"Hmm ... one should never go to funerals; I tell all my friends that. See, look, here I have it. Here's your bullet! Rifle bullet. Quite a chunk. I thought so. No wonder it went in deep." Jesús juggled the bullet in his palm and poked it with the point of the poniard, one eye shut. He was a connoisseur of bullets. Crimes of every sort interested him. Grumbling about powder and various calibers, he worked over Raul, stopped the bleeding and bandaged the shoulder.
Gradually, Raul sensed relief. Shifting in his chair he inspected the servants who had been watching. Lucienne ordered Marta to clean up, and the bloody towels and bowl disappeared. Peza, still grumbling, went outside for a cigarette. For the moment, the cool, long room, with its gray shuttered windows, belonged to Raul and Lucienne. She helped him to her sofa, backed him with pillows and opened windows. A glass between her fingers, she sipped and talked. The sea rolled its watery sound. Raul let his eyes close, and tried to imagine he had no branding iron of pain.
"... Two men died at the mill, when beams dropped and part of the mill fell on them. You remember Ortiz and Gonzales?"
She was dressed in dark gray, a flowing pleated skirt with a pleated jacket.
"... The men are lying in the chapel....
"... Jesús is going back to Colima right away. He's worried."
He tried to say he was worried about Petaca but he couldn't manage a word.
"Some of the chapel walls have cracked," she said, still standing by him.
Voices outside the house rose: a man shouted and boys began an altercation; a dog started barking.
Lucienne sat on the sofa, touched his face, his hands. For a second, she felt he was hers and the illusion pleased her; the day's trials dropped away and left her thinking of another day, on the beach. Tide low, they had walked to a cove where red-barked trees shaded the sand. Some baby manta rays had been washed onto the beach; seagulls flew low ... Raul had said....