"I was closer to Palma Sola."
"I think you're always closer," she said.
Astonished, he stopped dressing, stopped buttoning his shirt. With a
great effort, he made himself continue, his fingers working uncertainly.
"Give her up, Raul. Get her out of our lives. You owe it to me and
Vicente."
Somehow he managed the last button and thought: I've got to think
clearly. He crossed the room to her and placed his hand on her
shoulder.
"Would it help us now, Angelina? There's Estelle, you know...."
She lowered her eyes.
"Estelle," she said, wanting to keep the word to herself.
He felt her tremble.
Tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, I'll see Estelle. You and your
stinking boots. What can you know about delicacy? Keep your von
Humboldt. I'll keep my friend. Once you would have accompanied me to
Guadalajara, but now you send me with a servant.
Silent, he went out, pitying her small face, pitying himself, Caterina,
Vicente--everyone.
When he had clumped out, she closed the door, locked it, removed her
robe, went naked to the wardrobe and unboxed her fox fur, a
reddish-gold pelt. With it on, she appraised her body: quite, quite
pretty, she told herself. Parading in front of her mirror, she swayed
from side to side, dancing the length of the room and then back again
to face the mirror. Quite, quite pretty. All of a sudden, her ecstasy
faded and she tossed her fur on the bed and flopped beside it. Hunger
pervaded her. Closing her lids, flat on her back, she saw the
Degollado Theater in Guadalajara, saw María and Estelle, Estelle in
pale green moire, her blond hair glistening....
On the stage, the dancers performed jotas; the flamenco, dressed in
black, a red sash bleeding round his waist, put her into a trance.
Estelle whispered to her ... then....
So many barren days went into life at Petaca. No Vicente to love, no
Caterina, no woman her age or kind. Children, yes, but anonymous. No
plays, no musicals, no burlesques. In the convent of Ursula, on Calle
López Cotilla, she had had a girl friend (it seemed yesterday and not
years ago) who had slept with her. They had lain together, without
clothes, night after night. Nobody had ever found out. Where was she?
Where was Renée? What had happened to her? Would anyone in
Guadalajara ever have news of her?
Dear María, I'll come ... I wasn't going to come but now I'll come ...
I'll stay with you, then stay with Estelle. I'll have fresh pineapple
and oranges ... we'll have dulces ... we'll have nieves ... only a few
children will miss me here and maybe the chapel organ. Yes, yes, I
heard the organ say, one night, as the candle burnt low, she's nice,
she's really quite nice. Am I quite nice? I'm quite pretty. Estelle
says I am.
Sighing, she rose and sat at her dressing table and began plucking her
brows. Each hair, as she pulled it, made her wince. She rubbed
herself with cream, dressed and descended to the living room,
pretending, as she walked, that this home was the home of a Guadalajara
family and that she was a guest.
It irked her to find Caterina's smiling photo, in its velvet-gold
frame, on the desk. Momentarily bewildered, she dusted it and laid it
face down. Taking stationery out of the drawer, she wrote María,
writing fast, in a nervous spidery scrawl.
"Dear María,
"I am glad I can come to you. Raul says I can join you in a few days.
I'll try to be real discreet so you can keep me a long time. You must
phone Isabel and arrange fittings for me; I have to have so many
dresses in black.
"I'm glad the remodeling is done. I know it is pretty...."
A tropical cloud had gathered as she dressed and now, as she wrote, the
rain lashed, hitting the lagoon side of the house. She was glad Raul
had had men fix the living room roof; he was riding in the rain, she
realized. She did not care. Probably Manuel was holding an umbrella
over him. Raul had learned to look after himself long ago, he and his
Negro. Putting down her pen, she went to the veranda windows, her
elegant black swishing. But she was barefooted. More peasant than
many peasants, she liked the tongue of tiles licking her soles, the
hairiness of oriental rugs, the feel of the mountain lion before the
fireplace.
Her old-fashioned dress was low cut, with sleeves three-quarter; in the
V of her throat, above her boy breasts, dangled a diamond cross of her
mother's. She had braided her hair into a coronet, glossy, perfumed,
perfect.
Returning to her desk, hearing the rain, feeling the nakedness of her
feet, the nakedness of herself under the dress, she swayed on her
chair. As thunder rumbled, she recalled fragments of a poem by Felipe
Clavo, a passionate outcry: he had expressed what it was to be manacled
by tropical isolation where "white butterflies made love to protruding
lianas." Clavo's lines had the sway of a hammock.
