grew up in a poor region,” she said, “but you could see very beautiful trees there.”
She turned to the painter and the priest and said:
“Here are two men who used to know those trees.”
The men came forward and held out their hands to Alejandro and Jesús.
“Alessandro Centi,” said the painter. “In Italy, they call me Sandro.”
The priest took a sudden unexpected little bow.
“Père François,” he said. “I am glad our paths have crossed.”
Jesús made this sign of the cross.
“Are you French, Father?”
“I am indeed,” said the priest.
“Are we in heaven?” Jesús asked.
Père François looked at Petrus and laughed.
“If we are, the angels are awfully strange-looking,” he said.
Then he became serious again.
“To be honest, I don’t know if all this is real or if I’m dreaming.”
“Those who drink know that reality resides at the bottom of a bottle of amarone,” said Petrus.
“I’m the only one who can say what can be found at the bottom of an Italian bottle,” declared Sandro.
“Ecstasy,” said Petrus.
“And tragedy,” added the painter.
Maria, addressing the entire company, made a gesture of invitation toward the pavilion.
“In the name of the Council of Mists,” she said, “may I invite you to have tea with me?”
She bowed slightly to Tagore and led the small group along the path to Nanzen.
Nanzen. As they made their way toward the Pavilion, they saw below them a valley of tall trees, their tops veiled in mist. The pavilion was built on a promontory and elevated on pillars planted in thick moss gleaming with dewdrops. Worn steps led to a veranda that ran all the way around the old bandstand. When Alejandro stepped onto it he felt a brief, intense vibration. He went immediately behind Tagore, Solon, and Maria. The rest of the delegation followed, with Clara and Petrus bringing up the rear. From outside, the building seemed rather cramped, and Alejandro and Jesús were surprised to find it was big enough to accommodate them all and still project a feeling of spaciousness. As they left the veranda to go inside, they could sense they were going through an invisible vestibule, and now the sounds of the outside world were stifled. Oddly, Alejandro found the tranquility of the place seemed to match the nature of the mist in the valley, woven from the same evanescence, where a deep, vital breathing could be felt. All around, through openings that set off discrete portions of the panorama, the landscape unfolded in a succession of images. In the background, the red bridge, squeezed into the narrow space of a little window, revealed only the rising section of its arch; this confined perspective suggested the abstraction of a red stain upon the surface of an inky lake. Visible through other openings, further enhancing the tableau, was the splendor of trees and the mists in their successive rebirths. Every swirl of mist, every branch yielding in the wind, every mottled streak of black sky relentlessly produced the highest configuration of beauty.
The polar bear showed everyone where they should sit on the floor. Tagore and Solon sat across from each other to preside over the cenacle.
“Quartus, at your service,” said the polar bear with a slight bow.
“Hostus,” said the other minor elf just as he was being transformed into a squirrel.
He added:
“We are today’s assistants.”
The wooden floor was bare, apart from a faint silvery dust left undisturbed by their footsteps. A slight breeze traced swirling arabesques in the dust. On one of the walls of sand, a band of light-colored cloth, the only visible adornment, was decorated with unfamiliar writing as beautiful as a drawing and made with ink like that of the sky. Between two views onto the trees in the mist, against the wall on the side of the valley, was a bench covered in cups, teapots, terra-cotta bowls and a few rough-hewn wooden spatulas and ladles. Earthenware tea jars stood in a row under the bench. Next to them, on a brazier on the floor, a cast-iron kettle was whistling.
The only sound or motion in the room was the boiling of water and the dancing of silver dust. Quartus and Hostus set down two little cups of differing size and shape in front of each guest, then Quartus brought a teapot to Tagore along with a bowl and one of the tea jars. From it, the Guardian of the Pavilion took out a sort of crumbly brown cake and broke off a small piece. Hostus dipped a ladle into the kettle and Tagore poured a first splash of