When he was alone again the dimensions and silence of the house seemed to multiply. A murky touch of unreality was in the presence of things, the sharpness of his perceptions. Comforted by breakfast, he again crossed spaces that seemed conceived for him alone to inhabit, distant from his life and yet as hospitable as if he’d lived in them a long time and had returned now, this morning, to the rooms flooded with sun, the fire lit, the day’s newspapers on the racks next to the leather armchairs. He opened one with the fear he had felt so often, the simultaneous longing for and revulsion at finding news about Spain. It was a two-week-old New York Times, and he was about to put it back but anxiety drew him to its wide pages and tiny print. And there it was, on an inside page, the eternal curse of the bullfight’s language and cruelty: DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON — AND AT DAWN. He saw those words and knew they referred to Spain. They had to be there, “death” and “the afternoon,” as if it were an article about a bullfight and not a war, and the word “sun,” the white-hot brilliance exaggerating the colors of the national fiesta to the delight of tourists: DEATH UNDER THE SPANISH SUN — MURDER STALKS BEHIND THE FIGHTING LINES — BOTH SIDES RUTHLESS IN SPAIN. For them, both sides are the same in their exoticism and taste for blood: Elimination of Enemies by Execution Is the Rule. Who could have read the paper two weeks earlier, leaning back in the chair with broad, worn arms, the leather as noble as the logs burning in the fireplace or the marble mantel, who could have been interested in the news about executions in those arid landscapes punished by the sun while on the other side of the large window that faced the garden, a gentle, early autumn breeze would have been stirring the leaves and bringing the smell of soil and rain. What was a country at war like for someone reading the paper after breakfast: remote, cruel, doomed to misfortune, prompting perhaps a virtuous sympathy that costs nothing and strengthens the comfortable feeling of being safe, protected by distance and the civilization that permits you to take as a given the pleasures of the morning, bathing after a night of sleep, the abundance of breakfast in a spacious room illuminated by the clean light of day, the smell of coffee and of ink on the newspaper, of toasted bread and fresh butter gently melting on it. That’s how he’d read the news about Abyssinia not many months before, looked at the photographs in Ahora and Mundo Gráfico of defenseless Ethiopians with their spears and tribal robes, insolent Italian legionnaires in their epic colonial uniforms copied from bad adventure movies, their Fiat planes armed with machine guns and incendiary bombs. Now the Abyssinians are us: we are the victims of merciless invaders and those entrusted with the most rudimentary part of slaughter.
Murder Stalks Behind Fighting Lines. He put down the paper without having read the whole article and left the guesthouse, inhaling the fresh air that held the dew’s moisture and a smell of earth and fallen leaves, resin and the sap of the tall cedars or firs that edged the clearing, their tips moving gently in the breeze. A woodpecker’s rapping resonated, as powerful and clear as the knocking on a door or the echo of steps beneath a dome, the entire trunk vibrating, the wood strong and fresh. The ground covered with leaves gave gently under his feet, and the dew on the grass wet his shoes and the bottoms of his trousers. On one side the road disappeared into the woods. On the other, the side of the house struck by the sun, lay a rolling landscape of pastures and cultivated fields interrupted by white fences and farmhouses and tall barns painted vivid colors. He would have liked to follow either of those roads. But he was afraid he might get lost or be late, and he went back to the guesthouse, not only as a precaution but also because he saw himself as incongruous in his European city suit and shoes. From the outside, measuring it against the scale of the trees, he admired the shape of the building, the suggestion of deep roots in the way it rested in the clearing, solid and closed in to resist the cold of winters, a structure beautifully integrated into the countryside, yet singular, the balustrade of the terrace above the columns of the portico, the large windows facing all the cardinal points, the woods, the cultivated fields, the river, and beyond, the elevated line of blue mountains. He went back to his room to polish his shoes again and the bed was already made, the fold of the sheet straight, the pillows plumped up. Sitting by the window, his back erect in the solid chair, his hand resting on the desk, on the folder of drawings and watercolors he’d brought from Madrid, he imagined letters to his children and Judith Biely, calculated the time in Spain, listened to the sound of Stevens’s car slowly approaching.
Stevens was flushed, recently showered, resplendent, as if not only the gold frame and lenses of his glasses had been polished but also his light blue eyes, his nails, his teeth, his shoes of creaking leather that transported him from the car at almost the same speed as he’d been driving. He smelled of cologne and mint toothpaste. When Ignacio Abel sat down beside him, Stevens started the car and looked at his watch, impatient to make use of his time, to complete each of the tasks he’d planned for the morning, jumping arbitrarily from English to a Spanish so heavily accented it was unintelligible, gesturing to show him the points of interest around the campus, more at ease this morning, more sure of himself because he wasn’t subjected to the intimidating presence of Philip Van Doren. They stopped at buildings that had an air between Gothic and rural and contained overheated offices. The secretaries or typists smiled when they shook Ignacio Abel’s hand and paid close attention to hear his foreign name clearly, demonstrating by their high-pitched voices the enthusiasm they felt at meeting him, especially when Stevens listed his accomplishments, then showing a pained compassion when Stevens mentioned the war in Spain and the difficulties Professor Abel had to overcome to leave the country. He had to fill out forms, show documents, answer questions, nod even if he was confused, didn’t understand what he’d been asked, couldn’t find his passport or the document he’d put in a pocket moments before in another office. He had to get in the car again and continue the rest of the tour: meadows, patches of forest, rural paths, churches, classroom buildings, dormitories, athletic fields, more overheated offices and introductions, then again the fresh air with the smell of forest and lawn, the car backing up abruptly and Stevens looking at his watch, the labyrinth of goings and comings shrinking, reassuringly, to one scenario, the irregular quadrangle around which the principal buildings of the campus were organized: another University City, not half in the planning stage and left hanging and abandoned before it had come into existence, not erected on a tabula rasa of desert-like fields and eradicated pine groves, but having grown gradually, first as pioneer settlements in clearings in those forests long ago, then taking on a form both haphazard and organic, with visual similarities to British universities: Gothic towers, expanses of lawn, ivy-covered walls, and always — it seemed to Ignacio Abel, a newly arrived guest to this peculiar slowness of time, a convalescent from Spanish cataclysms — a serenity that corresponded to the immemorial cycles of the world, the passing of the seasons and the course of the river close by, gradual building rather than fits of rapture as sudden as disasters. At one of their stops, Stevens opened a door, preceded him up a spiral staircase, crossed a corridor with a low ceiling and stone ribs, opened a door that led to a small, comfortable room, and said, to Abel’s surprise, that this would be his office. In another room he was introduced to a group that welcomed him eagerly, it is so exciting to finally have you here as part of our faculty, and a moment later Stevens unceremoniously tugged on his sleeve and took him downstairs to a windowless room that was a photography studio. In the few minutes before the next undertaking, he ought to have his picture taken for his college identity card. The photographer had him sit on a stool before a black curtain and worked hard to get him into the correct position, making jokes Ignacio Abel didn’t understand but that provoked in the photographer hilarity not shared with Stevens, who kept glancing at his watch because soon they were to have lunch with a group of professors at the Faculty Club, and before that, a visit to the site of the future library. It was Mr. Van Doren’s special wish, he’d told him that very morning, that Professor Abel see the spot and make his preliminary notes on the terrain. That photograph must be somewhere in the archives of Burton College, the file card with his name typed in, faded because of the passage of time, the corners worn or folded, the attempt at a smile by an overly serious man who that morning looked older than his age, his face baffled, worried, unfamiliar, his lips curving rigidly at the corners.