sounds like the best bet. Everything here, in the city, is high; I have moved from the apartmento overlooking the park to a smaller, more airless cubicle, at 2$ the day. They give me no ashtray or (my favourite) cuspidor, so I must toss cigarette stubs on the floor. Not very pretty, but home.
At the moment I am waiting for a cable from somewhere to see if the Chiriqui Land Company wants an overseer. Imagine! Stalking through the jungle (of course all of my clothes for such a life are safely in Massapequa, as usual), and Me, who as moments go by takes a dimmer and dimmer view of bananas, telling hundreds of natives what ones to cut for shipment. The whole thing as fantastic as it seems always to turn out. But I am quite pleased.
The city is all one could ask, teeming with people and hot as it can be. There are occasional nice places where one could sit down and work, but I think that even with a comparatively substantial salary (Roberto mentions 350$ a month) the money and time would be gone as soon as it came, and I have honestly had enough of high life and sophistication for one season. From descriptions of bananaland, there is only the heat of the jungle, work to be done during the day, and the evenings and nights free. You can see, it sounds like a good place to work. The salary is pitifully small, but I gather one’s needs are taken care of, and it is possible to save something each month.
I have started the plans for another novel. It all sounds so very possible, to spend a stretch on the old plantation, healthful outdoor life drenched with sun, and work on a book. And if the book does not work out, at least I should be able to escape with my life and leathery skin and enough money to get back to the states and figure out another immediate future. I hope that all this does not distress you. It shouldn’t; at least for myself it looks good.
A good deal of my time is spent walking. I walk miles around the city alone, just looking and thinking. Then back to this palace to take off a wet shirt. I have still as little sympathy for the spanish language, and know just enough to be able to struggle through meals and get directions when I get lost, which is often.
You remember Davey Abad, the ex-prize fighter whose nightmares I shared on the ss West Portal some 6 years ago. I stopped in at a cantina a few evenings ago for a bottle of cervesa negra, fine dark beer, and there was Davey collapsed in a corner. He is taking cards at the gambling casino in the hotel Nacional, very ritzy, and I spent a pleasant hour or so recalling old times with him. Then I went into the casino and watched one man lose 100$ betting on the black on the roulette wheel—just like that, in two minutes, five spins, every number came up red, he with 20$ each time on the black—and a sad shattered American woman writing out 50$ travellers cheques like crazy to keep up with her losses. Fascinating, of course. The number 17 came up five times in twenty minutes, and I was fearfully tempted—but escaped quietly.
Everyone is kind. Strange to think that I have been here less than a week; I feel that the winter must be past in NY, and spring opening on LongIsland, that I have been away that long. But I gather that if the Chiriqui Land Company needs honest and competent (!) work done that it will seem years before I can manage to stroll into Brooks Brothers next fall and give them 47$ for one of their attache cases, and end this business of carrying papers and soap and a shaving brush in my pockets.
Again, thanks for so many things. I am getting on well, eating far more regularly than I ever managed in NY, &c &c. This address will reach me, I shall tell them to forward if the jungle calls.
Love
W
Roberto Arias: Panamanian lawyer (1918–99); his younger brother Tony was at Harvard with WG. Arnulfo Arias was first declared the loser in the 1948 presidential election, then declared the winner and held office from 1949 to 1951.
Juan Dias: spelled Diaz in a later letter, otherwise unidentified.
Chiriqui Land Company: a Panamanian fruit and vegetable vendor, a holding of Chiquita Brands, and still in business today.
To Edith Gaddis
Panama City
Thursday [December 1947]
Dear Mother—
Just a note to say I have your letter, and thank you. Honestly, it seems months since I left.
Also, best to call father and thank him for the Christmas present sentiment, but I think it somewhat dangerous to send anything here, with my plans as they are. This place will certainly forward mail, but you know the inter-American trouble that can happen with packages! Tell him I shall write.
Plans still uncertain—I hope the bananaland deal works out; it is the sort of exile I need. Am working hard at new novel—it is to concern vanity. I think I can write with some authority!
Well, you certainly sound like you are leading New York high life! Good—I do want you to have a good winter. No need to worry about sending me money—unless I have to pay my way out of bondage from the Chiriqui Land company!
Love to Granga, and you.
W.
To Edith Gaddis
Panama City
[28 December 1947]
dear Mother.
Another bulletin from the front. This one says that the Chiriqui Land Co doesn’t need the services of this old banana man. This old bananaman was pretty discouraged until today, now he is no longer discouraged but a bit alarmed. He has got a job with the canal, doing some kind of out-door work, something like helping overhaul a lock, whatever that is. I hope that you are not concerned that the fine education you gave me is producing nothing but a hemispherical bum, (let’s say vagabond, sounds nicer), and one who even in his better moments can at best push a wheelbarrow. (I must interrupt here and say that I would rather push a w-b- and have my mind to myself and be able to laugh when I want to or spit or quit than be standing agued and wet-footed in a 40$ a week publishing-house in my favourite city, wasting the only treasure I have, the English language, constantly being angry with things which are wasteful to be angry at, &c &c, you know.) [...] More often each day I am taken for something left here by a boat, which has cannily gone on without an undesirable member of its crew. Eventually I hope to send you my measurements and a portion of my earnings so that at your pleasure you can go to Brooks (I don’t believe that they do have my measurements, they may) and have them send me one of those natural-colour linen suits they are hoarding on the 2nd or 5th floor. They are around 35$, and I find I would have to pay at least that here, without even getting the Brooks Brothers label, instead a suavely pinched-in waist which passes for fashion among these vain people but isn’t quite what I have in mind as chic. And one might as well be chic if it is all the same price. Also it advances the chances of free meals, refreshments, and similar necessary vanities among the ‘set’ which I enter on occasion (occasion being the slightest hint of an invitation).
The two young gentlemen, Juan Diaz (a judge) and Guiellmo de Roux (an architect) continue to bear with me, and Sunday we motored again to the 50-mile-away beach and plundered the Pacific for all it was worth. I have a fine letter from Jake, whose plans for departure are practically realised, and I’m delighted; also one from Gard[i]ner, whose talents will never fail to arouse something akin to jealous envy in me. [...]
Love, W.
PS I have written to Father, a letter of news, greeting, and
