Do not be distrusting. No, for mistrust and doubt and suspicion are invitations to betrayal. Distrust him who counsels you to distrust — knowing that there was no need to light the cigarette. Then he returned both cigarettes and matches to his pocket and heard the motors of cars, the sounds of radios, jukeboxes, shrill whistles, a voice singing, mortar slapping against bricks, the burrr-brrr of a handsaw, a tinkle of piano keys, the steps of a rag vender crying his wares, a clatter of dominoes spilled out on a tabletop, a sigh, a cry, the cackle of chickens passing in a cage carried on their owner’s back. He opened his eyes. Black-clad mourners were walking out of a church. A hunchback was shining someone’s shoes, his brushes and waxes and clothes in a small wooden box festooned with bits of glass and copper centavos. A kitchen with its nested kettles and its smells of boiled chicken, white rice, garbanzo soup. A bakery with trays outside on the sidewalk showing large and small loaves and rolls, twists, puffs, muffins, coils, an endless variety. Across the street, a telegraph office. He moved toward it, dodging cars, and entered and propped his elbows on the marble counter and held his face between his hands. Now he was relaxed with the lassitude that was his compensation for the pain the barbital had subdued. But in an hour or two the lassitude would depart to be followed by its rebound, banal, sterile tension, and his nerves would be taut wires again and he would feel afraid, his fear of death by water or the absurd fear, the ridiculousness of which he would recognize but he would feel it just the same, of sudden death in the street. His fear would concentrate itself in the spastic pit of his belly and he would close his eyes and see himself laid out cold and colorless with a beard that like his fingernails and toenails would go on growing, with his guts distended by gases as if there were still life in him, as if the glassy eyes could still see, the gray-lipped mouth, hanging brutishly open, could still breathe. His hands cradled his face and became tactile mirrors reflecting its protruberances and declivities, its hairs, its orifices, its greases and oils, its dryness and dampness, its weight. They smelled of cologne still, his hands. He put them down. Scattered over the marble countertop were fresh telegraph forms and crumbled, wadded, discarded ones that he smoothed out and read: Please return home everything forgiven. Happy birthday dearest mother. Arriving bus from Acapulco tonight. Freddy passed examinations all well kisses. Papa died yesterday please come. Rorra my life how long will you resist your big daddy. Reference our conversation bales ordered shipped. Intended no offense will you forgive remember nights of love. Baby boy Alicia fine all happy. Book required for thesis out of print. Wonderful time keys to the city wish you were here mother stop. Stop, when perhaps the only way to ensure the permanence of a pleasure was to repeat it until simply that permanence became pleasurable no matter how jaded the repetition. Remember nights of love. The tachycardia had started again and his legs were leaden and the jerking in his chest would spread downward and excite the spasm and release the burning juices upon the duodenal ulcer and in spite of everything he would have to return to the radiologist and sit for an hour in that room ineffectually disguised as a room for reading, surrounded by others who would be waiting just as wearily, all sitting like stiff wax dolls on the foam-rubber cushions, no one daring to begin a conversation, to say anything more than to ask for a light or an ashtray, all hungry for consolation that would be inappropriate and undeserved because it was not pain they were going to have to endure but simply an experience lacking all dignity. And when the dark-skinned nurse wearing spectacles came and called his name he would rise and leave behind their curious looks and follow her to the cramped dressing room, where, after removing his jacket, tie, and shirt, he would bump his elbows and knees against the walls trying to get out of his trousers and underwear and for a moment after he took off his shorts he would stand naked looking down at his feet in their red socks and black shoes and then he would put on the white robe, ragged from many launderings, that is open behind and must be fastened with ties. And when he came out the nurse would open the door and he would enter a dim room and stretch out on the colorless surface of a table and when he was prone there the doctor would appear and turn lights on and off and press buttons and the X-ray camera would first nudge his belly and then push hard all the way through to his backbone and they would order him to breathe, stop breathing, breathe, stop breathing, breathe while he would be thinking that no compassion so cold and objective as that of a doctor deserves the name of compassion. Then the table would be elevated and he would be vertical again, feeling afresh the coldness of the nickel and mica pressed against his skin. The nurse would give him a glass of that miserable mud to drink, that white clayey liquid still clogged with lumps. And they say that X rays can produce cancer, yet every time he felt the spasm he told himself that he had to go for more, a cure that might be worse than the sickness. After the second glass of barium they would let him rest and then they would order him to assume indecent postures so that the ultimate kink of his intestines could be photographed and he would twist his body and raise a shoulder and tilt a hip, press his buttocks together and spread his feet, lie on one side and then the other and presently they would say that it was all over and he must take a laxative because barium can harden like stone in your belly. And the irritation would be worse because of the combination of barium and castor oil and X rays and heightened tension and one night he would wake vomiting blood, weak, frightened, and an ambulance would have to come and take him to the hospital hemorrhaging, dissolving, helpless, too late, too soon, too …