“You like him better than the Bishop, your god-father?”
He lifted his shoulders in a twisted, embarrassed shrug.
“The same!” he said. “I like him the same.”
Then he looked away into the distance, with a certain hauteur and insolence.
“Very different, no?” he said. “But in some ways, the same. He knows better what is Mexico. He knows better what I am. Bishop Severn did not know the real Mexico: how could he, he was a sincere Catholic! But Don Ramón knows the real Mexico, no?”
“And what is the real Mexico?” she asked.
“Well—you must ask Don Ramón. I can’t explain.”
She asked Cipriano about going to the lake.
“Yes!” he said. “You can go! You will like it. Go first to Orilla, no?—you take a ticket on the railway to Ixtlahuacan. And in Orilla is an hotel with a German manager. Then from Orilla you can go in a motor-boat, in a few hours, to Sayula. And there you will find a house to live in.”
He wanted her to do this, she could tell.