Hernando led Schultes into the park where they stopped en route to the pensión to have their shoes shined by an old man who had set up his station beneath the shade of an enormous ficus tree. Just behind them the steeple o the San Francisco church rose above the red-tiled roofs of the city. Four stories high, it was as tall as any building in Bogotá.
"Orange peels?" the bootblack asked as Schultes placed his oxfords on the small wooden step.
"Excuse me?"
"Do you want me to use orange peels, Doctor?"
"For the leather," Hernando explained.
"Sure, why not?" Schultes said. "But how did you know I was a doctor?"
"In this country," the man said casually as he rubbed the fruit along the instep of the shoe, "every son of a bitch with a tie and a pair of bifocals is a doctor."
"I see." He turned to Hernando. "Ten years of training, and all I really needed was a pair of glasses and a proper suit coat."
From One River by Wade Davis (1996)
No comments:
Post a Comment