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pickpockets, beggar children, plump mothers nursing bawling babes in their arms, pimps, ragged soldiers far away from home, aged cripples and the blind sellers of lottery tickets, unemployed workers and young girls – all the discarded junk and wonderful humanity of the slums joined hands for the dancing. Drunks tumbled out of
bodegas
to join in or at least harangue the womenfolk. The noise was tremendous, booming, wonderful, and crazy. Empty bottles crashed to the pavement, wineskins were flung up into the air. The shouting of one band soon got mixed up with another and nobody knew what kind of dance was being played. As long as there was noise, and shouting, and laughter.
    Finally the whores showed themselves as well – dressed in sheer black gowns or form-fitting sweaters or slit skirts, drinking and joking and belching, just to show the wives how much they gave a damn. The gypsy boys appeared, cheap guitars slung over their shoulders, and they sat down on the kerb to play
a flamenco
or
a jota
.
    “It is very colourful,” Mrs. Ira Birks – visiting dignitary from the United States, wife of a Harvard Law School graduate, applecheeked, native of Little Oak, Conn., aged fifty-three, sexually incompatible with Mr. Birks, antivivisectionist, Vassar, class of ’22, member – D.A.R., S.P.C.A., wrote poetry from 1920 to 1924 and still does the occasional watercolour, virginity lost in the back seat of a ’19 Ford, favourite poet, John Keats – said, turning to Cardinal Megura y Paenz, Archbishop of Valencia. “I simply adore your fiesta! If only I weren’t obliged to attend the bull-fights.…”
    The Ambassador laughed heartily
.
    The Archbishop smiled his thin and malodorous smile
.
    “
Mrs. Birks is only joking,” the Ambassador said
.
    They stood by one of the huge windows in the Exchange Building overlooking the Plaza del Mercado. The ball they were attending was in honour of the
Fallera Mayor,
and the twenty-five piece orchestra was playing the Merry Widow waltz
.
    Red-eyed drunk now, mad with the
flamenco
wail, the whores began to dance. Bleached blondes, jerking, twisting their bodies angrily; blackhaired bitches lifting their arms overhead and clapping desperately; old sluts shaking themselves into a frenzy and stamping their feet down on the pavement; giggling novices scream-singing until they soaked themselves in sweat. All for the dance, all for the song, all for the music.
    Moaning guitarists, their hands ripping up and down the twanging strings and beating on the hard wood of their instruments, made with their magic joy or sorrow of the maddening mob.
    Ai-aiii-ai-aii
,
Oooh aii yooii
,
En cárcel
,
En cárcel
.
    “It is a good thing there is a strong hand over them,” General Mellado – veteran of the Blue Division, son of a parish priest, first officer into Guernica – said. “Otherwise … No, I won’t talk politics in the presence of such a beautiful and distinguished lady.”
    “Oh, but I adore politics, don’t I, Henry?”
    The Ambassador laughed heartily
.
    Sweaty hands clapping, swelling hands clapping. Voices upgoing, high, high. Soul music reeling on, on, on, tumbling, jerking, screaming:
    Fuego! Fuego! Fuego!

Como huele a chamusquina!

Fuego! Fuego! Fuego!

Ay que no, que son sardina!
    Bodies rattling with spiritpain, cavorting on the alive street. (A man grabs a woman and retreats into the shadows.) Eyes cravefilling, paining. (A girl bites the neck of her partner.) Mouths of disbelief and hunger, heads filling with blood and want. (A young girl swoons.) Veins of the neck swelling purplish, chests thumping and sweatful. (Pedro quells his quaking wife with a slap, and holds her to him.)
    Fuego! Fuego! Fuego!

Mundos y planetas en revolución

con el fuego! De mi corazón!
    “What do you think of Graham Greene, Cardinal?”
    “Greene …?”
    “Oh, it is nothing,” the Ambassador said quickly, “just a writer. Mrs. Birks is something of an intellectual. She often addresses