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. Don Jaime seemed as willing for me to take it up with the referee authority as he had been unwilling to discuss Margrethe's tips with the court. To me this meant that he had handled enough of these debt contracts to be certain how they worked and thus had no fear that the judge or his clerk might rule against him.
I was not able to speak with Margrethe about it in private until that night. 'Marga, how could I be so mistaken about this? I thought the clerk worked it out for us before he had us countersign the assignment of debt. One hundred and twenty-one days. Right?'
She did not answer me at once. I persisted, 'Isn't that what you told me?'
'Alec, despite the fact that I now usually think in English - or in Spanish, lately - when I must do arithmetic, I work it in Danish. The Danish word for sixty is 'tres'- and that
is also the Spanish word for three. Do you see how easily I could get mixed up? I don't know now whether I said to you, "Ciento y veintiuno" or "Ciento y sesentiuno" - because I remember numbers in Danish, not in English, not in Spanish. I thought you did the division yourself.'
'Oh, I did. Certainly the clerk didn't say, "A hundred and twenty-one." He didn't use any English, that I recall. And at that time I did not know any Spanish. Seсor Muсoz explained it to you and you translated for me and later I did the arithmetic again and it seemed to confirm what he had said
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