THE TERRACE
Behind
him
all the infinite night." And this she said with a great
complacency. "Although Bob didn't have the night behind but
in
front of him," she added.
Arner was surprised and somewhat to blame, he felt, for Mrs.
Strolheim's excitement, with the counterfigure of Bob and the
infinite night. A patient passing by bent over Arner's hand,
which was resting on the edge of the table. She acted as
if
she
were going to
kiss
it, but she merely gazed at it closely and at–
tentively. Then she said: "The veins."
"Don't pay any attention," said Matilda. "It's a game. An
innocent game. I'm thinking about what you said before. I
be–
lieve you're right. Maybe
if
I had had a son things would have
been different. And now I would not be
ill.
But I think Bob
is.
sterile. Flying at great heights makes some pilots sterile, under–
stand? But, do you see the counterfigure of Bob in the picture?
Don't you see it?"
She showed it to him again. Arner wanted to distract her
and started making trivial observations. For example, that in the
land of Cibola there were more painters per square mile than any
place else on earth. Furthermore, there was a desert with a
sphinx. The sphinx was a stone camel to the left of the highway
going north from Santa Fe. A camel made by natural erosion.
The peculiar characteristics of Cibola did not end there, how–
ever. The dogs of the Indians spend day and night burying
bones for the anthropologists of the future-Matilda snickered.
Indians sometimes have three names: one Spanish, another
Indian, and another English, and they carefully conceal
all
three
-she laughed more openly. Strangers their first year in Cibola
learn six Spanish words which they pronounce in French. Fin–
ally the second year they buy a guitar. She laughed outright at
this
and Arner felt gratified. "I'm a skillful man," he reflected,
although modestly.
But Matilda forgot about these pleasantries and was gazing
at the top of the enclosed grating above the balustrade, thinking:
"They've put up that grating to keep me from jumping off head
