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of the door. That day, stuck in bed with fever, I had seen them all arrive in my room.

Having found the beginning of the stairs, halfway up the hall on the ground floor, they had gone up the four ramps in Istrian stone; they had crossed the room on the top floor and papa's study, they had slipped in single file through the half-open door of my room.

And then it is said that the peacocks are stupid. Mine weren't at all. As soon as I went to meet them they immediately did the wheel, to make me happy. If I sat in a meadow, they would immediately come to keep me company and the mothers did not get jealous at all when I took their babies. They were all my friends. All died under the bombs.

I too had been good at finding and running down the stairs in the dark on the night of the bombing. And to think that just a moment before I had ecstatically admired the beautiful lights launched by the planes to better identify the target.

"The lights that went down from the sky" could have been the title for the next story. The story of that long night. With a little girl I would have called Linda, in memory of Linda in her dressing gown*. Dead like peacocks.

Yes, I would have written about the night full of lights, I thought on my way home. But not immediately. I had already suffered enough for A Horse for Matanzas. Perhaps it was not necessary for the girl to die. The tale would have remained equally dramatic even if she continued to live in the pueblo near Puerto Escondido.

I wonder if I would see Escondido again. When I left Cuba I was sure I would return to the Finca, now a second home for me. Now I wasn't so sure anymore.

I passed by the arch of the portico in front of which - once - the wagons full of grapes stopped amid the cheerful shouting of the peasants; I skirted the wall where a window opened that - once - let out the scent of polenta,...

* guardarobiera is a laundress or a person in charge of linens. Since a little girl likely wouldn't be in charge of such a task I'll assume that it means "Linda in her dressing gown" though that notion is fraught with guesswork.