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had awakened the barman by lifting the man's head on its thin stalk
of a neck and letting it thud back to the zinc-topped bar.
There had been cruelty and indifference in the gesture and Brad–
shaw would have protested had not Senor Orquienz so completely
taken charge of matters.
"Ron
y
Siete Op"
he had ordered and thus,
with this curiously translated soft drink began declaration of faith
in The American Way Of Life.
He quickly disclosed a way of announcing the brand names of
things with devotional pomp. "Pinseal" he said as he produced his
alligator wallet. "Palm Beach" he announced as he checked the knife–
edge crease in his sleeve.
To these patents of equality with Bradshaw, he added a brief
autobiography which consisted largely of commercial coups of an
unspecified kind, a glittering but vaguely located social success. "Often
I am going to New York," he explained. "Ritz Carlton, Waldorf As–
toria, Copacabana," he added, naming these credentials of familiarity.
Bradshaw had told the man. "Well, they've pulled down the
Ritz. You'll have to stay somewhere else next time." Senor Orquienz
was not disconcerted. "Is possible," he conceded, making the existence
of the Ritz something that men of affairs and understanding could
decide for themselves.
In all this Bradshaw recognized the troubling symptoms of
what Mexicans called
pochismo.
He had steeled himself to expect the
traditional hatred of the
coloso del nortel;
when he met it, this
most modest of
gringos
had no resentment. But
pochismo,
the uncriti–
cal admiration of all things American, he found embarrassing; indeed
he shared Mexican contempt for it; for the wearer of the Harry
Truman shirt, the devotee of baseball scores. But this was a more
complex case. Time had played a trick on this amateur Yank. Isolated
on this hopeless peninsula, Senor Orquienz had fallen for an America
which had disappeared. The outmoded doctrine of "hustle" and
"pep" had, it seems, found its last devotee. It was, in fact, upon
Senor Orquienz' lips that Bradshaw first heard without irony these
sad tags of Babbitt's '20s. Bradshaw could hardly believe his ears
when Senor Orquienz had presented himself at the Gran Hotel and
announced almost in his first sentence, and to the accompaniment of
an actual back slap (definitely not an
abrazo)
that "in this one
horse burg, I am Mister Big."
