Bunuel_Luis_My_Last_Breath

Pro and Con 22 3where your fantasies can wander endlessly in the minute detours. Ilove cloisters, too, especially the one in El Paular. Of all the memorableplaces I've been, this is the one that's moved me most deeply.A rather large Gothic cloister, it's ringed not by columns but byidentical buildings with tall ogival windows and old wooden shutters.The roofs are covered in Roman tiles, the wood in the shuttersis splintered, and tufts of grass grow in the cracks in the walls. Theentire place is bathed in an antique silence; and in the center, hiddennow by a stone bench, there's a lunar dial, testimony to the brightnessof those ancient nights. Boxwood hedges run between pollardedcypresses, which must be centuries old. Perhaps its major attractionfor me, however, was the row of three tombs-the first, and mostmajestic, containing the venerable remains of a convent superior fromthe sixteenth century; the second, two women, mother and daughter,who died in an automobile accident just a few hundred yards fromthe convent and whose bodies were never claimed. The third tomb,a simple stone almost buried in the dry grass, is inscribed with anAmerican name. The monks told us that the man was one of Truman'sadvisers at the time the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima,and like so many others who were involved in that horror,he developed serious psychological and nervous disorders. He left hisfamily and his work, drifted about Morocco for a while, and finallycame to Spain, where one night, thoroughly exhausted, he knockedon the convent door. The monks took him in, and he died a weeklater.One day, when Carriere and I were working on a screenplay inthe hotel next door, the monks invited us for lunch in their refectory.It was a rather good lunch (lamb and potatoes, as I remember), buttalk was forbidden during the meal. Instead, one of the Benedictinesread from the Church Fathers until we finished eating, whereuponwe went into another toom-this one with chocolates, coffee, andtelevision-and talked to our heart's content. These monks were verysimple men; they made cheese and gin-the latter strictly illegal,since they paid no taxes. They also sold postcards and decorated canes