The southern shore might have been in a different country. It was the site of the Lambeth potteries, and there, in mud fields dotted with ramshackle workshops, crowds of gray-faced men and ragged women were still at work boiling bones, sorting rubbish, firing kilns and pouring paste into molds to make the drainpipes and chimney pots needed by the fast-expanding city. The smell was strong even here on the bridge, a quarter-mile away. The squat hovels in which they lived were crowded around the walls of Lambeth Palace, the London home of the Archbishop of Canterbury, like the filth left by high tide on the muddy foreshore. Despite the nearness of the archbishop's palace the neighborhood was known as the Devil's Acre, presumably because the fires and the smoke, the shuffling workers and the awful smell made people think of Hell.
Micky's lodgings were in Camberwell, a respectable suburb beyond the potteries; but he and his father hesitated on the bridge, reluctant to plunge into the Devil's Acre. Micky was still cursing the scrupulous Methodist conscience of old Seth Pilaster for frustrating his plans. "We will solve this problem about shipping the rifles, Papa," he said. "Don't worry about it."
Papa shrugged. "Who is standing in our way?" he asked.
It was a simple question, but it had a deep meaning in the Miranda family. When they had an intractable problem, they asked Who is standing in our way? It really meant Whom do we have to kill to get this done? It brought back to Micky all the barbarism of life in Santamaria Province, all the grisly legends he preferred to forget: the story about how Papa had punished his mistress for being unfaithful to him by putting a rifle up her and pulling the trigger; the time a Jewish family opened a store next to his in the provincial capital, so he set fire to it and burned the man and his wife and children alive; the one about the dwarf who had dressed up to look like Papa during the carnival, and made everyone laugh by strutting up and down in a perfect imitation of Papa's walk--until Papa calmly went up to the dwarf, drew a pistol, and blew his head off.
Even in Cordova this was not normal, but there Papa's reckless brutality had made him a man to be feared. Here in England it would get him thrown in jail. "I don't anticipate the need for drastic action," Micky said, trying to cover his nervousness with an air of unconcern.
