— But these things. . don't happen… I have to go.
— But wait! Wait! I haven't told you, when they took down his pants he's a face tattooed on his fundament! There's homage for a whole coven, wide eyes on the cheeks. Wait!. . there's a kiss he'll remember. Ehh? And I knew it, going around with a bum like that, blue eyes. . Wait!
Fr. Eulalio, his eyes fixed reverently on his toes flattening in the sandals at each step, emerged first from the Capilla de los Tres with a measured tread, one which he was, however, seldom able to measure for more than ten paces. At that point, some enthusiasm usually took hold, and he inclined to break into a disciplined but irregular dance, no matter how retiring his partners proved, so they were from Outside. At this moment he even had his hands clasped, and for a parlous moment, stood stock still at the door.
— I don't know whose tomb it is, but we might as well go the whole hog while we're here and take it in, said a woman, emerging.
— Boy, that big picture was some mess wasn't it, the Rubins, said a fat man in a brown suit and yellow necktie, who had apparently joined them. Two cameras swung from his neck, and a light meter, all in new leather cases. — Rubins, was he a Spaniard?
— Look at his name, Peedro Pablo, where else do you get a name like that? the woman with him answered. She was totally undistinguished, but for the ring she wore. It was gold, and large, and very modern, and suggested those articles which are advertised as "silent defenders."
The tall woman waited for her husband. Fr. Eulalio stood entranced with the morning's haul. But looking up, he commenced to vibrate, as though a marvelous set of springs were concealed under his robe; and if anything was required to set them in motion, it was the sight of the figure he saw now in fleeting glimpses of Irish thorn-proof, dodging behind the Moorish columns which surrounded them. For next to introducing himself to Americans, nothing gave him greater pleasure than introducing Americans to each other, and the opportunity of introducing four to one, and that one a noted writer, — un escritor muy distinguido, muy culto. . He almost sprang across the Moorish fountain.
The distinguished novelist saw there was nothing for it but surrender, and tried to compose himself as he was led forth, if only for that minute of courtesy which his position demanded. He came out wiping his hands on the seat of his trousers.
— We didn't know you were Catholic! said the woman with the ring, delighted, extending that hand, and withdrawing it more slowly, separating her fingers and glancing down surreptitiously to see what the sticky gray matter lodged between them might be, while her husband, bobbing amid the leather cases, lost his good-natured grin as he shook hands, and retired to wipe his on the seat of his pants.
— Well, you see. . the distinguished novelist commenced; but he was unequal to it. He tried to arrange his debilitated features into a smile, and turned to the tall woman with a weak inclination which he meant as a bow.
— We're going to see a tomb, — she said, — the tomb of… somebody or other, have you seen it?
— Yes, he answered instantly, and stared at her so oddly that she turned to her husband and said,
— We can't just leave poor Huki-lau out there all alone, even if she is wearing that. . protection, you never know.
Fr. Eulalio, meanwhile, moved busily enough among them to give everyone the feeling that they were in a crowded room, and as though for reassurance that this was not the case, the tall woman's husband turned his blank gaze up to the shreds of gray cloud which fled over the Moorish cloister. The distinguished novelist excused himself: he had a little work to do before lunch, and he got away.
— It was him, that stuck his head in the church and asked me what I was doing there, the woman with the ring announced. — You wouldn't think he'd act that way here in a place like this.
— Maybe he's just playing a game, the tall woman said vaguely, preoccupied with a high heel caught between the teeth of a broken mosaic. — My God. .
— It's hardly worth all this walking around everywheres, the woman with the ring said, — We haven't got any color fillum in the camera at all, they don't have it here.
Fr. Eulalio, meanwhile, explained that the distinguished novelist had recently suffered the death of someone very close to him, a sobering conclusion which he had drawn from the customary manifest of the black necktie.
Thus they were all slightly put off when the distinguished guest appeared in a calming Glen Urquhart plaid suit, and the necktie of the Honourable Artillery Company, though none of them knew its signification any better than he (for he'd just picked it out one day, passing Gieves's window in Old Bond Street, in London where he'd gone for first-hand experience of quite a different nature). It was a bracing pattern of jagged dark red strokes on a blue ground, and he looked quite restored.
It is true, he was happier taking lunch in the chill room at that small table near the windows, knee to knee with a calm lay brother appointed to the task, the heavy red cloth drawn over their laps and warm to the waist from the brazier underneath, with a cage over its coals to protect toes protruding from sandals, an arrangement rather like a communal Persian bed he had seen somewhere (not Persia).
— We've had plenty of experiences to write home about already, said the woman with the ring at the long table where lunch had just commenced, presided over by a placid Franciscan who spoke no English. The tall woman closed her pill box with a snap, as her husband poured his second glass of wine, and the woman with the ring crossed herself and got her napkin in place in one utilitarian gesture.
— We even got held up by a highwayman, her husband confirmed.
— It was on a train.
— Y «u still call it a highwayman anyway, her husband said patiently, smiling his cheery smile. — And he even talked English.
— It was broken English. And what do you think he told us? That we're just as much to blame, because we're there, that the victim abets the violence just by being there, he said, and he even made a quotation to prove it.
— From Dante he told us. He took all our money, at gun-point.
— Every peseeta we had on us.
— But he didn't take the cameras, the fat man said, — I guess he didn't know how much they were worth.
— He said he ought to do us a favor and throw them out the window, can you imagine? My. . don't they keep it cold here, she shivered.
Her husband got out his billfold and found a scrap of paper. — Here's a souvenir of it. He made me write this down so I'd remember to get this book and read it. Transcendent Speculations on Apparent Design in the Fate of the Individual, that's a mouthful isn't it. I wrote this down at gun-point.