At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances by Alexander McCall Smith

thing was that whatever the motive of Cinco Fermentaciones had been in proposing him, the fact remained that he was now a Corresponding Fellow of the Academy of Letters of Colombia, an honour which had eluded even Zimmermann. And even if the President of the Academy were to be annoyed with him for proposing Cinco Fermentaciones, he would probably never encounter the President in the future and thus there would be few occasions for awkwardness.
    Cinco Fermentaciones beamed with satisfaction. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘we – or, rather I, have planned a few days for you in the country, as a reward, so to speak, for your having come all this way. A very well-known lady, who has perhaps the finest literary salon in all South America, has specially invited us to her villa in the hills. It will be a real treat.’
    ‘I am most grateful,’ said von Igelfeld. A few days in the country, being well looked after, would suit him very well. He was not due back in Germany for over a week, and what could be more enjoyable than sitting on a shady verandah, listening to the sounds of flocks of tropical birds, and knowing that at the end of the day a fine meal awaited one.
    They returned to the hotel, where von Igelfeld packed his bags and had them carried to the car which Cinco Fermentaciones provided. Then, after a fortifying cup of coffee, they set off down a pot-holed road, through sprawling crowded suburbs, into the countryside. The warmth of the car and the drone of the engine made von Igelfeld feel drowsy, and by the time he woke up, they were driving down what appeared to be a private road, through plantations of fruit trees, towards a large, ochre-coloured house on the lower slopes of a mountain.
    ‘The home of Señora Dolores Quinta Barranquilla,’ said Cinco Fermentaciones. ‘Our journey is at an end. We have arrived at the Villa of Reduced Circumstances.’
    A servant met them at the large front door of the villa. He was a small man in an ill-fitting black jacket and wearing grubby white gloves. He took the suitcases from the back of the car and gestured for Cinco Fermentaciones and von Igelfeld to follow him. They went inside, into a house of high-ceilinged cool rooms, furnished with dark mahogany chairs and tables in the Spanish colonial style, with painted cupboards on which fruits,Virgins and hunting dogs competed for space with pink-faced cherubs. Then they passed through a portico into a courtyard, around the sides of which were arranged the doors which gave on to their respective bedrooms.

    Left by himself in his bedroom, von Igelfeld unpacked his suitcase and noticed, with satisfaction, a spacious writing desk on which supplies of paper, along with bottles of ink and a stick pen, had been laid. To the right of the desk was a bookcase housing several shelves of books. He glanced at the titles: there were collected essays, novels, works of philosophy, and several volumes of the poems of Pablo Neruda. He picked up one of the Neruda volumes, noting an inscription on the fly leaf:
Quinta Barranquilla,
from his life-long friend, Pablo Neruda: I am not worthy of your friendship, but I have it nonetheless, and am content.
Von Igelfeld was intrigued; the salon run by Dolores Quinta Barranquilla was clearly every bit as distinguished as Cinco Fermentaciones had implied. He replaced the book and picked up the volume next to it, a Spanish translation of Hemingway. Von Igelfeld was not impressed by Hemingway, whom he had never read and whom he had no intention of reading. In his view, those who practised hunting and fighting in wars should not write books, as there was nothing of any interest to literature in those pursuits. Hemingway was a fine example of this. No German writer would have gone bull-fighting in Spain or deep-sea fishing off Cuba, and this showed in the almost total absence of these themes in German literature. He placed the Hemingway back on the shelf with distaste and looked out of the window. In the middle of the