“I am not Enrique, lady,” Sard said, “but a traveller in need of a horse.”
“Dios mio,” she said, “and I not combed! I thought you were Enrique. Wait, then.”
He did not have to wait more than a minute; a light appeared at the shutter; a tin basin or pan was kicked into a corner; then the door was opened, the young woman called:
“Will the caballero enter, then?”
“Enter,” Sard thought, “and have my throat cut, perhaps; but I will enter.”
He went in, with a watchful eye lest Miguel, who “erred in mind,” should be lying in wait with a sand-bag just behind the door. However, Miguel was not there, the young woman was alone in the one-roomed house.
She had lighted a little tin lamp, which had a smoke-blackened glass, broken at the top. By the light of this Sard saw the room to be bare and untidy. The bed was an array of small pine boughs, with their needles, covered with sacks, ponchos and old serapes. The young woman had just risen from her nest there; she was “not combed,” as she had said, nor dressed, but hung about, as it were, with a long undergarment torn at the shoulder. She was a plump young woman, just beginning to grow fat: she was very dirty: her long, black hair shone from an unguent; she flung it rakishly back from her brow with the gesture of a great actress. Her eyes were like mules’ eyes, black and shining, with yellow whites. Her mouth was exceedingly good-natured. She stood near the door, clutching her sacking to her shoulder with one hand, while with the other she motioned Sard to enter. She grinned at Sard as a comely woman will grin at one whose praise of her comeliness would be esteemed.
The room, which was next door to the stable, had been lived and slept in for some months with closed door and shutter. It smelt of oil, tortillas, frijoles, horses, rats, mice, espinillo, hair-grease, poverty, garlic, tobacco, joss-stick and musk. A sort of mental image of a life made of all these things, all flavoursome and with a tang to them, reached Sard at once through his nostrils, with the further thought that it was not such a bad life, since it left the person both dignified and kind.
He explained that he needed a horse.
“Ay de mi,” she exclaimed, “but Miguel is with the horses at the siding beside the jetty, a half league hence. Assuredly he will lend a horse, but it is further on, at the quay, that you will find him now.”