hand. Managers from sugar plants had waited with
cars to take her 'in the front door and show her
around the elaborate factory where the sickly sweet
pulp changed its hue from vat to vat. In the hot
sweet air they smiled and bowed and she looked past
their plump whitecoated shoulders through slits of
windows to the green waving sea where the lumber-
ing bull carts waited for the bent backs to load them.
She sat with them at luncheon in the dim cool
dining room, the ice tinkling, the melons fragrant,
the fish browned and delicate and the wine poured
into colored goblets. Politely and skillfully they
fenced back and forth, sizing each other up. At last
truculent, impatient, the American spoke. "Listen
here, Mrs. Sidney, with all due respect to our
manager who is a Cuban, a lot of these people don't
want things better. He'll tell you, isn't that so 7 Try
to do things and see what thanks you get. I admit
they live like pigs but my God what would they do if
we weren't here to help them out 7 This island ain't
the one sore spot in the world either. It's practically
universal. Look at what you got at home. Why pick
on us. What about the farmer in the states 7 Say,
there's a problem, he's whining around and on his
back. Want me to tell you why 7 For the same reason
these babies are flat. Speculation. Why there's no
bigger gambler in the world than the farmer. Makes
Wall Street look like a piker. They were riding high
right after the war, same as here. Then what did
they do. They speculated. Bought land. Greedy and
anxious to clean up and now they can't take it. Well
we have to take it. We can't whine and crawl out of
it. We have to stay right here,
.T
ohnny on the spot
and keep going. If this New Deal keeps up with the
strange hold it's got on business, I don't know where
I'll be. I actually envy the man on relief, he hasn't
got my troubles and he knows where he stands."
Mrs. Sidney looked at her plate, stirring her cof-
fee. The Cuban manager now put in his oar. "We
can't answer your questions. We're not seers, you
know. The past is gone and who knows the future.
\Vages are, as I told you, set by law. Anything you
want to know about sugar now," he smiled brightly,
"Let's discuss sugar as sugar. Then we'll get some-
where."
Mrs. Sidney couldn't help herself, her hand shot
out angrily and then caught her napkin and the
thrust changed to a diplomatic gesture. She patted
the napkin gently and forced the words to come
mildly, "Sugar as sugar. A process. I'm afraid I
haven't got a technical mind. I'm interested in what
happens in making sugar and where it goes when it
is made. The people who make it and eat it you
know." The set faces glaring unfriendly and alien
warned her. She put a smiling face on like a mask,
turning soft and feminine. "I like people," she con-
fessed in a little voice. "It's sometimes a limitation,
don't you think 7" At that the American allowed
himself to smile broadly, he eased back in his chair,
PARTISAN
REVIEW
and the two managers looked at one another in a re-
lieved and condescending manner.
Alone in the small bare hotel of the hot baked
town she waited for evening. Her notebook filled
with scraps of their conversation flatteringly inter-
preted in case someone should search her papers in
her absence. She wrote with her head down, her eyes
digging into the page, fiercely intent, not daring to
give herself any thoughts but these. When night
came, she followed the directions that had been
given her in Havana by word of mouth, repeating
them to herself as she hurried down the back street,
past the gasoline station, turn to the right to the
tobacco store, walk two doors further and enter a
long hallway, knock on the door with the card tack-
ed over the bell. The door opened and the circle of
dark eyes, wary, suspicious, softened .. She stepped
in. Did she know Castello 7 What was he doing 7
What had he said 7 What were things like in· the
states 7 Then as each man took selfconsciously the
offered American cigarettes, a door to a court open-
ed and two men in white wrinkled workpants and no
shirts came in, looking hard as if to discover whether
or not this woman could help them, turning at last
with backs bare and across the backs great broad
flaming scars, the wounds of the machete.
All the way down the island managers of hotels
obsequiously jerked out her chair from the best table
but alone with waiters, as the fish was served, a
scabby story of resented wrongs poured like a sauce
over the food. At night after dinner the American
lady tripped down the front steps as the lights went
on under the palms of the little square, and strolling
idly, suddenly disappeared down a steep street to
on,eblock south, two west, the archway with the iron
grill, where young boys from the highschool waited
in their white suits. Their dark faces melting in the
darkness, their white suits came towards her touch-
ingly headless, and she followed them to the home
of the dead boy's mother. His bloody oncewhite suit
sprawled empty and useless with the dried accusing
stains upon his narrow bed. In the dim whitewashed
room of the dead boy she had stared at the collapsed
clothes. On the walls above the bed hung a crucifix
and a picture cut from an illustratecl1 paper of a
young Russian girl laughing, holding in one arm a
sheaf of wheat. She turned from the picture catch-
ing a quick flash in the eyes of the boy nearest her.
Her knees felt shaky but she answered their eyes,
the dead boy's mother and his alive companions,
looking at them one by one, promising, reassuring
their ;steady asking gaze with a promise, her lips
dry, her eyes as burning as theirs.
Back in the big hotel the stink from the open
sewers wafted up with the breath of the sea. Shots
had begun in the night. When day came little school
children marched through the filthy streets carrying
placards scrawled in chalk. "We want pencils. We
9
