At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances

have arrived at the Villa of Reduced Circumstances.’

A servant met them at the large front door of the villa. He was a small man in an ill-fitting black jacket and wearing grubby white gloves. He took the suitcases from the back of the car and gestured for Cinco Fermentaciones and von Igelfeld to follow him. They went inside, into a house of high-ceilinged cool rooms, furnished with dark mahogany chairs and tables in the Spanish colonial style, with painted cupboards on which fruits,Virgins and hunting dogs competed for space with pink-faced cherubs. Then they passed through a portico into a courtyard, around the sides of which were arranged the doors which gave on to their respective bedrooms.

Left by himself in his bedroom, von Igelfeld unpacked his suitcase and noticed, with satisfaction, a spacious writing desk on which supplies of paper, along with bottles of ink and a stick pen, had been laid. To the right of the desk was a bookcase housing several shelves of books. He glanced at the titles: there were collected essays, novels, works of philosophy, and several volumes of the poems of Pablo Neruda. He picked up one of the Neruda volumes, noting an inscription on the fly leaf: Quinta Barranquilla, from his life-long friend, Pablo Neruda: I am not worthy of your friendship, but I have it nonetheless, and am content. Von Igelfeld was intrigued; the salon run by Dolores Quinta Barranquilla was clearly every bit as distinguished as Cinco Fermentaciones had implied. He replaced the book and picked up the volume next to it, a Spanish translation of Hemingway. Von Igelfeld was not impressed by Hemingway, whom he had never read and whom he had no intention of reading. In his view, those who practised hunting and fighting in wars should not write books, as there was nothing of any interest to literature in those pursuits. Hemingway was a fine example of this. No German writer would have gone bull-fighting in Spain or deep-sea fishing off Cuba, and this showed in the almost total absence of these themes in German literature. He placed the Hemingway back on the shelf with distaste and looked out of the window. In the middle of the courtyard there was a small fountain, out of which water played gently. On a stone bench beside the fountain sat Cinco Fermentaciones, and at his side, engaged in earnest conversation with him, was a middle-aged woman in a red skirt and white blouse. This, von Igelfeld assumed, was Dolores Quinta Barranquilla. He moved closer to the window and stared at her, struck by her peaceful expression. It was a Madonna-like face of the sort that is not all that unusual in the Latin world; a face which Botticelli or Mantegna might have painted. He gazed at her, and as he did so, she suddenly looked up and met his eyes. Von Igelfeld froze, unable to move away from the window, but mortified to be caught in the act of spying upon his hostess. Then the spell broke, and he withdrew from the window, back into the shadows of his room.

A few minutes later, when he heard the knock on the door, he imagined that it was Dolores Quinta Barranquilla, and that she was coming to ask him to explain himself. He answered with some trepidation, but found that it was only the manservant in his ill-fitting jacket, who announced that drinks would be served in the salon at seven o’clock that evening and that the Senora would be honoured by Professor von Igelfeld’s presence at that time. Von Igelfeld thanked him and the manservant nodded. If His Excellency was in need of anything, he was only to ring the bell which he would find in his room; they were short-staffed, alas! as things were not quite what they were in the past, but they would do their best.

‘We are deeply honoured, Professor von Igelfeld,’ said Dolores Quinta Barranquilla. ‘Is that not so, Gabriel?’

‘Indeed it is,’ said Cinco Fermentaciones.

‘To have a Fellow of the Academy of Letters in the house is always rewarding,’ went on Dolores Quinta Barranquilla, ‘but to have a Corresponding Fellow, why, that’s a very particular distinction! Indeed, I cannot remember when last that happened.’

‘Five years ago,’ offered Cinco Fermentaciones.

Dolores Quinta Barranquilla thanked him for the information. ‘Five long years!’ she said. ‘Five arid years now ended!’

Cinco Fermentaciones smiled. ‘Indeed, this evening is almost like a meeting of the Academy.’

Dolores Quinta Barranquilla looked at him blankly, and he continued: ‘You see, my dear Senora Dolores, we almost have two Members of the Academy in the room. I myself . . . ’

Dolores Quinta Barranquilla clasped her hands together in delight. ‘ . . . have been elected! I am thrilled, Gabriel. At last those provincial fools have begun to understand . . . ’

‘Not quite,’ said Cinco Fermentaciones quickly. ‘Please note that I said almost two Members. I have been nominated. Indeed, my nomination is quite recent, but I have every reason to believe that it will lead to my election to the Academy.’

Dolores Quinta Barranquilla turned to von Igelfeld and fixed him with a warm smile. ‘I suspect that we might have you to thank for this,’ she said. ‘Our dear friend Gabriel has not been given the recognition that he deserves, I’m afraid. It comes from being out of Colombia.’

Cinco Fermentaciones held up a hand to protest. ‘You are too kind, Senora Dolores. My contribution is small.’

‘It was an honour to be able to propose Senor Gabriel Marcales de Cinco Fermentaciones,’ contributed von Igelfeld. ‘His work in . . . ’ he paused, and there was an awkward silence as they both turned to look at him. Von Igelfeld was quite unaware of his candidate’s work. Had Cinco Fermentaciones written a book? Possibly, but if he had, then he had no means of telling what it was and whether it was good or bad. Of course, one did not become a cultural attache for nothing, and he must have done something, possibly more than enough to deserve membership of the Academy of Letters. He took a deep breath. ‘His work in all respects is well-known.’

Dolores Quinta Barranquilla raised an eyebrow. ‘There are those who say that he bought the job,’ she said, going on quickly. ‘But I hasten to say that I am most certainly not one of those! There are so many people in this country who are consumed by envy. There are even some who say that I bought this villa, would you believe it?’

‘And you did not?’ asked von Igelfeld.

‘Certainly not,’ replied Dolores Quinta Barranquilla. ‘Everything you see about you belonged to my paternal grandfather, Don Alfonso Quinta Barranquilla. I have bought nothing – nothing at all.’

‘The Senora is modest,’ said Cinco Fermentaciones unctuously. ‘Even in her grandfather’s day, the villa was the centre of intellectual life in Colombia. Everybody of any note came out from the capital at weekends and participated in the discussion that took place in this very room. Everybody. And then, more recently, in the days of her father, Neruda began to call when he was in this country. He would spend weeks here. He wrote many poems in this very room.’

‘I am a great admirer of his work,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘His Spanish is very fine.’