as any ugly, venal affair. I exaggerate,
I know, but
not to any considerable extent. The turning of love
into an excuse for the vilest weakness is a good deal
more repulsive to me than is mere mediocrity.
If I
did not so cherish that love which exalts, I should
not so despise the love that degrades.
And it is this
latter which our literature and our cinema are too
frequently concerned with portraying.
In three-
fourths of the novels and films that we meet with, it
would appear that woman has no other mission in
life than to lead man to the brink of catastrophe.
But in spite of all this, the film was entertaining
and, as I have said, well played. It is owing to the
number of elements involved that it so hard for a
film to achieve the dignity of a work of art. But
there is another reason, which is that we so readily
put up with productions in the cinema whose equi-
valent in mediocrity we would not tolerate in litera-
ture.
I next saw (and I must confess that this was in a
third house,
where news-reels only were being
shown) a state funeral, lines of marching soldiers,
parades, horse and automobile races, and, for the
third time-the public appearing to like the thing,
the other two houses had put on the same silly
spectacle-a slow-motion race. I left, fed up with it
all. After a long period of work in the country, I
could find, in my own eyes, some sort of justification
for such a debauch. As to how other eyes than mine
may look upon it, I am little concerned with that.
Nevertheless,
being called upon to present to the
public a day out of my life, I am by no means content
that the day should be one which is so little to my
credit.
"You have no one to blame but yourself for its
not being better filled."
Yes, I know; that is what I kept saying to myself
when evening came and I found myself affected by a
kind of nausea for all that I have set down here. I
hesitated. Would it not be better to relate how I
had spent the day of the 26th, which had been hap-
pily and purposefully filled? Or the day following,
which, by way of reaction, I proposed to devote to
work? But I do not like cheating; and so, as I came
home--It
is, I repeated,
the blank nothingness of
a day off, a day lost, that I must depict. And I have
not so many more of them to live. Let me, then,
before I turn the latch on the 27th, endeavor to get
out of myself at least a few lofty thoughts.
It's no
use; I can think of nothing but asininities.
Yet, it
wasn't so late. I might have spent an hour revising
the translation of J ef Last's novel. What I did in-
stead was to go over in my mind those verses of
Ronsard's which I had started learning by heart
that morning; and in doing so, I experienced all over
again their soothing effect. Whereupon,
I turned the
page of this day in my Diary, a page which, had i~
not been for the engagement
I had taken upon my-
self to fulfill, would have remained forever a blank.
PARTISAN
REVIEW AND ANVIL
The Runners
PRUDENCIO DE PEREDA
I AM lying across the bridge holding on to the low
rail with my right hand, my head bending over
under it, and vomiting into the water going fast
underneath with the moon riding in it, the whole
?ody shaking with the spasms, when very suddenly
It comes to a stop and I pull my head in and slowly
lift it to lean against the rail, and then I see him
come running up the path in the dark and on to the
bridge. When he gets close to me I see that he is
crying and I hear him saying, "She's dead! She's
dead!"
My mouth is open and I look at him, but I do not
say anything and my hand begins to slip off the rail.
"At last," I think, "at last." Then my hand comes
off and I go down slowly with my back hitting the
boards and my head hanging over the edge, still
thinking that and the lips beginning to mutter, "At
last
I
At last!"
N ow the sky is blue and the stars are white spots
in it and I can look up at it and watch the blueness
and the whiteness of it, but before I could not stand
doing this. I could not do anything. They made me
stay outs.ide of the house that she was dying in be-
cause I could not see her in pain and I trembled.
"You can't do anything for her. Go on. Go away
from here." They told me this while my stomach be-
gan to move inside and to gurgle from fright. When
I began to walk away my knees were shivering and
then my whole body began to shiver, so I went to my
aunt's house and down to the wine room and I be-
gan to drink the red wine.
Sitting in the room on the first floor I could look
down the road and see the door of her house and
how lonely it looked now. Only her father and an
old woman were there with her. No one in the
pueblo wanted to help a "Communist" bitch fight
death. It was a Catholic pueblo.
I took a drink and I remembered that in the night
she used to tell me they were used to it. I had to
sneak out of the house to go and be with her, be-
cause my aunt did not understand about us. Her
father did, and some nights we stayed in the house
and talked with him about Socialism. We could be
very much together then because we both hated the
Spanish Socialists, but the old man had faith. He
laughed at us and said we were extremists.
"They'll
bring the revolution," he warned.
"They'll
bring
the revolution."
"Yes," I said, "yes, they will; on fascism's little
ass." It sounded funny in Spanish. That was in 1934
in June.
When we two had talked I always used to ask her,
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