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came to prefer the street to the studio, the nights to the days, it was all just as sadly predictable as that. They were subject to much stress at the time, partly to do with money, partly to do with the irritability that came of sustained daily drinking, and partly to do with the mischief that came of Vera’s idleness.
    —Mischief? I said, catching a whiff of something in his tone.
    He nodded. He laboured at his canvas every day, and in the empty apartment her absence would work its mischief at the back of his mind. He would push the thought down, he would employ the full resources of his will to remain concentrated on the work at hand. At noon he stuck his brushes into a jar of turpentine and wiped his hands on a rag, put on his cotton jacket and straw hat and descended the echoing stone staircase to the arcade below to buy cigarettes, knowing that he was really going down to see if Vera was about, assure himself that she was not in some room with a man. If he didn’t find her it would not be a happy afternoon in the studio, and he would rage in his mind until he heard her footfall on the staircase. Then they would fight.
    —How, fight?
    But he would not be drawn, he would not tell me if their fights were merely verbal, the same shouting and screaming they heard every night coming from other apartments in the building, or if it went further, if there was actual physical violence.
    Then came the night they heard gunfire close by. Jack had for some weeks been finding it more and more difficult to control his suspicions of Vera, and his work was suffering as a result. She refused to talk about what she did in the hours she spent away from the apartment. She told him it was no way to live, this trying to account for each other’s movements at all hours of the day or night. Her line was: Why can’t you trust me? He tried to banish the jealous thoughts, but no sooner did his head clear than the small voice started up again. He thought he might be going mad.
    But he was not mad! These thoughts came for a reason! He was picking up signs without being aware of what they were, he must have been, there was some subtle way she was telling him what she was doing, only he couldn’t identify it, but the message was coming through all the same, and he thought it was probably as simple a thing as how she touched him, or perhaps how she didn’t touch him, a telling but almost imperceptible falling off in her physical behaviour towards him that could only be the effect of a divided sexual attention.
    He asked himself why it mattered so much, but that got him nowhere, it mattered because it mattered, and he was far from complacent in this regard, far too fiercely committed to this union to be indifferent to the casual diversions of the body. But it also occurred to him that if she was indeed innocent then his constant suspicion would soon drive her into some man’s arms and create the very situation he was so desperately trying to avoid. Who could he talk to about this? Nobody. Me he had left behind. And I remember thinking that it might have been just this, I mean his isolation in the midst of people for whom Vera was the main attraction, and his dogged insistence on long hours alone each day in his studio, that aroused such jealousy and suspicion in him, or at least created a kind of morbid condition of the spirit in which these emotions could flourish.
    He grew to hate Havana. He grew to see its loose easy life as the enemy of his bond with Vera, and of his work.
    Then came the gunfire in the night. It woke them up. They knew what it was, no question of fireworks or backfiring automobiles. Jack went out onto the balcony, Vera following him, hissing at him to be careful. He stood with his hands on the balustrade, peering all around, but there was nobody about, nothing to be seen. The moon was low over the sea at the end of the street. He came back in, and they sat in his studio smoking, waiting for more gunfire, for whatever was