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And then the tractors were used only a few weeks a year.” Equivlint of laybah, he said. Few wiks a yah. “And then petrol and oil are expensive. And mechanics are scarce. So the tractors rusted and died. But in isolated spots the harvest went up that year, so the other farmers believed that they could not be better farmers without expensive equipment.”
    The Portuguese was softly blurred. He was reading a newspaper and smoking a black cigar. The guitarist had tilted his chair against a post and was sitting on the back of his neck.
    â€œSome of them—it goes back a long, long way, before the migrations—knock out two front teeth, upper or lower. Not just a barbaric custom; no. Lockjaw. In case of lockjaw they can still be fed. You must not make the mistake of thinking us primitive.”
    Morrison looked to Philips for help; Philips avoided his glance. “Developing,” Morrison said.
    â€œAh yes.”
    It was banana brandy. Goray loved it. Morrison tried to resist but now Philips’s eyes warned him.
    â€œYou people are afraid of life because you think that happiness demands punishment. So you forestall the fates by taking on the miseries of other people. People that you do not honestly care a fig for. You become crusaders, and annoy everybody.”
    â€œWell, I don’t know.” Morrison was very uncomfortable. His own country, after all. Did he talk about Goray’s country that way? No. By God. No. “Anyway that sounds out of date.”
    â€œAh, no. There is a missionary here, one Montgomery …”
    The Portuguese was gone but the room was still quite smoky. The guitarist was sitting on the floor, and now all his tunes were sad tunes. His woman had run off to Rio. There were no women in the restaurant. Waiters yawned.
    â€œYou have been asked to love your neighbor as yourself, which is plainly impossible. All your religions and philosophies ask the impossible. So you feel terrible in public about everything and make speeches about saving other countries from fates worse than death. That way you need not admit that you do not love them at all. Frankly I can think of no fate worse than death.”
    â€œI’m just an engineer.” Philips would not help him. God damn Philips.
    Plink plink. The guitarist lay flat, plinking.
    â€œAll right. Just one more. We leave in the morning, you know.”
    Goray poured.
    â€œYou are évolué. You are beyond death. Instead of death you have hospitals and flowers and heaven. Here we still have death. That is why you cannot win your small wars. Because you are fighting people who know death. You refuse to know it.”
    â€œI know death,” Morrison said. “I have been up to my ass in death.” The room had tilted slightly, or perhaps it was his chair. He seemed to be smoking, or at any rate holding, a very bad cigar. “Covered with blood. Amputated arms and legs stacked in a corner.”
    â€œNot the same,” Goray interrupted.
    â€œI would bloody well like to know why not,” Morrison bellowed.
    On the bare white ceiling a green lizard flicked his green tail. Plink.
    â€œI don’t know what the hell to say to you. Except that you’re wrong. A lot of us do care. You seem to know a hell of a lot about a place you’ve never been to.” Morrison knocked over his glass: tinkle, ooze.
    The room was almost empty. At one table a waiter slept, gray head pillowed on his crossed arms. Goray was huge. He puffed smoke. The lizard was gone. The horizontal guitarist stared dully toward them; with his thumb he plinkplinkplinked. Morrison rubbed his eyes. “All right,” he said. “Just one more.” Philips! Philips!
    â€œUnless you admit that you are not more than momentarily perturbed by distant cruelties, you will always be capable of committing them. Until you admit that you do not really weep for Hiroshima, you will make no start on preventing