Neal Stephenson - Cryptonomicon

“It was a surprise to everyone, sir,” Bobby Shaftoe says.

Now they are on a raised walkway that runs around the courtyard. Only livestock and servants live at ground level. Mr. Pascual leads them around to a door that takes them into the entresuelo. The walls here are rough stone, the ceilings are simple painted planks. They pass through a dark, somber office where Mr. Pascual's father and grandfather used to receive the managers of the family's haciendas and plantations. For a moment, Bobby Shaftoe gets his hopes up. This level has a few rooms that back in the old days were apartments for high-ranking servants, bachelor uncles, and spinster aunts. Now that the hacienda business ain't what it used to be, the Pascuals are renting them out to female students. Perhaps Mr. Pascual is leading him directly to Glory.

But this goes the way of all foolish, horny illusions as Shaftoe finds himself at the foot of a vast staircase of polished nara wood. He can see pressed-tin ceiling up there, chandeliers, and the imposing superstructure of Mrs. Pascual, contained within a mighty bodice that looks like something dreamed up by naval engineers. They ascend the stairs into the antesala, which according to Glory is strictly for casual, drop-in visitors but is fancier than any room Bobby Shaftoe has ever seen. There are big vases and pots all over the place, supposedly old, and supposedly from Japan and China. A fresh breeze runs through; he looks out a window and sees, neatly framed in it, the green dome of the cathedral with its Celtic cross on top, just as he remembered it. Mrs. Pascual holds out her band and Shaftoe clasps it. “Mrs. Pascual,” he says, “thank you for welcoming me into your home.”

“Please sit down,” she says, “we want to hear everything.”

Shaftoe sits in a fancy chair next to the piano, adjust his trousers a bit so that they will not cramp his erect penis, checks his shave. It probably has a few good hours left. A wing of airplanes drones overhead. Mrs. Pascual is giving instructions to the maid in Tagalog. Shaftoe examines the crusted lacerations on his knuckles and wonders whether Mrs. Pascual has the slightest idea of what she would be in for if he really told her everything. Perhaps a little anecdote about hand-to-hand combat with Chinese river pirates on the banks of the Yangtze would break the ice. Through a door and down the hall, he can see a corner of the family chapel, all Gothic arches, a gilded altar, and in front of it an embroidered kneeler worn threadbare by the patellas of Mrs. Pascual.

Cigarettes are brought round, stacked in a large lacquer box like artillery shells in a crate. They drink tea and exchange small talk for what seems like about thirty-six hours. Mrs. Pascual wants to be reassured, over and over again, that everything is fine and that there will not be a war. Mr. Pascual obviously believes that war is just around the corner, and mostly broods. Business has been good lately. He and Jack Shaftoe, Bobby's uncle, have been shipping a lot of stuff between here and Singapore. But business will get a lot worse soon, he thinks.

Glory appears. She has changed out of her student's uniform and into a dress. Bobby Shaftoe nearly topples backward out of the window. Mrs. Pascual formally reintroduces them. Bobby Shaftoe kisses Glory's hand in what he thinks is more than likely a very gallant gesture. He's glad he did, because Glory is palming a tiny wadded-up note which ends up in his hand.

Glory takes a seat and is duly issued her own teacup. Another eternity of small talk. Mr. Pascual asks him for the eighty-seventh time whether he has touched base with Uncle Jack yet, and Shaftoe reiterates that he literally just stepped off the boat and will certainly see Uncle Jack tomorrow morning. He excuses himself to the bathroom, which is an old-fashioned two-holer mounted above deep shafts that must descend all the way to hell. He unwads and reads Glory's note, memorizes the instructions, tears it up and sprinkles it down the hole.

Mrs. Pascual allows the two young lovers a full half hour of “private” time together, meaning that the Pascuals leave the room and only come back every five minutes or so to check up on them. There is a painfully elaborate and lengthy good-bye ceremony which ends in Shaftoe returning to the street and Glory waving to him from her balcony.

Half an hour later, they are doing tongue judo in the back of a horse-drawn taxi galloping over the cobblestones toward the nightclubs of Malate. The extraction of Glory from the Pascual residence was a simple matter for a highly motivated China Marine and a squadron of saucy nursing students.

But Glory must be kissing him with her eyes open because all of a sudden she wriggles loose and says to the taxi driver, “Stop! Please stop, sir!”

“What is it?” Shaftoe says blurrily. He looks around and sees nothing but a great big old stone church looming up above them. This brings a preliminary stab of fear. But the church is dark, there's no Filipinas in long dresses, no Marines in dress uniforms, it can't be his wedding.

“I want to show you something,” Glory says, and clambers down out of the taxi. Shaftoe has to pursue her into the place—the Church of San Augustin. He's gone by this pile many times but he never reckoned he would come inside—on a date.

She stands at the bottom of a huge staircase and says, “See?”

Shaftoe looks up into darkness, thinks there might be a stained-glass window or two up there, maybe a Laceration of Christ or an Impalement of the Blessed Thorax, but—

“Look down ,” Glory says, and taps one miniature foot against the first tread of the staircase. It is a single great big huge slab of granite. “Looks like ten or twenty tons of rock there I'd estimate,” he says authoritatively.

“It came from Mexico.”

“Ah, go on!”

Glory smiles at him. “Carry me up the stairs.” And in case Shaftoe's thinking of refusing, she sort of falls into him, and he has no choice but to catch her up in his arms. She traps his nape in the crook of her arm, the better to pull her face close to his, but what he remembers is how the silk of her sleeve feels against the freshly shaved skin of his neck. He begins the ascent. Glory doesn't weigh much, but after four steps he has broken a fine sweat. She is watching him, from four inches away, for signs of fatigue, and he feels himself blushing. Good thing that the whole staircase is lit up by about two candles. There's a lovely bust of a thorn-crowned Jesus with long parallel blood-drops running down his face, and on the right—

“These giant stones you are walking on were quarried in Mexico, centuries and centuries ago, before America was even a country. They were brought over in the bottoms of the Manila Galleons, as ballast.” She pronounces it bayast.

“I'll be damned.”

“When those galleons arrived, the stones were brought out of their bellies, one by one, and taken here to the Church of San Augustin, and piled up. Each stone on top of the last year's stone. Until finally after many, many years this staircase was finished.”

After a while it seems to Shaftoe as though it's going to take at least that many years to reach the top of the damn thing. The summit is adorned with a life-sized Jesus carrying a cross that appears to be at least as heavy as one of those stair-treads. So who's he to complain? Then Glory says, “Now carry me down, so you will remember the story.”

'“You think I'm some horny jarhead who won't remember a story unless it's got a pretty girl in it?”

'“Yes,” Glory says, and laughs in his face. He carries her down to the bottom again. Then, before she goes off on some other tangent, he carries her straight out the door and into the taxi.

Bobby Shaftoe is not one to lose his cool in the heat of action, but the rest of the evening is a blurry fever dream to him. Only a few impressions penetrate the haze: alighting from the taxi in front of a waterfront hotel; all of the other boys gaping at Glory; Bobby Shaftoe glaring at them, threatening to teach them some manners. Slow dancing with Glory in the ballroom, Glory's silk-clad thigh gradually slipping between his legs, her firm body pressing harder and harder against his. Strolling along the seawall, hand in hand beneath the starlight. Noticing that the tide is out. Exchanging a look. Carrying her down from the seawall to the thin strip of rocky beach beneath it.