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“Not that I know of.”

“Ay, que lío!”

“Sir?”

In the curtained alcove, suddenly cold, I crawled into bed with the telephone. I said, “It’s a Spanish expression like malentendu or snafu or screwed again. Excuse the emphasis. I am under stress.”

“Perhaps you would be so kind as to explain this in a letter,” said Mr. Stewart. “Are you at work on a book? We’d be interested, you know.”

“Nothing,” I said.

“But if you should get started ...”

“I’ll write you a letter,” I said.

I was paying for this call.

Now very stormy, I asked the operator to try Renata again. I’ll tell that bitch a thing or two, I thought. But when I got through, Milan said that she had gone and left no address. By the time I got to the Retiro, intending to express myself, there was nothing to express. I took a meditative walk. I reached the same conclusions I had reached in Judge Urbanovich’s chambers. What good would it do me to tell Renata off? Fierce and exquisite speeches, perfect in logic, mature in judgment, deep in wise rage, heavenly in poetry, were all right for Shakespeare but they wouldn’t do a damn bit of good for me. The desire for emission still existed but reception was lacking for my passionate speech. Renata didn’t want to hear it, she had other things on her mind. Well, at least she trusted me with Rogelio and in her own good time she’d send for him. By brushing me off like this she had probably done me a service. At least she would see it in that way. I should have married her long ago. I was a man of little faith, my hesitancy was insulting, and it was quite right that I should be left to mind her kid. Furthermore, I suppose the ladies figured that Rogelio would tie me down and prevent pursuit. Not that I had any intention of pursuing. By now I couldn’t even afford it. For one thing, the bill at the Ritz was enormous. The Señora had made many telephone calls to Chicago to keep in touch with a certain young man whose business was to repair television sets, her present affaire de coeur. Moreover, Christmas in Madrid, counting Roger’s illness and his presents, gourmet dining, and Renata’s cloak, had reduced my assets by nearly a third. For many years, since the success of Von Trench, or about the time of Demmie Vonghel’s death, I had spent freely, lived it up, but now I must go back to the old rooming-house standard. To stay at the Ritz I would have to hire a governess. It was impossible anyway. I was going broke. My best alternative was to move into a pensión.

I had to account somehow for this child. If I described myself as his uncle it would raise suspicions. If I called myself his grandfather, I would have to behave like a grandfather. To be a widower was best. Rogelio called me Charlie, but in American children this was normal. Besides, the boy was in a sense an orphan, and I was without exaggeration bereaved. I went out and bought myself mourner’s handkerchiefs and some very fine black silk neckties and a little black suit for Rogelio. I gave the American Embassy an extremely plausible account of a lost passport. It luckily happened that the young man who took care of such matters knew my books on Woodrow Wilson and on Harry Hopkins. A history major from Cornell, he had heard me once when I gave a paper at a meeting of the American Historical Association. I told him my wife had died of leukemia and that my wallet had been stolen on a bus here in Madrid. The young fellow told me that this town had always been notorious for its pickpockets. “Priests’ pockets are picked under the soutane. They really are slick here. Many Spaniards boast that Madrid is a world center for this picking of pockets. To change the subject— maybe you’d lecture for the USIA.”

“I’m too depressed,” I said. “Besides, I’m here to do research. I’m preparing a book on the Spanish-American War.”

“We’ve had leukemia cases in my family,” he said. “These lingering deaths leave you wrung out.”

At the Pensión La Roca I told the landlady that Roger’s mother had been killed by a truck when she