The bruise on his left hip had grown increasingly painful and, standing in the backs of chilly churches, one blue and golden marvel after another, he felt himself going stiff. Maybelle at last looked his way and guessed. “You’re exhausted,” she said. “We’ve earned ourselves a good lunch,” and hauled him off to a large clean expensive restaurant where English was spoken and where they were served cold white wine and grilled sardines so tender and crisp that even the tiny tails begged to be picked up and eaten. Meershank at that instant felt he understood the point of gluttony. Eating, drinking, spreading, appreciating, he entertained a vision of an afternoon nap back at the hotel. A siesta; what could be more appropriate? He smiled across at Maybelle who smiled back. Smooth sheets waiting to be mussed.

“Now,” Maybelle said, not so easily deterred, “for the pièce de résistance.”

They took a taxi to the Museum of Ancient Art, hurried past dark oily paintings of the Annunciation, of St. Anthony being tempted and retempted, portraits of sly, chinless burghers and archbishops and several more sword-struck virgins. “Almost there,” Maybelle said, pointing, leading Meershank around a corner.

Ah!-there it stood! The Adoration of St. Vincent. A howling wall of color. Maybelle, satisfied to have found what she was after, consulted her book. “Thank God! Three stars! At last a little respect.”

The six looming panels showed the saints of Portugal in all their homely wide-staring good nature. Meershank, who loved crowds, who respected healthy conviviality, felt instant affection for this mob. Besides saints there were peering, squinting beggars, knights, princes, fishermen, Queen Isabella herself, and a single Jew-all of history’s gaudy gang jamming together at an impromptu hour. There was nothing here that could be deconstructed. The faces, the postures, the cheerful way they overlapped and huddled and made human space for each other suggested folks out for a picnic. And the eyes, so strong, serious and clever; the eyes were something else; in the eyes Meershank read a mission to remap the world of good and evil.

Maybelle, lost in her book, whispered something in Meershank’s ear.

He croaked back. “Eh?”

“Nuno Gonsalves,” she repeated, looking up.

“What’s that?”-reverting to the role of curmudgeon abroad.

“The painter. That’s his name. Nuno Gonsalves. Fifteenth century.” Maybelle was going whispery again. “One of the treasures of Portugal.”

“I see.” One of the treasures. (That fragrant word.)

“Well, what do you think?” Maybelle hissed. “Pretty damn magnificent, isn’t it?”

Meershank’s tongue sought a sprig of irony. A pun to stick between his teeth, or a sharp little anachronism, finely sprung, needle-bright. This whispery place needed a dose of irreverence, a dollop of protein, but what?

“Yes,” he said to the startled Maybelle, forsaking all verbal horseplay and looking upward. The silver of a tear glinted, and with a straight face he said, “Magnificent.”