The air was oppressively humid, and Bell’s linen suit hung on his frame damp and clammy. His hatband was already stained through. Each breath supplied enough oxygen, but somehow it felt like the moisture-laden air was too thick to breathe. Next to him, the fan Marion waved under her chin looked like the wing of a bird flapping to gain elevation. It did little to dispel the sweat dewing her throat.
“This is going to take some getting used to,” Bell said.
The sky suddenly darkened, and an ominous charcoal shimmer, like some nightmare optical illusion, raced across the harbor’s surface. The effect swept over the steamer, and it was as if the heavens had flooded and were spilling over onto the world. The rain seemed to come down in waves rather than drops. The harbor looked like it had started to boil. Rain pounded the freighter’s deck so fiercely that conversation had to be conducted at a yell, and anyone caught out in the downpour was soon soaked to the skin. The docks were made of concrete or wood, but Bell imagined any dirt street beyond in the coastal city would soon be a river of ankle-deep mud.
He had never seen anything like it. The rain was so voluminous that he couldn’t see more than a few dozen feet, and any thought of turning his face skyward would risk accidental drowning. Thunder rumbled over the roaring rain, a deeper bass note that he felt in his chest.
Bell and Marion were standing in the doorway of the lounge, looking out over the ship’s covered promenade and rail. Talbot came up behind him, peered around Bell’s shoulder, and shrugged.
“This is just a light sprinkle,” he said and clasped Bell’s upper arm. “Wait until the real rain hits. I could have told you about this on the way down, but you need to see it to believe it. And you’re going to want to buy a straw hat. That blocked wool thing of yours will be moldy mush inside of a week.”
“Thanks,” Bell said sarcastically.
“Also, keep an eye on your feet. They won’t be dry again until you leave and can develop all sorts of issues.” Talbot smiled broadly, enjoying the discomfort of people newly arrived on the isthmus. “Welcome to Panama, Mr. and Mrs. Bell.”
There was only one upscale place to stay in the city and that was the Central Hotel Panama on Independence Plaza, not far from the Presidential Palace. There was the Tivoli Hotel, where Teddy Roosevelt had stayed in 1906, but it was within the Canal Zone, for all intents and purposes a separate country, and there was confusion as to whether people who weren’t employees could stay there. The Central was located in the Old Quarter of the city and it retained some colonial charm. The small peninsula jutting into the Pacific was actually the second Panama City. The first had been five miles south but it had been sacked and burned by the pirate Henry Morgan in 1671.
Bell had expected heavy Spanish influence on the architecture but noted a lot of French provincial. He realized it dated to their ill-fated attempt to dig a sea level canal some forty years earlier. The three-story hotel had been built at that time and looked faintly Parisian, with dormers along the roof and wrought iron balconies ringing the upper floors.
An associate of Talbot’s, Rinaldo Morales, had met them at the dock and given them a lift to their hotel. Despite the heat, the man wore his shirt buttoned to the throat and had on a pair of kid driving gloves. Talbot reminded Bell that he could join in his meeting the following morning with the Canal Administrator, George Goethals. Morales drove the former Army Major away to his house at the base of Ancon Hill, the jungle-shrouded hillock between the city and the canal.
Inside the Central Hotel was an atrium painted a smart, clean white. The floors, however, were muddy despite the staff’s efforts. As Bell had thought, the streets of the Casco Viejo district were a mixture of pavement and dirt, and the dirt sections were like quicksand, viscous and impassable, following the storm. The lobby buzzed with a crowd, and Bell noted English was being spoken more than Spanish.
He could just imagine the unprecedented upheaval the country was experiencing thanks to the American effort to bridge the Atlantic and Pacific.
His room was ready, as he’d reserved it while still in San Diego, and the receptionist handed him an envelope with a half dozen telegraph messages in it. To Bell, it was a ritual. At nearly every hotel he visited, upon check-in there were always a number of dispatches waiting that needed his urgent attention.
He turned over their luggage to a bellhop, and they followed the man up to the third floor to their room overlooking the plaza. The décor was spartan, just a bed and dresser with a wash basin, but Marion delighted at the need for mosquito netting. He was aware of the effort during the early years of the canal’s construction to tame malaria and yellow fever. Newspapers across America wrote weekly about Dr. Gorgas and his theory that these dread diseases were carried by mosquitoes and how he and his staff had gone about eradicating them by draining the swamps in which they bred and bringing proper drainage and sanitation to the region.
Panama saw its last case of yellow fever in 1906, and malaria grew rarer and rarer, though the threat persisted.
Marion opened the floor-to-ceiling door to the balcony, and they stepped outside. They both marveled at the lawn across the street. Thanks to the tremendous amount of rain the country received each year, the grass covering Independence Plaza was a vibrant green and lusher
