"Can deaf people think?” “Hmmm … being as I’m not deaf, I haven’t paid it much thought.” “Just consider, though …” Iñigo continued, then stopped and regarded me pigeon-like. “Aquila , you rascal! Mystery ought to be handled with reverence, not kicked about like a football.” “Ah, but you’re wrong! Life is an ocean teeming with mysteries. Think, now.… do you toss in a hook, draw one up on the shore, and dissect it? No, quite the contrary! You dive deep. Probe their hidden caverns. Frolic among them, and learn their lyric. When, at last, the fish eats out of your hand, it’s a stranger no longer. But, by then … ah, well, that’s when you notice how the hand is furrowed with age. While the ocean goes on forever.” We resumed our stroll along the weed-choked trail that had once been the main thoroughfare of Sion. After a bit, Iñigo ventured again to break the hush that these forsaken buildings compelled. “You’ve grown, Aquila. When last I saw you, in 1916, you were the cocky young pulpitarian. But look at you now—lecturing me on mystery … and the enigma of time itself.” “Time … yes. Alas, it’s time what transforms the bumptious firebrand into a middle-aged hermit who begins, at last, to understand just how much he doesn’t. “But as for your question,” I continued. “It’s natural for all human creatures to think—so long as the brain continues to function normally, as it were. Mental impairment, certainly, might lead to a loss of hearing, but I see no reason it should work in the other direction.” I could tell by Iñigo's expression that I’d struck wide of the target. “But, there now—I should have guessed it was a trick question, such as which side of the dog harbors the most fleas, eh?” “No trick, my friend. But I fear you've not got your arms around it yet. Think of a true deaf-mute, one who’s never heard a sound since he stepped out of the womb. Then suppose he’s shipwrecked and orphaned—washed up on a desert island at just three years’ age and fated thereafter to perdure his earthly career alone and lost. What language do you suppose he thinks in? Or, does he think at all? Has he a name for himself? How does he lay up memories—and recall them?” “Well, now! This fish is a stranger indeed. You know, I haven’t a crumb of a solution to your riddle. (Do you?) But I get the hunch it’s somehow twisted up with whatever it is you’ve been moiling at all these years.” We had reached the Sentinel Fig, which shadowed the great iron gateway to the common-house grounds. That derelict structure was now a windowless ruin, with a grove of pine and encino oaks jutting at weird angles through its crumbling roof. Warm draughts off the sierra sang through broken glass, while a red-tailed hawk orbited high above on a midsummer thermal. Here the road deposited us, and no further. “Shall we sit beneath the fig for a spell, as in the old days?” I said. A bilious moss thrived in the tree’s dewy shadow, flouting the dusty purview beyond. Iñigo scowled. “Actually … I’m not altogether out of steam yet. If it’s all the same to you, let’s walk the mountain trail. This ghost resort gives me … you know … ants up the spine.” As the path ascended, beneath the lacy coolness of hemlocks, Iñigo began his tale. But not from our parting twenty-three years earlier, right here in the La Silla mountains overlooking the valley of Monterrey, Mexico. We were both nineteen at the time, and full of ginger, albeit from two different worlds. Iñigo Durán, the well-educated immigrant from Munich, off to the posh pockets of Mexico City where he hoped to find hardy patronage for the produce of his violinmaking skills. And I, Aquila Navarro, the mascot of Sion at its apogee—before … But that tale is rightly told elsewhere, in the chronicle of Sion’s fall. Iñigo led the way, unwinding, as he went, a yarn that drew us five hundred miles south, and a hundred years into the past, where we stumbled into a small mountain village in the year 1839. It was a settlement of Otomí Indians—Hñahñu , they call themselves—that lay within the old boundaries of México State, but would later—after the Partitioning of 1869—join the modern state of Hidalgo, jewel of the Mexican highlands. And now is the time for me to take a bow and let Iñigo continue in his own words. For, after all, this was the fish that ate out of his hand.