Cólimes Jótel

Judging by the sign painted in large black letters on a sky-blue background across the front of the building, beneath the windowsills, the proper name of the place was “Hotel Colimes.”

In the registers of the food-hygiene office, it was modestly classified among the boardinghouses in the fourth category.

But the owner and his employees emphatically called it, supposedly in the English manner (?), stressing the antepenultimate syllable and aspirating the j in a strangled gasp: “Cólimes Jótel.”

They added, in Spanish, what another, smaller sign also announced in Spanish, complete with spelling mistakes, mounted on the façade above the architrave of the wooden cornice: “Rooms from a sucres. Wholesome meals. Attentive service. Morality in freedom.”

The “Hotel Colimes” occupied the upper floor of an old house made of cane and wattle-and-daub.

The building was almost a century old; and judging by its type and appearance, in a few more years someone would be able to claim with some justification that Bolívar had danced in its parlors.

Downstairs, the shops sold leather goods, giving off nauseating fumes of tannin and the stench of badly tanned hides.

From the sewers in the backyards rose visibly putrid vapors, in which clouds of flies and mosquitoes hovered.

All of this rose in dense wafts through the little interior galleries, leaving the upper floor oppressively close; the smell of counterfeit Coty face powder and cheap perfumes worn by the cabaret dancers, together with the reek of badly seasoned food coming from the kitchen, made it unbearable.

Of course, the building had not been built as a hotel but as a family residence; when the owner installed his business there, he had to adapt it for the purpose.

He had thrown up some absurd partitions, diagonal, parallel and angular, made from wallpapered cane or unplaned boards of white jigua wood.

In this way, the old rooms accommodated several guests, who could hear one another’s noises at night as though they were sleeping in the same bed.

The arrangement of the electric light bulbs, frosted Edison Mazda bulbs rated at 50 watts and 110 volts and fixed against the ceiling, meant that they lit several rooms at once.

Some rooms, however, did have their own exclusive 25-candlepower bulb, even with a switch.

These latter rooms occupied what had originally been servants’ quarters, and were charged at special rates higher than the usual price.

The principal clients of “Cólimes Jótel,” by virtue of their regular and faithful patronage, were prostitutes of various nationalities who danced for wages in the cabarets on Quito Street.

These women, whose charms were more or less debatable, generally returned drunk in the early hours just before dawn, accompanied by men as intoxicated as themselves; on waking around noon the men would raise an enormous fuss, claiming their pockets had been emptied.

“Cólimes Jótel” was also patronized by montuvio countrymen who “put up” there when they came to Guayaquil to get themselves “fixed up” by a doctor or to consult a lawyer.

Three of them came, at different times, to collect lottery prizes; but by a curious coincidence, when they went to cash in their tickets, each turned out not to be the winning one.

Although each time the montuvios swore by all their patron saints that they had brought the genuine ticket tied in a knot in a handkerchief, and that it must have been replaced at the hotel, it was of course “logical” to assume they had simply made glaring mistakes when comparing the number with the published list, since country folk, however well they can read, never completely master the dark science of figures.

In any event, the country folk added a picturesque touch to the hotel.

Along with themselves and their bundles, they brought a little of the clean air of the countryside and a pungent smell of horse sweat and cattle dung...

They also smelled of fresh janeiro grass and water from the ponds.

They provided strange spectacles when, returning from cinema shows or the circus, they discovered a prostitute waiting for them, lying on the cot in their room...

Some accepted delightedly; others protested at first, only to give in when the owner assured them that this was a custom imported directly from Austrian German, copied from the grand hotels of Vienna, and a convenience that the provident establishment offered its country guests.

Later, back on their distant estates, while treating with infusions of nameless plants some venereal disease that they supposedly caught by urinating against the wind, eating cañafístola, or sitting on sun-dried cacao or on a hot seat, they would talk endlessly about the fun they had had in Guayas...

“Cólimes Jótel” also offered other priceless services: for instance, it facilitated illicit meetings between married ladies and respectable people, for which it had a discreet side entrance and a fair assortment of hiding places.

When a girl from the outskirts was carried off by her boyfriend, detectives, if they had not found her in some similar place, could reliably find her at “Cólimes Jótel.”

Finding her was a certainty, and finding her no longer as she had entered, in the famous pink room...

The room differed from the others only in the color of its wallpaper, which aspired to be symbolic; otherwise it had the same furnishings: a half-torn little hammock; a bed in the old cujas style made of gas pipes, with a straw mattress; a tin washbasin; a wall shelf held up by a brace and serving as a bedside table; a small folding wardrobe; and under the bed, modestly concealed by the frayed bedspread, a chamber pot of a pretty green color with dahlias painted a deep oxblood red...

On one occasion, police officers searching the hotel for a cardsharp, a habitual drinker violating prohibition, or a wayward maiden came upon the loot from recent robberies.

No doubt it belonged to some rather disreputable guest who had failed to respect the house’s traditional rule, at once free-and-easy and strict....

“Cólimes Jótel” even allowed itself a few luxuries.

In its lobby it proudly displayed an Orthophonic Victrola 4-13 and possessed the private telephone of a saddlery shop.