punctuated with expansive gestures and bird cries of delight.
‘Tourists,’ the acquaintance murmured regretfully.
A waiter approached the group and they opened their lips to display huge white smiles. Pink gums showed around the edges of their teeth. The waiter herded them gently but firmly into an arbour where their cries were muted and their bright clothes could not disturb the other diners.
An elderly man in a perfectly tailored cream suit and panama hat entered and made his way to the next table. He sat down, drawing out a long slim cigar. The waiter approached and lit it deferentially after snipping off its end, then, without being asked, a second waiter brought a coffee and a small glass of green liquid on a little tray. The girl watched him pour some of the green liquid into a spoonful of sugar and set a match to it. An emerald flame swelled and hovered above the spoon. When it had burned itself out the man dribbled the thick dark residue into his coffee, stirred and drank it.
At length, the aunt pronounced it time to go, refusing the offer of a lift home in the acquaintance’s car. They were going by metro, she explained, for the girl must learn to use the subterranean train system in case she wanted to attend the theatre or visit a gallery when her aunt was otherwise occupied. ‘But the metro,’ the acquaintance said doubtfully, ‘she should never use the metro after dark . . .’
‘I will explain all that needs to be explained in good time,’ the aunt said in a mildly peevish tone, and then the two women smiled acidly at one another and agreed to take tea together again very soon.
The girl had a photograph taken in a booth for her metro pass, and this was snipped out and slid into a laminated case which she slipped obediently into her purse. Inside the metro station, which was only a sort of corrugated tin shed with turnstiles and a ticket machine, there were windows where men and woman sat looking bored and annoyed. The metro platforms themselves were deep underground, the aunt explained, pointing to an escalator that would carry them down to the platforms where one boarded the electric trains.
It was a steep descent and the girl seemed to lean into the air that swelled out of the tunnel.
‘Hold tightly to the handrail,’ her aunt said sternly. ‘You could fall.’ The girl rested her hand on it and found it moved slightly faster than the steps, so that she kept adjusting her grip. The ascending escalator was alongside and the girl looked into the faces of people riding on it: a tired man cradling a briefcase as if it were a baby; a young couple twined and kissing voluptuously; two nuns; a group of drunk men singing an obscene song and leaning on one another; a swarthy man with a surly expression; a big woman with a beautiful wide-mouthed face and a stained ecru bodice; a young woman muttering rapidly to herself. The girl was entranced. She had not seen such people in the restaurant or shops or in the park.
The aunt murmured discreetly that one should not stare because aside from being a mark of ill-breeding, it virtually obliged some sort of intercourse. The girl did not see how any sort of exchange could be conducted with people going decisively in opposite directions, but she looked away obediently.
A short hall between two opposing platforms came into view at the end of the escalator. One went left or right through little archways to the platforms, the aunt explained, one side for metro trains going east and south, one side for those going north and west. Just before they reached the bottom where the silver teeth of a grille swallowed the escalator, an enormous gust of cold wind blew up into their faces from the depths, as if the earth itself had sighed. The girl gasped as it tugged her hair from its braids and licked the sweat from her upper lip.
‘I smell the sea,’ she said in wonderment.
The aunt sniffed surreptitiously but could smell only the oily escalator reek, under which lay an unpleasant tang of urine. She pursed her lips; her notion that the girl was mentally afflicted strengthened, for the city was far from the sea.
When they reached their platform there were only a few people waiting down the far end. Between them and the aunt and the girl, a lone man stood in a