— Can you imagine? she demanded of the distinguished novelist, and he shook his head as though indeed he could not. Then he turned to the soup which the old woman put before him, and commenced to eat with a look on his face as though, perhaps, he could.
— Well you can't complain, said the fat man good-naturedly, — when you set out on an adventure trip in a country like this, like Mamie and me here with nothing but the clothes on our back. Right, Mamie? Then he lowered his attention, to wipe a spot from his yellow tie on the edge of the tablecloth.
— We didn't even bring a car over this time, said the woman with the ring. — We're going right down to the Holy Week in Seville as soon as we leave here. I wanted to see the big fair they have in Valencia too but I don't know how long we're over here for, it's not till later. They call it the Fallas, it's all fireworks. Then she turned to the tranquil figure at the table head, and addressed him in what she believed was his language, for she, with some of the girls back home, had taken a course, preparing for exactly such opportune exigencies as this. — Cuando tiene las Fallas en Valencia? she asked, and repeated, — las Fallas?. . but since she pronounced it phallus, the good Franciscan answered with a gelid smile and offered her the bread.
The tall woman cleared her throat, passed the wine decanter in answer to no one's request as far up the table as she could reach, and said that somewhere she had read that in this very monastery a monk had been put under a pot for refusing to go out and beg, and that he was still there. Had anyone seen it? — The pot, I mean.
No, but when the woman with the ring and her husband were in Granada, a guide took them on a tour through the Hospital de San Juan de Dios, and they had had to look at the crippled and deformed orphans, — which wasn't really the kind of thing we came all the way over here to see, we didn't know where he was taking us.
— That cathedral they have there, it's the biggest one I ever saw.
— And the sound when that gypsy boy's head hit the pavement. .
The distinguished novelist remained bent over his plate; and whether or not he appeared as contemplative as he believed, he did at least thus thwart any attempts to draw him into conversation, until, that is, someone asked him directly if he liked the art here. .
— Ahm…
— Like that big El Greco, the picture of the. .
— What? Is it safe? Is it still… he broke out, looking up abruptly.
— What?
— No. . nothing, I… I was thinking of something else. The. . ahm, yes it's a… an excellent picture, the ahrn plasticity of the modeling, the transition of ahm the heavy oils laid on transparent ones, a great clarity of ahm religious purpose without getting lost in a maze of details, of ahm. . for fear that there may be no… Ahm. .
— I've seen another picture of his, they make me nervous, everybody seems to wiggle too much in them.
— We saw a big Pietà in Granada, I like him better. Aren't you chilly? The distinguished novelist attacked the fish on the plate before him. It stared up with one round insolent eye, and he severed the head at one blow. The world of art settled, that of religion reared intrepidly.
— That was probably the village idiot.
— But won't they let him in church? the tall woman demanded. — In our church at home, of course I haven't been in it recently but we used to have one, an idiot I mean. Every small town had one, just like they had a town drunk and a Jew, but of course we didn't have any of these little boys in red sleeves to get him out the door. And that boy swinging that brass thing on the end of the chain made me frightfully nervous. It looked like it was going to blow up any minute.
The fat man looked self-conscious, and stopped to rub another spot from his necktie.
— And were you in the sacristy when they were getting that old priest ready to send on? I don't know, all that lace, and the way those little boys flit about. . She saw the distinguished novelist looking at her uneasily, and went on hurriedly, — I don't mean to say they're that way or anything but. . one hears things, she murmured, looking down at her plate. — Tell me, she whispered to the woman next to her, — what are these perfectly weird little things we're supposed to be eating.
— Lentils. Haven't you ever eaten them?
— I've read about them, the tall woman said and put down her fork.
— To tell the honest truth I don't really see how they eat like this all the time. I've had the johnny-trots ever since we got here. From all the oil. Do you have. .
— I take reducing pills. You swallow one before a meal and it blows up like a balloon in your stomach. You lose your appetite. Not that one wouldn't here anyhow. Have you looked at the bread? I don't mean tasted it, but just look at it. It's practically turning red.
— My husband would know what it is, said the woman with the ring, examining a piece of the bread. She broke it, and the fine gray texture crumbled. — My husband's in food chemistry. He studied toxicology at Yale. Her husband took the bread from her and examined it with a pocket magnifying glass. — He's with the Necrostyle people, she said, — you must know their products? Then she nudged her husband, and whispered that maybe he was being impolite, — because they're very sensitive, these people. Even if they're monks. — Micrococcus prodigiosus, he pronounced, snapping the glass closed and looking up with his cheery smile, — It forms sometimes on stale food kept in a dry place. Looks like blood, doesn't it.
— He's giving you a funny look, the woman with the ring said to her husband. And when at a sign from the figure at the head of the table, the bread was taken unobtrusively away, she whispered, — Oh dear, I wonder if we hurt his feelings. . And she'd just started to speak to the tall woman, in a very low tone of frank confidence, — They're pretty behind the times over here, when we landed the customs almost arrested me, they thought my Tampax was incendiary bombs. . Then she realized that the figure at the head of the table was addressing her, in slow careful syllables.
— He's explaining about the bread, she whispered aside, listening, — why it's funny. Concentrating, her lips moved as though to wrest the words from his, syllable by syllable while he spoke, and turning to explain when he paused, — because it's real hard to get flour over here, especially if you're poor like monks, they have to get it off the black market. That isn't exactly the way he put it, she amended when his silence unleashed her full confusion. — He says they even get food packages from America, like there was this Protestant minister who came here on a visit about thirty years ago and he always sends them these packages of food, they just got one lately. Then this is where I got sort of. mixed up, she confessed, while the figure at the head of the table watched her querulously. — I think it's something he wants me to explain to him, because in this last food package they just got there was some kind of powdery stuff in a tin box they mixed with the flour when they made this bread, and it came out funny. Maybe it was cereal, except I'm not sure what's the Spanish word for cereal. Maybe it was wheat germ, my husband could probably explain it to him, like enriched bread like we have home, except I don't know what's the Spanish for wheat germ. She sighed, looking almost wistfully at the scrap of bread by her husband's hand on the table, a hard crust, the crumbled fine gray texture flecked with spots "like blood." — Home, she repeated — Now, with it's almost Easter. . She sighed again, and smiled pensively, looking far away and rubbing the slight hair shade on her upper lip. — Isn't it nice we're all merkins.
At the head of the table, the figure nodded to her his thanks for her explanation to the other exotic guests and she, seeking to please him still further, was fishing for something in her bosom. The ring got caught, and finally she extracted it along with a string of beads which proved to be a rosary. — And see this here? she said to the others. — This little heart-shaped thing in the middle is full of Lourdes holy water, see it's stamped right on there, certified. She passed it up the table. The Franciscan looked at it with the polite interest he might have shown for a Zuñi prayer stick, and returned it as she went on, — My family's in religious novelties. Mostly plastic ones. Last year we got out a plastic shofar, for Yom Kippur. It was filled with candy. It went real well. Show them your key chain, she said to her husband, digging him with an elbow. — See? she said, showing it. There were a good many keys, but she got the plastic-enclosed picture free. — See? you just move it a little and his eyes open and close, see his lips move just like in prayer? And the hand he's got up in a benediction even wiggles a little, see? See the halo move when you tip it?… These go real well. It's a whole series of art-foto key chains. She started to pass this devotional object up the table, but the good Franciscan appeared to be absorbed studying his thumbnails.