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now against the pillow and absently running his fingers through the vines and tendrils carved into the mahogany forest of the bedstead, moodily giving thought to things he had not previously given any. “He did tell me there were some letters I could look at when I wanted, letters his mother wrote home to Cornwall.”
    Em stopped her constant movement between bags and boxes, bed and armoire, and stood with a pile of fresh laundry in her arms. “Couldn’t you ask him for them?”
    â€œI could,” Eric agreed, “I will. I think his mother died here because he told me another thing I hadn’t known: the woman I met in Cornwall when I was a child, she was
not
his mother, she was his stepmother.”
    â€œWell, you English—” Em said, going back to her packing. “No one ever knows what goes on in your families.”
    He was angered suddenly and sat up. “You know I’ve never even lived there, and
he
left the country himself. But now that I’m here, perhaps I can find out more.”
    â€œThat’ll be interesting,” she said as if she were encouraging a child to run out and play.
    He kicked aside her shoe bag and marched across to the window to open the shutters. “This could be just what I need—for my book,” he announced, letting in the view of the plaza and the evening sky above it. He expected this reference to his “book” to make an impression on her if nothing else did. “I’d never thought my family could ever be of help—but they might have something to give. I’ll have to find out.”
    This led to what was an evening of almost total silence and disappointment. They canceled their reservation at the Café Tacubaya and instead ate in the sepulchral hotel dining room, watched over by waiters in funereal uniform, talking, if at all, of travel agencies and banks and postal services; then they retired to lie at opposite sides of the so-called matrimonial bed, pretending to sleep till Em rose quietly at dawn to leave, and Eric, wide-awake, watched her in the semidark.
    He found he could not let her slip away without a word. Sitting up in a swaddle of bedclothes, he put out his arms and embraced her. “Oh Em,” he said, “dear Em. Don’t go.”
    She leaned into him, stroking his hair, trying to calm the anguish she sensed in him and to some extent felt herself. “It’ll be all right,” she whispered.
    â€œHow? How?” he asked, pressing his face into her.
    â€œYou’ll see,” she said, more firmly, putting her hands on his shoulders and pressing him away. “When you’re with me, you’re—we are—too close. When you’re by yourself, you’ll find so much more than you would with me—”
    â€œThat’s not so, Em,” he argued, trying to make out her expression in the pallid light of daybreak.
    â€œYou’ll see, you’ll see, it’ll happen,” she said, trying to reassure him, and twisted gently out of his grasp, lifted her case, and turned toward the door.

3
When at the beginning of the sixteenth century the Spaniards landed in Mexico, they first met with the natives of Sempollan, not far from the sea . . . the chiefs wore silver and gold ornaments that attracted the rapacious glances of the white adventurers. Their first question was “Whence comes this?” The natives pointed to the west. When, soon after, the ambassadors of Montezuma brought rich presents of the precious metals, adorned with emeralds, in order to induce the unbidden guests to turn back, they were confirmed in their opinion that there were literally golden mountains in the interior, and the cry was “Forward!”
— CARL SARTORIUS ,
Mexico and the Mexicans
, 1859
    Â 
    P AINFULLY, CREAKILY DISMOUNTING FROM THE train at Matehuala, as mottled as a moth with the grime and soot of the journey, Eric inquired about transport to take him