We quickly slipped past the people in the rockers, washed, and went out into the street to find a place where we could have supper.
In activities of this kind we showed a greater system than in the search for a hotel. During the month and a half that we had lived in the States we had become so sick of American cooking that we were agreeable to any other kinds of edibles—Italian, Chinese, Jewish—anything but Breakfast # 2 or Dinner # 1, anything but this numbered, standardized, and centralized food. In fact, if it is possible to speak of bad taste in food, then Anglo-American cooking undoubtedly is the expression of a bad, silly, and eccentric taste that has brought forth such hybrids as sweet and sour pickles, bacon fried to the consistency of plywood, or blindingly white and utterly tasteless (no, having the taste of cotton!) bread.
We therefore looked with tenderness at the luminous sign "Original Mexican Restaurant." The sign promised bliss, so we quickly walked in.
On the walls of the restaurant hung coarse and beautiful Mexican rugs, while the waiters wore orange silk blouses and satin neckties the colour of a drunkard's liver. Enchanted, as they say, by this orgy of colours, we twittered light-heartedly while selecting the dishes. We ordered a soup, the name of which we have now forgotten, and something else called "enchilada."
The name of the soup was forgotten because the very first spoon knocked everything out of our heads except the desire to seize a fire extinguisher and to put out the bonfire that broke out in the mouth. As for the enchilada, they proved to be long, appetizing blintzes filled with red pepper and gunpowder, thinly cut, and covered with nitroglycerine. It is simply impossible to sit down to such a dinner without wearing a fireman's helmet. We ran out of the Original Mexican Restaurant, hungry, angry, dying of thirst. Five minutes later we sal in a drug-store, the most ordinary American drug-store, and ate (oh, humiliation!) centralized, standardized, and numbered food, which we had cursed only half an hour before, drinking beforehand ten bottles of Coca-Cola apiece to quiet our disturbed nervous system.
Scarcely able to drag our legs after these horrible adventures, we went out for a walk through Santa Fe. American brick and wood had disappeared. Here stood Spanish houses of clay supported by heavy buttresses. From under the roofs emerged ends of square or round ceiling beams. Cowboys walked down the streets, their high heels clicking. An automobile drove up to a motion-picture theatre, and from it stepped down an Indian and his wife. On the forehead of the Indian was a broad bright-red bandage. On the ankles of the Indian woman could be seen thick white puttees. The Indians locked their automobile and went to see the picture. On the high stools of a shoe-shining shop sat four American boys with brilliantined hair. They were about thirteen or fourteen years old and looked exceptionally independent.
Mr. Adams eyed these boys for a long time, and finally, after calling the "gentlemen," found out what they proposed to do that evening.
"We are having our shoes shined," said one of the boys, "because we are going to a dance."
Failing to draw anything else out of these young gentlemen, we returned to our hotel, where the hissing radiator had heated the air in Our rooms to seventy-seven degrees.
In the matter of temperatures Americans are inclined to extremes. They work in overheated dwellings and drink overcooled drinks. Everything not offered piping hot is offered ice-cold. There is no middle ground.
The heat of the room and the smouldering flame of the enchilada reduced us by morning to a dried-out and well-tempered consistency, ready for further adventure.
Santa Fe is the capital of the state of New Mexico, the youngest state in America. The capital of the youngest state of America is one of the oldest of American cities. However, besides a few really ancient ones, all the buildings in the town are clean, new, built in the style of the old Spanish missions. The city as a whole seems somehow artificial, as if it were made for American tourists.
In the long building of the old governor's palace is now located the state museum. Its exhibits offer a fairly good notion of Indian, Spanish, and Mexican material culture. Americans-have few antique things. They arc devoted to them, carefully preserve them, and do not treat tourists interested in antiquities as a source of profit. Oh, they will show you
things without end, explain, provide you with printed, excellently published materials, all of it free, even without charging an admission fee to (he museum.
Among forbidding red hills beyond the city stands the fine building of the Rockefeller Institute of Anthropology. The institute is supported by one of Rockefeller's sons. But what would happen if Rockefeller's son had not been interested in anthropology? That, we dare say, could not be answered even by the assistant director, Mr. Chapman himself, who was acquainting us with the work of the institute.
Having shown us the excellently organized closets where on thin metallic shelves the rich collections of decorated Indian dishes were neatly displayed; storerooms where Indian rugs and textiles lay in a constantly maintained special temperature which guarantees their preservation; laboratories in which young scientists sat thoughtfully over apparently ordinary stones—having shown us all of this, Mr. Chapman, a man with an excellent, energetic, and spare American face, said:
"The Indians are doomed to disappear. We study them well, but we do little to preserve them as a people."
We entered the cathedral toward one o'clock, but the priest was so kind that he postponed his dinner a little. He opened the cathedral, quickly and dexterously genuflected, and, rising, led us to look at a wall with remarkable Spanish sculptures. We stood in a dusty storeroom, where in disorder, helter-skelter, on the shelves, on the floor, and in closets, stood Jesuses, Mothers of God, and saints. The figures were primitive and inimitable. Catholic splendour astounded one in these painted and gilded little statues.
Having learned that we had come from the Soviet Union, the father became more courteous than ever.
"I am also a communist," he said, "but not, of course, the kind you are. Christ was more than a man. That is why he did not act the way people do. But, of course, we cannot discuss that."
The abbot of the old Church of St. Miguel, built in 1541, proved to be a Frenchman and a Franciscan monk. His enterprise was on a commercial footing. In the first place, he took seventy-five cents from us for looking around. The building of the church itself was old, but all the sculptures were new German factory work. But the greedy abbot liked them and assiduously urged us to admire. This led us to conclude that the venerable Franciscan did not know anything at all about art.
He, too, asked us where we had come from, but said nothing about his own convictions. He merely remarked that the Franciscan Order was no longer doing any work in Russia, and suggested that we buy postcards with the coloured representation of the Church of St. Miguel.
When we returned to the hotel we began to look over the piles of letters of introduction we had accumulated, and began to free ourselves from those we had not used and would not have occasion to use. Out of the package of letters we had received from Dos Passos, one, addressed to the famous American poet, Witter Bynner, was needed by us today. About twenty letters were addressed to places which we would still visit, while three letters were no longer needed.
Since letters of introduction are not sealed, we looked at them casually before destroying them. The letters were very hearty, we were described from our best side, but for some strange reason we were recommended in all of them as passionate admirers of Mark Twain. We could not understand for a long time what had driven the benevolent Dos Passos to single out this particular in our biographies. Finally, we remembered that once we had told Dos Passos about our visit to the city of Hartford in the state of Connecticut, where Mark Twain lived during the years when he was already famous and well off. We described to Dos Passos Twain's wonderful, restful home, which stood beside the home of Harriet Beecher Stowe, who had written Uncle Tom`s Cabin, a novel famous in its time, told him that in that house there was now a library, and that on the walls of the library we saw the original illustrations for The Prince and the Pauper, which we had known since our childhood.