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It didn't have to be Khrush or Mao. They would have built statues to a big
green Martian if it could have delivered on the promises.
The curious and immediate and personal result of the color prejudice in the
islands was that my pale chocolate stewardess with the great legs identified
with me. We were both part of the ruling cabal. There could be an earnest
friendliness in her unlikely blue eyes, an uninhibited flirtatiousness.
Another little girl of exactly the same color, but a citizen of the US of A
and working, say, for Eastern on a domestic run, would have been working hard
on an Afro hairdo, would have given me the precise number of millimeters of
smile as prescribed by Eastern, would have been entirely correct, but her eyes
would have been as empty as the ice of a long winter, concealing nothing more
personal than a propagandized hostility, a prepackaged contempt, an ability to
see me only as a symbol of oppression, not as a living creature walking
two-legged on the same untidy world, trying to live through the weird years
with a little bit of grace and care.
Too bad, somehow. The real guilt is in being a human being. That is the
horrible reality which bugs us all. Wolves, as a class, are cleaner, more
industrious, far less savage, and kinder to each other and their young.
When she came back with the screwdriver, she leaned one round delicious knee
on the empty seat beside me and reached and put the glass and napkin on the
small, built-in service area between the seats. I could read her name tag. Mia
Cruikshank. "Mia?" I said.
"Yes, sir?"
"I just meant ... it's a pretty name."
She made a droll mouth. "Better than what it was, I think. Miriam. Mia is
smashing compared to that."
"Smashing indeed."
So we went humming down across the blue seas under the blue skies of
vacationland at approximately nine hundred feet per second, which is the
muzzle velocity of the .45 caliber Colt automatic pistol, an ugly and
cumbersome weapon. Our happy captain pointed out this and that. We stopped at
Kingston and San Juan and points south.
We lost more passengers than we took on. Each is land had its quota of red
tape, so that the stops were long.
Mia kept me happily supplied with drinks and food, and we found it easy to
smile at each other. We stood together when the sun was low, on the little
platform at the top of the rolling stairs at the little airport on St. Lucia.
"You are remaining at Barbados, sir, or continuing?"
"To Grenada tomorrow morning."
"Oh, yes. That is so lovely an island. Of course, Barbados is very nice, too.
Just one night is a short time to stay."
"I didn't want to stay there at all."
"I know. There is no way. You fly with us or Pan Am to Barbados or Trinidad,
from Miami everyone arrives too late for the last flight to Grenada. It has to
be by daylight, of course, in the small aircraft. Where will you stay in
Barbados?"
"I thought I would check it out after I get there."
"Oh, yes. The season is over. There is room everywhere. But really, there was
room in most of the places during the season too this year. We did not carry
so many people to Barbados this year."
"Why not?"
She glanced back over her shoulder and moved closer to me, lowered her voice.
"I am not a rich, Important person who owns a hotel, so perhaps they know what
they are doing. But, sir, suppose this was in the season and you are traveling
with a lady and you try to make a reservation for the two of you in Barbados,
just to stay in a hotel room overnight to continue on in the morning. In your
money, in US dollars, to stay at the Barbados Hilton, it will be seventy
dollars for one night, and there will be ten percent service charge added to
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that, so that it will be seventy seven dollars. Even were you to stay at the
Holiday inn, sir, it will be fifty-five plus ten percent, or sixty dollars and
fifty cents."
"Without meals? You have to be kidding."
"Oh, no. You see, sir, they will only make reservations for you on the
Modified American Plan, which includes breakfast and dinner, even when it is
clear you will have dinner aboard this flight and leave so early the next
morning there is perhaps time for coffee and rolls. This is happening in all
the islands, sir. It is perhaps the worst in Barbados, the worst of all. It is
a fantastic greed. It is like some terrible animal out of control, so hungry
it feeds upon itself and is killing itself. I should not say so much."
"I won't turn you over to the tourist board, Mia."
"Oh, thank you." She hesitated and scowled. "There is something I am trying to
think how to say. It is really what is wrong now with the islands. It is why
each year there will be fewer people coming to these lovely places."
"It's a shame."
She turned to face me directly and looked up at me. "Seventy-seven dollars is
over a hundred and fifty dollars in our currency. In Biwi dollars. A house
servant in Barbados might make fifty dollars, Biwi, a month. A waiter or
waitress might make seventy-five dollars, Biwi, a month. So how does a human
person feel serving or cleaning up after another human person who pays two or
three months wages for one single night in a room? Sir, it is like such a
terrible arrogance and thoughtlessness. It makes hate, sir. It makes contempt.
So the cleaning is done badly, and the serving is done very slowly and badly,
and there are no smiles. Then, sir, the person who is paying too much because
the hotel owners are so greedy, he becomes very angry, because if he pays so
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