The door opened without

The exterior of the unnumbered house was in no way distinguishable from its less fortunateneighbours, except for the window with lace curtains and an imposing front door taken from someold church. The coachman pounded the door knocker, and only when he had made certain that itwas the right house did he help the Doctor out of the carriage. The door opened without a sound,and in the shadowy interior stood a mature woman dressed in black, with a red rose behind her ear　pro tourisme.

Despite her age, which was no less than forty, she was still a haughty mulatta with cruel goldeneyes and hair tight to her skull like a helmet of steel wool. Dr. Urbino did not recognise her,although he had seen her several times in the gloom of the chess games in the photographer’sstudio, and he had once written her a prescription for tertian fever. He held out his hand and shetook it between hers, less in greeting than to help him into the house. The parlour had the climateand invisible murmur of a forest glade and was crammed with furniture and exquisite objects, eachin its natural place. Dr. Urbino recalled without bitterness an antiquarian’s shop, No .26 rueMontmartre in Paris, on an autumn Monday in the last century. The woman sat down across fromhim and spoke in accented Spanish　Conference organisers.

“This is your house, Doctor,” she said. “I did not expect you so soon.”Dr. Urbino felt betrayed. He stared at her openly, at her intense mourning, at the dignity ofher grief, and then he understood that this was a useless visit because she knew more than he didabout everything stated and explained in Jeremiah de Saint-Amour’s posthumous letter. This wastrue. She had been with him until a very few hours before his death, as she had been with him forhalf his life, with a devotion and submissive tenderness that bore too close a resemblance to love,and without anyone knowing anything about it in this sleepy provincial capital where even statesecrets were common knowledge. They had met in a convalescent home in Port-au-Prince, whereshe had been born and where he had spent his early years as a fugitive, and she had followed himhere a year later for a brief visit, although both of them knew without agreeing to anything that shehad come to stay forever. She cleaned and straightened the laboratory once a week, but not eventhe most evil-minded neighbours confused appearance with reality because they, like everyoneelse, supposed that Jeremiah de Saint-Amour’s disability affected more than his capacity to walk　vacation packages to Hong Kong

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Dr. Urbino himself supposed as much for solid medical reasons, and never would have believedhis friend had a woman if he himself had not revealed it in the letter. In any event, it was difficultfor him to comprehend that two free adults without a past and living on the fringes of a closedsociety’s prejudices had chosen the hazards of illicit love. She explained: “It was his wish.”Moreover, a clandestine life shared with a man who was never completely hers, and in which theyoften knew the sudden explosion of happiness, did not seem to her a condition to be despised. Onthe contrary: life had shown her that perhaps it was exemplary.

On the previous night they had gone to the cinema, each one separately, and had sat apart asthey had done at least twice a month since the Italian immigrant, Don Galileo Daconte, hadinstalled his open-air theatre in the ruins of a seventeenth-century convent. They saw All Quiet onthe Western Front, a film based on a book that had been popular the year before and that Dr.