ors of their
shops, and the idlers, gathered on the narrow square before the
Commercial Exchange, glanced at him with those affable looks that greet
a stranger in a small city where nobody keeps his secret.

He walked along in the middle of the street, avoiding the light,
canvas-topped carriages. The tobacco stores flaunted many-colored signs
with designs that served as the trade-mark of their products. In the
show windows the packages of tobacco were heaped up like so many bricks,
and monstrous unsmokable cigars, wrapped in tinfoil as if they were
sausages, glitteringly displayed their absurd size; through the doors of
the Hebrew shops, free of any decoration, could be seen the shelves
laden with rolls of silk and velvet, or the rich silk laces hanging from
the ceiling. The Hindu bazaars overflowed into the street with their
exotic, polychrome rarities: clothes embroidered with terror-inspiring
divinities and chimerical animals; carpets in which the lotus-flower was
adapted to the strangest designs; kimonos of delicate, indefinable
tints; porcelain jars with monsters that belched fire; amber-colored
shawls, as delicate as woven sighs; and in the small windows that had
been converted into display cases, all the trinkets of the extreme
Orient, in silver, ivory or ebony; black elephants with white tusks,
heavy-paunched Buddhas, filigree jewels, mysterious amulets, daggers
engraved from hilt to point. Alternating with these establishments of a
free port that lives upon contraband, there were confectioneries owned
by Jews, cafes and more cafes, some of the Spanish type with round,
marble-topped tables, the clicking of dominoes, smoke-laden atmosphere
and high-pitched discussions accompanied by vehement gestures; others
resembling more the English bar, crowded with motionless, silent
customers, swallowing one cocktail after another, without any other sign
of emotion than a growing redness of the nose.

Through the center of the street there passed by, like a masquerade, the
variety of types and costumes that had surprised Aguirre as a spectacle
distinct from that furnished by other European cities. There were
Moroccans, some with a broad, hooded cape, white or black, the cowl
lowered as if they were friars; others wearing balloon trousers, their
calves exposed to the air and with no other protection for the feet than
their loose, yellow slippers; their heads covered by the folds of their
turbans. They were Moors from Tangie