If only she knew how much truth there was in her words! Yes, I was like a bull on the road to the slaughterhouse!

The waiter came back carrying the drinks, and when he saw me looking like a man who walks in his sleep, he winked his sly eye at me with a meaning of:

— Chew on it, you poor wretch!

And I signaled back with my eye: Your day will come!

Dercinha was absorbed — engrossed, rather — in doing her duty by the banquet, so I said to her:

— It is rare to see a young lady eat with such an appetite. As for me, I have a tendency to stoutness... I must keep my figure... and besides, too much eating brings little pimples out on the face.

— That's silly. I eat everything, but I do violent gymnastics. I said to myself: it is I who will be doing gymnastics when the hour comes to pay the bill!

— What's this? Have you no appetite?

— My family are people of excess, and my father died of an ulcer of the stomach.

— Poor thing! Nothing ever hurts me.

And to furnish the proof, she ordered a second plate of the trout.

I said — to turn her desire away from the cinema, and shift the price of the tickets over to the dinner bill:

— I believe the hour of the first cinema show has passed.

— Don't grieve, my dear; we'll go to the second show.

The waiter brought the list of sweets, and she said, let us see:

— Mixed compote. No. Fruit. No. Pudding. No. Aah — here! Bring wafers, and cherries with French cognac, and some chestnuts with port, and ice cream.

The little demon, like the plague, was leaping in one "tick" from France to Portugal to North America. The waiter no longer took me into any account: he went off without asking me what I wanted. I said: God be praised! But then he came back with the plates of sweets for my companion, and drew out — from where I do not know — two dried bananas whose very look brought on gloom, and set them before me; and I had strength for nothing except to curse his mother... inwardly. And I asked her — to draw out the time and so escape the cinema — Coffee?

— I don't want any, "my precious," thank you.

I was dumbfounded, and cried out:

— We must drink coffee!

— Very well.

We drank the coffee, and she said, come along. I said, we've missed the first show.

The cold sweat was streaming from my brow and my teeth were chattering like brass castanets between the fingers of a Spanish dancer.

— Are you perhaps ill?

— No. It may be indigestion...

— ??? But you have eaten nothing!

The truth is I had eaten nothing. It was she who ate — and at that minute she was eating my very soul. What was I to do, O Lord? Should I ask my compan-ion whether she carried any money on her? And what would she say then of us, the sons of the Arabs??

Time passed, and my agitation grew; my companion painted her face over and over, laid layer upon layer on her lips, and the waiter came back again and again to ask whether she wanted anything more. Her patience gave out and she said:

— Alfredinho! We have missed the first show and we shall miss the second. Come along!

She rang the bell and the waiter came. I said, in a runaway voice:

— The bill.

And I set about calming my terror, saying: why drown in a glass of water?? What I have with me may be enough. What imbecile optimism! The two-thousand-piaster note was saying, "I must grow, and grow again, until I get as fat as the hundred-lira note."

I heard the fall of the waiter's steps. As he came on, the sight of him was like the sight of the train in the cinema when it devours the ground and seems about to come out of

the screen and leap upon the spectators. He said:

Free — Max Factor Hollywood

FREE — Fill in this coupon and send it to: Max Factor Hollywood, P.O.B. [...] Beirut

Please send me my complexion analysis and my personal color-harmony make-up chart, together with the illustrated instruction leaflet "The New Art of Make-Up"

Complexion color | Eye color | Hair color

Name:

Address:

City: