“Señor Caballero,” he croaked, “I pray you to consider this house your own. My servants are yours.”
Within was a gravel yard, shut in by portentous lead-white house-sides with black window holes. Under each row of windows was a vast vaulted tunnel, caged with iron bars, for all the world like beasts’ dens. It being day, the beasts were out and lounging about the patio. They had an effect of infinite tranquillity, as if they were ladies and gentlemen parading in a Sunday avenue. Perhaps twenty of them, in snowy white shirts and black velvet knee-breeches, strutted like pigeons in a knot, some with one woman on the arm, some with two. Bundles of variegated rags lay against the walls, as if they were sweepings. Well, they were the sweepings of Havana jail. The men in white and black were the great thieves … and there were children, too—the place was the city orphanage. For the fifth part of a second my advent made no difference. Then, at the far end, one of the men in black and white separated himself, and came swiftly to me across the sunny patio. The others followed slowly, with peafowl steps, their women hanging to them and whispering. The bundles of rags rose up towards me; others slunk furtively out of the barred dens. The man who was approaching had the head of a Julius Caesar of fifty, for all the world as if he had stolen a bust and endowed it with yellow skin and stubby gray and silver hair. He saluted me with intense gravity and an imperial glance of yellow eyes along a hooked nose. His linen was the most spotless broidered and embossed stuff; from the crimson scarf round his waist protruded the shagreen and silver handle of a long dagger. He said:
“Señor, I have the honour to salute you. I am Crisostomo Garcia. I ask the courtesy of your trousers.”
I did not answer him. I did not see what he wanted with my trousers, which weren’t anyway as valuable as his own. The others were closing in on me like a solid wall. I leant back against the gate; I was not frightened, but I was mightily excited. The man like Caesar looked fiercely at me, swayed a long way back on his haunches, and imperiously motioned the crowd to recede.
“Señor Inglesito,” he said, “the gift I have the honour to ask of you is the price of my protection. Without it these, my brothers, will tear you limb from limb, there will nothing of you remain.”
His brothers set up a stealthy, sinister growl, that went round among the heads like the mutter of an obscene echo among the mountaintops. I wondered whether this, perhaps, was the man who, O’Brien said, would put a knife in my back. I hadn’t any knife; I might knock the fellow’s teeth down his throat, though.
The alcayde thrust his immense hat, bloodred face, and long, ragged, silver locks out of the little door. His features were convulsed with indignation. He had been whispering with the Civil Guard.
“Are you mad, gentlemen?” he said. “Do you wish to visit hell before your times? Do you know who the señor is? Did you ever hear of Carlos el Demonio? This is the Inglesito of Rio Medio!”
It was plain that my deeds, such as they were, reported by O’Brien spies, by the Lugareños, by all sorts of credulous gossipers, had got me the devil of a reputation in the patio of the jail. Men detached themselves from the crowd, and went running about to announce my arrival. The alcayde drew his long body into the patio, and turned to lock the little door with an immense key. In the crowd all sorts of little movements happened. Women crossed themselves, and furtively thrust pairs of crooked, skinny, brown, black-nailed fingers in my direction. The man like Caesar said:
“I ask your pardon, Señor Caballero. I did not know. How could I tell? You are free of all the patios in this land.”
The tall alcayde finished grinding the immense key in the lock, and touched me on the arm.
“If the señor will follow me,” he said. “I will do the honours of this humble mansion, and indicate a choice of rooms where he may be free from the visits of these gentry.”
We went up steps, and through long, shadowy corridors, with here and there a dark, lounging figure, like a stag seen in the dim aisles of a wood. The alcayde threw open a door.
The room was like a blazing oblong-box, filled with light, but without window or chimney. Two men were fencing in the illumination of some twenty candles stuck all round the mildewed white walls on lumps of clay. There was a blaze of silver things, like an altar of a wealthy church, from a black, carved table in the far corner. The two men, in shirts and breeches, revolved round each other, their rapiers clinking, their left arms scarved, holding buttoned daggers. The alcayde proclaimed:
“Don Vincente Salazar, I have the honour to announce an English señor.”
The man with his face to me tossed his rapier impatiently into a corner. He was a plump, dark Cuban, with a brooding truculence. The other faced round quickly. His cheeks shone in the candlelight like polished yellow leather, his eyes were narrow slits, his face lugubrious. He scrutinized me intently, then drawled:
“My! You? … Hang me if I didn’t think it would be you!”
He
