— Who was that? he asked, seating himself, squaring his hair as he did so.
— I told you, people. . people will disdain no ruses, no ruse ai all to prove their own existence.
— Listen, you. . But Mr. Yak found that he was again speaking to the back of a pair of shoulders, and he wilted back.
— Good God, the desolation of that place, that station we just stopped at. The window again held off the black surface of the night.
— I feel like we been riding on this thing all my life.
— Yes, yes that's it, that's it, you know? It's like. . like being at sea. Somebody's said that going to sea is the best substitute for suicide. Why, in this country… in this country. .
— Suicide?. .
— Look, what if we're caught?
— With this? Mr. Yak shrugged. He had recovered his composure. — No, I mean. . whatever you. . whatever we're. . wanted for.
Mr. Yak looked up quickly, to see him turning back to the window. — What's the matter, you scared now? he said, and then repeated, — Wanted for?
— Yes, I… I am. I am scared.
— Sometimes I think I ought to have gone to Brazil. But that's the thing, a place like that, Brazil, everything's too new, what you want to do, you always want to go to the mother country of the place you maybe should have gone to… His voice tailed off. He had recovered his composure, but he looked weary, and older, jouncing back against the seat cushion, his hair slightly crooked on his brow, staring vaguely straight ahead, and the shaking of the train kept him nodding thoughtfully. — But now you go one place, and then you go somewheres else. . His own tone was vague now, as he turned his attention to the reflection in the glass.
— Sail on, sail on, like the Flying Dutchman. Why good God, in this country. .
— Who?
— It was Herr von Falkenberg, sailing without a steersman around the North Sea condemned to never make port, while he and the Devil played dice for his soul.
Suddenly they were face to face, and Mr. Yak found the hand mounting the two diamonds clutching his wrist. The eyes he stared into were burning green, the face even more knotted than that first day he had seen its confusion in the cemetery, and the voice more strained with desperation. — Why, in this country you could. . just sail on like that, without ever leaving its boundaries, it's not a land you travel in, it's a land you flee across, from one place to another, from one port to another, like a sailor's life where one destination becomes the same as another, and every voyage the same as the one before it, because every destination is only another place to start from. In this country, without ever leaving Spain, a whole Odyssey within its boundaries, a whole Odyssey without Ulysses. Listen. .
— You. . anyways, Mr. Yak interrupted, trying to break away from the eyes fixed on him and even to withdraw from the hold of the hand he had sought so many times, — anyways you couldn't drownd on the land.
— You couldn't! Well it's. . it's like that. It's like drowning, this despair, this. . being engulfed in emptiness.
The grip on Mr. Yak's wrist quivered with intensity, as did the eyes and the whole face as though waiting for some answer from him. Mr. Yak broke the hold of the eyes, lowering his own to the hand there, and the diamonds glittering over the flat lap which separated them. — What you'd want to do maybe, he commenced, — you might like go to a monastery awhile, you don't have to turn into a monk, you're like a guest there, you… he filtered, staring at the hand, and the two diamonds, — you. .
— Do you want it?
— What?
— This ring, this diamond ring? It's yours. It's yours now, if you want it.
Mr. Yak snatched his arm away and almost lost his balance. He looked helpless for a moment, and then managed to say, — No, no I… I didn't ever want it oil you. . He looked away from the hand there, to several places before his eye stopped at the extended feet between them, where the shawl had come off again, and there he bent down to pull it together. — We can get down to work now, he said from the shaking floor, — and then, when you have your work everything is… He was trying to knot the ends of the shawl, but it kept coming undone. He heard his own voice speaking with the tone of another, — And then all the love you've hoarded all your life, for your work. . listen. . His hands were shaking, and he could not make the ends meet to knot. — Have you got a knife, so I could cut this thing and tie it? Still he did not look up, aware that the figure was standing over him steadily on the shifting floor, and the square hand held a penknife before him. He reached up for it, raising his eyes at the same time. — Listen, he said, — listen, did you. . really kill?. . did you really kill somebody?
The train jolted, and he lost his balance on the floor. — Look out! Look out for her!
They were in Madrid.
In the railway station, what they wanted to do, according to Mr. Yak, who was moving and muttering like an old man talking to himself, they didn't want to be in any big hurry, and they didn't need to act suspicious pretending they were having an easy time with their charge, — because if people think you're having any trouble then they don't bother you, they try to look the other way. Except here, he added, annoyed, looking round the station. — They're better in New York that way, here somebody's just liable to try to help you out, that's because they're used to old people here, in New York they pretend they don't know there's such a thing. . and he went on muttering, in time with his shuffling steps, when his words were no longer distinguishable.
Near the luggage check-room, they paused and Mr. Yak said, — Wait here, I'll get a cab. We can't carry this all over town like this. His eyes darted about as he spoke, and then he muttered, — All these cops, these Guardia Civil. . and he hurried away.
He was in more of a hurry, his eyes still jumping from one black patent-leather tricorn to another as he avoided the Guardia Civil, when he returned. He was in such a hurry, in fact, that he went right past the woebegone couple standing against the wall near the luggage room. A moment later he returned, looking more harassed, glanced up, away, and stopped dead. He turned his head slowly, to see the patient shawl-wrapped figure standing right where he had left her, but now she was waited upon, at a respectful distance, by a creature not much taller, apparently not much younger, and despite his activity, in an inferior state of repair. The numbered metal tag on his dirty cap shone like a diadem in the battered crown of this martyr to unkemptness, and identified him as one of that villainous horde who, for a nominal fee, will spare no effort in making the first moments of the traveler's arrival in these capitals a faithful foretaste of the worst possibilities for helplessness, confusion, misery, anger, blasphemy, and acute hatred, that may lie ahead. A single tooth appeared and fled from sight in the midst of the dirty field of stubble on his chin, pursuing words which leaped out the more exhilarated by Mr. Yak's incredulous approach. He had a strap for binding the handles of bags together, and this he waved in the air, spurred on, and still held to his proper distance, by the stiff reserve of the figure he was regaling.