THE SURPRISING DOCTOR
I
N the citadel we
boasted an American pharmacy. It was quite an up-to-date drug-store in
the sense that you could buy there notepaper and envelopes, ice-cream
in three flavors, popcorn, fire-crackers, secondhand Moro krisses,
picture-postÂcards of Juramentados with trailing guts or of the Royal
Family of Sulu, also native basket-ware, pottery and bronze betel-nut
outfits; and if you were really lucky and came on the right day, you
could even obtain vaseline and medicated cotton wool.
The
drug-store man was a disgruntled son of Arkansas, with six fingers to
each hand. I often sat with him in a game of bluff, and when I had half
an hour to spare I would sit in his pharmacy behind the globes of
colored water, listening to words of wisdom, and abuse of those whom he
disliked—and they were many.
His
wife had no children, so she kept monkeys instead, monkeys of every
kind and size known on the island. Some of them looked like wistful
Filipino children, others more like baboons, and one, a silver-gray
monk with a red-raw backside, who looked like a raw beefsteak on a
silver grill. She had bought none of them; but as each departing
soldier left his monkey behind, she would adopt the orphan, and so she
became mother to a large brood.
I
am sure these monkeys could dispense. They sat on the counter, on
shelves, swung from the rafters or went for airings on the roof. One
little chap had learned the use of money, and if no one would give him
a centavo he would go and open the till, take out a brown coin and make
straight for the Chino tienda across the road. He knew how many
ground-nuts he should get for a centavo, and the Chino dared not cheat
him
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