The amused expression that appeared on Carvalho’s face prompted no particular reaction from his visitor. His repeated glances in the direction of an empty chair forced Carvalho to offer him a seat, and, once seated, the visitor slowly and deliberately lit a cigarette, took a deep breath, in order to get his narrative started, and gave Carvalho a detailed resumé of his encounter with Jauma miles above the Mojave Desert. Carvalho began to wonder whether he was in the presence of some kind of oral novelist, a habitual monologist with a taste for performing to gatherings of Trappists, a cultured leftist fallen on hard times, and he sensed that the story was probably going to end with a coup de theatre, a carefully weighted punchline which would tie up the threads and give meaning to the whole.
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