Free The Death Ship by B. Traven Page A

fifty times torn up and thrown into the waste-basket and done over again. The whole thing was no longer an affair of human beings; it had become an affair of papers, blanks, affidavits, certificates, photographs, stamps, seals, files, height-measuring, and quarreling about the correct color of the eyes and the hair. The human being himself was out and forgotten. A piece of merchandise would not have been treated so.
    The good old flag spread all over the wall. A picture of the man who had said something about the country being created by the Lord to be the land of the free and for the hunted. Another picture of another man who had said great things about the right of human beings, even Negroes, to unrestricted freedom.
    A huge map was there also. It was the map of a country great and large enough to give some space to an extra fifty million human beings eager to work and to find happiness on earth. I looked at the map and I was pleased to see that good old Sconsin was still on it.
    I was still looking around when a lady came in like a clap of thunder. Short, unbelievably fat. In this room where everyone awaiting his turn had a lean and hungry figure, this lady had the effect of a loathsome insult.
    The fat lady had curly, bluish-black, oily hair, done up in the manner affected by street-girls when they want to go with their men to the chauffeurs’ ball. She had a pronounced
    hooked nose, thick lips, brightly painted, brown dreamy eyes that were larger than the holes they were set in and looked as if they might pop out any moment. The fat lady was dressed in the most elegant masterpiece of a French dressmaker. Looking at how she tried to walk like a human being on her immensely high heels, one had the impression that in a minute she would collapse under the weight of her heavy pearl necklace and the heavy platinum bracelets around her wrists. Her fingers were ridiculously short and thick. On all fingers, save on the thumb, she wore diamond rings; on some fingers she carried two and even three rings. It seemed that the finger-rings were necessary to keep her thick fingers from bursting open.
    Hardly had she opened the door when she cried: “For God’s sake, I have lost my passport.” (She pronounced it “pace-pot”.) “Where is that consul? He has to receive me immediately. I must have another pacepot. I take the Oriental Express in the evening.”
    I had been made to believe that only sailors can lose their papers. Now I see that even well-dressed people can be without passports. Hello, Fanny, I can tell you that Mr. Consul is going to say something very interesting to you about lost passports. I feel some sympathy for that fat lady. The sympathy of the galley-slave for his fellow.
    The clerk jumped to his feet, all devotion. He bowed and said in a soft and very polite voice: “Of course, madame. I will announce you right away to the consul. It will be a pleasure. Just one moment, please.”
    He ran and brought a chair and begged the fat lady to be seated. He did not say: “Sit down!” Just: “Will you be seated, madame? Thank you.”
    He helped the lady to fill in all the blanks. The hungry and lean people who had been waiting for weeks had to do this by themselves, and when it was not satisfactorily written they had to do it over and over again. The lady perhaps could not write. So of course the clerk had to help her. Or she was so great a personage that she did not need to write. At home she probably had a social secretary who did all the writing for her and told her all the gossip.
    No sooner had the clerk filled out the applications than he took up the forms, ran to one of the doors, behind which the death-sentences were passed out, knocked softly, and went in. In less than half a minute he returned, ran up to the lady, bowed, and said: “Mr. Grgrgrgrs wishes to see you, madame. I am certain you have the three photographs with you.”
    “Here they are,” the fat lady said, and handed the photographs to the