WHEN MR. VALDEZ left the Ottavio House he walked home alone all the way back to his flat and he complimented himself that not once did he stop and check who was walking behind. Through the dark little side streets where the sound of his heels on the pavement echoed back from the houses on either side, along Cristobal Avenue, where the cars cruised by, jammed in tight together, one after another, where the pavements were crowded, where he was jostled, where he imagined the touch of the pickpocket or the pistol in his ribs, by an effort of will he never once glanced behind him. He closed his door and turned the key in the lock and relief swept over him as it does over a drowning sailor who manages to throw his arms around some floating piece of timber, as if it would save him, as if it could defy the waves and the gales, as if a few planks of wood and a brass bolt could stand up to a bullet or a boot or the crushing weight of a search warrant.

He had not pleaded. He had not wept or whimpered or cried out or visibly trembled. He had kept control of his bladder and his dignity. He had that much to be pleased about. But Mr. Valdez was bitterly afraid. In the garden he had been afraid that Caterina might leave him and afraid that he might turn into a husband. In the Ottavio House he was afraid of Camillo, afraid of what Camillo might say and do, afraid of what Camillo might do to Caterina unless he spoke up for her, afraid of what might happen to him because he dared to speak up, afraid every step of the way home, and he was sick of it. The warm pulse of life was throbbing painfully in the stump Caterina had somehow kissed back into life and he wanted it to stop. He wanted to go back to a time before, when he was cut off from life and other people, but it was too late for that. He had tasted of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge and he knew that he was naked. There was no way back to the time when he did not know.

Foolishly he thought of dragging furniture through the house and piling it against the door—as if it would do anything but add a few moments of miserable terror to his ordeal. It was pointless. He knew it was pointless. If Camillo wanted it he could simply make him vanish like a rabbit in a magic act, like his father.

And then, for a moment, the fear subsided again. He thought of Caterina. He had defied Camillo for her sake. He had refused to betray her. He knew she must be warned. But he did not warn her.

To warn Caterina, he would have to leave the flat again, go out in the dark again, walk down the avenue again, down that grubby side street to a place he had never visited but which Camillo knew all about, a place where, even now, Camillo might be waiting to catch him, and that wouldn’t help Caterina.

“That wouldn’t help her at all,” he told himself. “It will have to wait until morning. If she’s not in the Phoenix I can find a way to bump into her or get Cochrane to pass on a note. Get that business with the check sorted out and tell her. Safer. Far better to wait.”

That was how he excused himself. Dr. Cochrane, who called himself a coward, would have been ashamed to say such things even to himself, but suddenly Mr. Valdez wanted to be safer. Safer seemed the thing to be. Safer was the thing to do.

He poured himself a lot of brandy in a tumbler and he was surprised to notice that, as he drank it, his hand did not tremble. He was surprised to notice that he had noticed.

Mr. Valdez took off his shoes, clumsily, with the toe of one against the heel of another in a way that would ruin the leather, and he walked through the flat to stand at the big window that looked down the avenue with its long strings of moving lights.

It looked like civilization. To the untrained eye it looked as if the jungle had been cleared, the snakes forced out of their holes, the jaguars chased away with smoke and drums, but Mr. Valdez knew that what had come in their place was something far, far worse, far more vicious and something that did not fear to walk out in the light.

And then Mr. Valdez did something he had not done since he was a boy. His hand found the hilt of his grandfather’s sword. He tugged it from the brass scabbard and it came out quietly through the collar of sheepskin, still oiled to protect against the faraway ocean it had not tasted for decades. It spoke to him of ancestry and blood, pride and honor, and he moved with it across the room, holding it, moving it, presenting it just as he had been taught to do, and he heard his grandfather saying: “Keep the tip up” and “Bring the leg back” and “That’s the way, boy. Never give a sword to a man who can’t dance.”

Mr. Valdez could dance. In his silent flat he heard the Tango of Death and he moved on the balls of his feet, like a cat with one long, vicious claw.

I have no friends
I have no lovers
I have no country
Nor religion
I have only bitterness in my soul
And sickness in my heart.

A tawny cat who ended up where he had begun, crossing the road and going into the whorehouse only so he could come out again, over and over and over, stalking the flat until he finished, with the tip of his sword poised against the fabric of a cushion on his beautiful leather couch, pricking it but not piercing it and wondering if the warm thumbprint of flesh between Camillo’s collar bones would feel that way.

He was sweating. He was hot. Mr. Valdez drank some more brandy and went to bed. He took the sword with him. When he lay down alone in a bed that smelled of Caterina, on a pillow that smelled of Caterina, the weight of it comforted him.