— Oh! Oh! Oh! Mr. Yak spun the shock of hair round on his head, and opened the door the margin of an eye.
— Señor Asche? said the dueño from the dark passage. Mr. Yak started to make wild gestures of beckoning behind the door. His guest stared at him. — Su pasaporte. . Finally Mr. Yak reached through the opening to snatch the Swiss passport, with a muttered — Gracias to the dueño, and he closed the door and bolted it. — Señor Asche, that's you, he said crossing the room. — I wanted you to come get it from him, your passport. Stephan Asche. See? He handed the Swiss passport over the newspaper barricade. — There, Stephan. Like I said, see? Safe as a nut. Look at the picture in it, go ahead. It's just like you, just like I said, that square face all screwed up around the eyes, see? Now you just want to wash up a little and get a shave. And he bounded off again, across the room toward the mirror over the washbowl, where the drying wads of blotting paper caught his eye. — Do you want to see me eat fire? he brought out, leering into the glass at the image of the man behind him. The image of Stephan Asche did not move. Nothing moved there, but the smoke rising gently behind the disorder of newspapers, the untended trail of a fire smoldering in a pile of debris where nothing retains its original shape, or purpose, among broken parts and rusted remains of useful objects, unidentifiable now, indistinguishable from other fragments of the past, shapes and sharp angles of curious design and unique intention, wasting without flame under the litter of news no longer news, pages of words torn by the wind, sodden with rain, words retaining separation, strung to the tear, without purpose, but words, and nothing moves but the smoke, rising from two bright embers.
— Stephan! Mr. Yak bursts out, turning from the washbowl. — Wake up!. . you. . you went to sleep with your eyes open it looked like, you. . listen. .
— Look. .
— Listen, you don't want to smoke that stuff, see? It smells lousy, it makes the whole room here smell like the town dump. It's a third potato peel, the tobacco here. . See? Listen, you want to wash up and shave.
— But I don't.
— Yes you do. Come on… what do you want to do?
— Nothing.
— You can't do nothing. See? There's work to do. See? All this. . All this. . The spotted cigarette-burned robe comes off in a swirclass="underline" Mr. Yak's neck is quite a long one, springing out of the neck-band shirt, caught, constricted with a preposter's dignity, in plexiglas, roped and drawn with Saint Anthony's earnest, Saint Anthony's hostage draws it tight to the throat. — The water into wine, and the wine into water, the blood that congeals and turns into stone, that's all for the old párroco, see? To bring him around to where he'll agree to sell us that. . sell us the thing for the mummy. Nothing? You don't want to do nothing? That's the way you get into mischief. You get into mischief, doing nothing.
— Dies irae, dies illa, solvet saeclum in favilla. . Tell me, did they sing that out here?
— Where?
— The Mass, you said you had a Mass sung for the dead. They sing that sometimes, in Masses for the dead, swinging the censer to kill the smell of the living. Look, what was that blonde I met in the hall?
Silence submits to the thud of an Ideal ash hitting the floor. From. the wall, the Andalusian maiden stares down over her sturdy balcony, over the shoulder of him in the guitar's embrace, to coquette with her host, who disdains her directly their eyes meet, turning as though yanked to by the lead at his neck. — Just what you say, a blonde. Forget her.
— But 1 don't even know her yet.
— So that saves you tbe trouble. You don't want to get mixed up with that flashy piece of goods. See?
Somewhere, a clock struck. — See? Mr. Yak repeated, taking a step toward the darker corner, his head lowered, chin jutting forth, he looked searchingly where the smoke rose like a man looking on a refuse heap, finding a nondescript necktie worn and discarded among the cinders, some rags, two shoes which will never fit anyone else, still he looked searchingly, and his eyes caught a glitter. — You're here to get mixed up with some blonde that'll take them diamonds right off your finger? Then why are you here then?
— Why am I here? I'm here because I'm not any place else. Now look. .
— Now listen, you and me. . Wait! What are you doing? You don't want to open the windows. .
Nevertheless, the floor-length windows were swung open, and the sounds of Alphonso del Gato rose to them, mounting on a chorus of Francisco alegre. . ole!
— You don't want to get mixed up with that flashy piece of goods down the hall, Mr. Yak repeated, addressing Stephan's back, at the windows. — See?
Nevertheless, awhile after everyone else had lunched on garlic soup, a simple cocido, dead fish, and an orange, and the blue angora sweater nowhere in sight in the small dining room, Mr. Yak, slipping down the passage between doors closed upon afternoon slumber, glanced in the dining room, and there saw his friend at a table, the blue fluff catercorner. She was biting his thumb.
Reproach filled Mr. Yak before he knew it, and he almost mistook his step; but there would be time enough for all his words of rebuke, warning, and censure: now there was work ahead, and he hurried toward it, feeling chilly and grown old.
As for Marga, she was a discreet person: there was a building in the Calle Ventura de la Vega where, up a flight, a dim shuttered room afforded but one furnishing above necessity, a mirror, mounted along the length of the bed, which that afternoon reflected with a fertile vigor undiminished by repetition liberties taken upon every natural part of her but her coiffure, though that, to be sure, was a crown of artifice whose consequent fragility she had good reason to protect: only in descent from the exposed and cultivated brow did the remontant powers of nature prove how, as the poet wrote, the natural in woman closely is allied to art.
— I saw you. . Mr. Yak said that evening, standing in the spotted robe, holding his hair in his hand before him, and he looked weary. His day had been a busy one, inveigling the old párroco on the one hand, fending off the importunate Señor Herrnoso Hermoso on the other. But more than the day's fatigue showed on him. The instant he pulled off that shock of black hair, a heavy decade of years weighed his shoulders down, and now his eyes, as though another day's application had exhausted their glitter, showed with a dullness which, but for the impatient promptings of his voice, might have been construed as disappointment. — Listen, we… we have work to do, and you, behaving like this, it's like cutting your nose off in spite of your face, he said. — You're not a bum.
— Stephan.
— What?
— No, I… I just said that, I just called you that, so you'll get used to it. Mr. Yak lowered his eyes wearily, to the floorboards whose different lengths effected an unsteady parquet.
If the orange-colored cloth of that coat could be so quickly supplanted in memory by its leopard collar at full length, both disappeared from attention and memory alike when the coat was drawn open and nothing but Marga beneath it, for she wore it as a robe de chambre, or rather de couloir, on that last-minute trip between her room and the toilet, managed, like all of her public appearances, with a decorum which greatly enhanced her license in private. There, except for the armoire across the room mounting something the proportions of a pier glass which would have demanded taxing, if not unnatural, exertions, for its full employment, there was no mirror in her room to confirm one sense in what four others were making possible, no confirmation for that most immediate sense, that most used, most depended upon, most easily deceived, none but her lips too close, separated, teeth biting silence, and eyes demanding correspondence in closing.