67.
RAMON SENDER
ous. I believe I've killed him, my husband I mean. Don't say
anything to me yet. Don't speak to me, please."
On the sanatorium terrace she reflected: "All these men
who have come to the party have their past, too. Amer, among
them. Mine is more distant, even though I am so young. It's
more distant because they say I'm mad." Then she returned to
the scene in the bar.
Bob stood up, left two bills on the table and said:
"Let's go somewhere else. Let's get out of here, but be
calm."
It was useless advice because she was calm. Now also on the
terrace of the sanatorium she was calm. She looked at the sky
and thought of the infinite night.
They left the bar. Something odd was happening. Bob
began telling himself that Matilda was quite capable of having
killed her husband.
"If
so," it suddenly dawned on him, "I'm
going to lose her before I've made her mine." This gave him a
certain dejected feeling.
It was hot that night, but the air is dry and light in the
nights of Cibola. They climbed into the car and by the avenue
running parallel to the river they drove down to a little desert.
On the sanatorium terrace Matilda recalled that this night,
which later became elastic, was for the moment very rigid. That's
the way it seemed to her, at least.
She said to Bob:
"I've killed him, but when the police find out I won't
be
alive. I am determined to kill myself before morning."
She opened her purse and showed him the revolver with .a
very short barrel and a very wide breech. The cartridges were
intact. Incredulous Bob asked:
"Your husband ... is he dead?"-She nodded.-"And you
say you killed him? But how did you kill him?"
Matilda said that her husband took two pills before going
to bed every day. That night instead of those he ordinarily took,
she had put two others on the table, from a bottle marked
with
