“Two peasants from the lines walked over, talking together, and one of them called to me, ‘What passes with thee, Pilar?’
“‘Nothing, man,’ I told him.
“‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Speak. What passes.’
“‘I think that I have a belly-full,’ I told him.
“‘Us, too,’ he said and they both sat down on the bench. One of them had a leather wineskin and he handed it to me.
“‘Rinse out thy mouth,’ he said and the other said, going on with the talking they had been engaged in, ‘The worst is that it will bring bad luck. Nobody can tell me that such things as the killing of Don Guillermo in that fashion will not bring bad luck.’
“Then the other said, ‘If it is necessary to kill them all, and I am not convinced of that necessity, let them be killed decently and without mockery.’
“‘Mockery is justified in the case of Don Faustino,’ the other said. ‘Since he was always a farcer and was never a serious man. But to mock such a serious man as Don Guillermo is beyond all right.’
“‘I have a belly-full,’ I told him, and it was literally true because I felt an actual sickness in all of me inside and a sweating and a nausea as though I had swallowed bad sea food.
“‘Then, nothing,’ the one peasant said. ‘We will take no further part in it. But I wonder what happens in the other towns.’
“‘They have not repaired the telephone wires yet,’ I said. ‘It is a lack that should be remedied.’
“‘Clearly,’ he said. ‘Who knows but what we might be better employed putting the town into a state of defense than massacring people with this slowness and brutality.’
“‘I will go to speak with Pablo, I told them and I stood up from the bench and started toward the arcade that led to the door of the Ayuntamiento from where the lines spread across the square. The lines now were neither straight nor orderly and there was much and very grave drunkenness. Two men had fallen down and lay on their backs in the middle of the square and were passing a bottle back and forth between them. One would take a drink and then shout, ‘Viva la Anarquia!’ lying on his back and shouting as though he were a madman. He had a red-and-black handkerchief around his neck. The other shouted, ‘Viva la Libertad!’ and kicked his feet in the air and then bellowed, ‘Viva Ia Libertad!’ again. He had a red-andblack handkerchief too and he waved it in one hand and waved the bottle with the other.
“A peasant who had left the lines and now stood in the shade of the arcade looked at them in disgust and said, ‘They should shout, “Long live drunkenness.” That’s all they believe in.’
“‘They don’t believe even in that,’ another peasant said. ‘Those neither understand nor believe in anything.’
“Just then, one of the drunkards got to his feet and raised both arms with his fists clenched over his head and shouted, ‘Long live Anarchy and Liberty and I obscenity in the milk of the Republic!’
“The other drunkard who was still lying on his back, took hold of the ankle of the drunkard who was shouting and rolled over so that the shouting drunkard fell with him, and they rolled over together and then sat up and the one who had pulled the other down put his arm around the shouter’s neck and then handed the shouter a bottle and kissed the red-and-black handkerchief he wore and they both drank together.
“Just then, a yelling went up from the lines and, looking up the arcade, I could not see who it was that was coming out because the man’s head did not show above the heads of those crowded about the door of the Ayuntamiento. All I could see was that some one was being pushed out by Pablo and Cuatro Dedos with their shotguns but I could not see who it was and I moved on close toward the lines where they were packed against the door to try to see.
“There was much pushing now and the chairs and the tables of the fascists’ café had been overturned except for one table on which a drunkard was lying with his head hanging down and his mouth open and I picked up a chair and set it against one of the pillars and mounted on it so that I could see over the heads of the crowd.