Signs & Portents

In Mexico City's pulquerias, sad-voiced tenors strummed guitars and sang: "In this year of nineteen hundred and forty-eight a comet appeared in the sky. Have a care, senores, have a care!" Each dawn last week the comet could be seen in the eastern sky, shooting out its long mane of white fire. The tabloid Prensa Grafica blamed it for the five slight earthquake shocks that rattled the city during the week.

Because of la cometa, more people than usual were praying in Mexico City churches, but they lighted fewer candles at the altars. Explained sad-eyed Maria Rodriguez, as she stood in the queue at the corn mill on Nino Perdido Avenue: "When artificial light burns while a comet is in the skies, newborn babies will be marked, on their bodies if male and on their faces if female." The other women nodded soberly. "Even if all the lights are out," said Juana Sanchez, "one hundred children will be born this year with harelips, two prominent men in the government will die, and two great plagues will sweep the world." A couple of women hastily crossed themselves.

More sophisticated Mexicans took the comet in stride. At Tacubaya Observatory, Astronomer Guillermo Haro patiently explained over & over that there was nothing to fear, that the comet would soon disappear. Some tradesmen saw a chance to make money. A haberdasher advertised: "Comet Sale--Everything Goes Fast!" Gloria Duval, chic hairdresser at the Hotel Reforma, introduced a Comet Hairdo, an upswept job.

Two of Mexico's three current international conferences--on high-frequency radio and plastic surgery1--also watched the comet calmly. But not the third. Declared Wing Chao, president of the International Brotherhood of Magicians: "I graduated as an astrologer in China, and I speak with authority: the most tragic things will happen in Asia and in Europe." Nodded his colleague, Lee Fu: "Things are so bad I dare not speak of them."

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