Clavo had said: "Love between women is superior to love between men and
women--it asks so little." At the Degollado, Clavo had read his poetry
but she could not remember him or what he had read; she had been too
young.
The woman's poet, some called him.
That didn't matter.
Only loneliness, only love mattered.
"Caterina, do you mind the storm?" she asked, the huskiness of her
voice softer than usual. "I guess you don't mind the rain. I guess
none of us mind the rain when our day comes. No thunder reaches us...."
Taking her pen, she completed her letter to María and then wrote
Estelle Milan. A streak of lightning blazed. In Guadalajara, when it
rained, a carriage whisked them to the theater; they laughed as they
bumped over cobbles; after the theater, they had supper at the Copa de
Leche: Cota, Lorenzo, Cordero, Gouz, Aguirre, Milan. In spite of the
storm, she had rejoined her friends: a shiver ran through her because
they were so real, so close.
Chavela lit candles on the desk, on the mantelpiece and in wall
brackets.
"It's gotten dark so fast," she complained. "What a rain! Do you want
me to light the kerosene lamp?"
"Later," Angelina said. "Bring me my cup of coffee."
"I'll bring it right away."
Angelina poured at the desk, mixing her particular concoction of strong
coffee and hot milk, pouring the milk from a diminutive Turkish pot of
brass. As she drank, she heard Gabriel coming in. She liked Storni
and rose to welcome him.
Slipping off his poncho, spreading it over the back of a chair, he
kissed her hand and brought a chair close to the desk. Because of the
damp, he limped heavily. His robe smelled of dried straw; noticing the
smell, she held up her handkerchief and said:
"The coffee's just right. I'll ring for a cup."
"Hot coffee--on an evening like this! Where's Raul?" He was naïvely
captivated by her perfume and her old-fashioned dress.
"Raul's gone to see about a dam that cracked in the quake."
"We'll need all the water we can save, before our dry season ends," he
said.
She hid her feet under her skirt and played with the diamond cross at
her throat.
"I'm leaving for Guadalajara ... María's house is done. Gabriel, it'll
be so good to get away. I'll have Vicente come when school is out in
Colima."
"I know how you feel," Gabriel adjusted his glasses. "I'd like to get
away myself, if there weren't so much to do here at Petaca."
"Why has Don Fernando taken another bad turn?" she asked.
"Money," he said.
"Whose money?"
"Hacienda money," said Gabriel. "You see, Raul canceled certain
accounts. He wants to do away with the indebtedness on the tienda de
raya books. A matter of hacienda funds."
"Raul goes too far," she said, putting her cup down hard.
He began to defend Raul's actions and she tried to listen politely,
filling his cup, giving him sugar, handing him a napkin. She felt that
the sound of the rain was all that kept her in the room--without it
everything would disappear.
"Oh, Caterina's photo has fallen over," he said, and set it up.
"I laid it down."
"Why did you do that, Angelina?"
"To help me forget her."
"Forget her ... we mustn't forget her."
"Don't you understand that I miss her ... I miss her all the time ... I
don't need her photograph. Can't you see that things can be so bitter
... can't you accept how I feel?" She spoke without rebuke, as though
to herself.
They lapsed into silence; the rain beat across the veranda, across the
tiles; somewhere a shutter thudded; somewhere children babbled.
"We should have saved her," said Gabriel, stirring his coffee.
"How could we have saved her?"
"The Indians know many ways of curing dysentery."
"Then why don't they cure their own little ones? We see them die every
year. Gabriel, the haciendas are littered with their graves."
She remembered playing with Concepción, Miguelito, Trinita, Pepe--dear
faces, Petaca's dead children! Her love for them choked her.
Forget Petaca! Forget Raul!
But did one forget someone once loved? Could there never be accord?
Gabriel had recommended patience. The dung beetle was patient: she had
seen it shoving a ball, worming it from side to side, attacking it
frenziedly. She was no dung beetle. Revolving the delicate cup on its
saucer, guiding it around inside the rim, her toes digging at the rungs
of her chair, she smelled her own flesh, waited. It seemed to her she
had waited more than half her life, waited for someone to love, waited
for marriage, waited for sexual adjustment, waited for childbirth, for
her babies to walk and talk. Even death had to be waited for. Her
own. Her friends. Don Fernando's.
She heard her father-in-law say:
"Let's not bring that toy to the breakfast table....
"This is no place for women ... get out....
"Well wait for your wife to go to bed....
"Take the noisy children away...."
