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 nearby. 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 roundabout 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 marimbas in the doorways and in front of the houses—three or four together, 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.
After 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 felt in his pocket for the stub and the whole cigarette, and keeping his fingers around them, walked across to the park. The celestial fireworks were very bright, but there was no thunder. Throughout the town sounded the clink and purr of the marimbas, some near and some far away. A soft breeze stirred the branches of the few lemon trees in the park. He walked along thoughtfully until he came to a bench directly opposite the entrance of the hotel, and there he sat down and brazenly began to smoke his stub. After a few minutes it was easier for him to believe that one of the two yellow-haired women would come out. He flicked away the butt, leaned back and stared straight at the hotel. The manager had put a square loudspeaker over the entrance door, and out of it came a great crackling and hissing that covered the sound of the marimbas. Occasionally a few loud notes of band music rose above the chaos, and from time to time there seemed to be a man’s voice speaking behind the noise. Jacinto was annoyed: the women would want to stay inside where they could hear the sound better.
A long time went by. The radio was silenced. The few voices in the park disappeared down the streets. By the cathedral everyone was asleep. Even the marimbas seemed to have stopped, but when the breeze occasionally grew more active, it brought with it, swelling and dying, long marimba trills from a distant part of the town.
It grew very late. There was no sound but the lemon leaves rubbing together and the jet of water splashing into the basin in the center of the market. Jacinto was used to waiting. And halfway through the night a woman stepped out of the hotel, stood for a moment looking at the sky, and walked across the street to the park. From his bench in the dark he watched her as she approached. In the lightning he saw that it was not the younger one. He was disappointed. She looked upward again before moving into the shade of the lemon trees, and in a moment she sat down on the next bench and lighted a cigarette. He waited a few minutes. Then he said: “Señorita.”
The yellow-haired woman cried: “Oh!” She had not seen him. She jumped up and stood still, peering toward his bench.
He moved to the end of the seat and calmly repeated the word. “Señorita.”
She walked uncertainly toward him, still peering. He knew this was a ruse. She could see him quite clearly each second or so, whenever the sky lighted up. When she was near enough to the bench, he motioned for her to sit down beside him. As he had suspected, she spoke his tongue.
“What is it?” she asked. The talk in the strange language at the station had only been for show, after all.
“Sit down, señorita.”
“Why?”
“Because I tell you to.”
She laughed and threw away her cigarette.
“That’s not a reason,” she said, sitting down at the other end of the bench. “What are you doing here so late?” She spoke carefully and correctly, like a priest. He answered this by saying: “And you, what are you looking for?”
“Nothing.”
“Yes. You are looking for something,” he said solemnly. ”
I was not sleeping. It is very hot.”
“No. It is not hot,” said Jacinto. He was feeling increasingly sure of himself, and he drew out the last cigarette and began to smoke it. “What are you doing here in this town?” he asked her after a moment.
“Passing on my way south to the border,” she said, and she told him how she was traveling with two friends, a husband and wife, and how she often took a walk when they had gone to bed.
Jacinto listened as he drew in the smoke and breathed it out. Suddenly he jumped up. Touching her arm, he said: “Come to the market.”
She arose, asking: “Why?” and walked with him across the park. When they were in the street, he took her wrist fiercely and pressing it, said between his teeth: “Look at the sky.”
She looked up wonderingly, a little fearfully. He went on in a low, intense voice: “As God is my witness, I am going into the hotel and kill the man who came here with you.”
Her eyes grew large. She tried to wrest her arm away, but he would not let it go, and he thrust his face into hers. “I have a pistol in my pocket and I am going to kill that man.”
“But why?” she whispered weakly, looking up and down the empty street.
“I want his wife.”
The woman said: “It is not possible. She would scream.”
“I know the proprietor,” said Jacinto, rolling his eyes and grinning. The woman seemed to believe him. Now he felt that a great thing was about to happen.
“And you,” he said, twisting her arm brutally, “you do not scream.”
“No.”
Again he pointed to the sky.
“God is my witness. You can save the life of your friend. Come with me.”
She was trembling violently, but as they stumbled through the street and he let go of her an instant, she began to run. With one bound he had overtaken her, and he made her stop and look at the sky again as he went through his threats once more. She saw his wide, red-veined eyes in a bright flash of lightning, and his utterly empty face. Mechanically she allowed him to push her along through the streets. He did not let go of her again.
“You are saving your friend’s life,” he said. “God will reward you.”
She was sobbing as she went along. No one passed them as they moved unsteadily on toward the station. When they were nearly there they made a great detour past the edge of town, and finally came to the cemetery.
“This is a holy place,” he murmured, swiftly crossing himself. “Here you are going to save your friend’s life.”
He took off his shirt, laid it on the stony ground, and pushed her down. There was nothing but the insistent, silent flashing in the sky. She kept her eyes shut, but she shuddered at each flash, even with her lids closed. The wind blew harder, and the smell of the dust was in her nostrils.