The earth was turning fast. Women cannot walk out of the traps of love, but men can; they have wars and revolutions to attend to. What would happen now? She knew. One signed five sheets of paper and answered minute, excruciatingly exact questions. She had seen the questionnaire. One had to say whether one's wife or husband believed in the revolution; one had to tell everything. Rango would be filling these pages slowly, with his nervous, rolling, and swaying handwriting. Everything. He would probably say that his wife was a cripple, but the party would not condone a mistress.

Then suddenly the earth ceased turning and the blood no longer rang in her ear. Everything stood deathly still because she remembered the dangers. She remembered Rango's friend who had been found with a bullet hole in his temple, near the café where they met. She remembered Rango's story about one of the men who worked for the revolution in Guatemala: the one who had been placed in a jail half full of water until his legs rotted away in strips of moldy flesh, until his eyes turned absolutely white.

The next evening Rango was late. Djuna forgot that he was always late. She thought: he has signed all the papers, and been told that a member of the party cannot have a mistress.

It was nine o'clock. She had not eaten. It was raining. Friends came into the café, talked a little, and left. The time seemed long because of the anxiety. This is the way it would be, the waiting, and never knowing, if Rango were still alive. He would be so easily detected. A foreigner, dark skin, wild hair, his very appearance was the one policemen expected from a man working for the revolution.

What had happened to Rango? She picked up a newspaper. Once he had said: "I picked up a newspaper and saw on the front page the photograph of my best friend, murdered the night before."

That is the way it would happen. Rango would kiss her as he had kissed her the night before at the street corner, with the violin playing, then the violin would stop, and that very night...

She questioned her instinct. No, Rango was not dead. She would like to go to church, but that was forbidden, too. Despair was forbidden. This was the time for stoicism.

She was jealous of Rango's admiration for Gauguin's mother, a South American heroine, who had fought in revolutions and shot her own husband when he betrayed the party.

Djuna walked past the church and entered. She could not pray because she was seeking to transform herself into the proper mate for a revolutionist. But she always felt a humorous, a private, connivance with god. She felt he would always smile with irony upon her most wayward acts. He would see the contradictions, and be indulgent. There was a pact between them, even if she were considered guilty before most tribunals. It was like her friendliness with the policemen of Paris.