This is an exaggerated spectacle, thought Lillian, and it makes me comfortable. I was always an exaggerated character because I was trying to create all by myself a climate which suited me, bigger flowers, warmer words, more fervent relationships, but here nature does it for me, creates the climate I need within myself, and I can be languid and at rest. It is a drug...a drug...

Why were so many people fearful of the tropics? "All adventurers came to grief." Perhaps they had not been able to make the transition, to alchemize the life of the mind into the life of the senses. They died when their minds were overpowered by nature, yet they did not hesitate to dilute it in alcohol.

Even while Golconda lulled her, she was aware of several mysteries entering her reverie. One she called the sorrows of Doctor Hernandez. The other was why do exiles come to a bad end (if they did, of which she was not sure). From where she sat, she saw the Doctor arrive with his professional valise. But this burden he deposited at the hotel desk, and then he walked toward Lillian as if he had been seeking her.

"You haven't had dinner yet? Come and have it with me. We'll have it in the Black Pearl, so you will become familiar with the place where you are going to play every night."

The Black Pearl had been built of driftwood. It was a series of terraces overhanging the sea. Red ship lanterns illumined a jazz band playing for a few dancers.

Because the hiss of the sea carried away some of the overtones, the main drum beat seemed more emphatic, like a giant heart pulsing. The more volatile cadences, the ironic notes, the lyrical half-sobs of the trombone rose like sea spray and were lost. As if the instrumentalists knew this, they repeated their climbs up invisible antennae into vast spaces of volatile joys and shrank the sorrows by speed and flight, decanting all the essences, and leaving always at the bottom the blood beat of the drums.

The Doctor was watching her face. "Did I frighten you with all my talk about sickness?"

"No, Doctor Hernandez, illness does not frighten me. Not physical illness. The one that does is unknown in Golconda. And I'm a convalescent. And in any case, it's one which does not inspire sympathy."

Her words had been spoken lightly, but they caused the Doctor's smooth face to wrinkle with anxiety. Anxiety? Fear? She could not read his face. It had the Indian sculptural immobility. Even when the skin wrinkled with some spasm of pain, the eyes revealed nothing, and the mouth was not altered.

She felt compelled to ask: "Are you unhappy? Are you in trouble?"

She knew it was dangerous to question those who were accustomed to doing the questioning, to being depended on (and well did Lillian know that those who were in the position of consolers, guides, healers, felt uncomfortable in any reversal), but she took the risk.