Season of the Swamp

One

The badges dragged the man from the ship, hurled him down the gangplank, and he fell in front of them and then attempted to stand, but the badges conquered him with clubs and he didn't defend himself from their blows, because his hands were clasping a treasured object to his chest. One of the badges torturing him said Drop it. They didn't speak the language, but that's what the badge was saying. Drop it! shouted the one who seemed to be the boss, and then he insulted the man; they didn't recognize the word but they recognized the language of hate. But the man did not drop it, not until three badges wrenched one arm and three wrenched the other, and the object fell to the ground and popped open, and the boss picked it up, and though he'd no doubt held objects like this one before, he was astonished to see that it was a compass.

In that frozen moment in which the badges looked at the boss and the boss looked at the compass and the man looked at the boss holding the compass and nobody knew what to do, he caught a glimpse of the tattoo on the man's back, on his shoulder blade, a glyph of a bird walking one way while looking the other.

Then time unfroze, the boss snapped the compass shut, turned, and walked off, and his badges lifted the man up only to drag him off like a beast once more and disappear into the throng.

Then everything kicked into action: the cranes hoisting sailboats, the ships loaded with hay and coal, the cotton-so much cotton, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of bales of cotton-the mountains of produce being unloaded, the smell of fresh produce, the smell of rotting produce, the promiscuity of incomprehensible voices, the people bustling here and there, the smell of the people bustling here and there; to the left, dark water specked with lights; ahead, the dim lights of lampposts; to the right, the twinkling lights of the city.

They let themselves lurch between the stevedores and the men who suddenly began to swarm them, offering things and pointing this way and that.

He leaned over to Pepe and shouted into his ear did he have the address. Pepe looked stricken. What was it, what was it. A hotel. Mata had sent word that he'd wait for them at a hotel. A hotel named for a city. Or a state. Or was it a person. Something with a C.

"Hotel Chicago?" he shouted into Pepe's ear.

Pepe made squint eyes.

"Hotel Cleveland?"

Pepe dubitated, not dissenting, just dubitating.

"Hotel Cincinnati?" he asked.

Though the voices around them were a sea of unnavigable sounds, one of the squawkers accosting them beamed and, face aglow, said:

"Hotel Cincinnati," and tapped his own chest. "Hotel Cincinnati."

Then gestured for them to follow.

He shrugged and said to Pepe Let's go, and the city sucked them up like a sponge.

The man walked fast but kept turning back to ensure that he and Pepe were following; after climbing down from the levee and entering the actual city-city-less congested but more mud-their guide began to walk slower and slower, until he stopped entirely, then whistled in no apparent direction, and from the alley emerged a little kid to whom he gave instructions using the universal sign for writing, and the kid took off running. Their guide turned back to them and thumbs-upped in triumph, then walked on once more.

They came to a house with a torch over the door. With a majestic flourish, their guide, spent, offered them the narrow square door as if it were the entrance to a palace. Beside it, a strip of cloth read Hotel Cincinnati.

They entered single file; inside, the boy was still holding a hammer in one hand and a strip of fabric in the other; behind him was a dark hallway, a rocker, a fireplace around which were arranged several armchairs where three sailors sat warming their hands, and an oak table where an austere woman sat, already asking Yeah, what? with her nose.

He pulled out the documents he'd shown at customs, but the woman shook an impatient head and thumbed her fingertips in the universal sign of This is what I'm talking about. So he pulled out some of the money he'd brought, in pesos, which the woman assessed for a moment before she nodded, They're legit, took them, and gave an order to the kid, who trotted off down the hall.

They followed him to an inner courtyard containing nothing but broken chair parts and stacked-up tables, and a door at the back, which the kid opened for them. Two cots. One whole chair. A hook to hang clothes on. A pewter basin. The kid pointed to another door on another side of the patio, with any luck the toilet. The boy gazed at them in silence for a minute. Then made the universal sign of Welcome to the Hotel Cincinnati and left.

