Except me.
You can see it and I see it and the woman read it in my hand but she doesn't see it, yet.
Not yet she doesn't see it.
"Am I a leader for nothing?" Pablo asked.
"I know what I speak of.
You others do not know.
This old man talks nonsense.
He is an old man who is nothing but a messenger and a guide for foreigners.
This foreigner comes here to do a thing for the good of the foreigners.
For his good we must be sacrificed.
I am for the good and the safety of all."
"Safety," the wife of Pablo said.
"There is no such thing as safety.
There are so many seeking safety here now that they make a great danger.
In seeking safety now you lose all."
She stood now by the table with the big spoon in her hand.
"There is safety," Pablo said.
"Within the danger there is the safety of knowing what chances to take.
It is like the bullfighter who knowing what he is doing, takes no chances and is safe."
"Until he is gored," the woman said bitterly.
"How many times have I heard matadors talk like that before they took a goring.
How often have I heard Finito say that it is all knowledge and that the bull never gored the man; rather the man gored himself on the horn of the bull.
Always do they talk that way in their arrogance before a goring.
Afterwards we visit them in the clinic."
Now she was mimicking a visit to a bedside,
"Hello, old timer.
Hello," she boomed. Then, "_Buenas, Compadre_.
How goes it, Pilar?" imitating the weak voice of the wounded bullfighter.
"How did this happen, Finito, Chico, how did this dirty accident occur to thee?" booming it out in her own voice. Then talking weak and small,
"It is nothing, woman.
Pilar, it is nothing.
It shouldn't have happened.
I killed him very well, you understand.
Nobody could have killed him better.
Then having killed him exactly as I should and him absolutely dead, swaying on his legs, and ready to fall of his own weight, I walked away from him with a certain amount of arrogance and much style and from the back he throws me this horn between the cheeks of my buttocks and it comes out of my liver."
She commenced to laugh, dropping the imitation of the almost effeminate bullfighter's voice and booming again now. "You and your safety!
Did I live nine years with three of the worst paid matadors in the world not to learn about fear and about safety?
Speak to me of anything but safety.
And thee.
What illusions I put in thee and how they have turned out!
From one year of war thou has become lazy, a drunkard and a coward."
"In that way thou hast no right to speak," Pablo said.
"And less even before the people and a stranger."
"In that way will I speak," the wife of Pablo went on.
"Have you not heard?
Do you still believe that you command here?"
"Yes," Pablo said.
"Here I command."
"Not in joke," the woman said.
"Here I command!