the street. They will savage you in a tender portion, your wallet, at the drop of a hint.

It is no good to tell me that a handbag is "cheap" at thirty-five dollars simply because the same handbag would be priced at a hundred and fifty dollars in New York; if I were in the States I would not be buying a handbag for any century and a half-nor for thirty-five dollars either if I could avoid it; my cornbelt ancestors would spin in their modest graves.

Ticky was moderate; she bought only three alligator bags. Of course each bag had to have shoes to match. Besides that they were actually giving away (almost) bags of other sorts. Then there were sweaters and blouses and gloves and other things. I kept reminding her that we had been sixty kilos over the weight limit in flying the Andes and that we were going to have to pay excess air baggage several times more; I don't think she heard me.

Once I had anesthetized myself to the inevitable it was really pleasant to see her have so much fun. For most women, to be in Calle Florida is something like dying and going to heaven. So far as I have seen or ever heard nowhere else in the world are there so many smart shops catering to women jampacked into so small a neighborhood. Add to that the fact that a favorable rate of exchange makes any purchase a bargain (in feminine logic) and that many things really are wonderful bargains by any standard.

I offer this hard-earned advice to others who may follow: give her a flat amount and take her traveler's cheques away from her. Tell her solemnly that when the amount is gone the fun is over. Then stay in your hotel room, quietly quaffing San Martíns and thinking serious thoughts; if you go along you will be tempted to let her have more money.

I went along, of course.

Ticky encountered for the first time the custom of dickering. She was no good at it, as she believed instinctively that it is immoral to attempt to get anything below the asking price, equivalent to taking bread out of the mouths of the shopkeeper's hungry little ones. But she finally got it through her head that, except in the large department stores that advertise "firm prices," each sales transaction in Latin America is a social event, more valued for the ritual than for the regrettable economic aspect. But she never did acquire any skill at it. Fortunately most sales people are not disposed to swindle a señora, even if she is from Estados Unidos and therefore conclusively presumed to be rich.

She encountered, too, the lovely custom of making the purchaser a little gift after the transaction is over, and was delighted with it. So am I, for that matter; it is probably an uneconomic practice that results in higher-than-necessary prices, or profits lower than proper, or both, but it does not cost much and adds grace and warmth to life.

In the course of an afternoon's shopping it was necessary to stop for tea. By "tea" I do not mean a cup of lukewarm tannic acid solution with skimmed milk added; afternoon tea in Buenos Aires is somewhat simpler than a Thanksgiving dinner, but not much. The place to go is a
confitería
-which should not be translated as "confectionary shop." (Knowing little or no Spanish I often tried to struggle along through translating by cognates, as indicated above; this can lead to trouble. In a cocktail lounge in our hotel I saw a sign which seemed to me plainly to read: NO PROPAGATION PERMITTED IN THIS ROOM-which seemed to me a reasonable restriction, even in a broad-minded hotel. I learned later that it read: NO TIPPING. And it did not even mean that.)

A
confitería
is a combination soda fountain, cocktail bar, tea shop, and restaurant, usually with live music and other elegances. The best are as swank as the Stork Club; our favorite had the end of the room caged off and filled with dozens of song birds which sang along with the strolling musicians. Around four-thirty or five in the afternoon entire families gather in them, Papa has his highball, Mama has tea, the kids have sandwiches and cakes and malted milks and ice cream sodas or anything they wish. We have no institution for the entire family which compares in wide choice of hospitality, but it is high time we imitated it. We won't of course; the bluenoses would have fits-corrupting the young, and so on.