The Old Patagonian Express: By Train Through the Americas

8 THE RAILCAR TO SAN SALVADOR

The town only looked Godforsaken; in fact, it was comfortable. It was a nice combination of attributes. In every respect, Santa Ana, the most Central American of Central American towns, was a perfect place — perfect in its pious attitudes and pretty girls, perfect in its slumber, its coffee-scented heat, its jungly plaza, and in the dusty elegance of its old buildings whose whitewash at nightfall gave them a vivid phosphorescence. Even its volcano was in working order. My hotel, the Florida, was a labyrinthine one-story affair, with potted palms and wicker chairs and good food — fresh fish, from nearby Lake Guija, was followed by the crushed velvet of Santa Ana coffee, and Santa Ana dessert, a delicate cake of mashed beans and banana served in cream. This pleasing hotel cost four dollars a night. It was a block from the plaza. All Santa Ana's buildings of distinction — there were three — were in the plaza: the Cathedral was neo-gothic, the town hall had the colonnaded opulence of a ducal palace, and the Santa Ana theatre had once been an opera house.

In another climate, I don't think the theatre would have seemed so special, but in this sleepy tropical town in the western highlands of El Salvador — and there was nothing here for the luxury-minded or ruin-hunting tourist — the theatre was magnificent and strange. Its style was banana republic Graeco-Roman; it was newly whitewashed, and classical in an agreeably vulgar way, with cherubs on its façade, and trumpeting angels, and masks of comedy and tragedy, a partial sorority of Muses — a pudgy Melpomene, a pouncing Thalia, Calliope with a lyre in her lap, and — her muscles showing through her tunic as fully developed as a gym teacher's — Terpsichore. There were columns, too, and a Romanesque portico, and on a shield a fuming volcano as nicely proportioned as Izalco, the one just outside town, which was probably the model for this emblem. It was a beautiful turn of the century theatre and not entirely neglected; once, it had provided Santa Ana with concerts and operas, but culturally Santa Ana had contracted and catering to this shrunken condition the theatre had been reduced to showing movies. That week, the offering was New York, New York.

I liked Santa Ana immediately; its climate was mild, its people alert and responsive, and it was small enough so that a short walk took me to its outskirts, where the hills were deep green and glossy with coffee bushes. The hard-pressed Guatemalans I had found a divided people — and the Indians in the hinterland seemed hopelessly lost; but El Salvador, on the evidence in Santa Ana, was a country of half-breeds, energetic and full of talk, practising a kind of Catholicism based on tactile liturgy. In the Cathedral, pious Salvadoreans pinched the feet of saints and rubbed at relics, and women with infants — always remembering to insert a coin in the slot and light a candle first — seized the loose end of Christ's cincture and mopped the child's head with its tassel.

But no citizen of this town had any clear idea of where the railway station was. I had arrived from the frontier by car, and after two nights in Santa Ana thought I should be moving on to the capital. There was a train twice a day, so my time-table said, and various people, without hesitation, had directed me to the railway station. But I had searched the town, and the railway station was not where they had said it was. In this way, I became familiar with the narrow streets of Santa Ana; the station continued to elude me. And when I found it on the morning of my third day, a mile from the hotel in a part of the town that had begun to tumble into ploughed fields and cash crops, behind a high fence and deserted apart from one man at an empty desk — the station master -1 understood why no one knew where it was. No one used the train. There was a major road from Santa Ana to San Salvador. We take the bus: it seemed to be a Central American motto in reply to all the railway advertising which said, Take the Train — It is Cheaper! It was a matter of speed: the bus took two hours, the train took all afternoon.

The station was like none I had ever seen before. In design it looked like the sort of tobacco-curing shed you see in the Connecticut Valley, a green wooden building with slatted sides and a breeze humming through its splinters. All the rolling stock was in front — four wooden cars and a diesel. The cars were labelled alternately First and Second, but they were equally filthy. On a siding was a battered steam locomotive with a conical smoke stack, its boiler-plate bearing the inscription Baldwin Locomotive Works, Philadelphia, Pa -110 — it could have been a hundred years old, but the station master assured me that it ran perfectly. Nearer the station was a silver-painted wooden railcar, the shape of a cable car. This contraption had its own engine, and it was this, the station master said, that made the run from here to San Salvador.

