PARTISAN REVIEW
but on the plain he strode powerfully ahead and sometimes arrived
at the market before sunset.
Now he stood in the public square with a small paper parcel
in his hand. He had arrived the day before. Instead of sitting in the
sidestreet near the fountain and discussing the sales with the others
from his village, he walked into the municipal garden and sat down
on a concrete bench marked "1936." He looked up and down the
walk. No one paid him any attention. He was barefoot, so the shoe–
shine boys passed him by.
Tearing open the paper packet he emptied the dried leaves into
his
left hand. With his right he picked out all the little round, black
berries and tossed them away. Then he crushed the leaves and slowly
rolled them into five thin cigarettes. This took all his attention for
a half hour.
A voice beside him said: "That's pretty."
He looked up.
It
was a town dweller; he had never seen
him
before, so he did not answer.
"All for you?" said the other in the silken town voice that
Jacinto had learned to distrust.
"I bought it. I made them," said Jacinto.
"But I like
grifas
too," smiled the stranger. He was poorly dressed
and had black teeth.
Jacinto covered the cigarettes completely with one big hand
which he placed on the seat of the bench. The stranger pointed to
a soldier sleeping on another bench near the iron bandstand.
"He wants one and I want one. You should be more careful.
It's three months now for possessing marijuana. Don't you know?"
"No," said Jacinto. "I don't know." Then he slowly handed
over two of the cigarettes. The man took them.
"So long," he said.
Jacinto stood up full of fury, and with the other three cigarettes
still in his hand, he walked out into the plaza and down the long
street that led to the station.
It
was nearly time for the daily train
from the north. Sometimes crazy people got off, who would give a
man enough money for two good meals, just for carrying a bundle
into the town for them. There was a cemetery behind the roundhouse
where some of the railroad employees went to smoke the weed. He
remembered it from the preceding year; he had met an inspector
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