The Treasure OfThe Sierra Madre (2 page)

There came a day when the shelves could no longer hold all the bags, boxes, sacks, and grips of former guests, and there was not an inch of space left for the bags of newcomers. The owner of the hotel then ordered a general cleaning out.

Checks had never been given; such a luxury was not expected in this hotel. Some bags bore a label with the name of the owner. Others carried labels of the express companies, or a ship, or a hotel in Spain or Morocco, or Peru, by which its owner recognized it. Other bags had the name of the guest written on them in chalk or in pencil. It often happened that the owner could not get his package, which he recognized by its appearance, because he had forgotten the name he had given when he had handed his bag to the manager, having in the meantime changed his name several times for the sake of convenience.

From many suitcases and boxes the labels had dropped off or been torn off, or, if they were greasy, eaten by rats. Names written in chalk or pencil had disappeared. Often the clerk had forgotten to ask for the name of the owner, or the man had come in drunk and unable to remember his name. The clerk then wrote on the bag only the number of the cot which had been assigned to the guest, who, of course, forgot this number at once, if he ever knew it.

It was difficult to say how long certain things had been stored. The manager or the hotel-owner estimated the number of months things had been kept by the thickness of the layer of dust which covered them. They rarely made a mistake by this method of judging.

The owner of the hotel, in the presence of the manager, opened the baggage and packages, looking through them for valuables to be claimed by him in payment for the keeping. Mostly he found only rags or junk, for anyone who had something of value did not go to the Oso Negro Hotel, or if he did, he remained no longer than one night.

The rags were given away to those who were hanging around begging for them. In this world no shirt, no pair of pants, no shoes can be so shabby that some human being will not say: “Let me have it, please; look at mine. Thank you, sir!” For no man can ever be so poor but that another believes himself still poorer.

3

Dobbs had no suitcase with him, not even a pasteboard box or a paper bag. He would not have known what to put into them. All he possessed in this world he carried in his pants pockets. For months he had not owned a waistcoat, nor a coat. Such things had gone long ago. He did not need them, anyway. Nobody had a coat here except foreign tourists and men who wished to make a good impression. Here coats look as silly as a top-hat on the head of a New Yorker who cannot afford a taxi.

Dobbs stepped up before the clerk’s window, where on a board there stood an earthen water-bottle. This was the community water-bottle for all guests. No water was to be had in the rooms or in the shacks. If you were thirsty, you had to leave your cot and come here to get water. Experienced patrons, especially those who frequently felt thirsty during the night, took with them a tequila-bottle filled with -water when turning in.

The manager, who during the day acted also as clerk, was a very young man, hardly more than twenty-five. He was short and very lean, and he had a long, thin nose. His nose indicated that he was a born hotel-clerk. His cheeks were hollow, his eyes fallen in and set in dark rings. He was suffering from malaria, which had turned the skin of his face pale yellow, with greenish shadows. He looked as if he might die any minute. Your mistake, mister, for he could wallop any tough sailor who opened his swear-hold farther than was considered decent by the clerk. He worked from five in the morning until six in the evening, when the night-clerk relieved him. Then he would go to the plaza and walk around fifty times for exercise.

The hotel never closed, and the clerks had a busy time. There was not a halfhour day or night when there was not at least one patron to be called because he had to go to work. Few tourists stopped in this hotel, and if they did, it was mostly by mistake and they went back home telling the world what a dirty country the republic was.

The patrons here were almost exclusively working-men, with jobs or without, sailors who had been left behind by their ships or had jumped them. Occasionally an oilman or two stopped here who the week before had been millionaires, but who had gone broke because their wells had run dry or had not come in at all. In general the lodgers were bakery workers, street-payers, watchmen, cooks and waiters in cafes, news-boys; and many had professions and jobs which cannot be easily named or explained in a few words. Many of these men could have rented a room with a family or in a private house where they would have slept better and where they would not have been permanently in company with all sorts of thieves, card_sharpers, tramps, dice-loaders, vagrants, and adventurers who, as long as they paid, also lived here. The only class distinction here was indicated by the answer to the question: “Can you pay for your cot or can’t you?” It was because the hotel could be trusted to call a man at the right time and see to it that he left that scores of decent working_men lived here permanently. They preferred to live here among all this scum of five continents rather than risk losing their jobs for being late to work.