'Where have you come from?' asked the Stationmaster.

'Boston.'

'Plane?'

'Train.'

He shook my hand and said, 'Now that is something I would like to do!' He had been to Zacapa, he said, but he hadn't liked it much — the Guatemalans were a confused people. The Hondurans were worse. But what about my route from Boston? He questioned me closely: how many hours from Chicago to Fort Worth? What sort of trains? And the Mexican railways — were they as good as people said they were? Which trains had dining cars and pullmans? And had I seen anything like his steam locomotive? 'People tell me it is now worth a lot of money — I think they are right.' Where was I going from here? When I told him Argentina, he said, 'Wonderful! But be careful in Nicaragua — there is a rebellion there at the moment. That cruel man, Somoza.'

We were standing near the railcar. The station master shook his head at it. 'It is rather old,'he said, 'but it goes.'

It was leaving for San Salvador after lunch. I checked out of the Florida and, at the station, bought my ticket — a bargain at thirty-five cents for thirty-five miles. I had planned to sit near the front of the railcar, but the engine was noisy and as soon as we were on our way I had found two Salvadoreans in the back to talk to. They were both salesmen, in their mid-twenties. Alfredo was stocky and dark and looked athletic in a squat muscular way; he sold plastic basins and household fixtures. Mario was thin and had a mirthless chattering laugh. He sold toothpaste, oil, soap and butter. They had been sent by their companies to Santa Ana and their territory was in and around Santa Ana, nearly the whole of western El Salvador. It seemed a big area, I said. They reminded me that it was a very small country: they had to visit twenty or thirty shops a day to make a profit.

We were speaking in Spanish. Did they speak English?

'Enough,' said Mario, in Spanish, and chattered out his laugh.

'I know enough,' said Alfredo, in Spanish. 'I was in Arrisboorg for two months- studying English.'

'Pennsylvania?'

'Meeseepee.'

'Say something in English.'

Alfredo leered at me. 'Titty,' he said. Then he uttered several obscenities which, in his terrible pronunciation, did not sound at all offensive.

'Spanish is better than English,' said Mario.

'I think that is true,' said Alfredo.

'Nonsense,' I said. 'How can one language be better than another? It depends on what you are trying to say.'

'For all things,' said Mario. 'Spanish is a more amplified language. English is short and practical.'

'Shakespeare is short and practical?'

'We have Shakespeare in Spanish,' said Alfredo.

Mario stuck to his point. He said, 'We have more words in Spanish.'

'More words than English?'

'Lots more,'he said.

The railcar had halted to take on passengers. Now we started and not far from the track was a hairy mottled pig ploughing grass with its snout. Mario gestured at the pig.

He said, 'For example, take "pig" — we have five words for pig. How many do you have?'

Hog, sow, piglet, swine. I said, 'Four.'

'Listen,' he said, and counted on his fingers. 'Cuche, tunco, maraño, cochino, serdo. What do you think of that?'

'And two words for "dog",' said Alfredo. 'Chucho and can.'

'We have about seven words for children, or child,' said Mario. 'In Honduras they have eight!'

Alfredo said, 'How many have you got for dog?'

Puppy, mutt, mongrel, cur. 'Four,' I said. 'That is more than you have.'

'Well, we have four for bull,' said Mario.

My God, I thought, what a ridiculous conversation.

Mario listed the words for bull: novillo, buey, tórrete, guiriche.

'You win,' I said. The railcar stopped again, and while Alfredo and Mario went out to buy Cokes I dug my Spanish dictionary out of my suitcase and checked some of the words. When the railcar resumed its jangling progress I said, 'Buey does not mean bull. It means "ox".'

