The Bum

The Bum

I had come to Vera Cruz from Mexico City to catch a ship to Yucatan; and found that, a dock strike having been declared the previous night, my ship could not put in. I was stuck in Vera Cruz. I took a room in the Hotel Diligencias overlooking the square and spent the morning looking at the sights of the town. I wandered down side streets and peeped into quaint courts. I visited the parish church which is very picturesque. Then I found that I had seen all that was to be seen and I sat down in the coolness of the arcade that surrounded the square and ordered a drink. The sun beat down on the square and dusty coco palms mercilessly. Great black buzzards perched on them for a moment, flew down on the ground to gather some bit of offal, and then flew up to the church tower. I watched the people crossing the square; Negroes, Indians, Spanish; they varied in colour from ebony to ivory. As the morning wore on the tables around me filled up, chiefly with men, who had come to have a drink before luncheon. I had already bought the local paper but the news-boys tried to sell me more copies of the same paper. I refused, oh, twenty times at least, the boys who wanted to shine my spotless shoes; and having come to the end of my small change I could only shake my head at the beggars who gave me no peace. Little Indian women, each one with a baby tied in the shawl on her back held out skinny hands to me; blind men were led up to my table by small boys; cripples exhibited their deformities; and half naked, hungry children endlessly demanded coppers.

But suddenly my attention was attracted by a beggar who, unlike the rest of them and unlike the black-haired people sitting round me, had hair and beard of a red so vivid that it was startling. His beard was ragged and his long hair looked as though it had not been brushed for months. He wore only a pair of trousers and a cotton singlet, but they were rags, dirty and foul, that barely held together. I have never seen anyone so thin: his legs, his naked arms, were skin and bone and through the holes of his singlet you saw every rib of his body; you could count the bones of his dust-covered feet. He was not old, he could not have been more than forty, and I wondered what had brought him to this state. It was absurd to think that he would not have worked if he had been able to get work. He was the only one of the beggars who did not speak. He said nothing. He did not even hold out his hand, he only looked at you, but with such wretchedness and despair in his eyes, it was dreadful; he stood on and on silently looking at you, and then, if you took no notice of him, he moved slowly to the next table. If he was given nothing he showed neither disappointment nor anger. If someone offered him a coin he stepped forward a little, held out his hand, took it without a word of thanks and went his way. I had nothing to give him and when he came to me, I shook my head and used the polite formula with which the Spaniards refuse a beggar.