This had the desired effect of chilling him. Though he was still young, hardly fifty, the immediacy of death, even when manifested in the person of a chance acquaintance, did inspire a certain gravity.
He mumbled something which I did not catch. I think my hearing has begun to go: not that I am deaf but I have, at times, a monotonous buzzing in my ears which makes conversation difficult, though not impossible. According to the local doctor my arteries have hardened and at any moment one is apt to burst among the convolutions of the brain, drowning my life. But I do not dwell on this, at least not in conversation.
“There’s been a big shake-up in the Atlantic community. Don’t suppose you’d hear much about it around here since from the newspapers I’ve seen in Egypt they have a pretty tight censorship.”
I said I knew nothing about recent activities in the Atlantic community or anywhere else, other than Egypt.
“Well they’ve worked out an alliance with Pan-Arabia which will open the whole area to us. Of course no oil exploitation is allowed but there’ll still be a lot of legitimate business between our sphere and these people.”
I listened to him patiently while he explained the state of the world to me; it seemed unchanged: the only difference was that there were now new and unfamiliar names in high places. He finished with a patriotic harangue about the necessity of the civilized to work in harmony together for the good of mankind: “And this opening up of Egypt has given us the chance we’ve been waiting for for years, and we mean to take it.”
“You mean to extend trade?”
“No, I mean the Word.”
“The Word?” I repeated numbly, the old fear returning.
“Why sure; I’m a Cavite Communicator.” He rapped perfunctorily on the table twice. I tapped feebly with my cane on the tile: in the days of the Spanish persecution such signals were a means of secret communication (not that the persecution had really been so great but it had been our decision to dramatize it in order that our people might become more conscious of their splendid if temporary isolation and high destiny); it had not occurred to me that, triumphant, the Cavites should still cling to those bits of fraternal ritual which I’d conceived with a certain levity in the early days. But of course the love of ritual, of symbol is peculiar to our race and I reflected bleakly on this as I returned the solemn signal which identified us as brother Cavites.