Dressed in one of his charro outfits or in badly pressed whites, whip
or quirt in hand, he epitomized Petaca. Blood-shot eyes, battered
mouth, scrawny neck--soon death would take them away. And she knew how
he feared death; she had heard him mumble to himself. It had perplexed
her that Caterina had been fond of him but she let them alone, hoping
the innocence of one would offset the vices of the other. Well, it had
been a brief affection. She wondered how she condescended to treat him
humanely, almost with affection sometimes.
Pouring herself more coffee she tried to shake her mood and said the
first thing that came to mind:
"What have you been thinking about?"
"I? Oh, I was thinking of Italy. What were you thinking about?"
"Don Fernando. Caterina. Life and death."
"I was thinking of home. Very foolish of me. I guess I'm ... well,
sentimental." He patted his bald spot.
"You've been homesick as long as I can remember," she said.
"Come, come now," he said. "I haven't been that bad, have I?"
Chavela went about opening windows and candle flames wavered from the
cool, damp but refreshing air. The clack-a-clack of hundreds of
blackbirds resounded from their roosting place in the Indian laurels at
the lagoon end of the garden.
Gabriel lit a kerosene lamp and placed it on the piano and excused
himself.
"Good-night, Angelina ... I must visit Viosco ... he's sick ... thanks
for the coffee...."
She hunched on a sofa, her feet under a velvet cushion, eyes on the
irresolute candles. Shall I confess to Gabriel that I like to walk
naked in my fur? Shall I tell him about the girl at the convent?
Shall I tell him why Raul married me? Confess. Must we all confess,
confess how lonely we are?
Later, in the chapel, she prayed for Vicente and herself. The place
was dimly lit but the darkness and her _rebozo_ could not shut out the
Petacans, the lame, the sick, the hungry: they whimpered for clothes,
medicine, alms: they fought for food, stole, got drunk, killed. They
had never crowded about her before and their ghostly presence drove her
to her room.
Raul had stayed in a peasant hut during the rain, a thatched room where
woven fronds, carefully herringboned, shut out most of the downpour. A
pig slept in a corner. Raul sat on a wooden chest; the owner and his
wife squatted on a mat. Above the pig, in a sisal hammock, swung a
child. Another hammock was looped over a peg, its pouch resembling a
gray moth's case. The deluge shut out nearly all light. Through the
open doorway mist drubbed. Nobody tried to talk. Raul dozed. When
the rain stopped, he thanked the pair, accepted a chunk of sugar cane
for Chico, and got on his horse and rode off.
Chico trotted briskly, whiffing the rain-washed air as they followed a
trail through pastureland where knots of Herefords grazed. Belly high
to the horse, a stone wall paralleled the trail, iguanas here and there.
At a bend, Chico whirled sidewise, and pain from his bullet wound shot
through Raul. He thought he might topple, but somehow managed to keep
his saddle, as the horse pirouetted. Shouting, commanding, he dug his
spurs. The horse screamed. Then, Raul saw the snake, a good-sized
rattler.
Dragging violently at the bit, he checked Chico underneath some orange
trees and dismounted, thoroughly disgusted.
"You fool. Haven't you ever seen a rattler before? You ought to learn
a thing or two. You crazy fool--you're no colt!"
The snake slithered away through the grass.
At the dam, the foreman told Raul that they had less than a week's
work, though the cracks in the dam appeared formidable. Raul sucked
his pipe, nodded his head, simply agreeing. The place oozed gnats and
flies. Sandpipers paraded the shallows.
Remaining on his horse, Raul chatted with the workers, all of them in
breechclouts or shorts. A number wore conical hats of a nearby
mountaineer clan. The southerners had bodies like chocolate. Some
spoke no Spanish. Through the years, Raul had acquired an Indian
vocabulary of sorts and he tried to josh the men but none of his jokes
got across. He slapped at gnats, and left as soon as he could.
On his way home, he felt a sense of freedom. The breadth of the land
affected him. Uncle Roberto had said: "It does something to a man to
live on a place you can't ride across in days." Though Raul had been
born at Petaca, he realized there were parts he had never seen, hill
country, mountain fields, lava terrain, streams. A subforeman insisted
that a lake existed in Sector 25. Recently someone told of Indians
camping in 31, thatched huts in a valley of willows.
As dusk brought the swallows and bats, Raul remembered Petacan outings
in all kinds of weather, high volcano climbs with lightning flashing
from rock to rock, river explorations, treks across pasture lands,
trails to milpas, trails through steamy canyons choked with red-barked
trees. They had herded cattle, roped yearlings, branded, dehorned;
they had driven herds of sheep and goat; they had chased wild horses.
