The Salvation of Pisco Gabar and Other Stories by Geoffrey Household Read Free Book Online Page A

World?”
    â€œFernando Sebastian de la Fuente,” answered Don Macario surprisingly, “Quartermaster of the Santa Maria .”
    â€œI have always heard so,” Ramon lied politely.
    â€œIt is a tradition in the family that he was the first to touch land,” said Don Macario. “Come with me. I will show you his picture.”
    We started up.
    â€œAh, I forgot! My housekeeper has gone out, and I have no key.”
    He looked diligently in his waistcoat pockets.
    â€œNever mind. It will be for another day. What a pity! For I wished to offer you a glass of wine. But let us go to the taberna. You do not mind?”
    â€œNot I,” I said. “They have a splendid red wine of Toledo….”
    It was good, that wine; but I suggested it because it cost rather less than a penny a glass. I knew at that first meeting that Don Macario was not rich. Later, I saw that he was so poor that if he had enough in his pocket to pay for his one amusement, he had no other use for money. He owned no land beyond his garden, and no livestock except the fowls and pigeons that happily laid and bred with very little human intervention, and provided him and his housekeeper with all the solid food they ever ate. For the rest, there were the vegetables of the garden. They bought little but the oil for cooking. His income was perhaps four hundred Spanish dollars a year, and it sufficed.
    He was a tall, spare man in the late fifties; clean-shaven, ever dressed in the same suit of some unwearing English tweed. It had been cut by a country tailor at least thirty years before, and buttoned nearly up to the neck. The trousers were always creased as neatly as the thick stuff would permit. Ramon told me that Don Macario performed two duties every night. He said his prayers and he put the trousers under the mattress. Which he did first I do not know.
    We led our horses down the street to the tavern, Don Macario walking between us. My mare nuzzled his shoulder, and he reached up and stroked her nose with delicate fingers.
    â€œIt is long since I rode a horse,” he said.
    â€œTake her out to-morrow,” I answered. “She needs more exercise than I can give her.”
    He looked afraid. Eager, but afraid, as one face to face with a spiritual temptation.
    â€œNo! No! It might not be—good for me.”
    â€œShe is very quiet,” I said.
    â€œI must not!” he cried with fierce emphasis.
    We hitched our horses to the rings set in the tavern wall, and went in.
    â€œDon Macario!” cried the innkeeper. “ Buenas tardes, Don Macario. Good evening, caballeros! What will you take?”
    â€œFour chiquitos, ” said Don Macario.
    â€œFour?”
    â€œYou will not join us?”
    â€œIt is not my custom,” said the innkeeper. “One has to be careful, you understand. But since it is you, Don Macario, who invite me—”
    He poured four little glasses from the pigskin behind the bar. We drank them. Then he poured four more.
    â€œOn the house—if you will so honor me!” he said.
    We sat talking for a while. Cattle … horses … the mayor … the government … what does one talk of in a country inn?
    â€œWhat is the new program at the cinema?” asked Don Macario.
    The innkeeper took a long paper cylinder from behind the bar, pinned the two top corners to the wall, and began to unroll it downwards. Don Macario watched him eagerly, uttering little exclamations of pleasure as foot by foot the cinema poster revealed its immodest beauties. The innkeeper bent down to fix the bottom, and then stood back to regard his handiwork.
    â€œ Que cosa! What a thing!” he exclaimed with mingled admiration and ridicule.
    It was a thing. A fellow with a tremendous jaw, who earned his living in quieter times by herding cows, was galloping on a yellow horse down the centre of a railway track. He had a gun in his right hand with which he was blazing away at an