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money. I wouldn’t have to live like this.” She laughed again. “Don’t you think his family would adore me? After all, how could they know?”
    Chaim ordered Toni a cognac and waited silently until she had drunk it.
    “Do you want to have an abortion?”
    “Yes.”
    “What about the father?”
    “He is far away,” she said. “He … no, he isn’t. But I don’t want to have his child.”
    “Does he want it?”
    “No.”
    The new quartet –
orgastic
trumpet, wailing saxophone, despairing piano, and neurotic drums – made an attempt at jazz. They had the beat wrong though, and it sounded quite forced.
    “Tell André. He would want to know.” Yes, I’m drunk, he thought. Now, I’m really drunk. “Tell André,” he said.
    Toni lit a cigarette. “What about the girl. Didn’t she die of an abortion?”
    Chaim shrugged his shoulders inscrutably.
    “You won’t tell me about it?”
    “If he wants to he’ll tell you.”
    The quartet was enthusiastically applauded. They had played an American song, and everybody applauded. Even the florid waiter stopped, and applauded. He thought: I have got a cousin in America. Roosevelt was an American, and he was a great man. The drunken Frenchman in the dinner jacket applauded. He thought: In America everybody is rich. Chaim didn’t applaud because he knew the song, and the words, and it was badly played. Chaim said to himself:
    Con-ju-ra-tion

Is in his socks and shoes;

Tomorrow he will have those

Mean Sundown Blues!
    Toni got a handkerchief out of her bag and began to dab at her eyes. “You think I’m weak,
sinverguenza
. You think it has been dishonest of me not to have told him long ago,” she said. “I never thought I’d meet a man like him. I’d do anything for him, Chaim. Only he mustn’t think badly of me.”
    “You tell him about it,
chica
. If you decide to have an abortion I’ll arrange it.”
    “Do you remember, Chaim? The first time I spoke to him it was here and he was drunk. He had been drinking for a week and I took him home. It was about four in the morning, and a lovely child was dancing in the street for small change. There must have been about five or six people watching her and André began to fight them. I couldn’t stop him! He wanted to take her home with him, the fool! But the child was scared and she ran away.”
    Chaim motioned for Luís to bring Toni another cognac.
    “Don’t
chica
. Everything will be all right.”
    “I never told you what happened when I got him back to the hotel. His room,
madre mía!
The bed had been moved into the centre of the room and it was surrounded by a pile of books, suitcases, canvases, and bottles, built up as a dam. He said it was to protect him from the rats.”
    “Tiere maidele
, he is neither a child nor a boor. You did more than anyone else to make him well.”
    Toni took a sip of cognac and coughed.
    The spotlight was turned off. The bright lights went on again.
    “Look,” Toni said, “they are going to dance again.”
    “Yes, they are going to dance again.”
    “Do you think he’ll want me to have the child?”
    “Yes.”
    “It would always be between us.”
    “Not necessarily.”
    “I’m so afraid,” she said.
    Chaim stood up and kissed her on the forehead. “We’ll have supper together tomorrow night,
chica
. Just you and me. The hell with André.”
    Toni embraced him. She felt relaxed and warm in his arms. She kissed him on the cheeks.
    “Chaim, I’m afraid.”
    “Tell me,” Chaim said, “just between the boys. Did you try hot gin?”
    Toni laughed.
    “Oh, yes, he’s waiting for you at Ruzafa’s. He was in earlier but he left again. He wanted to see the dancing.”
VII
    They began to assemble sober and even shy on the corners and plazas and alleyways shortly after midnight. Wooden bandstands had been erected on the street corners, and for a long time the jerky music of
pasodobles
swelled in the slums. Old men who had been searching the gutters for butts,