| Smiley warns Rothman that Essella's tribal origins mixed with the recent overlay of several year's schooling with the Sister of the Sacred Heart have made of her an impossible liminal creature with neither a forest soul or a Christian soul. He points to the Teatro as an emblem of the impossibly hybrid. |
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Last night a dream in the desert, lad. The bush that burns but never consumes itself. The voice of Yahweh soaring like the Phoenix. But the tablet was sundered, the very image of Essella, a tribal soul half converted by the nuns, a tragic divided thing, neither savage nor civilized. Oh a heart of fire I grant, but doomed to burn to ash. Go not, lad, into that dark night. |