'It is the same animal,' said Mario.

We argued about this until Alfredo conceded, 'Yes, in the United States the ox is different from ours. I have seen them in Arrisboorg.'

We were passing through lovely mountains, very steep and volcanic. On many of the lower slopes were coffee bushes. We were not very far from Guatemala even now, and it struck me as amazing that landscape could change so quickly from country to country. This was not only greener and steeper than what I had seen just over the border in the Motagua Valley, but had a cared-for look, a rustic neatness and a charm that made it quite attractive. I did not know then that El Salvador imported most of its vegetables from Guatemala, and yet El Salvador was clearly the busier-looking of the two, the better integrated. Its real burden was its size: what claim could such a small place make? I had heard that it was run by fourteen families, a melancholy statistic suggesting ludicrous snobberies and social jostling as well as an infuriated opposition to them, Marxist students sweating with indignation. Mario and Alfredo confirmed that this was true.

'I do not like to talk about politics,' said Alfredo. 'But in this country the police are cruel and the government is military. What do you think, Mario?'

Mario shook his head. It was obvious that he preferred to talk about something else.

At about three-thirty we came to the town of Quetzaltepeque. Seeing a church, Mario and Alfredo made the sign of the cross. The women in the railcar did the same. Some men removed their hats as well.

'You are not a Catholic?' said Alfredo.

I rapidly made the sign of the cross, so as not to disappoint him.

Alfredo said, 'In English, what is the meaning of huacha?'

What was this, some Nahautl word? Alfredo giggled — no, he said, there were no Indian languages spoken in El Salvador. Huacha was English, he insisted, but what did it mean? I said I was not familiar with it — could he use it in a sentence? He cleared his throat and hunched and said in English, 'Huacha gonna do when da well rons dry?'

'English,' said Mario, with a derisory snort.

Although they were both travelling salesmen, they hoped to rise in their firms and, one of these days, be promoted to a desk job in San Salvador. Mario worked on a straight commission, Alfredo's profit was based on a credit system which I could not understand — he had a salesman's knack for long opaque explanations, exhausting the listener into submission without allowing comprehension to occur. I said that they both seemed very ambitious. Oh, yes, said Alfredo, Salvadoreans were much cleverer than other Central Americans.

'We are like Israelis,' said Alfredo.

'Are you going to invade anyone?'

'We could have taken Honduras a few years ago.'

'I have an ambition,' said Mario. He said the salesman in his company who sold the most boxes of Rinso that year was going to win a free trip to San Andres Island. He thought he had a good chance of winning — he had sold thousands of boxes.

The valleys were deepening, the mountains growing shadowy in the setting sun. The railcar was small, but at no time was it full, and I guessed that it would not be long before it was removed and the railway service suspended except for shipments of coffee. Towards late afternoon we passed through dense forest. Alfredo said there was a swimming pool nearby, fed by a waterfall; it was a wonderful place for picking up girls. He would be glad to take me there. I said I had to be moving along, to Cutuco and Nicaragua. He said he would not go to Nicaragua for anything in the world. Neither Alfredo nor Mario had ever been to Honduras or Nicaragua, which were next-door.

San Salvador remained hidden. It lies in a bowl, surrounded by mountains which trap the air and keep it smoggy. To our right was a highway-the Pan-American Highway. Alfredo said it was a fast road, but had its dangers. Chief among these was the fact that, ten miles out of San Salvador, the Pan-American Highway is sometimes used as an emergency landing strip for planes. I said that I would rather be in this railcar pottering gently through the coffee plantations than in a bus careening towards a taxiing plane.

What were these two going to do in the capital? Business, they said, see the manager, file orders. Then Mario said a bit hesitantly that he was also going to see his girl-friend — he did not yet have a girl-friend in Santa Ana and was being driven to distraction by the provincial morality of the place. Alfredo had two or three girl-friends. His main reason for this trip to San Salvador ('please do not tell my manager!') was to see the football game that night. It promised to be one of the best games of the year — El Salvador was playing Mexico at the National Stadium and, as Mexico was scheduled to play in the World Cup in Argentina, it was El Salvador's chance to prove itself.

