Amelia lay there for several minutes staring at the ceiling, until Boudreaux said, "Cher, bring me one of my cigars, if you'd be so kind?"

She got one out of his humidor, nipped the end off with her front teeth before Rollie, calling her name, could stop her. "You know I like it cut with my penknife." Amelia paid no attention. She found a match to light the cigar, got it going good, handed it to Rollie and crossed to the armoire, where she took off the robe and hung it up. She stood there naked deciding what to wear this afternoon, fairly sure Rollie was watching.

"You going out?"

He was watching. But wouldn't ever hint about having sex unless she showed an inclination first, touching, kissing or looking at him a certain way. He would never risk appearing to be in heat and come off as having natural inclinations. Not that much passion was ever expressed in this union. When they did go to bed he'd begin kissing and fondling and Amelia would wonder if they were ever going to get to it. He seemed experienced enough, but too self-conscious to bring any real fun to the bed. He never ever perspired.

She slipped on a kimono and walked to the window again to see, three floors below, the coaches lining the street, the beggars, the children with swollen bellies, mounted soldiers passing by. Across the street rows of folding chairs faced the center of the park and the statue of a queen where, several nights a week, military bands played on and on in the brilliant glow of electric streetlights. Amelia raised her gaze to twin spires on the far edge of the Old City.

"I thought I'd drop by the cathedral." "You've seen Columbus's tomb, haven't you?" "It's Easter Sunday. I thought I might go to Mass." "You're thinking about it, or yes, you're going?" "I'm going."

"Won't you have to go to Confession?"

"I won't have to, but I may."

He had lowered the paper and was staring at her now. He said, "Your Church allows you to fuck all week and then go to Mass on Sunday?" in that quiet, condescending tone of his.

She said, "Rollie, when have you ever wanted to fuck all week?"

She watched him raise his eyebrows.

"I don't believe I've ever heard a woman use that word."

"It must be you've lived a sheltered life," Amelia said, not caring what he thought, "you only know your own kind." She said, "After Mass I'll go say good-bye to Lorraine. She's leaving tonight."

"What do you mean by my own kind?"

"People who have everything they want." She returned to the armoire and stood looking in. "Don't bother calling Novis, all right? I'd rather have Victor take me."

"Novis isn't your kind, uh?"

"I don't have anything I want to say to him."

"You get back," Boudreaux said, "I want to hear more about my sheltered life." He disappeared behind his newspaper.

They rode to AtarSs in an open coach. "A twenty-cent ride," Fuentes said, "from the hotel and the gardens of the Parque Central to the most depressing sight in Havana. And there it is, the field called the Death Hole."

Amelia was aware of shod hooves on paving stones and the sound of iron tires and the squeak of springs as they approached the walls of the Castillo de AtarSs.

"Last year," Fuentes said, "the bodies of people that Weyler killed with famine and disease were brought here, thousands of them during those months, and left for the carrion to mutilate and devour."

He had wanted to open an umbrella to protect Amelia from the sun, but she said no and held the brim of her sun hat, staring at the desolate field, a wide depression off the left side of the road, the field stretching all the way to the scarred stone-and-mortar walls of the fortress.

"It was always a place of death. Forty-seven years ago, when I was sixteen," Fuentes said, "a patriot by the name of Narcisso Lopez came with four hundred men to join with insurgents already fighting the Spanish." He said to Amelia, "You've heard of an American patriot by the name of Crittenden?" She said she wasn't sure and Fuentes said, "He came with Narcisso Lopez as the second in command, as half the men with them were Americans. But they had very bad luck. They landed at Mariel during a storm, so all their powder was wet when the Spanish attack them and Crittenden and fifty of his men were brought here. You see the drawbridge? Crittenden was crossing it to enter the fort and the Spanish soldiers couldn't wait any longer, they shot him down on the bridge. His men were taken to the field, chained together in three groups and they were shot down. I was sixteen years old."

Amelia turned to Fuentes, an old man in a white suit holding the umbrella between his knees.

"You were here?"

"I was with Narcisso Lopez. Not on the boat, but with the ones already here, and I was with them when the Spanish came and we had no dry powder to use. Narcisso Lopez was taken to the Morro and made to perish by the garrote, strangle to death, God rest his soul. One hundred were sent to Spanish dungeons in Africa and some of us were kept here to wait to be tortured. I think of it that way, because to wait makes it worse. The Spanish hung us on a wall, the iron ring twelve feet from the floor, sometime upside-down, and beat us with cane, our wrists bound so tight our hands swell to twice their size," Fuentes said, showing Amelia his hands with their yellowed, cracked nails. "Others were seated in the chair with the iron collar, the garrote; a single turn of the screw from behind will strangle the person, crushing his neck. They like to break legs, too, and leave the person to perish from starvation.

I was taken to the parade ground, all open, and put in stocks. You know what I mean by stocks? They hold you by the neck and the wrists, like in the old pictures you see of your Puritans. But this one they put you in face-up to the sun and leave you there all day. They said it was worse than the garrote, looking at the sun like that, and always the person couldn't stand it and became blind and insane. I shut my eyes as tight as I could squeeze them shut and still I could see the brightness of the sun through my eyelids. So I prayed to St. Francis of Assisi, because I remember from when I was a boy, a priest telling me St. Francis was a friend of Brother Sun, he called it, and Sister Moon. He liked all the animals, birds rested on his shoulders and he never stepped on insects. You know of St. Francis?" Amelia told him yes, of course, and Fuentes said, "I prayed to him, asking if he had any friends that were clouds, and you know what happened?"

"It rained," Amelia said.

"Listen, it rained for six days and six nights," Fuentes told her, "in the spring, before the big season of rain. It rained so much they put me in a cell and forgot about me for three years, when they said that was enough and gave me a pardon."

They were approaching the drawbridge now. It was down and the sally port was open to show the parade grounds inside and a Guardia with a carbine slung from his shoulder.

"In there, straight across the grounds," Fuentes said, "are the torture rooms. To the right, past an outside stairway, is the entrance to the dungeons they use. Rudi Calvo say the Guardias released some people, reconcentrados, and told him now they the only ones, a squad of Guardias. Rudi Calvo thinks eight of them on duty to guard the three prisoners;

Tyler, the United States marine and the officer from El Morro, Lieutenant Molina. They took his uniform away from him."

"I liked him," Amelia said. "Maybe that's why I'm not surprised he's here."

"Rudi Calvo thinks they'll send him to Africa."

Amelia said, "Victor," and then waited as she heard him speaking to the coachman, who brought the team around in the cobblestone road to start back to Havana. "Do you still pray to St. Francis?"

"I don't believe in God anymore," Fuentes said. "Well, sometimes, but not always. I do believe in St. Francis, but I don't use him anytime I want or for small favors. No, I pray to him only when it becomes life or death."