Azores heard a rough aged voice and turned.
In a dark corner the old woman in tatters sat. She looked in emptiness unseeing eyes.
“Well and situation!” – Azores thought.
– Whether tell, be so kind as, there lives Don Hurges? – Azores asked, approaching the old woman.
The smile stretched her toothless mouth. The long hooked nose almost touched the sharp, raised up chin.
– Don – scoffing, it imitated. – Unless Dona live in such peasant houses?
– You after all did not answer my question.
– No Hurges exists here – the old woman angrily proshamkat.
Azores became gloomy.
– But, perhaps, he lived here? You live in this house long ago?
– Seventy six years – the old woman answered.
– And never heard about Hurges?
– Perhaps also heard. In seventy six years about whom you will not hear. Yes you who such and what it is necessary for you? – she asked suspiciously, and her nostrils began to move as if sense of smell could replace with it sight.
– I have a letter to Zhuan Hurges. Obviously, from his brother who died during the crash of “Leviathan”. The letter was revealed in a bottle and thanks to a happy occurence it appeared in my hands.
The old woman with interest listened. Azores monitored expression of her face. Obviously, she after all knows Hurges.
– Approach me, I will feel you – she unexpectedly told after minute silence.
Azores satisfied this strange request. The old woman diligently felt a sleeve of his jacket, forced to bend and quickly ran a dry wrinkled hand over the person from a forehead to a chin.
Survey, obviously, satisfied it. Having thought, she said:
– Yes, you Spaniard. And you here arrived recently…
Azores could not comprehend from what she drew such conclusion, however did not venture to ask about it.
– I assure you that I do not deceive and came to you as the friend – Azores hotly told. Seeing that the old woman begins to give up, he risked to open the card which could solve a game in its advantage. – I am a correspondent of the communistic newspaper “Barselonsky Proletary”.
The effect exceeded its expectations. The old woman became straight and severely asked:
– You tell the truth?
The communist Azores hotly and sincerely said an ancient Spanish oath, and it made a due impression. The old woman turned the face to a sound of its voice and said:
– I trust you.
Azores breathed a sigh of relief:
– Give me your hand.
Azores strongly shook hands the old woman.
– We should be careful, very careful – it continued, shaking the head – especially to such blind woman as I. Around spies and traitors. If I cut off to myself language in time, Zhuan Hurges, perhaps, would not be where it now.
The old woman mournfully inclined the head. Obviously, she blabbed out already once and it ruined Hurges.
– Where it? – Azores asked.
– There, where to you not to reach – the old woman answered. She pointed to a window through which the roof of new prison was visible. – To me once here also came and asked: “Companion Hurges at you lives?” And I, the old hen, was caught on the word “companion”.
Azores was confused. The situation becomes complicated… The one whom he looked for sits at thick walls of prison…
– Tell, really it is impossible to meet it in any way?
– If you were the prosecutor or the chief of prison, then could see it daily – the old woman answered. – And so … – It sadly shook the head.
– But it has to have friends! They can help me. You are not familiar with someone from them?
The old woman pricked up the ears again and looked at Azores the whitish unseeing eyes as if she hoped to read Azores’s plans through a cataract film.
– I understand you – Azores told. – You are afraid to open the secret apartment. But the meeting can take place at you. There is rather deserted place, and companions can be convinced that “tail” of salted pork fats does not try to keep step with me. It is possible to appoint a meeting and in other place – where you want. Appoint hour and the place.
The old woman of minutes five was silent. Azores already began to lose patience.
– On Sunday in the tenth o’clock in the evening at the cemetery, near a chapel – she unexpectedly told, without looking at it.
Azores thanked her, shook hands and left. Then returned and a little perplexed addressed the old woman:
– Forgive me for my desire to help you and do not misunderstand it. – He put it credit cards. – There are twenty five dollars.
– Not to offend you, I will take, but not now, and then, after the appointment.
He understood it. This money could become the treachery price if Azores was a spy. The old woman had the right to be mistrustful to people.
Azores left.
AT THE CEMETERY
Azores was young, hot and had vivid imagination. It built the most courageous projects of an appointment to Hurges and even his releases. Perhaps, to give itself for the priest from Spain and to pass to Hurges under the guise of the confessor? But in prison the confessors… Undermining? Stealing from the prison-yard by plane? Bribery? Azores remembered several stories of difficult prison escapes. The imagination cleared up. With these thoughts he fell asleep and dreamed some gloomy underpasses, ladders, lattices…
He used the days which remained prior to a meeting at the cemetery on collecting materials for the newspapers. These days in Buenos Aires the strike of workers and employees of city transport broke out. Azores was in time everywhere, without forgetting also about Hurges. “A strange surname – he thought – sounds for foreigners as Spanish, however not Spanish. Hurges… Whom could it be?”
At last day of an appointment came. Azores came a little earlier and began to wander about the cemetery.
“Class privileges do not come to an end also with death”, Azores thought. Yesterday it happened to it to visit the cemetery of aristocrats and rich men. There is a marble city: mausoleums, family crypts, chapels, the wide, covered with yellow sand paths, flowers. Real exhibition! Here, on the cemetery of the poor, simple wooden crosses which are so closely put one near another that between graves