I had read about Latin American soccer — the chaos, the riots, the passionately partisan crowds, the way political frustrations were ventilated at the stadiums. I knew for a fact that if one wished to understand the British it helped to see a soccer game; then, the British did not seem so tight-lipped and proper. Indeed, a British soccer game was an occasion for a form of gang-warfare for the younger spectators. The muscular ritual of sport was always a clear demonstration of the wilder impulses in national character. The Olympic Games are interesting largely because they are a kind of world war in pantomime.

'Would you mind if I went to the game with you?'

Alfredo looked worried. 'It will be very crowded,' he said. 'There may be trouble. It is better to go to the swimming pool tomorrow — for the girls.'

'Do you think I came to El Salvador to pick up girls at a public swimming pool?'

'Did you come to El Salvador to see the football game?'

'Yes,'I said.

The San Salvador railway station was at the end of a torn-up section of road in a grim precinct of the city. My ticket was collected by a man in a pork-pie hat and sports shirt, who wore an old-fashioned revolver on his hip. The station was no more than a series of cargo sheds, where very poor people were camped, waiting for the morning train to Cutuco: the elderly and the very young — it seemed to be the pattern of victims in Central American poverty. Alfredo had given me the name of a hotel and said he would meet me there an hour before kick-off, which was nine o'clock. The games were played late, he said, because by then it wasn't so hot. But it was now after dark and the humid heat was choking me. I began to wish that I had not left Santa Ana. San Salvador, prone to earthquakes, was not a pretty place; it sprawled, it was noisy, its buildings were charmless, and in the glare of headlights were buoyant particles of dust. Why would anyone come here? 'Don't knock it,' an American in San Salvador told me. 'You haven't seen Nicaragua yet!'

Alfredo was late. He blamed the traffic: There will be a million people at the stadium.' He had brought along some friends, two boys who, he boasted, were studying English.

'How are you doing?' I asked them in English.

'Please?' said one. The other laughed. The first one said in Spanish, 'We are only on the second lesson.'

Because of the traffic, and the risk of car-thieves at the stadium, Alfredo parked half a mile away, at a friend's house. This house was worth some study; it was a number of cubicles nailed to trees, with the leafy branches descending into the rooms. Cloth was hung from sticks to provide walls, and a strong fence surrounded it. I asked the friend how long he had lived there. He said his family had lived in the house for many years. I did not ask what happened when it rained.

But poverty in a poor country had subtle gradations. We walked down a long hill towards the stadium, and crossing a bridge I looked into a gorge expecting to see a river and saw lean-tos and cooking fires and lanterns. Who lived there? I asked Alfredo.

'Poor people,' he said.

Others were walking to the stadium, too. We joined a large procession of quick-marching fans, and as we drew closer to the stadium they began yelling and shoving in anticipation. The procession swarmed over the foothills below the stadium, crashing through people's gardens and thumping the fenders of stalled cars. Here the dust was deep and the trampling feet of the fans made it rise until it became a brown fog, like a sepia print of a mob scene, with the cones of headlights bobbing, in it. The mob was running now, and Alfredo and his friends were obscured by the dust cloud. Every ten feet, boys rushed forward and shook tickets at me, screaming, 'Suns! Suns! Suns!'

These were the touts. They bought the cheapest tickets and sold them at a profit to people who had neither the time nor the courage to stand in a long rowdy line at a ticket window. The seat-designations were those usual at a bullfight: Suns were the cheapest, bleacher seats; Shades were more expensive ones under the canopy.

I fought my way through the touts and, having lost Alfredo, made my way uphill to the kettle-shaped stadium. It was an unearthly sight, the crowd of people emerging from darkness into luminous brown fog, the yells, the dust rising, the mountainside smouldering under a sky which, because of the dust, was starless. At that point, I considered turning back; but the mob was propelling me forward towards the stadium where the roar of the spectators inside made a sound like flames howling in a chimney.

