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remark; did the priest not mean, “Do you think
He
knows the difference?” How false and cynical, if true—did it betray a papist lack of faith in their own dogma? He should not have talked to the priest at all. Just at that moment he broke loose—or rather, the padre threw his hand away, casting it up into the air as if setting free a dove.

3

    W OLFIE WORE HABITUALLY , EVEN AT NIGHT , A BLACK BERET , OUTSIZED dark glasses, the green fatigues of one or more foreign armies, and a gold earring in his left ear. He had been talking loudly when he lost his footing in the slime and fell, and because he was drunk he continued talking in mid-air and while still on his hands and knees, as if nothing were amiss. He was still speaking as he rose. He was a broad squat powerful man, with big loose hands and a big shaggy head, a chest like a nail keg, and small feet, and he was tightly sprung; one had the impression that Wolfie, fitted out with rubber soles, could bound five feet straight up into the air from a standing position.
    “How come he wants to see us!” Wolfie shouted; they had been summoned by a soldier to an audience with El Comandante. “There ain’t enough bread to pay this Guzmán, anyway!” When Moon did not answer, Wolfie said, “Look, we got thirty-four pesos and we was into him for more than that ten days ago. And I ain’t goin to no calabozo, never again, not in this town and not on this whole lousy continent. I’m very particular about the pens I go to.” He stopped short in the street. “Remember down in Paraguay? Like, that food, man. Are you kiddin? That’s
food?
And also those are very unhygienic conditions, not to mention stink. It stinks in there worse than it stinks out here.” He drew in a violent breath of the sweet jungle night. “Phoo!” he said. “This jungle! How can you stand it—you depraved or what? I mean, this is where God
farted
.”
    “It smells to me like the night was full of flowers.”
    “Oh man,” Wolfie said. “Flowers. Flowers, he says. Oh man.” He walked on a little way. “Lissen. I am very serious,” he resumed. “I don’t dig this jungle scene. I wanna split, and we ain’t got bread enough to gas up the lousy aircraft. I am being very serious with you. If there ain’t a solution around here pretty fast, we’re screwed.”
    “That’s right.”
    “And when you showed him them river diamonds, he told you they looked phony.”
    “All diamonds are white, says the Comandante.”
    “I tell you what I think. I think this Guzmán, he’s gonna hang in there a little more and then he’s gonna grab the aircraft.”
    “That’s what I think too.”
    “Well, we ain’t gonna take the screwin lyin down.”
    “We’ll have to take it standing up then.”
    “Yeah, yeah, so all right. So I’m gonna send a letter to the American ambassador and sign it ‘An Outraged Citizen.’ What do you say to that?” Wolfie shadowboxed, punching and snorting in the open street, but almost immediately gave it up. “Okay, never mind, don’t talk to me, I forgot Cuba. So we lost our citizenship—that was my fault?” He shook his head and sighed, then laughed. “Old Wolfie,” he said, “the Wandering Jew. Only why in Christ did we wander into this place for—it wasn’t funky enough in all them other jungles? Why don’t we ever wander along the Riviera, maybe?
La dol-ce vita
, right, Lewis?” He sighed mightily, enjoying himself. “And just to think, only twenty years ago I was Fat Morty, the best kid on the block. I took my bar mizvah and I never ate goy dreck, and I was goin to be, like, a Talmudic
scholar
. And now I’m the Man without a Country. There ain’t no justice, right, Lewis?” He grinned. “I got an idea, Lewis. If we go to the calabozo, we might as well go there flat, because they’ll grab the thirty-four anyway. So first we’re gonna go back to La Concepción, Lewis, and have a little drunk for ourselves, all right, Lewis?… I said, all