Gathered around campfires, they had eaten from chuck wagons. Years
past, they had packed burro trains into the Mountain Rancheria area in
search of gold and silver. They had hunted deer in the uplands,
_tigres_ in the marsh grass of the coastal land, iguanas where the
palmera whined, alligator and ibis in the lagoons, wolf and bear midway
up the great peak, eagles at the summit.
At first, he had tried to share these things with Angelina but she had
not cared for the rough life and so he had gone with his men, storing
up the hours, making his own calendar, riding most often with Manuel,
including Lucienne when he dared.
High up, in the darkening sky, a hawk drifted.
Surely, the Medinas were monarchs of a kind.
Lights burned at Petaca, in the windows and in the kerosene lamps atop
the wooden posts in the courtyard. Raul saw rurales, some mounted,
some afoot, their uniforms unmistakable. He had heard that they had
been encountered in the remote sections of the hacienda but this was
the first time he had seen them and he was glad to have an indication
of their interest in apprehending Pedro. His trip to Colima had been
successful.
He did not doubt that his father knew where Pedro had gone. (Would
this new stroke end his life?) Some said guns were being smuggled,
bought and sold. At other haciendas, men had been placed on guard
duty. Count de Selva, it was rumored, had clamped men in irons for
demanding the right to buy matches in Colima.
A peculiar fear washed over him, as he rode into Petaca. It seemed to
be hooked up in his mind with the birthday party Lucienne was planning
next week at Palma Sola. A foolish fear, no doubt.
11
As he stood in the living room at Lucienne's, a little tipsy, glass in
hand, Roberto las Casas called the roll, talking to himself:
"Baroness Radziwill and family, Count and Countess de Selva (the old
boy's not doing well), Lucienne (very pretty), Joaquín Siquiros,
Federicka Kolb (ah!), Benito Serrato (new mayor of Colima), Raul,
Gabriel, Jesús Peza, General Matanzas (drunk) ... quite a birthday
gathering...."
Roberto flicked ash from his beautifully tailored dinner suit and
lifted his glass. For a man in his late fifties, he was handsome.
Standing to one side, near some candles, his diamond cuff links and
studs glittered. Bald as a man can be, he had the air of a diplomat.
Angular, taller than Raul, he had none of Raul's physical toughness ...
he was a Guadalajara lawyer, promoter of mining interests and capable
dabbler in city real estate. His mother had been the sister of Raul's
mother. He liked the city, but appreciated Petaca's spaciousness,
hunts, rodeos, fiestas and gambling.
Tonight the roulette wheel spun and the tiny _pelota_ clicked like a
race horse; it clicked and stopped, and the sound of the surf came
through the room. For days the wind had boiled offshore and now the
rollers foamed and thudded.
"Twenty," Joaquin Siquiros called.
"Twenty," someone repeated.
No one had placed money on that number and the wheel began again.
"Forty-one," Siquiros called, in his boyish voice.
Roberto strolled from guest to guest, drinking, eating, chatting, bored
with roulette since he had lost heavily; the asthmatic Selva had stolen
his luck and Lucienne had won more than her share of the evening's
cash. He found Lucienne, beside a big _mafafa_, and put his arm around
her.
"Were you lucky the last round?" he asked.
"Yes, but where have you been?"
"Just talking to people, catching up on Palma gossip."
"You're drinking too much."
"Not too much. I'm just tall and hold more. I leave the drinking to
the Baroness. See, she can hardly take in her winnings." He laughed
gently.
Half asleep, losing, gaining, she leaned on the roulette table, jewels
sparkling in her hair.
"... Sister of the Polish pope," said Roberto. "Let's have something
to eat," he whispered. "Food has been known to help people in my
condition. May I bring you some sandwiches?"
"Please. I'm really hungry."
He served sandwiches and _entremés_ from a silver tray that salt air
and time had darkened to a pewter finish.
"Now, my dear, I'll get us some coffee. Let's sit here."
"Twenty-four," Siquiros called.
"Mine, mine!" shouted the Baroness.
"Where did you buy that lovely gown? In Paris?" asked Roberto,
bringing the coffee, and sitting down by Lucienne.
"In Rome," she said.
"Rome ... I remember Rome ... but I never saw a gown like yours there."
He sipped his drink and said: "Lucienne, you're a beautiful woman; you
make the gown more beautiful."
