Free The Death Ship by B. Traven Page B

clerk. Then the clerk sprang to the door, opened it with a bow, and let her in.
    The lady was not long in the holy chamber. When she came out, she closed her hand-bag with an energetic gesture which announced better than her speech ever could: “Thank heaven, we have money. And we do not mind paying for quick and good service. A consul cannot live by his salary alone. Live and let live.” Then she walked across the room wagging her hips like a dog that is pleased with itself.
    The clerk rose from his chair and invited her to be seated again. The fat lady sat down, using only half of the chair, thinking this would indicate best how much of a hurry she was in. She went fishing in the depths of her hand-bag, took out a powder-puff, and began to powder her thick nose. She had taken out not only her powder, but something which distinctly crinkled in her hands. She pushed the crisp affair among papers lying on the table. As she did so, she gave the clerk a glance, which he caught all right. However, he made believe he did not know what the glance meant. When the lady had whitened her nose, she shut her hand-bag with the same energetic snap she had used on coming out of the holy chamber.
    The hungry men and women waiting in the room had never been in God’s country before. They merely wanted to go there and partake of the riches of the world. So they were still innocent and did not understand the universal language of snapping hand-bags. Since they did not know how to use this sort of language, and since they had no means of using it in the right way, no one offered them a chair, and they had to wait until their turn came.
    “If it would please you, madame, will you call for your passport in half an hour, or do you wish us to send it to your hotel?”
    “Never mind, mister,” the fat lady said. “I shall drop in myself in an hour on my way to the station. I have signed the passport already, in the consul’s office. Good afternoon.”
    The fat lady returned in an hour. She received her passport with a bow from the clerk and with: “Always a great pleasure to be at your service, madame.”
    I was still sitting and awaiting my turn.
    I apologized mentally for my unjustified bad opinion of American consuls. They are not so bad as I thought. It was nothing but national jealousy, what Belgian, Dutch, and French policemen had told me about American consuls being the worst of all bureaucrats alive. Here, at this consulate, I certainly would obtain the passport that would help me get a ship to go back home and be an honest worker ever after. I would settle down somewhere in the West, get married, and do my bit to populate my country and make the kids bigger and better citizens.
     

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    I was asked to “come in.” All the other people waiting here had to go, when their number was called, through a different door from the one I used. I passed through the same door through which the fat lady had passed. So I was, after all, to see Mr. Grgrgrgrs, or whatever his name was. Exactly the gent I was most eager to see. A person so kind as to give a lady in need, in so short a time, a new passport would understand my troubles better than anybody else.
    The gentleman I met was short, lean, and rather sad or worried about something. He was dried up to the bones. He looked as though he had been working in an office before he had reached fourteen. I had the impression that, should it ever happen that he could no longer go to an office at a certain hour in the morning and work there or sit there until a certain hour in the afternoon, he would die inside of six weeks, believing himself a failure.
    “Sit down. What can I do for you?”
    “I would like to have a passport.”
    “Lost your passport?”
    “Not my passport. Only my sailor’s identification card.”
    “Oh, then you are a sailor?”
    When I said: “Yes, sir,” he changed the expression on his face, and his voice took another tone. He narrowed his eyes, and from then on he looked