full of a cooing of pigeons and the wide halls had dark rafters painted
with arabesques in vermilion, in a suit of black velvet, writing at a
table under a lemon tree. Down the sun-scarred street, in the cathedral
that was building in those days, full of a smell of scaffolding and
stone dust, there must have stood a tremendous catafalque where lay
with his arms around him the Master of Santiago; in the carved seats of
the choirs the stout canons intoned an endless growling litany; at the
sacristy door, the flare of the candles flashing occasionally on the
jewels of his mitre, the bishop fingered his crosier restlessly, asking
his favorite choir-boy from time to time why Don Jorge had not arrived.
And messengers must have come running to Don Jorge, telling him the
service was on the point of beginning, and he must have waved them away
with a grave gesture of a long white hand, while in his mind the
distant sound of chanting, the jingle of the silver bit of his roan
horse stamping nervously where he was tied to a twined Moorish column,
memories of cavalcades filing with braying of trumpets and flutter of
crimson damask into conquered towns, of court ladies dancing, and the
noise of pigeons in the eaves, drew together like strings plucked in
succession on a guitar into a great wave of rhythm in which his life
was sucked away into this one poem in praise of death.

Nuestras vidas son los rios
Que van a dar en la mar,
Que es el morir....

Telemachus was saying the words over softly to himself as they went
into the theatre. The orchestra was playing a Sevillana; as they found
their seats they caught glimpses beyond people's heads and shoulders of
a huge woman with a comb that pushed the tip of her mantilla a foot and
a half above her head, dancing with ponderous dignity. Her dress was
pink flounced with lace; under it the bulge of breasts and belly and
three chins quaked with every thump of her tiny heels on the stage. As
they sat down she retreated bowing like a full-rigged ship in a squall.
The curtain fell, the theatre became very still; next was Pastora.

Strumming of a guitar, whirring fast, dry like locusts in a hedge on a
summer day. Pauses that catch your blood and freeze it suddenly still
like the rustling of a branch in silent woods at night. A gipsy in a
red sash is playing, slouched into a cheap cane chair, behind him a
faded crimson curtain. Off stage heels beaten on the floor catch up the
rhythm w