bab
RAMON SENDER
"What?"
"Practical things. The names of the hotels and their prices.
The exchange rate of money and the maximum and minimum
temperature."
"How strange in a dead man!"
"That's what husbands usually say, dead or alive."
When they reached Lisbon it was only twelve forty by the
airport clock. Matilda liked what she saw from there and wanted
to
go
into the city, but Bob refused.
"If
we go," he said, "the
dawn will trap you there, the light of day, I mean, and you know
what will happen." But just in case he asked:
"Or have you changed your mind?"
"About suicide? No."
They flew to the Azores, and from there to Bermuda and
St. Louis, and finally Cibola again. Always it was night. There
they were in the city where Matilda believed she had killed her
husband. Flexing his numb legs, Bob declared:
"What do you think of that? We've been flying for twenty–
four hours now without ever seeing daylight."
He started giving instructions for continuing the flight and
said to Matilda:
"We'll continue on to Seattle and from there we'll go to
Japan in a direct flight. I can keep on giving you an elastic
night, an interminable night. But don't you want to rest?"
She said yes and went to the rest room. When she returned
she expressed .a rather unexpected desire. Timidly she said that
she would like to go to her house for a moment, in other words,
to the scene of the crime.
Bob looked for a telephone and called her husband for the
third time. The "dead" man answered immediately. Bob an–
nounced their caIl--of the two of them-and the husband seem–
ed surprised but not displeased. His tone was affable.
When they reached Matilda's house her husband was wear–
ing pajamas and grey bathrobe with a green print and his hair
was tousled. Matilda looked at him, absolutely nonplusses,
and
