The Islands of Unwisdom by Robert Graves

Author:Robert Graves [Graves, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7953-3683-6
Publisher: RosettaBooks
Published: 2014-03-25T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

THE ERUPTION

Don Alvaro complained of weakness and a sensation as if of burning down the right side of his body, but had no fever and ate with an appetite. Doña Mariana spent a deal of time at his bedside, where she showed him more love than did her sister; and though it seemed strange that she should have forgiven him so easily, at first I suspected nothing. Then one day, in the Great Cabin, while chronicling Malope’s visit to the flagship and mine to the village, I happened to set down this observation: that the natives had carefully collected their nail-parings and hair-clippings and thrown them into the sea for fear that we might make magic with them; and that Malope had likewise been at pains to dispose safely of his red spittle and the leavings of his buhio, dropping them into a box at the base of his roof pillar with a muttered prayer to the idol carved above it. At that I laid down my pen, seized by a sudden horror. I recalled that three days before, at the same hour, I had seen Doña Mariana drop her thimble and send it rolling across the floor with a covert motion of her foot, and that when I hurried to retrieve it she told me sharply that I was not her valet. She had let a minute or two pass by, then rose leisurely and groped for it herself, but kept her back turned towards me; though I guessed that she was picking up something else besides, I could not see what it was. It came upon me now that after breakfast on the same day Don Alvaro had been seated on the chest close to where the thimble went, trimming his nails. Had she been gathering what he let fall, before the pages came to sweep the floor?

I remembered fragments of gossip that had reached me since we left Callao, especially about the pack of Tarot cards that a witch in the ship was said to be using for divination. Elvira, who whispered the story to Jaume, did not give the woman’s name but described the pack as though she had seen and handled it. She told him that when, at the request of a person of importance, two blind cards were drawn for Don Alvaro, the six of Sceptres turned up, which foretells failure of an enterprise in the midst of execution, and with it the Lightning-struck Tower, a card of great misfortune; and that when another two were drawn for Doña Ysabel, they proved to be the Ace of Cups, which marks the beginning of a love affair, and the Chariot, portending its triumphant conclusion. I guessed that the witch must be either Doña Mariana herself or her maid Inez, and that the person of importance could only be Doña Ysabel—who else would have asked for blind cards to be drawn for her and her husband? Also, Miguel Llano had told me in scorn and

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