640 The restaurant manager was the sort of person who felt that because Beethoven had written the Fifth Symphony, therefore he was superior to the entire populations of China, India and Africa. Beethoven was very important to him, not to mention da Vinci, Michelangelo, and various other representatives of Western civilization. To the restaurant manager the superiority of western culture was self evident, he took pleasure in pointing it out to Coromo.
641. The restaurant manager did not fire him as he had been planning. He suddenly felt a pang of guilt at having criticized his employee's paintings. To him the inferiority of Coromo's little pictures was so obvious that it hardly needed to be mentioned, and he could see from the man's dejected looks that he had gone unnecessarily too far. "Don't feel bad Coromo," the manager said, "Art is long and life is short, or rather life is short and art is long, something like that, good luck with your little pictures."
642. It was early evening when Coromo left the manager's office, walked down the narrow basement hallway, and up the stairs to the restaurant. It was that time of day when the restaurant was closed before the evening entertainment. At the far end of the room some musicians were warming up, it was a reggae group, they were doing some song of Bob Marley.
643. The entertainment each evening varied, the previous night had been a string quartet playing the works of Schubert. Coromo listened to the music of Marley, and thought about the previous evening, and how the guests had retired to their rooms early. The guests, unlike the restaurant manager had no appreciation for the great music of Western civilization, but he knew that the restaurant would be busy till late that night, the tourists would stay late because they adored reggae.
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