The mob took up this cry and surged past me, stirring up the dust. I'here were women frying bananas and meat-cakes over fires on the walkway that ran around the outside perimeter of the stadium. The smoke from these fires and the dust made each searchlight seem to burn with a smoky flame. The touts reappeared nearer the stadium. They were hysterical now. The game was about to start; they had not sold their tickets. They grabbed my arms, they pushed tickets in my face, they shouted.

One look at the lines of people near the ticket windows told me that I would have no chance at all of buying a ticket legally. I was pondering this question when, through the smoke and dust, Alfredo appeared.

Take your watch off,' he said. 'And your ring. Put them in your pocket. Be very careful. Most of these people are thieves. They will rob you.'

I did as I was told. 'What about the tickets? Shall we buy some Suns from these boys?'

'No, I will buy Shades.'

'Are they expensive?'

'Of course, but this will be a great game. I could never see such a game in Santa Ana. Anyway, the Shades will be quieter.' Alfredo looked around. 'Hide over there by the wall. I will get the tickets.'

Alfredo vanished into the conga line at a ticket window. He appeared again at the middle of the line, jumped the queue, elbowed forward and in a very short time had fought his way to the window. Even his friends marvelled at his speed. He came towards us smiling, waving the tickets in triumph.

We were frisked at the entrance; we passed through a tunnel and emerged at the end of the stadium. From the outside it had looked like a kettle; inside, its shape was more of a salver, a tureen filled with brown screeching faces. In the centre was a pristine rectangle of green grass.

It was, those 45,000 people, a model of Salvadorean society. Not only the half of the stadium where the Suns sat (and it was jammed: not an empty seat was visible); or the better-dressed and almost as crowded half of the Shades (at night, in the dry season, there was no difference in the quality of the seats: we sat on concrete steps, but ours, being more expensive than the Suns, were less crowded); there was a section that Alfredo had not mentioned: the Balconies. Above us, in five tiers of a gallery that ran around our half of the stadium, were the Balcony people. Balcony people had season tickets. Balcony people had small rooms, cupboard-sized, about as large as the average Salvadorean's hut; I could see the wine bottles, the glasses, the plates of food. Balcony people had folding chairs and a good view of the field. There were not many Balcony people — two or three hundred — but at $2,000 for a season ticket in a country where the per capita income was $373 one could understand why. The Balcony people faced the screaming Suns and, beyond the stadium, a plateau. What I took to be lumpish multi-coloured vegetation covering the plateau was, I realized, a heap of Salvadoreans standing on top or clinging to the sides. There were thousands of them in this mass, and it was a sight more terrifying than the Suns. They were lighted by the stadium glare; there was a just-perceptible crawling movement among the bodies; it was an ant-hill.

National anthems were played, amplified songs from scratched records, and then the game began. It was apparent from the outset who would win. Mexico was bigger, faster, and seemed to follow a definite strategy; El Salvador had two ball-hoggers, and the team was tiny and erratic. The crowd hissed the Mexicans and cheered El Salvador. One of the Salvadorean ball-hoggers went jinking down the field, shot and missed. The ball went to the Mexicans, who tormented the Salvadoreans by passing it from man to man and then, fifteen minutes into the game, the Mexicans scored. The stadium was silent as the Mexican players kissed one another.

Some minutes later the ball was kicked into the Shades section. It was thrown back into the field and the game was resumed. Then it was kicked into the Suns section. The Suns fought for it; one man gained possession, but he was pounced upon and the ball shot up and ten Suns went tumbling after it. A Sun tried to run down the steps with it. He was caught and the ball wrestled from him. A fight began, and now there were scores of Suns punching their way to the ball. The Suns higher up in the section threw bottles and cans and wadded paper on the Suns who were fighting, and the shower of objects — meat pies, bananas, hankies — continued to fall. The Shades, the Balconies, the Anthill watched this struggle.

