I explained to them that I would be back. Outside in the street I went down the street looking for the shop that made leather wine-bottles. The crowd was packed on the sidewalks and many of the shops were shuttered, and I could not find it. I walked as far as the church, looking on both sides of the street. Then I asked a man and he took me by the arm and led me to it. The shutters were up but the door was open.
Inside it smelled of fresh tanned leather and hot tar. A man was stencilling completed wineskins. They hung from the roof in bunches. He took one down, blew it up, screwed the nozzle tight, and then jumped on it.
“See! It doesn’t leak.”
“I want another one, too. A big one.”
He took down a big one that would hold a gallon or more, from the roof. He blew it up, his cheeks puffing ahead of the wineskin, and stood on the bota holding on to a chair.
“What are you going to do? Sell them in Bayonne?”
“No. Drink out of them.”
He slapped me on the back.
“Good man. Eight pesetas for the two. The lowest price.”
The man who was stencilling the new ones and tossing them into a pile stopped.
“It’s true,” he said. “Eight pesetas is cheap.”
I paid and went out and along the street back to the wine-shop. It was darker than ever inside and very crowded. I did not see Brett and Bill, and