Lucienne laughed happily.
"I'm fairly sober," he said. "And it is your birthday.... Shall I go
on? About your hair, your tiara ... your..."
"Ah, no ... no more, dear Roberto." But her hand went to her platinum
tiara; she pushed it forward on her head; the rubies, diamonds and
sapphires seemed to glow a little more. The gown was dark, almost a
velvet green, very long, very simple. She wore no jewelry other than
the tiara, a Humboldt heirloom.
"You know, it's almost 2:00 A.M.," she said.
"Why do you think about time on your birthday! When it's four, we'll
be able to see the sun. Has it been a wonderful party?"
"Very wonderful, Roberto."
"Have you opened my gift?"
"Tomorrow."
"Tomorrow," he agreed, and took a sandwich from the tray on a side
table. "Come, Raul, join us," he said, grasping his cousin's arm.
"Aren't you hungry? We have a sandwich tray here."
"I've been hungry all evening," said Raul. "Lucienne, where are the
venison steaks you promised?"
"You don't sound like a man who has lost a lot of money," said Roberto.
"I didn't lose so much."
"I'll see to it that you win next year," said Lucienne, bringing him
close.
"What could he win next year that he hasn't got now?" laughed Roberto.
"Here, Raul, take my chair. I feel better.... I'll try a whirl at
that wheel again. What's your lucky number, Lucienne?"
Outside, on the ocean porch, the orchestra began a plaintive
Veracruzana, with the violins carrying the melody, the horns a trifle
slow, the surf coming through.
Oblivious of the orchestra, General Matanzas sat at the old Chickering;
his fingers fished for a sentimental song to match his intoxicated
mood. He swayed on his bench, his belly sagging, his epaulettes
bobbing. Smoke from some candles on the piano drifted across his
gray-white head and beard.
"It's really bad news about Díaz," said Raul to Lucienne. "He
shouldn't resign. If he must resign, he should appoint a capable
successor. The more I think about it, the less I like the situation.
De Selva says we're in for bad times."
"Come, come," said Lucienne. She leaned over and brushed crumbs from
his trousers. "I think Díaz will die in office. He should, just to
please us. And, anyhow, this is my party...."
"Maybe you don't grasp the significance," he said.
"A man in his eighties has a plan."
"But nobody knows his plan."
"We live a long way from the capital. We'll get some accurate news
soon. Our president is no fool."
Federicka Kolb, a friend of the Humboldts for years, paused before
Lucienne and Raul, smiled and offered them cigarettes. She was an
attractive heavy-set person, with a light complexion and especially
intelligent mouth and eyes.
"Darling," asked Lucienne, "what is the latest news about President
Díaz? Is there anything we can depend on?"
"General Matanzas said he has resigned and left the country," said
Federicka.
"The highest authority," said Lucienne, glancing at the general, who
had put his head on his arms.
"I'll talk to him later," said Raul. "Is there any word of a
successor? Has Matanzas been in Mexico City recently?"
"I was in Mexico City last week," said Federicka, her face pleasant and
calm. "People say Díaz wants Mexico to become a democracy. Díaz wants
the Indians to vote."
The orchestra had stopped playing and Baroness Radziwill overheard
Federicka's last sentence.
"That's utterly ridiculous," she cried, her black eyes snapping. "Not
one Indian in ten thousand can read or write. Is Díaz too old to
think?"
"They can read at the point of a gun," said Serrato, the young Colima
mayor, his lips twisting.
Federicka took up the challenge: "All of us can remember faithful
Indians. When Lucienne's mother and father drowned in the surf, who
tried to save them? The Indians who were fishing nearby. Itzla
drowned. He gave his life. When my father built the railroad to
Cuernavaca, he learned to like them."
"Long live Porfirio Díaz," cried Serrato dully.
"Long live Díaz," others echoed.
"Maybe I've drunk too much coffee," Roberto muttered under his breath.
"What's all this?"
"I'm no Díaz man. How do you feel about Petaca and what I'm doing?"
Raul asked him.
"Well," said Roberto, grinning, "Fernando, like Díaz, has served his
time. I want to see what you can do."
He opened his silver cigarette case and rubbed a smudge from the
initials. He felt sleepy, tired of this room and its old-fashioned
furniture. A little sickish, he headed for the porch and the cool sea
air. Being alone could be comforting.
"I tell you, we're in for bad times," de Selva sermonized before a
group. "Our haciendas are threatened by renegades. Don Raul was
wounded by one of those fools who wants to grab our land. We have to
carry guns ... I go about armed."