And the players watched, too. The game had stopped. The Mexican players kicked the turf, the Salvadorean team shouted at the Suns.

Please return the ball. It was the announcer. He was hoarse. If the ball is not returned, the game will not continue.

This brought a greater shower of objects from the upper seats — cups, cushions, more bottles. The bottles broke with a splashing sound on the concrete seats. The Suns lower down began throwing things back at their persecutors, and it was impossible to say where the ball had gone.

The ball was not returned. The announcer repeated his threat.

The players sat down on the field and did limbering-up exercises until, ten minutes after the ball had disappeared from the field, a new ball was thrown in. The spectators cheered but, just as quickly, fell silent. Mexico had scored another goal.

Soon, a bad kick landed the ball into the Shades. This ball was fought for and not thrown back, and one could see the ball progressing through the section. The ball was seldom visible, but one could tell from the free-for-alls — now here, now there — where it was. The Balconies poured water on the Shades, but the ball was not surrendered. And now it was the Suns' turn to see the slightly better-off Salvadoreans in the Shades section behaving like a swine. The announcer made his threat: the game would not resume until the ball was thrown back. The threat was ignored, and after a long time the ref walked onto the field with a new ball.

In all, five balls were lost this way. The fourth landed not far from where I sat, and I could see that real punches were being thrown, real blood spurting from Salvadorean noses, and the broken bottles and the struggle for the ball made it a contest all its own, more savage than the one on the field, played out with the kind of mindless ferocity you read about in books on gory medieval sports. The announcer's warning was merely ritual threat; the police did not intervene — they stayed on the field and let the spectators settle their own scores. The players grew bored: they ran in place, they did push-ups. When play resumed and Mexico gained possession of the ball it deftly moved down the field and invariably made a goal. But this play, these goals — they were no more than interludes in a much bloodier sport which, towards midnight (and the game was still not over!), was varied by Suns throwing firecrackers at each other and onto the field.

The last time play was abandoned and fights broke out among the Suns — the ball bobbing from one ragged Sun to another — balloons were released from the upper seats. But they were not balloons. They were white, blimpy and had a nipple on the end; first one, then dozens. This caused great laughter, and they were batted from section to section. They were of course contraceptives, and they caused Alfredo no end of embarrassment. 'That is very bad,' he said, gasping in shame. He had apologized for the interruptions; for the fights; the delayed play. Now this — dozens of airborne rubbers. The game was a shambles; it ended in confusion, fights, litter. But it shed light on the recreations of Salvadoreans, and as for the other thing — the inflated contraceptives — I later discovered that the Agency for International Development's largest Central American family planning programme is in El Salvador. I doubt whether the birth-rate has been affected, but children's birthday parties in rural El Salvador must be a great deal of fun, what with the free balloons.

Mexico won the game, six to one. Alfredo said that El Salvador's goal was the best one of the game, a header from thirty yards. So he managed to rescue a shred of pride. But people had been leaving all through the second half, and the rest hardly seemed to notice or to care that the game had ended. Just before we left the stadium I looked up at the ant-hill. It was a hill once again; there were no people on it, and depopulated, it seemed very small.

Outside, on the stadium slopes, the scene was like one of those lurid murals of Hell you see in Latin American churches. The colour was infernal, yellow dust sifted and whirled among crater-like pits, small cars with demonic headlights moved slowly from hole to hole like mechanical devils. And where, on the mural, you see the sins printed and dramatized, the gold lettering saying Lust, Anger, Avarice, Drunkenness, Gluttony, Theft, Pride, Jealousy, Usury, Gambling, and so on, here after midnight were groups of boys lewdly snatching at girls, and knots of people fighting, counting the money they had won, staggering and swigging from bottles, shrieking obscenities against Mexico, thumping the hoods of cars or duelling with the branches they had yanked from trees and the radio aerials they had twisted from cars. They trampled the dust and howled. The car horns were like harsh moos of pain — and one car was being overturned by a gang of shirtless, sweating youths. Many people were running to get free of the mob, holding handkerchiefs over their faces. But there were tens of thousands of people here, and animals, too, maimed dogs snarling and cowering as in a classic vision of Hell. And it was hot: dark grimy air that was hard to breathe, and freighted with the stinks of sweat; it was so thick it muted the light. It tasted of stale fire and ashes. The mob did not disperse; it was too angry to go home, too insulted by defeat to ignore its hurt. It was loud and it moved as if thwarted and pushed; it danced madly in what seemed a deep hole.

