Word: quito
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ALBERT B. FRANKLIN Quito, Ecuador...
...Bemelmans' artist eye, Quito appeared from above "as if made of marzipan crawling with numberless black flies." The Quito train was small, baroque and red with "banisters . . . that belong to an old brownstone house." Restaurant signs en route read: Hays Krim (Ice Cream), Airistiu (Irish Stew) and Wide Navel Wiski (White Label Whisky). In a hotel, whose walls were papered with copies of the Schweizer Hausfrau, he could read useful pointers on the cure of hemorrhoids and on what to do if encumbered with a hat, an umbrella and a lighted cigar when approaching a lady...
...Quito a sunburned lieutenant told him: "It is terrible here, Señor. First you must make love to this girl you want until your nose bleeds; second you must make love ... to her mother, her father, the butler, and the parrot, and in the end you must always marry her." The café society set was dull and insolent ("they all but come over to your table to read the labels on your clothes") but some of the transients were good. "Franz Josef's local grandson had some claim to authenticity: his accent was correct, he clicked...
...Quito schools were definitely progressive. In the copybook of one little boy, an honor pupil, Bemelmans saw a picture "like a Christmas card, with sunrays, little stars, scrolls, and illumination surrounding the words 'La Sifilis.' Equally beautiful and fetching was the next title, 'La Gonorrea.' This was done in green, with darts. The teacher explained that such instruction prevents shock later...
Bemelmans was considerably more saddened by some of Quito's Jewish refugees who, in the pitiful hope of some day returning to Germany, were playing every possible kind of ball with the local Nazis. As for the Nazis, they were insidious and smart. Thanks to their magazine, The Voice of the Worker, the average Quiteno believed of the "damned Yanquis" that: "One day they will come over, hundreds of them, and kill us all with them, with these machines, with bombs that come down." There were busses named Hindenburg and Adolfo Hitler. And out in the jungle, headhunters...