Читать книгу The Plumed Serpent. Historical Novel - Life and Love after the Mexico Revolution онлайн

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‘You like him better than the Bishop, your god-father?’

He lifted his shoulders in a twisted, embarrassed shrug.

‘The same!’ he said. ‘I like him the same.’

Then he looked away into the distance, with a certain hauteur and insolence.

‘Very different, no?’ he said. ‘But in some ways, the same. He knows better what is Mexico. He knows better what I am. Bishop Severn did not know the real Mexico: how could he, he was a sincere Catholic! But Don Ramón knows the real Mexico, no?’

‘And what is the real Mexico?’ she asked.

‘Well — you must ask Don Ramón. I can’t explain.’

She asked Cipriano about going to the lake.

‘Yes!’ he said. ‘You can go! You will like it. Go first to Orilla, no? — you take a ticket on the railway to Ixtlahuacan. And in Orilla is an hotel with a German manager. Then from Orilla you can go in a motor-boat, in a few hours, to Sayula. And there you will find a house to live in.’

He wanted her to do this, she could tell.

‘How far is Don Ramón’s hacienda from Sayula?’ she asked.