34
PARTISAN REVIEW
harvest and after that he got a job digging potatoes out of the black
soil. Then he went on his way while the thrushes hurtled around
like stones, menacing the delicate blue of the sky. The money he
earned with three days' work allowed him to do nothing for a week;
and he spent the whole time sleeping under the peach trees laden
with fruit , or in open fields, or in haystacks . The sun tanned his face
and arms. A serene light bathed his eyes . When he occasionally
went back to the city, he would see Aquiles Marambio ftom a
distance, and at the sight
ofSebasti~n
he would turn away or rapidly
cross the street to avoid having to talk to him, raising a gloved
finger from afar as if to scold him or remind him.
Little by little something strange was happening to
Sebasti~n :
he couldn't control his sleep. Now he couldn't just start in sleeping
of his own free will as in the past. Sleep would overpower his will,
acquiring an independence that ruled him despotically . Now, sud–
denly, sleep would take over for no obvious reason, on the side of a
road for example , and he would have to curl up right there, among
the dirty weeds, to sleep. Uneasy, he sensed that sleep was overflow–
ing its place and flooding his entire life. He would succumb any–
where, by day or by night, in cold or warm weather, under the rain
or during working hours, and when he woke up his desperation
grew when he realized he still couldn't remember. But as he slept
more and more, he felt more and more tormented by knowing he
was excluded from his own happiness; and yet he felt more and more
confident that he would see the door open wide to receive him. A
great nearness was what he remembered on awakening. But nothing
more.
One day they gave him a scythe, promising him that if he
mowed all the hay in a pasture and stored it in the silo, they would
pay him a tidy sum of money-enough,
Sebasti~n
thought , to allow
him to sleep a whole month without worrying about anything, and
a whole month of sleep was a fantastic prospect . His chest bare , his
scythe over his shoulder, he waded across the pasture from one end
to the other. The tops of the fig trees were liquid and murmured in
the breeze that had just picked up, and in their thick blue shadows ,
on the moss, two ducks were resting like recently washed shirts
which the wind had softly left fall.
Sebasti~n
heard the herons cry
out, and, looking up at the heavy clouds moving swiftly over the
