Strange Pilgrims Read Online Free PDF Page B

contemptible.” At that moment Homero saw him with his heart and laid down his weapons.
    Lázara came home late that night. From the door she saw the jewels glittering on the table under the mercurial light, and it was as if she had seen a scorpion in her bed.
    “Don’t be an idiot, baby,” she said, frightened. “Why are those things here?”
    Homero’s explanation disturbed her even more. She sat down to examine the pieces, one by one, with all the care of a goldsmith. At a certain point she sighed and said, “They must be worth a fortune.” At last she sat looking at Homero and could find no way out of her dilemma.
    “Damn it,” she said. “How can we know if everything that man says is true?”
    “Why shouldn’t it be?” said Homero. “I’ve just seen that he washes his own clothes and dries them on a line in his room, just like we do.”
    “Because he’s cheap,” said Lázara.
    “Or poor,” said Homero.
    Lázara examined the jewels again, but now with less attention because she too had been conquered. And so the next morning she put on her best clothes, adorned herself with the pieces that seemed most expensive, wore as many rings as she could on every finger, even her thumb, and all the bracelets that would fit on each arm, and went out to sell them. “Let’s see if anyone asks Lázara Davis for receipts,” she said as she left, strutting with laughter. She chose just the right jewelry store, one with more pretensions than prestige, where she knew they bought and sold without asking too many questions, and she walked in terrified but with a firm step.
    A thin, pale salesman in evening dress made a theatrical bow as he kissed her hand and asked how he could help her. Because of the mirrors and intense lights the interior was brighter than the day, and the entire shop seemed made of diamonds. Lázara, almost without looking at the clerk for fear he would see through the farce, followed him to the rear of the store.
    He invited her to sit at one of three Louis XV escritoires that served as individual counters, and over it he spread an immaculate cloth. Then he sat across from Lázara and waited.
    “How may I help you?”
    She removed the rings, the bracelets, the necklaces, the earrings, everything that she was wearing in plain view,and began to place them on the escritoire in a chessboard pattern. All she wanted, she said, was to know their true value.
    The jeweler put a glass up to his left eye and began to examine the pieces in clinical silence. After a long while, without interrupting his examination, he asked:
    “Where are you from?”
    Lázara had not anticipated that question.
    “Ay, Señor,” she sighed, “very far away.”
    “I can imagine,” he said.
    He was silent again, while Lázara’s terrible golden eyes scrutinized him without mercy. The jeweler devoted special attention to the diamond tiara and set it apart from the other jewelry. Lázara sighed.
    “You are a perfect Virgo,” she said.
    The jeweler did not interrupt his examination.
    “How do you know?”
    “From the way you behave,” said Lázara.
    He made no comment until he had finished, and he addressed her with the same circumspection he had used at the beginning.
    “Where does all this come from?”
    “It’s a legacy from my grandmother,” said Lázara in a tense voice. “She died last year in Paramaribo, at the age of ninety-seven.”
    The jeweler looked into her eyes. “I’m very sorry,” he said. “But their only value is the weight of the gold.” He picked up the tiara with his fingertips and made it sparkle under the dazzling light.
    “Except for this,” he said. “It is very old, Egyptian perhaps, and would be priceless if it were not for the poorcondition of the diamonds. In any case it has a certain historical value.”
    But the stones in the other treasures, the amethysts, emeralds, rubies, opals—all of them, without exception—were fake. “No doubt the originals were good,” said the