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enter with martial tread mi general expert he says in affairs of honor un militar coño vamos may he try

to conciliate the parties

al to the fumoir where already four champagnebot-tles are ranked cozily iced in their whitemetal pails coño, sandwiches are served mi general clears up the

-241-misunderstanding something about los negros and las cubanas overheard in the cabin of the bucks from Bilbao by listening vamos down the ventilator many things were that better were unsaid but in any case honor insulated by the ventilator was intact gingerly the champions take each others hands coño palmas som-breros música mi general is awarded the ear in the steerage the gal egos sing and strum el rubio at the bar confides to me that it was from la bel a of the pink jabbing finger and the dainty ear at ventilators that he with the diamond ring received the and that he himself has fears coño una puta in-decente arrival in Havana an opulentlydressed husband in a panamahat receives la bel a the young bucks from

Bilbao go to the Sevil a-Biltmore and I

dance of the mil ions or not lackofmoney has raised its customary head inevitable as visas

in the whirl of sugarboom prices in the Augustblister-ing sun yours truly tours the town and the sugary nights with twenty smackers fifteen eightfifty dwindling in the jeans in search of lucrative

and how to get to Mexico

or anywhere

-242-MARGO DOWLING

Margo Dowling was sixteen when she married Tony.

She loved the trip down to Havana on the boat. It was very rough but she wasn't sick a minute; Tony was. He turned very yel ow and lay in his bunk al the time and only groaned when she tried to make him come on deck to breathe some air. The island was in sight before she could get him into his clothes. He was so weak she had to dress him like a baby. He lay on his bunk with his eyes closed and his cheeks hol ow while she buttoned his shoes for him. Then she ran up on deck to see Havana, Cuba. The sea was stil rough. The waves were shooting columns of spray up the great rocks under the lighthouse. The young thinfaced third officer who'd been so nice al the trip showed her Morro Castle back of the lighthouse and the little fishingboats with tiny black or brown figures in them swinging up and down on the huge swel s outside of it. The other side the pale caramelcolored houses looked as if they were standing up right out of the breakers. She asked him where Vedado was and he pointed up beyond into the haze above the surf. "That's the fine residential section," he said. It was very sunny and the sky was ful of big white clouds.

By that time they were in the calm water of the harbor passing a row of big schooners anchored against the steep hil under the sunny forts and castles, and she had to go down into the bilgy closeness of their cabin to get Tony up and close their bags. He was stil weak and kept saying his head was spinning. She had to help him down the gangplank. The ramshackle dock was ful of beadyeyed people in white and tan clothes bustling and jabbering. They al seemed to have come to meet Tony. There were old ladies in'shawls and pimplylooking young men in straw hats and

-243-an old gentleman with big bushy white whiskers wearing a panamahat. Children with dark circles under their eyes got under everybody's feet. Everybody was yel ow or cof-feecolored and had black eyes, and there was one grey-haired old niggerwoman in a pink dress. Everybody cried and threw up their arms and hugged and kissed Tony and it was a long time before anybody noticed Margo at al . Then al the old women crowded around kissing her and staring at her and making exclamations in Spanish about her hair and her eyes and she felt awful sil y not under-standing a word and kept asking Tony which his mother was, but Tony had forgotten his English. When he final y pointed to a stout old lady in a shawl and said la mamá

she was very much relieved it wasn't the colored one. If this is the fine residential section, Margo said to her-self