Both clerks were efficient. Day after day new guests came, old ones left. Every hour, day and night, new faces were seen. All nationalities were represented here. There came and went whites, blacks, browns, yellows, and reds; old and young, tall and short. But neither of the clerks ever made a mistake. Whoever passed by the window, the clerk on duty knew instantly whether he had paid or not. If he was in doubt, he glanced at the register and then watched to see into which room the man went. Since none of the shacks had locks, no keys were needed. Anyone smart enough could have gone into any of the shacks and taken a cot. But the two clerks were so well trained that they knew at once the face of a guest, the name he had given, the number of his cot, and the payment he had made, and whether or not these details coincided.

A few rooms containing old dilapidated beds were separated by cracked boards from the other rooms. These were so small that outside of the bed only a narrow space a foot wide was left for the occupants to undress in. These little cages were rented by men who brought their women along with them. For these accommodations one peso was charged for each person.

Two huts were kept solely for women patrons. Here also doors could be neither locked nor properly shut. The women who lodged here were mostly girls employed in restaurants and hotel kitchens. In spite of the fact that anybody could easily have sneaked into the women’s quarters at night and that the rest of the hotel was full of men of all sorts and kinds, the girls were safer here than in many a hotel which makes a fuss about its moral standing. The women were never molested by men coming in drunk. By the unwritten law of the hotel and of the men who lived here any man who tried to harm one of the girls would have been dead at sunrise. The men never even went near enough to the women’s quarters for a peep through the cracked clapboards. The women were the only guests in the shacks of the patio who had mosquito-bars for their cots. The men had to manage without.

Many of the guests had been living here two, three, even five years. These oldtimers usually occupied the corners of the shacks in which they bunked, and so obtained a certain privacy not enjoyed by others. They were freer here than in a private house, for they could come and go as they wished. No landlady ever asked them questions or felt it her duty to pester them with her own opinions on morals and punishment hereafter.

The shacks had no closets and no wardrobes of any kind. Patrons whose cots were in the middle of the hut laid their things on a broken chair or tied them to the under side of their cots with strings. The men who occupied corners or had their cots alongside a wall hung up their clothes on nails. Others kept theirs in wooden boxes under their cots. Others, again, whose belongings hung on the wall covered them with sacking and then fastened them with strings crosswise tight against the wall, so that it would have been difficult for a thief to drag a pair of pants or a shirt out of this mass of clothes.

It rarely happened that anything was stolen. Anyone leaving with a parcel was scrutinized by the clerk in such a way that if the man was not honest he dropped the package and ran away. A thief in this hotel was never afraid of the police or of jail. He was only afraid—terribly afraid—of the beating he would receive if he was found out. The clerk had only to call into the patio, where always, day or night, a score of guests were hanging around. They would take the thief into one of the shacks and there preach him a sermon which would make such an excellent impression upon his mind and body that for the next seven days he could not move a finger or an eyelid without moaning. These sermons had proved so effective that the hotel could guarantee that no theft would recur inside of two months to come.

Only oldtimers left a part of their belongings in the shacks while they were at work. Their coats, pants, and shirts were so well known by the clerks that it was hardly possible for anyone to leave wearing stolen clothing without being caught.

In the room where the clerk had his little desk there was also a safe in which the patrons’ valuables were kept, such as cash, documents, watches, rings, and instruments. Among these were all sorts of implements used by geologists, topographers, prospectors, and miners, as well as revolvers, guns, rifles, and fishing outfits on the wall, either checked here or left in lieu of payment.

