PARTISAN REVIEW
81
gave a grid pattern to the town. The lanes, not intended much for
cars, ruled out the chance of driving the Ghia much closer to the
site of the ruined church.
The village was into preparations for the festival. The women
wore black. One turned to look at Django. A comer of her ribosa
was caught in her mouth and she held it there with blank and
total concentration, in which there was some element that assured
and disturbed him.
Sensitive beyond reason, Django felt that somehow
all
these
people knew who they were and what they were there for, and al–
though he was reasonably sure they'd do nothing to impede him,
they wouldn't do much to "help. Rafael wanted to play dominoes.
Django wanted to get to the old church. The game was postponed
on account of priority.
The three of them followed one lane through the village and
beyond. Mter a mile or so, they reached a wooded area that fell
away from the road at a fairly steep grade. From that vantage point,
Rafael pointed to the heaps of volcanic lifelessness in the distance,
grey and black, and he led the way down through the trees.
They walked along a stream, sometimes following a path, some–
times, feeling reckless and elated, bounding from rock to rock like
mountain goats. Django felt good. The rocks and the moss of the
wooded terrain again reminded him of Pennsylvania mountains, but
toward the bottom where the trees thinned out and the land leveled,
the terrain became a bit more formidable, a little less hospitable to
the foot. Django noticed the first traces of volcanic deposit underfoot
some time before Rafael pointed it out to him, and he was some–
where ahead of himself, already accosting the unfriendly landscape
and mounting up to the church even before the ruin was fully visible.
And then he could see where the bells had been.
A little further on and the two remaining walls of the church
were visible. The wall that had contained the entrance to the cathe–
dral to the left, and to the right, the wall that held the altar, the
business end of the church, the sacristy.
The twin sentinels of the ruin, awash with the rosy glow of a
sunset that had set the western sky to burning in a scarlet sort of
hemorrhage, soaked the entire landscape with a reflected color like
the ghosts of geologic horror, reminiscent of the day Pancutin had
