Only medicine, the man said.
You a doctor?
The bloodshot eyes looked slyly out of their corners at Mr. Tench. You would call me perhaps a-quack?
Patent medicines? Live and let live, Mr. Tench said.
Are you sailing?
No, I came down here for-for ... oh, well, it doesn't matter anyway. He put his hand on his stomach and said: You haven't got any medicine, have you, for-oh, hell. I don't know what. It's just this bloody land. You can't cure me of that. No one can.
You want to go home?
Home, Mr. Tench said; my home's here. Did you see what the peso stands at in Mexico City? Four to the dollar. Four. Oh, God. Ora pro nobis.
Are you a Catholic?
No, no. Just an expression. I don't believe in anything like that. He said irrelevantly: It's too hot anyway.
I think I must find somewhere to sit.
Come up to my place, Mr. Tench said. I've got a spare hammock. The boat won't leave for hours-if you want to watch it go.
The stranger said: I was expecting to see someone. The name was Lopez.
Oh, they shot him weeks ago, Mr. Tench said.
Dead?
[7] You know how it is round here. Friend of yours?
No, no, the man protested hurriedly. Just a friend of a friend.
Well, that's how it is, Mr. Tench said. He brought up his bile again and shot it out into the hard sunlight. They say he used to help ... oh, undesirables ... well, to get out. His girl's living with the Chief of Police now.
His girl? Do you mean his daughter?
He wasn't married. I mean the girl he lived with. Mr. Tench was momentarily surprised by an expression on the stranger's face. He said again: You know how it is. He looked across at the General Obregon. She's a pretty bit. Of course, in two years she'll be like all the rest. Fat and stupid. Oh, God, I'd like a drink. Ora pro nobis.
I have a little brandy, the stranger said. Mr. Tench regarded him sharply. Where?
The hollow man put his hand to his hip-he might have been indicating the source of his odd nervous hilarity. Mr. Tench seized his wrist. Careful, he said. Not here. He looked down the carpet of shadow: a sentry sat on an empty crate asleep beside his rifle. Come to my place, Mr. Tench said.
I meant, the little man said reluctantly, just to see her go.
Oh, it will be hours yet, Mr. Tench assured him again.
Hours? Are you certain? It's very hot in the sun.
You'd better come home.
Home: it was a phrase one used to mean four walls behind which one slept. There had never been a home. They moved across the little burnt plaza where the dead general grew green in the damp and the gaseosa stalls stood under the palms. It lay like a picture postcard on a pile of other postcards: shuffle the pack and you had Nottingham, a Metroland birthplace, an interlude in Southend. Mr. Tench's father had been a dentist too-his first memory was finding a discarded cast in a waste-paper basket-the rough toothless gaping mouth of clay, like something dug up in Dorset-Neanderthal or Pithecanthropus. It had been his favourite toy: they tried to tempt him with Meccano: but fate had struck. There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in. The hot wet [8] riverport and the vultures lay in the waste-paper basket, and he picked them out. We should be thankful we cannot see the horrors and degradations lying around our childhood, in cupboards and bookshelves, everywhere.
There was no paving: during the rains the village (it was really no more) slipped into the mud. Now the ground was hard under the feet like stone. The two men walked in silence past barbers' shops and dentists': the buzzards on the roofs looked contented, like domestic fowls: they searched under wide crude dusty wings for parasites. Mr. Tench said: Excuse me, stopping at a little wooden hut, one story high, with a veranda where a hammock swung. The hut was a little larger than the others in the narrow street, which petered out two hundred yards away in swamp. He said, nervously: Would you like to take a look around? I don't want to boast, but I'm the best dentist here. It's not a bad place. As places go. Pride wavered in his voice like a plant with shallow roots.
He led the way inside, locking the door behind him, through a dining-room where two rocking-chairs stood on either side of a bare table: an oil-lamp, some copies of old American papers, a cupboard. He said: I'll get the glasses out, but first I'd like to show you-you're an educated man ... The dentist's operating-room looked out on a yard where a few turkeys moved with shabby nervous pomp: a drill which worked with a pedal, a dentist's chair gaudy in bright red plush, a glass cupboard in which instruments were dustily jumbled. A forceps stood in a cup, a broken spirit-lamp was pushed into a corner, and gags of cotton-wool lay on all the shelves.
Very fine, the stranger said.
It's not so bad, is it, Mr. Tench said, for this town? You can't imagine the difficulties. That drill, he said bitterly, is made in Japan. I've only had it a month and it's wearing out already. But I can't afford American drills.
The window, the stranger said, is very beautiful.
One pane of stained glass had been let in: a Madonna gazed out through the mosquito wire at the turkeys in the yard. I got it, Mr. Tench said, when they sacked the church. It didn't feel right-a dentist's room without some stained glass. Not civilized. At home-I mean in England-it was [9] generally the laughing Cavalier-I don't know why-or else a Tudor rose. But one can't pick and choose.
He opened another door and said: My workroom. The first thing you saw was a bed under a mosquito tent. Mr. Tench said: You understand-I'm pressed for room. A ewer and basin stood at one end of a carpenter's bench, and a soap-dish: at the other a blow-pipe, a tray of sand, pliers, a little furnace. I cast in sand, Mr. Tench said. What else can I do in this place? He picked up the cast of a lower jaw. You can't always get them accurate, he said. Of course, they complain. He laid it down again, and nodded at another object on the bench-something stringy and intestinal in appearance, with two little bladders of rubber. Congenital fissure, he said. It's the first time I've tried. The Kingsley case. I doubt if I can do it. But a man must try to keep abreast of things. His mouth fell open: the look of vacancy returned: the heat in the small room was overpowering. He stood there like a man lost in a cavern among the fossils and instruments of an age of which he knows very little. The stranger said: If we could sit down ...
Mr. Tench stared at him-blankly. We could open the brandy.
Oh, yes, the brandy.
Mr. Tench got two glasses out of a cupboard under the bench, and wiped off traces of sand. Then they went and sat in rocking-chairs in the front room. Mr. Tench poured out.
Water? the stranger said.
You can't trust the water, Mr. Tench said. It's got me here. He put his hand on his stomach and took a long draught You don't look too well yourself, he said. He took a longer look. Your teeth. One canine had gone, and the front teeth were yellow with tartar and carious. He said: You want to pay attention to them.
What is the good? the stranger said. He held a small spot of brandy in his glass warily-as if it were an animal to which he gave shelter, but not trust. He had the air in his hollowness and neglect of somebody of no account who had been beaten up incidentally, by ill-health or restlessness. He sat on the very edge of the rocking-chair, with his small attaché [10] case balanced on his knee and the brandy staved off with guilty affection.
Drink up, Mr. Tench encouraged him (it wasn't his brandy) ; it will do you good. The man's dark suit and sloping shoulders reminded him uncomfortably of a coffin: and death was in his carious mouth already. Mr. Tench poured himself out another glass. He said: It gets lonely here. It's good to talk English, even to a foreigner. I wonder if you'd like to see a picture of my kids. He drew a yellow snapshot out of his notecase and handed it over. Two small children struggled over the handle of a watering-can in a back garden. Of course, he said, that was sixteen years ago.