He peeped through the crack of the door, then slipped out, suddenly falling at once on his hands and knees, so as to be hidden by the stone balustrade from anybody in the patio. He, too, did not think himself safe.
Early in the evening I descended into the court, and Father Antonio, walking up and down the patio with his eyes on his breviary, muttered to me:
“Sit on this chair,” and went on without stopping.
I took a chair near the marble rim of the basin with its border of English flowers, its splashing thread of water. The goldfishes that had been lying motionless, with their heads pointing different ways, glided into a bunch to the fall of my shadow, waiting for crumbs of bread.
Father Antonio, his head down, and the open breviary under his nose, brushed my foot with the skirt of his cassock.
“Have you any plan?”
When he came back, walking very slowly, I said, “None.”
At this next turn I pronounced rapidly, “I should like to see Carlos.”
He frowned over the edge of the book. I understood that he refused to let me in. And, after all, why should I disturb that dying man? The news about him was that he felt stronger that day. But he was preparing for eternity. Father Antonio’s business was to save souls. I felt horribly crushed and alone. The priest asked, hardly moving his lips: “What do you trust to?”
I had the time to meditate my reply. “Tell Carlos I think of escape by sea.”