Читать книгу The Plumed Serpent. Historical Novel - Life and Love after the Mexico Revolution онлайн

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The Judge trembled with irritation like an access of gout. The party sat in gloomy silence, that sense of doom and despair overcoming them as it seems to overcome all people who talk seriously about Mexico. Even Owen was silent. He too had come through Vera Cruz, and had had his fright; the porters had charged him twenty pesos to carry his trunk from the ship to the train. Twenty pesos is ten dollars, for ten minutes’ work. And when Owen had seen the man in front of him arrested and actually sent to jail, a Mexican jail at that, for refusing to pay the charge, ‘the legal charge’, he himself had stumped up without a word.

‘I walked into the National Museum the other day,’ said the Major quietly. ‘Just into that room on the patio where the stones are. It was rather a cold morning, with a Norte blowing. I’d been there about ten minutes when somebody suddenly poked me on the shoulder. I turned round, and it was a lout in tight boots. You spik English? I said yes! Then he motioned me to take my hat off: I’d got to take my hat off. What for? said I, and I turned away and went on looking at their idols and things: ugliest set of stuff in the world, I believe. Then up came the fellow with the attendant — the attendant of course wearing his cap. They began gabbling that this was the National Museum, and I must take off my hat to their national monuments. Imagine it: those dirty stones! I laughed at them and jammed my hat on tighter and walked out. They are really only monkeys when it comes to nationalism.’