PARTISAN REVIEW
wearing a tight metal garment. At that instant he looked at the sky
and saw far above him the tiny black dots that were vultures, moving
ever so slowly in circles as they surveyed the plain
in
the afternoon
sunlight. Beyond them stood the clouds, deep and monumental.
"Ay
!"
he sighed, shutting his eyes, and it occurred to him that this
was what the dead people, who were lying on all sides of
him,
looked
at day after day. This was all they could see-the clouds, and the
vultures, of which they needed have no fear, hidden safely as they
were, deep in holy ground.
He continued to smoke, going deeper and deeper into delight.
Finally he lay back and murmured: "Now I am dead too." When he
opened his eyes it was still the same day, and the sun was very low
in the sky. Some men were talking near by. He listened; they were
trainmen come to smoke, discussing wages and prices of meals. He
did not believe any of the figures they so casually mentioned. They
were lying to impress one another, and they did not even believe each
other. He smoked half of the second cigarette, rose, stretched, and
jumped over the cemetery wall, going back to the station by a round–
about path in order not to have to speak to the trainmen. Those
people, when they smoked, always wanted more and more company;
they would never let a fellow smoker go quietly on his way.
He went to the cantina by the station, and standing in the street,
watched the railway employees playing billiards inside.
As
night
approached, the lightning became increasingly visible. He walked up
the long street toward the center of town. Men were playing marim–
bas in the doorways and in front of the houses-three or four to–
gether, and sometimes only one, indolently. The marimbas and the
marijuana were the only good things in the town, reflected Jacinto.
The women were ugly and dirty, and the men were all thieves and
drunkards. He remembered the three people at the station. They
would be in the hotel opposite the plaza. He walked a little faster,
and his eyes, bloodshot from lack of sleep and too much of the drug,
opened a bit wider.
Mter he had eaten heartily in the market sitting by the edge of
the fountain, he felt very well. By the side wall of the cathedral were
all the families from the mountains, some already asleep, the others
preparing for the night. Almost all the stalls in the market were dark;
a few figures still stood in front of the cold fruit-juice stand. Jacinto
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