At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances by Alexander McCall Smith Page B

are those who say that he bought the job,’ she said, going on quickly. ‘But I hasten to say that I am most certainly not one of those! There are so many people in this country who are consumed by envy. There are even some who say that I bought this villa, would you believe it?’
    ‘And you did not?’ asked von Igelfeld.
    ‘Certainly not,’ replied Dolores Quinta Barranquilla. ‘Everything you see about you belonged to my paternal grandfather, Don Alfonso Quinta Barranquilla. I have bought nothing – nothing at all.’
    ‘The Señora is modest,’ said Cinco Fermentaciones unctuously. ‘Even in her grandfather’s day, the villa was the centre of intellectual life in Colombia. Everybody of any note came out from the capital at weekends and participated in the discussion that took place in this very room. Everybody. And then, more recently, in the days of her father, Neruda began to call when he was in this country. He would spend weeks here. He wrote many poems in this very room.’
    ‘I am a great admirer of his work,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘His Spanish is very fine.’
    ‘He is still with us, I feel,’ said Dolores Quinta Barranquilla dreamily. ‘Do you not feel that, Gabriel? Do you not feel Pablo’s presence?’
    ‘I do,’ said Cinco Fermentaciones. ‘I feel that he is with us here at the moment.’
    ‘As are all the others,’ went on Dolores Quinta Barranquilla. ‘Marquez. Valderrama. Pessoa. Yes, Pessoa, dear Professor von Igelfeld. He travelled up from Brazil and spent several weeks in this house, in the time of my father. They talked and talked, he told me. My father, like you, was fluent in Portuguese. He and Pessoa sat here, in this very room, and talked the night away.’
    Von Igelfeld looked about the room. He could imagine Pessoa sitting here, with his large hat on the table by the window, or on his knee perhaps; really, these were most agreeable surroundings, and the hostess, too, was utterly charming, with her mellifluous voice and her sympathetic understanding of literature. He could talk the night away, he felt, and perhaps they would.
    The conversation continued in this pleasant way for an hour or so before they moved through for dinner. This was served in an adjoining room, by a middle-aged cook in an apron. Von Igelfeld had expected generous fare, but the portions were small and the wine was thin. The conversation, of course, more than made up for this, but he found himself reflecting on the name of the villa and the parsimony of the table. These thoughts distressed him: there was something inexpressibly sad about faded grandeur. There may well have been a salon in this house, and it may well have been a distinguished one, but what was left now? Only memories, it would seem.
    Von Igelfeld slept soundly. It had been an exhilarating evening, and he had listened attentively to his hostess’s observations on a wide range of topics. All of these observations had struck him as being both perceptive and sound, which made the evening one of rare agreement. Now, standing at his window the following morning, he looked out on to the courtyard with its small fountain, its stone bench, and its display of brilliant flowering shrubs. It was a magnificent morning and von Igelfeld decided that he would take a brief walk about the fruit groves before breakfast was served.
    Donning his newly acquired Panama hat, he walked through the courtyard and made his way towards the front door. It was at this point, as he walked through one of the salons, that he noticed a number of rather ill-kempt men standing about. They looked at him suspiciously and did not respond when von Igelfeld politely said,
‘Buenos Dias.
’ Perhaps they were the estate workers, thought von Igelfeld, and they were simply taciturn. When he reached the front door, however, a man moved out in front of him and blocked his way.
    ‘Who are you?’ the man asked roughly.
    Von Igelfeld looked at the man before him. He was wearing dark