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

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‘A cat!’ she exclaimed. ‘It is a cat.’

‘Or a coyote!’

‘A coyote!’

‘Let’s look!’ said Villiers. ‘Why, how awfully interesting! Do you think it’s old?’

‘It is old?’ Kate asked.

‘The time of the old gods,’ said the boatman. Then with a sudden smile: ‘The dead gods don’t eat much rice, they only want little casseroles while they are bone under the water.’ And he looked her in the eyes.

‘While they are bone?’ she repeated. And she realized he meant the skeletons of gods that cannot die.

They were at the landing-stage; or rather, at the heap of collapsed masonry which had once been a landing-stage. The boatman got out and held the boat steady while Kate and Villiers landed. Then he scrambled up with the bags.

The man in white trousers, and a mozo appeared. It was the hotel manager. Kate paid the boatman.

‘Adiós, Señorita!’ he said with a smile. ‘May you go with Quetzalcoatl.’

‘Yes!’ she cried. ‘Good-bye!’

They went up the slope between the tattered bananas, whose ragged leaves were making a hushed, distant patter in the breeze. The green fruit curved out its bristly-soft bunch, the purple flower-bud depending stiffly.