On the edge of the shadow lay Ignacio, the violinist, wrapped in a tattered serape, sleeping off a drunk. He can play one tune when intoxicated—Tosti's "Good-Bye." When very drunk he also remembers fragments of Mendelssohn's "Spring Song." In fact, he is the only high-brow musician in the whole State of Durango, and possesses a just celebrity. Ignacio used to be brilliant and industrious—his sons and daughters are innumerable—but the artistic temperament was too much for him.
The color of the street was red—deep, rich, red clay—and the open space where the burros stood, olive drab; there were brown crumbling adobe walls and squat houses, their roofs heaped high with yellow cornstalks or hung with strings of red peppers. A gigantic green mesquite tree, with roots like a chicken's foot, thatched on every branch with dried hay and corn. Below, the town fell steeply down the arroyo, roofs tumbled together like blocks, with flowers and grass growing on them, blue feathers of smoke waving from the chimneys, and occasional palms sticking up between. They fell away to the yellow plain where the horse-races are run, and beyond that the barren mountains crouched, tawny as lions, then faintly blue, then purple and wrinkled, notched and jagged across the fierce, bright sky. Straight down and away through the arroyo one saw a great valley, like an elephant's hide, where the heat-waves buck-jumped.
A lazy smoke of human noises floated up: roosters crowing, pigs grunting, burros giving great racking sobs, the rustling crackle of dried corn-stalks being shaken out of the mesquite tree, a woman singing as she mashed her corn on the stones, the wailing of a myriad of babies.
The sun fairly blistered. My friend Atanacio sat upon the sidewalk thinking of nothing. His dirty feet were bare except for sandals, his mighty sombrero was of a faded dull brick color embroidered with tarnished gold braid, and his serape was of the pottery blue one sees in Chinese rugs, and decorated with yellow suns. He rose when he saw me. We removed our hats and embraced after the Mexican fashion, patting each other on the back with one hand while we shook the other.
"Buenos tardes, amigo," he murmured. "How do you seat yourself?"
"Very well, much thanks. And you? How have they treated you?"
"Delicious. Superlative thanks. I have longed to see you again."
"And your family? How are they?" (It is considered more delicate in Mexico not to ask about one's wife, because so few people are married.)
"Their health is of the best. Great, great thanks. And your family?"
"Bien, bien! I saw your son with the army at Jimenez. He gave me many, many remembrances of you. Would you desire a cigarette?"