In corners and on narrow shelves, near at hand for the clerk, dozens of little parcels, card-boxes, and books were piled up. These were checked to be called for within an hour or two. Most of them were never claimed. The owners of some of them were probably at the other end of the world, for if a man needed a job and was at the docks just when a ship, short a hand or two, was heaving anchor, he hopped on and left his parcels or instruments behind. You can’t eat a theodolite and you can’t sell it, not for twenty bucks, if all second-hand dealers and pawnshops are glutted with them. But a job means food, and a man would be a fool not to let instruments or fishing tackle or guns go and to seize his chance to hop on a bucket where there are three square meals a day.

A shelf with little compartments was filled with letters for patrons. Bundles of letters, many of them from a mother, a wife, or a sweetheart, were piled up, covered with thick dust. The men to whom they were addressed might be dead, or working deep in the jungles clearing new oil-fields, or on a tramp in the China Sea, or helping the Bolsheviks build up a workers’ empire, with no time to think that the letter-writers back home might be crying their eyes out over a lost sheep.

What the manager or the clerk called his desk was a small table, wabbly and well worn. On this were the register, a few letters and papers, an ink-bottle, and a pen. Every patron had to register, as a reminder that he was staying in a civilized country and not with an Indian tribe. Only his last name was written in, with the number of his shack and his cot and the amount of money he had paid. All other information concerning a patron, his nationality, his profession, his home town, was of no interest to the clerk or to the police, who never came to inspect the register except when looking for a criminal. The tax officials frequently looked into the register to find out if the hotel had made an incorrect declaration. The city had no surplus of officials, and only where there are more officials than are actually needed are people pestered to tell the police all about their private affairs.

4

Dobbs came to the window, banged his peso upon the table, and said: “Lobbs, for two nights.”

The clerk took up the register and wrote: “Jobbs,” because he had not caught the name and was too polite to ask again. His answer was: “Room seven, bed two.” “Room” meant “shack,” and “bed” meant “cot.”

Dobbs grunted something which might have been: “Okay, brother,” or perhaps: “Kiss me somewhere, you mug.”

He was hungry and had to go hunting or fishing… . But the fish would not bite. He went after a man in a white suit and whispered a few words to him; the man, without looking at him, handed him a toston—that is, half a peso.

With these fifty centavos Dobbs hurried to a Chinese restaurant. Chinese cafes are the lowest-priced in the republic, but not the dirtiest. Lunch-time was long past, but in a Chinese cafe one may get dinner, called “comida corrida,” at any time. If dinner is over, the meal is called “cena,” meaning “supper,” whatever time it is by the cathedral clock.

Dobbs, knowing he could pay for his meal, kept the Chinese running like the devil. Everything that was set before him he had changed for something else, exulting in feeling once more how pleasant it is to chase someone around without mercy.

Then he trudged again to the plaza, picking his teeth on the way, and rested on a bench until he felt hungry for coffee. He walked the streets for a good while without success, until a man in white finally gave him a silver coin, fifty centavos again.

“Geecries,” Dobbs said to himself, “I’m sure lucky with gents dressed in white.” He walked across the plaza to the side nearest the docks of the passenger liners and freighters. Here was a cafe without walls, doors, or windows, which were not needed since the cafe kept open twenty-four hours every day.

Dobbs ordered a glass of coffee—the greater part of it hot milk with coffee poured on the top of it—and two pieces of milk bread. He sweetened the coffee with a quarter of a pound of sugar. When the waiter put the ice-water on the table, Dobbs looked up at the price-list painted on the wall and yelled: “Haven’t you bandits raised the price for that stinking coffee five cents more?”

“Well,” said the waiter, chewing a toothpick, “runningexpenses are getting higher. We simply can’t do it any longer for fifteen fierros.”

Dobbs did not really object to the price. He just wanted to complain, as any patron who can pay feels he is entitled to do.

“Go to hell! I don’t buy any lottery tickets,” he bellowed at a little boy who for the last five minutes had been brandishing lottery tickets right under his nose.