"I agree with you," said the Doctor. "The white man who falls apart in the tropics is the same one who would fall apart anywhere. But in foreign lands they stand out more because they are few, and we notice them more."

"And then at home, if you want to fall apart, there are so many people to stop you. Relatives and friends foil your attempts! You get sermons, lectures, threats, and you are even rescued."

The Austrian laughed: "I can't help thinking how much encouragement you would get here."

"You, Mr. Hatcher, didn't disintegrate in the tropics!"

Hatcher answered solemnly: "But I am a happy man. I have succeeded in living and feeling like a native."

"Is that the secret, then? It's those who don't succeed in going native, in belonging, who get desperately lonely and self-destructive?"

"Perhaps," said the Doctor pensively. "It may also be that you Americans are work-cultists, and work is the structure that holds you up, not the joy of pure living."

His words were accompanied by a guitar. As soon as one guitar moved away, the sound of another took its place, to continue this net of music that would catch and maintain you in flight from sadness, suspended in a realm of festivities.

Just as every tree carried giant brilliant flowers playing chromatic scales, runs and trills of reds and blues, so the people vied with them in wearing more intense indigoes, more flaming oranges, more platinous whites, or else colors which resembled the purple insides of mangoes, the flesh tones of pomegranates.

The houses were covered with vines bearing bell-shaped flowers playing coloraturas. The guitars inside of the houses or on the doorsteps took up the color chromatics and emitted sounds which evoked the flavor of guava, papaya, cactus figs, anise, saffron, and red pepper.

Big terra-cotta jars, heavily loaded donkeys, lean and hungry dogs, all recalled images from the Bible. The houses were all open; Lillian could see babies asleep in hammocks, holy pictures on the white stucco walls, old people on rocking chairs, and photographs of relatives pinned on the walls together with old palm leaves from the Palm Sunday feast.

The sun was setting ostentatiously, with all the pomp of embroidered silks and orange tapestries of Oriental spectacles. The palms had a naked elegance and wore their giant plumes like languid feather dusters sweeping the tropical sky of all clouds, keeping it as transparent as a sea shell.

Restaurants served dinner out in the open. On one long communal table was a bowl of fish soup and fried fish. Inside the houses people had begun to light the oil lamps which had a more vivacious flicker than candles.