Raul led Lucienne to the long, cool porch and they danced to a Strauss
waltz ... the ocean beating hard.
"Hold me close, Raul."
"Are you falling asleep?"
"I've been thinking of my presents, what fun it's going to be, opening
them."
"When will you open them?"
"At lunch tomorrow ... just the two of us."
"Open them now."
"It's fun to wait. When there aren't so many people around."
"Shall I tell you what Roberto gave you?"
"Tell me ... please."
"Two gold-plated faucets for your bathroom ... in fourteen karats."
"Oh, no. I'll never believe that. How silly!"
"Come on, let's open his package."
"All right, let's open it, let's open all my presents."
They went into the living room, laughing heartily.
Roberto listened to their laughter, as he got ready for bed, his
bedroom door half-open. He envied their love. A fine house in Colonia
Vallarta had not added up to happiness for him. His wife thought him a
clown, not a wit. Now, the Díaz news had disheartened him and he
tossed his shirt over one of Lucienne's plants, beside the four-poster.
Stretching, he breathed in the cool air, glad to be back by the ocean.
It would be fun to see how Lucienne felt about those faucets tomorrow
... he had paid a pretty penny for them....
In the morning, Raul met Lucienne in the greenhouse, whose salt-rimed
windows faced the sea, a ramshackle Swiss-style conservatory built by
her father when he, too, had dabbled in plants and flowers. When Raul
came in, she was adjusting salt screens.
"Good morning. You're up early."
"Good morning, darling. You're lazy. I've already had a swim."
"You should have wakened me."
"But you were so comfortable, I just slipped out of bed."
"Have you had breakfast, Lucienne?"
"I'm waiting for you."
"I often think of you working here. Your world is something you can
touch. When we were little you had a garden of your own ... all these
years this has been your life ... this and your friends."
"But has anything come of it?"
"I'd like to marry you."
"Raul, don't talk that way, especially before breakfast. An agnostic
must be left to her plants."
"I want to break away.... I want Angelina to live permanently in
Guadalajara."
She lifted a watering can and began sprinkling seedlings.
"Let's be realistic: who broke away first, you or Angelina?"
"I can't say."
"Really?"'
"Really, I don't know ... and what could it matter?"
Drops from the watering can fell on her fresh white cotton dress.
"This is no way to begin the day," she said. "Let's make it a happy
day. I think we should have breakfast."
They ate at a square table in her dining room, facing the ocean through
many French windows. On three sides, in round bamboo barrels and
special boxes, tropical plants grew lavishly, most of them dark green,
many of them climbing as high as the ceiling. It was like being inside
a miniature park. Barefooted girls served. A girl brought in a blue
glass pitcher filled with red roses and placed the bouquet in the
center of the table.
"I feel better," said Raul.
"One should never talk marriage in a greenhouse."
Raul grinned.
"Has everyone gone home?" he asked.
"I think so ... even Roberto."
"What was his hurry?"
"To get the train in Colima."
"He should have waited for me."
"I told him you needed sleep ... that I needed you."
Mona wandered in and Lucienne fed her pieces of tortillas. Her
short-haired terrier appeared and the two dogs raised such a hullabaloo
the maids had to chase them outside.
"What happened to your baby fox?" said Raul, eating _mamey_.
"It got away, somehow. What's become of Vicente's honey bear?"
"He's around. Vicente likes him."
"How's Vicente doing?"
"Fine. He's a great boy."
"And what does Angelina write ... or should I ask?"
"She wrote strangely."
"How do you mean?"
"She told about a round of parties, and then made curious remarks about
Caterina."
"Are you worried about her?"
"Something's wrong." But he avoided saying anything more.
While a girl removed their fruit husks, they smiled sadly at each
other. His hand grasped hers. They wanted to push aside unhappiness.
The girl set down a platter of golden-brown _pámpanos_ ringed with
sliced limes.
"I'd like to walk to the old church this afternoon," he said.
"The old church? Why?"
"I've always liked it ... let me serve you, Lucienne ... nobody knows
how long it's been there. It was a lighthouse for years, wasn't it? I
haven't seen it for ages."
"Big fig trees are smashing it, lifting walls: one side's trapped in
the roots of a huge fig. Treasure hunters have dug up the floors ever
since somebody found a tiny gold ship there."
"Do you think anyone found a ship of gold?"
"I doubt it. But you'll see lots of lizards; they attend Mass
faithfully." She blushed.