Fo'castle Waltz

Time moves slowly in darkness; sometimes it gallops. I was getting a little panicky—no use kidding myself. I'd never get anywhere with that check-room girl. I almost popped my eyes trying to see that watch again. The orchestra had begun to settle with the sound of a huge henhouse quieting down for the long night.

The little door under the stage opened, and the conductor bowed out into the wedge of light from its entrance and climbed to his little stand.

Christ, what the hell time was it? I was perspiring freely now. I had a date with that goddam train. I stumbled over legs getting out the aisle and climbed up the steps leading to the back of the balcony, in a sweaty panic. That possible midinette stood quietly in the corridor at the head of the balcony stairs. Maybe I could have done something with her, but it was too late now.

I got to the big stairs whirling down to the lobby. There was a trick I'd learned as a bellhop that came in handy then. By holding the rail and just letting yourself fall, tipping the corner of the steps with your heels and landing with a loud slap of both feet when you hit the landings, you could really make speed. It sounds good, too—like a machine gun with every tenth shell extra loud. At the balcony landings I could hear the orchestra had finally started to play.

At the bottom of that long staircase there was a tremendous double door leading to the main lobby. The upper half of these doors were glass and I grabbed and swung them open—Crash!

Gawd—I'd forgotten those goddam brakeless doors, with their hinges swimming in oil! That was the biggest door I'd tackled yet and it banged against the stone wall of the lobby with a deafening roar. I stood there watching it quiver, expecting those immense plates of glass to come shattering down about me. With one movement every door leading into that lobby was thrown open and a mob spearheaded by the white-tied ushers surrounded me, all jabbering and waving their arms at once.

I backed up against the wall and grabbed out the watch, railroad ticket, train schedule, and my seaman's passport and assorted papers, and tried to explain with sign language and futile gestures that I was just trying to make a train—and I was late.

Nobody seemed to understand, and I wasn't getting away so easy. A long, elegant-looking lady edged her way through the circle of ushers who fenced me in and stood looking me up and down a moment. Then, with a regal gesture of her raised hand, she silenced everybody, and with great care she spoke, pointing a gloved finger at me with each word.

"Are you Eengleesh?"

Phew! What a relief to hear a language you could understand under such circumstances.

"No—no, Fm not. You see, I'm an American, an American sailor from an American ship. We're docked down in Rio Santiago—" and I waved that train ticket, railroad schedule, watch, etc., at her. "You see—there's this last train. I gotta make my ship— We may be sailing—"

This dame, who stood facing me with (what might have been a nice) long leg thrust forward, drew herself up and folded her arms across her middle.

"You—min—Nord—"

I said, "Huh?"

"You are naught American. You min—you are Nord Americano!"

"Huh?—Nord?—Yeh—yes, ma'am. North American, of course. You see, this—"

But she wasn't listening to me any more. She had turned her head and spoken quietly to the group around her, at one side and then the other. They looked at me with a sneer and then, wrinkling up their noses as if there was a bad smell, they slowly broke up and walked back into the Teatro, looking over their shoulders at me as they went. The ushers had gathered into small glowering groups, their hands clasped behind their backs, and they watched me menacingly until I left the lobby of the Teatro Colon and gently closed the big doors that opened to the street.

Out in the safety of the cold, wet darkness I ran. Vaguely, I remembered the crowded streets and the dark, uniformed traffic cops topped by their spiked German helmets wearing large, white gloves and directing the crowds with their enameled white billies. I reached the railroad station with plenty of time and sat around waiting for that 10:30 train to Rio Santiago. Joe's watch was a little fast.

The trip back was colder and longer than that beer-studded journey to Buenos Aires that noon. The coach was heated by a pot-bellied stove at one end. A couple of naval cadets kept feeding it lumps of wood, but the wind blowing through that cracked wooden coach never let the heat accumulate. I must have dozed off—I can't remember much about my trip back from the Paris of the Western Hemisphere. I was happy to crawl into my dry bunk aboard the S.S. Hermanita. Never again on that trip did I try to have anything but a sailor's night out when I went ashore

19. Fo'castle Waltz