His reception on disembarking from the packet boat had been a foretaste of all that was to come: waiting and waiting and not knowing words and not being seen and learning the secret names of things.

When it was finally his turn he had pulled out his papers, but instead of taking them, the bureaucrat supposedly helping him had asked a question or two: Where are you from? Why have you come? What do you do? What is your name? Not all of them: one or two. He decided to reply to them all, one by one. The official gave him an exasperated look, snatched his papers, and began copying down his details, but when he reached Occupation the bureaucrat stopped and asked him something. Looking at the word the bureaucrat pointed to, he replied Abogado, lawyer. The bureaucrat gazed at him blankly and wrote Merchant, and then paused again on seeing the age listed on the document: 47. Looking up, the man studied him in genuine curiosity, almost amiably, and wrote 21. The bureaucrat also wrote the wrong date of arrival, though perhaps it wasn't the bureaucrat but he who was wrong: for a long time now he'd had no idea what day it was.

He'd kept his mouth shut when his papers were handed back. And Pepe had been dispatched much quicker.

They had been on their way out when the compass man landed at their feet.

A cockroach traversed the ceiling as if setting out across the desert, illuminated by a band of light coming in from the courtyard. They tracked its progress in silence even though each of them knew the other was awake. They watched it wander back and forth for a while. Then Pepe said:

"When can we go back?"

The cockroach turned and scuttled off to a corner.

"Soon, no doubt."

They had to find the others. The next morning, he inquired as to whether Mata too was lodging there, writing out Mata's name and mimicking the man's long mustache. Mata was not lodging there. He asked more for the sake of it than out of any actual optimism. By this point he suspected that if the Hotel Cincinnati even existed, this was not it. But there was no point asking for the real Hotel Cincinnati, as if they might reply, Oh, you wanted the real Hotel Cincinnati.

They drank a hot drink aspiring to tea, which the austere owner logged in her little notebook, then put on their coats and set out. For a few minutes, they stood on the sidewalk in silence.

Though it was a sunny day, the street failed to register this fact. It wasn't the worst cold he'd ever felt, but it was a slow cold that, rather than strike all at once, took its time finding just the place to let a layer of frost slip in under his coat. They walked to the corner and looked in every direction. No sign of yesterday's crowds. They headed for the river, and as they neared it, the streets perked up: there came a smell of burning coal, shops began to open here and there, they heard whistling. A drunk, wakening to the horrific news that he was no longer drunk, looked their way with the clear intention of asking for alms, but quickly changed his mind.

Arriving at the levee, they headed to the spot where the compass man had been hurled. Somehow, he had hoped for a sign of what had happened, any sign of the beating, of the adrenaline, of the onlookers. There was nothing.

Back at the grand Hotel Cincinnati, they walked in to find two sailors bumping chests and chins right there in the, uh, lobby. The sailors spat saliva, tobacco, and insults like dogs separated by a fence, or perhaps not separated, since one leaned over all casual-like and took down the poker hanging beside the chimney, while the other-surprisingly agile, given all that hair, all that flesh, all that rum on his breath-took a step back and pulled from his armpit or who knows where a fat rope with a heavy ball on one end; he swung it around once, tracing a perfect circle, as though to furl the heat from in front of the fireplace, and the second time around he cracked the other sailor's skull.

It was a beautifully fluid moment, despite the appalling sound the sailor's skull made as it split. He and Pepe would come to find that such juxtapositions were quite common here.

The austere innkeeper snapped her fingers and signaled to the kid, who tugged down his cap, put on his coat, and ran off, while the husband-the one who'd guided them to the world-famous Hotel Cincinnati-pulled a pistol from under his armchair but didn't point it at the sailor, who, though no longer swinging his weapon, was still brandishing it, bent arm aloft; the husband simply offered a couple of calm suggestions: time to stand back, put down the weapon, don't be a jackass, one or two of those.

The sailor rolled up his weapon and tucked it back under his arm, his calm methodry in stark contrast to his endless shouting. Then the loud and living sailor bent over the collapsed one, opened his coat, and from an...