Alfredo knew a short cut to the road. He led the way through the parking lot and a ravaged grove of trees behind some huts. I saw people lying on the ground, but whether they were wounded or sleeping or dead I could not tell.

I asked him about the mob.

'What did I tell you?' he said. 'You are sorry you came, right?'

'No,' I said, and I meant it. Now I was satisfied. Travel is pointless without certain risks. I had spent the whole evening scrutinizing what I saw, trying to memorize details, and I knew I would never go to another soccer game in Latin America.

That soccer game was not the only event in San Salvador that evening. At the Cathedral, as the fans were rioting in the National Stadium, the Archbishop of El Salvador was receiving an honorary doctorate from the President of Georgetown University. The Archbishop had deliberately made it into a public ceremony, to challenge the government and give a Jesuitical oration. There were 10,000 people at the Cathedral and I was told that this crowd was equally frightening in its discontent.

And ten years before, there had been 'The Football War' — also known as 'The 100 Hour War'. This was between El Salvador ano Honduras — first the soccer teams and the rioting spectators, then the national armies. It had grown out of El Salvador's chronic shortage of land. Salvadoreans slipped over the border into Honduras to farm, to squat, to work on the banana plantations. They worked hard, but when the Hondurans got wind of it they tried to restrict entry on the Salvadorean border; they persecuted squatters, then repatriated them. And, as in all such squabbles, there were atrocity stories: rapes, murders, torturings. But there were no large-scale hostilities until the crucial soccer matches were played in preparation for the 1970 World Cup. In June 1969, there was violence after the El Salvador-Honduras match in Tegucigalpa, and this was repeated a week later in San Salvador. Within days, the El Salvador army began its armed attack on Honduras — its cue had come from the soccer match: the fans' belligerence was to be taken seriously. Although the war lasted only a little more than four days, at the end of it 2,000 soldiers and civilians — mainly Hondurans — lay dead.

A year ago, an election was held in El Salvador. The election was rigged. There was violence, and there were mob scenes of the sort I had seen at the soccer game, but this time enacted on the streets of the capital. Students were shot and people imprisoned. And so El Salvador found itself with yet another military dictatorship. This was a particularly brutal one. Politics is a hideous subject, but I will say this: people tell you that dictatorships are sometimes necessary to good order, and that this sort of highly-centralized government is stable and dependable. But this is seldom so. It is nearly always bureaucratic and crooked, unstable, fickle, and barbarous; and it excites those same qualities in those it governs.

Back at my hotel, which was not a good hotel, I wrote about the soccer game. The writing made me wakeful, and there were noises in the room — occasional scratchings from the ceiling. I opened Poe's Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym and began to read. It was, from the first chapter, a terrifying story: Pym is a stowaway; he becomes trapped between decks and, without food or water, he suffers the pitching of the ship. His dog is with him. The dog becomes maddened and goes for him. Pym nearly dies, and is released from this prison only to find that there has been a mutiny on board, and there is another storm. All this time, in my own narrow room, I had been hearing the sinister scratchings. I switched out the light, went to sleep and had a nightmare: a storm, darkness, wind and rats scrabbling in a cupboard. The nightmare woke me. I groped for the light-switch. And in this lamp's glare I could see that there was a hole in the ceiling, directly overhead, the size of a quarter. It had not been there before. I watched it for some minutes, and then a pair of yellow teeth appeared at its chewed edge.

I did not sleep that night.