From the sides of the narrow entrance passage rose brick stairways
leading to open galleries that ran along the three stories of the
house and returned to the patio. At intervals, in the back of these
galleries, opened rows of doors painted blue with a black number on
the lintel of each.
Between the lime and the bricks of the walls stuck out, like exposed
bones, jamb-posts and crossbeams, surrounded by lean bass ropes. The
gallery columns, as well as the lintels and the beams that supported
them, must formerly have been painted green, but as the result of the
constant action of sun and rain only a stray patch of the original
colour remained.
The courtyard was always filthy; in one corner lay a heap of useless
scraps covered by a sheet of zinc; one could make out grimy cloths,
decayed planks, debris, bricks, tiles, baskets: an infernal jumble.
Every afternoon some of the women would do their washing in the patio,
and when they finished their work they would empty their tubs on to
the ground, and the big pools, on drying, would leave white stains and
indigo rills of bluing. The neighbours also had the habit of throwing
their rubbish anywhere at all, and when it rained--since the mouth of
the drain would always become clogged--an unbearable, pestilential
odour would rise from the black, stagnant stream that inundated the
patio, and on its surface floated cabbage leaves and greasy papers.
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