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anywhere else there in Holy Week. At any rate the four Russians were coming, and the chief Balearic mining engineer and the municipal vet had been thrown in for good measure, and between now and half-past two, which was lunch time, Mother Trudi was going to work like a runaway self-propelled two-speed gear lawn mower, between breaks. Such as visiting Gallery 7 with Janey, for instance.
    We left Anne-Marie flowing about with the vacuum, but upstairs all the blinds were still drawn. Janey doesn’t like getting up early. I didn’t know what Gil’s habits were. I spread myself over two seats beside Helmuth and prepared to enjoy the calm predawn country run into Ibiza. It was cool in the garden, and a cock was crowing somewhere beside Santa Eulalia, to the right. There was a pink band along the horizon, over the sea, but the tall, concrete hotels beside the village were all dark, and the whitewashed church-fort on its hill. We turned our backs on a sky filled with chalky blue clouds with a sort of peach-colored glitter between. After a bit the sun burst through and shadows sprang out on the road in front of the Rover and were promptly mown down by the traffic.
    Seven a.m. is rush hour in rural Ibiza. Between the unwalled fir woods and orchards, the scrub, the small farms, the walled crops, and the bony sheep, the goats, the fat hens, the occasional chained cow, and all the busy, undulating fields that spread in the distance to the low, bald, furzy hills—the greater part of the island seemed to be shifting on wheels toward us. They came in Seats and Simcas and whopping great lorries, on push-bikes and every kind of motorized cycle ever produced outside of acetate locknit: Vespas, Mobylettes, Lambrettas, and old vibrating models with old vibrating workmen in black berets, their lunch in a strapped-on reed basket. Once a real motorbike came by with a crouching rider in fur-collared leathers and goggles and big fur-lined gloves, his mouth and chin concealed by a scarf, making straight for Toad Hall. Then we passed the famous wood with the ditch and joined the Portinaitx junction where I had felt Austin take the bend yesterday, and from then on the traffic was going more with us, to Ibiza.
    I got to know that road far too well. But I never saw it again as busy as I did on market mornings, black-shawled arm, the top two or three skirts with the tile factory steaming and chaps loading gray honeycomb bricks onto a lorry like mice in a Mack Sennett comedy. The cement factory past the San Miguel junction was going a bomb. The Gasolina was open. Even in fields deserted to little round olives and carob trees, or among the orange and fig trees and pink-and-white blossoms, old Spanish grannies in straw hats and pigtails were whizzing to and fro, the bundle of reeds or whatever under one kilted. I taught Helmuth to sing “One Man Went to Mow” in English, and we bowled along in the Rover a bit over the stipulated 80 km’s, bawling it out until we got to the long, straight avenue of trees just before Ibiza.
    In front of us were two mule carts just negotiating the sharp, right-hand bend, where the Talamanca path joins the main road in a huddle of buildings. Between the upright lath sides of each cart, a woven mat had been slung, like a dipped carpet, and each mat held a bouquet of round, green, dewy lettuces. They nodded before us, and the sweep of the harbor lay blue behind them, and the high town of Ibiza lay behind that, not like a bride’s cake this morning, but a hazy stockpile of windows, with old yellow buildings on top and some trimming, like a club sandwich, of green. Somewhere up there was Gallery 7.
    The clock on the Cathedral tower said 7:15 A.M., and the seagulls on the quay were warbling seagull flamenco. I sighed and got out Anne-Marie’s list and a purseful of paper money like bits of old blanket, while Helmuth trundled behind the lettuces round the bay past the yacht marina and into the sort of thicket of shops and