I took the hand that was hanging in the air, kissed the palm of it, and asked:
“You love me more than anyone else in the world?”
She pulled the hand away from me.
“Are you a bookkeeper?” she demanded. “Must you have amounts, weights, and measurements for everything?”
I grinned at her and tried to go on with my meal. I had been hungry. Now, though I had eaten only a couple of mouthfuls, my appetite was gone. I tried to pretend I still had the hunger I had lost, but it was no go. The food didn’t want to be swallowed. I gave up the attempt and lighted a cigarette.
She used her left hand to fan away the smoke between us.
“You don’t trust me,” she insisted. “Then why do you put yourself in my hands?”
“Why not? You can make a flop of the revolution. That’s nothing to me. It’s not my party, and its failure needn’t mean that I can’t get the boy out of the country with his money.”
“You don’t mind a prison, an execution, perhaps?”
“I’ll take my chances,” I said. But what I was thinking was: if, after twenty years of scheming and slickering in big-time cities, I let myself get trapped in this hill village, I’d deserve all I got.
“And you’ve no feeling at all for me?”
“Don’t be foolish.” I waved my cigarette at my uneaten meal. “I haven’t had anything to eat since eight o’clock last night.”
She laughed, put a hand over my mouth, and said: