The two of them spent their first morning there exploring the coastal city of Porto, which is an airy gemlike city that, as Maybelle complained, had been severely underrated-given one lousy star in the Michelin Guide, that was all. This was plain crazy, a single star for a dozen broad sun-splashed terraces, for countless baroque churches, for the elegant iron bridges, and the lazy smoky river lined with pungent fishing boats and dark bars. Ridiculous! She was indignant. She slapped the green guide book hard against her long thigh. Coming to Portugal had been her idea. She was the one who had thought of flight, of leaving the Ontario winter behind, who had persuaded and cajoled and weakened her husband Meershank, and she was determined to unearth treasures for him hour by hour. Now this insult, this chintzy rating, a gorgeous city awarded one grudging star.

“And just listen,” Maybelle said to Meershank, stopping in the middle of a steep, winding cobbled street to consult the despised guide. “We’re supposed to ‘note the gaily colored laundry flapping overhead’. Laundry! I ask you. Never mind this incredible architecture all around us, we’re asked to gape at mended tablecloths and old underpants.”

Meershank looked upward. Was it the word underpants that caught his attention? Or Maybelle’s brightly injured North American scorn, her admirable readiness to admire, and to deplore the kingly judg ments of rubber tire merchants. So what does this uncultivated bunch know from anything? Back in Canada, she told Meershank, the least of these little Portuguese churches would have caused a major fussing over. A plastic dome built to protect the gold leaf and blue tiles. Tickets sold, conducted tours given, voices hushed toward a proper reverence. But here amid the riches of Portugal, tourists were asked to gaze at laundry! The condescension, the perversity! And what did the owners of the laundry have to say about it? Were they consulted about their contribution to the city’s ambience? Adjured in the name of folklore to keep their colorful laundry flying? Don’t you bet your sweet heart on it.

Socks, sheets, aprons, brassieres. Meershank took them in, groping for a portion of his wife’s contempt. He respected cleanliness, that was the problem. He liked the thought of clothes whipped by soapy water and then bright air. Work pants, blankets-and were those diapers? Ah, diapers, yes, half a dozen in a neat row, holding hands as it were. Seeing them he felt, finally, a throat swell-wah!-of delectable sentiment.

That was the moment when his foot slipped. He felt his leg joint pull brutally at its moorings, and for a second he struggled grotesquely for balance, but to no effect. Then he was spread on the stone street, a man of some sixty-five years, lying on his back, his four limbs pointed in four different global directions.

There he rested, as grounded as any being can get, a cartoon splat: Meershank Sprawled.