BRADSHAW'S TOMBSTONE
337
From his grilled hatchment, the fat patron looked at the scene
with interest and satisfaction. Sooner or later, he had always known,
the gringo would come on the wrong side of Don Jesus-Maria.
Bradshaw had paid his bill (it had hardly been double the usual
rates) so that the patron could look with the proper detachment at
the pleasurable scene; in his experience it was not wise to come on
the wrong side of Don Jesus-Maria, that
trampa raja,
that red ele–
phant nose.
He saw the gringo put the papers in his bag, and, clutched on
the arm by Don Jesus-Maria walk out across the square.
Bradshaw would have liked to have spent his last hour or so in
San Rafael looking about with the fresh eye of someone who knows
he is leaving a place for perhaps the last time.
"There must be some misunderstanding," he kept saying, as he
and Senor Orquienz turned into the broad
calle
where on that first
fateful morning he had seen the curious little drama of the mad
woman and the tormenting children which had so impressed him and
which he had made the basis for his parable of San Rafael.
There, beneath the arched
puerta,
the mad woman had taken
her place. The children too. Here, in San Rafael, where nothing
worked by time or schedule, this alone-this evil little drama-was as
regular as the bus itself was not regular.
"Permit me to tell you what are the facts of the matter," said
Senor Orquienz. "So you will not print a lot of bunk. Every morning
my sister is going to church. Yes, this is my house and that is my
sister."
As
Bradshaw digested this disconcerting intelligence, he ob–
served that the children seemed even more wary of the man than of
the woman. They backed away in a circle as from a dog of uncertain
temper. Orquienz scattered a handful of
centavos;
they picked it up
with wary familiarity, like city pigeons.
"Chicken feed," said Senor Orquienz. "But I am saying my
sister comes every day from the church. At the church she prays that
I will repent of my sins, and that I will be punished for them. She
prays God" (and here Senor Orquienz made a grimace of disgust
as if some unpleasant thing were in his mouth) "will punish me. Of
course he is doing nothing of the sort. Is too busy--over there," said
