If she still could hear this whistle, there must be echoes in the soul. But she was regaining her own eyes, and with these eyes, with her own vision, she would return home.

The patio was full of birds in cages. The noises of the fiesta kept them awake too. Why should it be among these shadows, these furtive illuminations, these descending passageways that her true self would hide? Driven so far below the surface! She was now like those French speleologists who had descended thousands of feet into the earth and found ancient caves covered with paintings and carvings. But Lillian carried no searchlight and no nourishment. Nothing but the wafer granted to those who believe in symbolism, a wafer in place of bread. And all she had to follow were the inscriptions of her dreams, half-effaced hieroglyphs on half-broken statues. And no guide in the darkness but a scream through the eyes of a statue.

In the morning she returned to life above the ground. Outside in the patio there was a washstand, and the water in the pitcher was cool spring water. The mirror was broken, and the towel had been used by many people. But after the loneliness of the night's journey Lillian was happy to use a collective towel and to see her face in two pieces which could be made to fit together again. She had made a long journey, the journey of the smile and the eyes. There were no decorations for such discoveries. The journey had in reality taken only three months. According to the calendar her trip had taken only the time of an engagement in a night club. The voyage underground had taken longer, and had taken her farther. She would return to Golconda to drink her last cup of flowing gold, iridescent water, sun and air, to pack her treasures, her geological discoveries, the statues which, once unearthed, had become so eloquent.

When they arrived at Golconda it was the end of the New Year celebrations. The streets were still littered with confetti. The street vendor's baskets were empty, and they were sleeping beside them rolled in their ponchos. The scent of malabar was in the air, and that of burnt fireworks.

Lillian walked down the hill to the center of town, past the old woman in black who sold colored fruit juices and white coconut candy, past the church with its wide doors open so that she could see the bouquets of candlelights and the women praying while they fanned their faces. Cats and dogs were allowed to stray in and out, the workmen continued to work on their scaffolds while Mass was being said, the children were allowed to cry, or were fed right there while lying in the black shawls slung from their mother's necks like hammocks.

She walked in a glittering sunlight that annihilated all thought, that left only the eyes awake, and a procession of images marching through the retina, no thoughts around them, no thoughts interpreting them.