Bueno, Bueno, Bueno!

By EDWARD P. MORGAN

MEXICO has three telephone systems: one American, one Swedish, and one run (really quite frequently) by the government, but he who thinks the republic is blessed with progress in triplicate is a beautiful dreamer. None of the systems connects directly with either of the other two, and a man who has a battery of telephones on his desk is not a tycoon but a victim of circumstance.

Mexicans know better than to trust the telephone, and have conditioned themselves with such skepticism that if they should happen to establish a connection on the first dial, they would hang up and walk morbidly away. By the same token, no citizen in his right mind ever answers the telephone until it rings at least twice.

When he does answer, it is with complete resignation and a bored “ Bueno.”

Bueno in Spanish, as everybody knows, means “good” — not “good morning” or “good day,” just, “good.” There you have the skepticism in action because the Mexican knows perfectly well no good is going to come of it.

“Adónde hablo — to where do I speak?” demands the caller belligerently, a Mr. Gómez.

The defense is ready for that one.

“To where do you wish to speak?” a voice retorts, derisively.

“A la casa del señor Espinosa.”

“ This is the lechería, La Violeta.” Scorn. Triumph.

(You always get the Violet Milkery or the Marc Antony Meatery when you want the house of Señor Espinosa or anybody else’s house.)

“Con quién hablo — with whom do I speak?” he snaps as soon as a suspicious “Bueno” drifts in from the other end.

“With whom do you wish to speak?” The lechería, or whatever he has hooked this time, is no fool.

“Is not there the señor Espinosa?” Gómez pleads, desperation flecking his voice.

“No, señhor. He does not live here.”

“Ay, Dios! It is a mistake.”

Tomorrow Gómez will encounter his friend Espinosa on the street with a thumping abrazo and tell him he made him a telefonazo yesterday but, what a barbarity, what a bore, he could not reach him, for anything.

2

In wartime, of course, censorship is necessary, but officials needn’t have worried at any time about actually having to cut in on calls, because the telephone lines constantly carry such a cacophony of wails, whispers, and clicks that nobody would dare plot trouble either by long or by short distance.

The happiest time of all is during the rainy season when the telephones “become decomposed.” The water shorts the cables and you don’t have any service until they dry out or until the linemen can fix the insulation, which is seldom, because often the linemen are busy with fiestas.

A long-distance call has a distinctive ring from all others: a short, urgent series of bells, calculated to arouse the soundest sleeper from his siesta.

There is nothing more heart-warming, after that nerve-racking jangle, than to hear your long-distance operator cajoling her sister worker in Tlaquepaque to put the call through.

“Oye, tú, qué pasa contigo?” she says with an intimate little provocation. “Listen thou, what passes with thee?”

“Espérete tantito, chula; ya viene,” tinkles Tlaquepaque in reply. “Wait thyself so slightly, pretty one, already it comes.”

And so it does, the “Bueno” a little more muffled but just as doubting.

Lethally efficient as American operators are, their crisp and final “I’m scrry, sir, but I am unable to give out that information ” will forever label them as spoilsports beside their Mexican cousins.

During Mexico’s last hearty earthquake, almost everybody was shaken out of bed with a seasickening roll, including an emergency long-distance operator summoned to help with a flood of official, press, and frantic personal calls.

“Ay, Mother of God, señor,” she confided to her customer while they waited for Morelia to come on the line and tell them the temblor had made the churchbells toll. “What a brutal fright! What a barbarous thing! We have been praying. And are you all right, senor?”

The more sensible Mexican undoubtedly thanks his saints that there is now no new telephone equipment because of the war, so he won’t have to be bothered. But there are those contemptuous of contentment who demand phones.

Tired of explaining to an insistent and irate customer that there were none to be had, and no wire either to connect them, a telephone man hushed him finally.

“Pues, señor, ya no hay mas numeros,” he said, his voice burdened appropriately with sorrow. “Well, sir, already we have run out of numbers.”