Caramens attacked the village. The women were still, but didn’t leave. The blacksmith talked to the prisoner, I can’t remember what he said, something about not behaving as he should, all the village wanted to see him caged, and if after he was caged he spoke to the village boys of things he shouldn’t, he’d find a way to punish his deceitful tongue. While the men looked from the prisoner to the blacksmith, I was watching the village and suddenly noticed smoke rising. At first, I didn’t think anything about it; I looked at the smoke curling as it climbed and tried to imagine the men who had glimpsed the shadows in the shrubs. The smoke was like a black tree trunk rising in the air. I was surprised when I heard my voice saying that a house in the village was on fire, only I didn’t say a house, I said the village, because it seemed to me that the whole village was burning; the shadows had set fire to the village while people was preparing to defend it. Everyone turned to look at the smoke, and the blacksmith’s wife and the other women became agitated. It’s hard for me to know, hard to think, hard to remember, hard to know in what order things happened, but in the end it all goes round, when I’ve forgotten it all, forgotten about me and everything else, and the fire returns. The blacksmith’s house was on fire, and it was as if fire and wind inhabited it, and wind and fire poured out of the windows, at times in steady streams, other times in broken spells. A furious tongue of fire rose, then suddenly broke into deliquescent red and blue tongues, sometimes clear fire, sometimes crowned by smoke searching for its way through the air, not knowing which direction to take, until finally the wind carried it off. The fire cried out with a desperate voice, like a voice laughing at everything, crimson with madness. And the prisoner. no, it was then that they beat me, not one man alone, more than one, because it was my fault that the prisoner had killed himself. Some days later the blacksmith’s son told me who had started the fire. The pain I felt when they were beating me merged with the smoke that was drawing flames with it as it fled; it all blended into the murmur of the water coursing beneath the village and the hands beating me. As we watched the smoke, the prisoner had let himself slip into the water; he went under and the river swept him away, at the spot where people went to gaze at the rocks. The blacksmith’s son wasn’t with us. He hadn’t come to cage the prisoner. Nor was he in the Plaça while they were cementing Senyor. I woke up — or was regaining consciousness after the beating — and saw more houses burning. The fire leapt higher and higher, turning the sky scarlet, like tinted fog. My back ached, especially my right shoulder. I wiped my mouth and discovered clotted blood on one side. The taste in my mouth was one I’d never experienced before: dust and ashes and filthy water. I stood up and found myself alone. By the light of the fire, I could make out the place where the prisoner had let himself slide into the water when I shouted that the houses were on fire. I was just beyond the wash area, on my way back into the village, when I came across a frightened woman who, as she passed me, said they were killing her husband and she couldn’t bear it any longer. Men were fighting in front of the blacksmith’s house; my wife was seated in a corner, terrified, her hands covering her face. I walked toward them, and just as I reached the group, someone grabbed me by the neck, a man I didn’t know. He told me some boys from the village had killed the man of the cave and I was part of it, because my wife had borne the news. He shook her by the shoulders. She said it was true, she’d heard shouts and had stopped, heard how the boys killed him, the old man groaning, the boys laughing. They killed him with his own cudgel. She ran to the village to give the news and discovered the burning houses. When the man asked her what she was doing near the cave, she said she’d gone to Maraldina to visit the cemetery where her mother was buried. She went there often, and when she came back she always took the long route, to see if she could get a glimpse of the man from the cave. She was also looking for her daughter whom she hadn’t seen all day. The boys who killed the old man entered the village before her; when she reached it they were explaining how they’d slain the old man, displaying the cudgel, which was still wet with blood, beating their chests with delight. Everything began with the fire; people were terrified about the shadows the watchmen had seen. A group of men had cornered the man from up the mountain — the one who had tried to strangle the cement man — and he’d bolted into a house, propped the door shut, and was running along the roof, to see if he could jump from one to another and escape, but they followed him. He told them it wasn’t his fault, he’d been blind with rage. The ones on the street called to him to come down, we won’t hurt you, come down. The man kept shouting that he wasn’t to blame, it was in his blood, while the others continued calling to him to come down. Many hours later the man gave up and came down from the roof. They cracked open his skull, but he wasn’t dead, so they strung him up by his feet from a tree in the Plaça. Like a horse, they said, when they left him there; and before returning to the fighting arena, they gave him a shove so he’d swing back and forth. That was when, while the man and my wife. yes, that was when the blacksmith’s son yanked me by the arm and led me away, I still don’t know. it all happened so fast, time has muddled everything. When we left the village we came across Senyor’s stretcher, abandoned in the open, and the blacksmith’s son told me to move fast. A cloud of smoke was pouring out of the stables, followed immediately by flames, and as the flames battled the smoke and wind, the sound of galloping horses reached us. They sped past, almost brushing against us, knocking over the stretcher and Senyor, treading on them. The earth shook, and I covered my ears. When the horses had passed, the blacksmith’s son pulled me along and, without knowing how, we found ourselves at Pedres Baixes. Night was ending, and the smell of fire pervaded everything, cleansing it all. Sparks were shooting up from the blacksmith’s house, and his son calmly said, that’s it. He told me my child was dead. He said, come and you’ll see her. He led me to the cemetery on Maraldina. Though still dark, night was ending, and the light from the fires couldn’t reach us there. He directed me to the first heather shrubs, where the path began; she was lying there, on her side. I picked her up. Her legs were drawn against her chest. She was on her side. I picked her up and carried her home, leaving her on top of the table. Without saying a word, the blacksmith’s son had followed us.