— I heard you. . Mr. Yak said next day. — I heard you in there last night. And now look at you, look at your eyes, you're getting this French influenza like everybody's getting, that ought to put you in bed a while and take care of yourself, see? Because in a day or two we're going to bring it in, for the mummy, see?
If she heard the heart pounding in the dark, or felt it shaking the whole frame she embraced, every beat splitting the head she held between her hands, the jaw rigid then shivering on gasps for breath, while every beat of the heart surged the flow more weakly and ebbed to withhold the life she drew forth, she gave no sign of knowing in the dark, the first time, the second, the third and her knee raised to manage gently insistent manipulation with her toes, to continue the rehearsal and then in a rush repeat the performance, no more sign than the animal trainer putting the sick dog through its paces.
Two days later, when Margà had left for the country (a family wedding), Mr. Yak had his arrangements almost made. The párroco in San Zwingli was properly awed, the sacristan thoroughly intimidated, and Señor Hermoso Hermoso, convinced with such happy importance that he knew what was going on, had given up trying to find out. He had even at one point, and quite unwittingly, put Mr. Yak onto something most pertinent to the project, in a casual cafe conversation which turned to a local method for aging fine lace, a process Mr. Yak now considered employing to add some dozens of centuries to the linen bandaging, before it was finally baked on.
— So what we want to do, we want to bury it somewhere, in the ground, see? Listen. . are you listening, Stephan? How do you feel, you feel better? Listen, then what you want to do, you go there where it's buried, and wet it down, see? You know what I mean, wet it down? I mean, like. . like you stand over it and wet it down, see? You do that a lot of times, then you dig it up and hang it in the sun, and it's got that nice yellow aged color that makes it look real old, see? You listening? Come on, get your head out of under the covers. You got to come out with me and buy this linen bandaging so we get the right kind. See? Come on. You feel better. You're all well now. Come on, get your head out of under the cover.
The mound on the bed shifted, but remained silent, and Mr. Yak leaned forward to put a kindly hand on what he believed to be a shoulder. There was a growl from inside.
— Come on, you want to come out in the fresh air will do you more good than this here. . Mr. Yak shook the mound, and the growl grew louder. Finally a cautious aperture appeared, with an eye behind it, and a clear voice said, — Go away.
— Good. You're not in a delirium any more anyway, Mr. Yak said, letting go the shoulder, and he sat down beside the bed, re- lieved. For these past two evenings, Mr. Yak had returned wearied enough with the work of the day, to the even more taxing demands of this friendship he had formed from the depths of what he could by now believe to have been the kindness of his heart. And just as there could be no doubt, after touching his forehead, but that Stephan had been ill, there was even less doubt of his delirium after listening to his conversation: Salamanders and Sylphs, and Mermaids, a regular Carnival, but wait, not carne vale. . Ave carne!. . Salve!. . macte virtute esto! — Did you want me to end like Descartes, then? Larvatus prodeo, retiring to prove his own existence, and he kept a Salamander. She came to visit him like mine did then. But now. . Copulo, ergo sum. Eh? Carne, O te felicem!
And Mr. Yak had shaken his head, and muttered something about "that flashy piece of goods down the hall," at which he was instantly threatened with blindness as happened to Stesichorus, — for slandering Helen.
— What an affliction, Mr. Yak muttered, but to himself, and thinking of himself, not Stesichorus.
— Why, proving one's own existence, you'd be surprised what a man will do to prove his own existence?. . pursued Mr. Yak out the night before, crossing himself. — Why, there's no ruse at all that people will disdain, to prove their own existences. .
— Get some sleep, Stephan.
— No ruse at all…
Now, Mr. Yak gave up once more, with a glance up at the An-dalusian love scene on Stephan's wall, and returned to his own room where now hung the picture he had traded for it, Jesus del Gran Poder, which he had found leaning face-to against Stephan's wall. He stood looking absently at the dark bowed head of Christ under the weight of the Cross, and, after a full minute, cocked his head at a sound in the hall. A moment later he found Stephan trying to slip out of the pension. He let him escape, followed, and then caught him up in the street below as though by accident. There they exchanged their usual contentious greetings, and Mr. Yak took him off to buy forty meters of linen bandage, on the promise that they go to a bar immediately after.
The comradeship between these two men by now had something inevitable about it. They were in ways mutually dependent, and at constant cross purposes. The older man seemed interested in what the younger did only in order to disapprove of it; and the younger man's total lack of interest in the elder's activity only spurred that one on to redouble it. They seldom entered a bar together, but that Mr. Yak ordered two coffees, and his companion stood, restraining one hand with the other, until he could get one of them on a glass of wine, or, more frequently now, coñac. What is more, there were moments when they strongly resembled one another, though that, perhaps, was only in an expression round the eyes, a tense look, glittering with impatience, a sort of alert vacancy, ready lor flight.
Their pursuits were by now so mysterious to one another that neither showed surprise at anything the other did or said, each, in fact, depending more and more heavily on the other for encouragement, an arrangement somewhat similar to that magic formula of modern marriage, whose parties are encouraged by disapprobation and disinterest respectively.
Their present careers were reaching the first peaks at about the same time: just as Mr. Yak was ready to bring his purchase from the rural cemetery into town and commence actual work on it, his partner had passed the last lap on a Marathon of drink, and appeared to be scaling the heights beyond.
— What's that spilled on the lapels of your coat like that? Mr. Yak demanded, catching up with him at one point.
— I'm learning to drink from a bottle with a spout, you don't touch it to your lips. Getting it up there's easy enough, it's when you try to stop that it gets on you like this.
— What's that, those marks on your shoulders?
— That's from sliding down between the casks.
— You don't want to spend money like this.
— You told me it's so dirty it's unhealthy to carry around.
— Why weren't you in at supper tonight?
— Not after that gray artichoke. And that woman at our table, I can't tell whether she's crossing herself or fixing her napkin, it goes on all the way through the meal. And that woman at the next table, suckling the baby.
— What's the matter with that?
— Nothing the matter with it, it just takes my mind off the bread soup.
— You're not mixed up with some woman now, are you?
— What's the matter with women?
— I got nothing against them, it's just that no one of them can last a man his whole life.
— Good God! What, do you think I suggested that?
— No, but they will. I never knew a woman yet that the minute she came into the room I wasn't waiting tor her to leave it. Try getting married some time. I even had a wife once myself.
— What did you do with her?
— I tied the can to her. What do you think I did. Listen, tell me something… — The joke about the five Jones brothers? Have you heard that? Los cinco-jones?…
— We got work to do, why do you get drunk like this?
— Well I'll tell you, I have five monkeys in my stomach and four chairs in my head, do you know that one? The first coñac and one monkey goes up and sits down. Second glass, another one goes up and sits down, the third. .