Paul Bowles
UNDER THE SKY
Inland from the sea on the dry coastal plain lay the town,
open, spread out under the huge high sky. People who lived outside
in the country, and even some of the more educated town-dwellers,
called the town "the Inferno" because nowhere in the region was
the heat so intense. No other place around was quite so shadowless
and so dusty; it seemed that the clouds above shrank upwards to
their farthest possible positions. Many miles above, and to all sides,
they hung there in their massive patterns, remote and motionless.
In the spring, during the nights, the lightning constantly jumped
from one cloud to another, revealing unexpected distances between
them. Then,
if
anyone ever looked at the sky, he was surprised to
see how each flash revealed a seemingly more distant portion of the
heavens to which still more clouds had receded. But people in the
town seldom turned their heads upward. They knew at what time
of the year the rains would come, and it was unnecessary to scan
those vast regions in order to say what day that would
be.
When the
wind had blown hard for two weeks so that the dust filled the wide
empty streets, and the lightning grew brighter each night until finally
there was a little thunder, they could be sure the water would soon
fall.
Once a year when the lightning was in the sky Jacinto left his
village in the mountains and walked down to the town, carrying
with
him
all the things his family had made since his last trip. There
were two days of walking in the sierra where it was cool; the third
day the road was through the hot lands, and this was the day he
preferred, because the road was flat and he could walk faster and
leave the others behind. He was taller and prouder than they, and
he refused to bend over in order to be able to trot uphill and down–
hill
as they did. In the mountains he labored to keep up with them,
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