Going through some old, very old files on some Zip disks I found –remember Zip disks?– I found this rather curious piece I had written back in the 80s. A word of explanation is perhaps necessary.

Encotel was the name of the Postal Service in Argentina in pre-privatisation days, and expats like me living in Buenos Aires who had the good fortune to receive packages from abroad had to go down to their International Office on Antartida Argentina and Comodoro Py (this is the junction of two streets in the old dock area). Here you had to queue for ever to pick up your parcel (if they hadn’t lost it), and, what’s worse pay the customs dues.

The problem with this was that you had to pay the importation / customs fee not just before collecting the parcel, that would have been OK, but before knowing who it was from or what it was. My own particular problem was that being the owner of a language school publishers would frequently send me samples –books, audio and video cassettes (remember cassettes)– which were not always welcome. My mum and sisters would send presents for the children too, and I had no way of knowing which were which without paying first. And there were no refunds. Incidentally, despite Argentina being a signatory to the free importation of educational materials, in Encotel you still had to pay – but that’s a whinge for another occasion

And they decided how much. Quite how they calculated custom dues was always a mystery to me. I once received a paper and bamboo Siamese fighting kite something like the one above but rather more artsy fartsy. The customs declaration said in English ‘1 Siamese Fighting Kite’  and the guy on the counter asked me to translate. I told him what it was (and explanation was necessary because the translation didn’t really do it for him) and with no hesitation he quoted me a price as if he was used to people importing these items on a daily basis. And the price he quoted –with no consultation of any sort– was at least twice the cost of the kite in England plus the postage.

I was always pissed off about this, and one day, having a column to fill in the Buenos Aires Herald, I sounded off publicly. Nothing changed, but it generated a little humorous correspondence. Not quite sure why I chose to do this in cod Elizabethan, but guess it seemed like fun at the time. The original text is below – I have resisted the urge to tinker, although should like to.

A pox on Encotel

Manolo: Good even, Jorge: Wherefore goest thou?
Why art thou breathless, wherefore starest thou so?
For do I fear so as I love thee well
The stars have shone unwontedly on thee.

Jorge: Tis true, and vexed I am of late, for now
Hard from that place I come where many hours
Are customed men to wait in hope for news
From foreign climes by th’authorities withheld
And yet must waste for naught yet pay it dear.

Manolo:
What meanst thou? Sirrah, prithee, speak me plain
Nay, riddle me not, yet say thy meaning clear.

Jorge: Of Encotel I speak, yet, bear not hard
That I should so inflamed inform on this
Which wrongs the state: Oh, what would come on it?

Manolo: Yet speak you now.  I bid thee that you stand
Not on your love for state yet that I know
You bear for me. I pray thee tell it clear,
What cause hath brought thy countenance so low.

Jorge: I have a mind to tell thee all, I swear;
I’faith I shall:  a pox on Encotel.
Fashion it thus: this day upon the morn
A paper through my casement all sealed up
Did tell me presently to make repair
To Antartida and Comodoro Py
Where messages from foreign parts had come
And urged me if I would of this more know
Present myself twixt eight and four o’clock

Manolo: Why, sirrah, then a packet hast received?
And paid it well, in taxes and in time?

Jorge: Yet let me speak.  Would wert it thus, yet hark,
It was not so.  Methinks thou knowst the place?

Manolo: Indeed, an’t please you, many a time and oft
Cause have I had for frequenting that place.

Jorge: Tis well.  Then list, for I shall now unfold
Th’events which me befell ere night had dropt.
With motive plain came I to Encotel,
The yellow paper firmly grasped in hand,
Where to a table at the entrance plied,
A surly fellow was which tended me,
Sleek-headed, dank and bittered as the vetch.
My papers scarcely glanced at, me he sent
T’another table, documents to present.

Manolo: And, so it is, good friend, thou knowst full well
The custom of this land is fashioned thus.

Jorge: So let it be, for ’tis no cause for pain,
Yet seems it strange to me what next befell.

Manolo: I pray thee, sir, to cut thy story short.

Jorge: That shall I. To a gentleman I hied
Whose office ’tis the fees to calculate
On packets here received from foreign lands.
What price, I asked: he answered twenty-six
With forty cents. For what, cried I?  Yet hold,
This packet, prithee, sirrah, please inform
The contents what they be, ere I do pay.

Manolo: Methinks thou hast a point: unknowing ne’er
Should man his coin dispense without just cause
and knowledge full

Jorge: I’faith a jot he cared
but I could pay or thence from whence I came.

Manolo: And, paidst thou, Jorge ?

Jorge: Ay, in truth I did
As curiosity doth master man.
And nay, why not, indeed?  For unbeknownst
To me a packet despatched might have been
And favourably had chance to be received.
Yet too methought should one consider on
How men desirous to promote their wares
Send unsolicitedly their marketries,
Thus giving me some worthy cause to wish
Their deeds undone wert I to bear their costs.
My argument presented thus rebuffed
So urged I was to pay or hie me home.
But pray thee, truthfully, I vainly cried,
‘Tis meet that I should pay when yet I know
Not what tis that I pay?  Ye Gods, ’tis strange,
‘Tis passing strange, perhaps I want it not.
Again they bid me quiet, again I railed
Till blue-robed clods were standing thick on me.
I hung my head, I cried in shame, I paid.
I ask thee, Manolito, canst be fair?

Manolo: The packet, what was’t, that caused thee all this trial?

Jorge: Ha, why, in truth, tell thee yet I can not,
For seeing only of what ilk it dealt,
And ang’ring as the flint that beareth fire
Left I it there: ‘Twas trash I needed not.
Of all the strange things that have reached my ears
It seems to me most wondrous Encotel
The hard-gained drachmas of a peasant poor
Should thus wring from his ignorance, for who
In presence of a packet from afar
Can yet resist, or, unresisting, live
With redress all denied tho cause there wert.
‘Tis strange, I swear, ’tis strange, yet ’tis, yet ’tis.