"How long do you intend to stay?" asked the official. "How much money do you carry with you? In what currency? Do you have a return ticket?"

You had to account for every move, arrival or exit. In the world there was a conspiracy against improvisation. It was only permitted in jazz.

The guitars and the singing opened fire. Her skin blossomed and breathed. A heavy wave of perfume came down the jungle on the right, and a fine spray of waves came from the left. On the beach the natives swung in hammocks of reeds. The tender Mexican voices sang love songs which cradled and rocked the body as did the hammocks.

Where she came from only jewels were placed in satin-lined, cushioned boxes, but here it was thoughts and memories which the air, the scents, and the music conspired to hypnotize by softness.

But the airport official who asked cactus-pointed questions wore no shirt, nor did the porters, so that Lillian decided to be polite to the smoothest torso and show respect only to the strongest muscle.

The absence of uniforms restored the dignity and importance of the body. They all looked untamed and free in their bare feet, as if they had assumed the duties of receiving the travelers only temporarily and would soon return to their hammocks, to swimming and singing. Work was one of the absurdities of existence. Don't you think so, Senorita? said their laughing eyes while they appraised her from head to toe. They looked at her openly, intently, as children and animals do, with a physical vision, measuring only physical attributes, charm, aliveness, and not titles, possessions, or occupations. Their full, complete smile was not always answered by the foreigners, who blinked at such sudden warmth of smile as they did at the dazzling sun. Against the sun they wore dark glasses, but against these smiles and open naked glances they could only defend their privacy with a half-smile. Not Lillian. Her very full, rounded lips had always given such a smile. She could respond to this naked curiosity, naked interest, proximity. Thus animals and children stare, with their whole, concentrated attentiveness. The natives had not yet learned from the white man his inventions for traveling away from the present, his scientific capacity for analyzing warmth into a chemical substance, for abstracting human beings into symbols. The white man had invented glasses which made objects too near or too far, cameras, telescopes, spyglasses, objects which put glass between living and vision. It was the image he sought to possess, not the texture, the living warmth, the human closeness.