of the States he began the game of existence. So loose are ties
down on the Zone that a man's room-mate might go off into the
jungle and die and the former not dream of inquiring for him for a
week. Especially we world-wanderers, as are a large percentage of
"Zoners," with virtually no fixed roots in any soil, floating
wherever the job suggests or the spirit moves, have the facts of
our past in our own heads only. No wanderer of experience would
dream of asking his fellow where he came from. The answer would be
too apt to be, "from the last place." So difficult did this matter
become that I gave up rushing for the bus to Pedro Miguel each
evening and the even more distressing necessity of catching that
premature 6:30 train each morning in Empire and, packing a sheet
and pillow and tooth-brush, moved down to Paraiso that I might
spend the first half of the night in quest of these elusive bits
of bachelor information.

Meanwhile the enrolling by day continued unabated. I had my first
experience enumerating "gold" married quarters--white American
families; just enough for experience and not enough to suffer
severely. The enrolling of West Indians was pleasanter. The wives
of locomotive engineers and steam-shovel cranemen were not
infrequently supercilious ladies who resented being disturbed
during their "social functions" and lacked the training in
politeness of Jamaican "mammies." Living in Paradise now under a
paternal all-providing government, they seemed to have forgotten
the rolling-pin days of the past. It was here in Paraiso that I
first encountered that strange, that wondrous strange custom of
lying about one's age. Negro women never did. What more absurd,
uncalled-for piece of dishonesty! Does Mrs. Smith fear that Mrs.
Jones next door will succeed in pumping out of me that capital bit