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“What about that nun?”

“Where?”

“Right there, right there—the one who’s walking under the archway.”

“Oh. Secondary, obviously—who the hell wants to read about a nun?”

“Also, she doesn’t look like she’s broken a plate in her life, so she’s more of a Saint John of the Cross character than a Zorrilla . . .”

“What about the old woman begging for alms at the church door?”

“She’s got a protagonistic look about her, doesn’t she? But a short piece, of course. A story. Twenty pages or so. At most.”

“Yes, a short story. A sad one. Very French, or maybe Russian. One of those where the main character starts out a pauper and spends the rest of the narrative sinking deeper into destitution. And those soldiers making rounds?”

“Nothing. That’s all they’re good for—making their rounds in the background. They haven’t even got a page in them.”

They’ve played the game late into the night. Slowly the electric streetlights have come on, and behind the windowpanes in the poor neighborhoods, the flames of candles and oil lamps have begun to flicker. It smells like noodles and white rice. In that building teeming with Chinese, it always smells like noodles and white rice, and sometimes a little like opium too.

“What about that pretty girl?”

“What about that little boy who’s playing?”

“What about that coachman beating his horse?”

They keep pressing each other for a long time, even after the figures passing below them have become mere formless masses onto which any sort of character can be projected. But neither seems to have any intention of moving.

At last, when all is swallowed in darkness, when there is nothing left to look at, one of them—it doesn’t matter which—asks:

“What about Georgina?”

And the other, whichever he is, doesn’t answer.