But he had to die like everyone else. They made him die in the center of the Plaça. They wanted to watch him. When Senyor’s eyes began to protrude, an old man from the slaughterhouse said: he wanted to see the village carried away by the river, and the village sees him carried away by death. And I didn’t know where that girl was.
VIII
Everything was solitary and quiet as I walked back down the path. Groups of men were strolling through the streets. I could not rid myself of the fever that had passed to my hand, nor free my eyes of the image of Senyor’s vacant eyes peering at me above his mottled hand as I described my father’s last death. All of this merged with the images of the man who enjoyed watching people die and the woman shouting as she was led away. I approached one of the groups, where a man was explaining that early that morning — when the sun was scaling the stone arch, heading for the bend in the river — he had ventured close to the old man’s cave and found the man with the cudgel standing in the center of the clearing, hands in the air, crying out to the stones and to all that could hear him — everywhere his voice could reach — that he was a dead man. I left the group and drew near another, where a man said that someone had stolen the cudgel from the old man of the cave. The man announced that if he discovered who had committed the deed, he’d drag his face through the dust, slash open his back with the old man’s cudgel, and sow the ground with his blood. Another man said in a troubled voice that when he was young he’d fought against the patient old man, and after the contest the way he perceived life had changed. In front of the blacksmith’s house, a large number of men were discussing whether it was a good thing to have troubled the old man, who’d had a difficult life. To steal his cudgel was to steal his hands. One mentioned that he could remember how the old man had won the cave when he was young by fighting against two cudgel-swinging men. He’d defeated the two of them without moving, stopping the blows of one and the other as they swung and tried to outwit him. Finally he’d delivered the death blow to both, and took possession of the cave, leaving the men at his feet, slain by killings as clean as handfuls of water. As the man uttered these last words beneath the heavy wisteria-laden night, I saw the hand without ever seeing it. The blacksmith’s voice could be heard above the others’, telling them there was no need to be so anxious: his son had just reported that the old man had recovered his cudgel. Go home to your houses, don’t think of this any more. A youngish man, with black eyes and sunken cheeks, approached the blacksmith, placing his hand on the smithy’s shoulder. The blacksmith turned his head, glancing at the hand on his shoulder, and looked into the man’s eyes. If anyone torments the old man of the cave, announced the young man, they’ll have to reckon with me. The day we battled, I sliced open the man of the cave’s chest, and with blood gushing out of him, the only thing the old man did was stop my blows. When I fell to the ground, as everyone did — the man of the black eyes exclaimed — instead of wounding me, he left me with light, and patience pervaded all my being. He removed his hand from the blacksmith’s shoulder and continued speaking: if anything bad should happen to the old man of the cave, I give my word that I’ll kill the prisoner. He began to shout: that bag of bones and rancor, evil soul, worse than any of us. Another man, similar to him — black eyes and flattened hair — approached him, shaking his head from side to side, as if his words were directed at everyone, and he announced that he’d talked to the prisoner once about the man of the cave. The prisoner said if the men who ventured out to fight were unmanly after their mothers had mangled their ears, they were even less so after combat. It’s hard to believe, the prisoner had told him, that no one recognizes the man of the cave’s pride. He leaves the combatants half-dead and returns to his cave to laugh. The blacksmith told him to be quiet; he wanted to know if the prisoner had said this while he was still locked in the cage or when he’d ceased to be a person. The man couldn’t respond because the man with the sunken cheeks struck him on the face with his fist, knocking him flat on the street. People cried out for the prisoner to be put back into the cage. The blacksmith raised his hand to calm the crowd, again telling everyone to go home. In the end nothing bad had occurred, the old man again had his cudgel, according to what his son had told him, and while everyone was worrying about the old man, he was sleeping like a rock. At that very moment a barely audible neighing sprang from the prisoner, and from out of the darkness a desperate neighing issued from one of the village streets. No one knew who had neighed.