THE YOUNG men and women walked round and round the plaza in the hot electric night: the men one way, the girls another, never speaking to each other. In the northern sky the lightning flapped. It was like a religious ceremony which had lost all meaning, but at which they still wore their best clothes. Sometimes a group of older women would join in the procession—with a little more excitement and laughter, as if they retained some memory of how things used to go before all the books were lost. A man with a gun on his hip watched from the Treasury steps, and a small withered soldier sat by the prison door with a gun between his knees, and the shadows of the palms pointed at him like a zariba of sabres. Lights were burning in a dentist's window, shining on the swivel chair and the red plush cushions and the glass for rinsing on its little stand and the child's chest-of-drawers full of fittings. Behind the wire-netted windows of the private houses grandmothers swung back and forth in rocking-chairs, among the family [97] photographs—nothing to do, nothing to say, with too many clothes on, sweating a little. This was the capital city of a state.
   The man in the shabby drill suit watched it all from a bench. A squad of armed police went by to their quarters, walking out of step, carrying their rifles anyhow. The plaza was lit at each corner by dusters of three globes joined by ugly trailing overhead wires, and a beggar worked his way from seat to seat without success.
   He sat down next the man in drill and started a long explanation. There was something confidential, and at the same time threatening in his manner. On every side the streets ran down towards the river and the port and the marshy plain. He said that he had a wife and so many children and that during the last few weeks they had eaten so little—he broke off and fingered the cloth of the other's drill suit. "And how much," he said, "did this cost?"
   "You'd be surprised how little."
   Suddenly as a clock struck nine-thirty all the lights went out. The beggar said: "It's enough to make a man desperate." He looked this way and that as the parade drifted away down—hill. The man in drill got up, and the other got up too, tagging after him towards the edge of the plaza: his flat bare feet went slap, slap on the pavement. He said: "A few pesos wouldn't make any difference to you. ..."
   "Ah, if you knew what a difference they would make."
   The beggar was put out. He said: "A man like me sometimes feels that he would do anything for a few pesos." Now that the lights were out all over town, they stood intimately in the shadow. He said: "Can you blame me?"
   "No, no. It would be the last thing I would do."
   Everything he said seemed to feed the beggar's irritation. "Sometimes," the beggar said, "I feel as if I could kill …"
   "That, of course, would be very wrong."
   "Would it be wrong if I got a man by the throat ...?"
   "Well, a starving man has got the right to save himself, certainly."
   The beggar watched with rage, while the other talked on as if he were considering a point of academic interest. "In my case, of course, it would hardly be worth the risk. I possess [98] exactly fifteen pesos seventy-five centavos in the world. I haven't eaten myself for forty-eight hours."
   "Mother of God," the beggar said, "you're as hard as a stone. Haven't you a heart?"
   The man in the drill suit suddenly giggled. The other said: "You're lying. Why haven't you eaten—if you've got fifteen pesos?"
   "You see, I want to spend them on drink."
   "What sort of drink?"
   "The kind of drink a stranger doesn't know how to get in a place like this."
   "You mean spirits?"
   "Yes—and wine."
   The beggar came very close: his leg touched the leg of the other man: he put a hand upon the others sleeve. They might have been great friends or even brothers standing intimately together in the dark: even the lights in the houses were going out now, and the taxis which during the day waited half-way down the hill for fares who never seemed to come were already dispersing—a tail-lamp winked and went out past the police barracks. The beggar said: "Man, this is your lucky day. How much would you pay me ...?"
   "For some drink?"
   "For an introduction to someone who could let you have a little brandy—real fine Vera Cruz brandy?"
   "With a throat like mine," the man in drill explained, "it's wine I really want."
   "Pulque or maguey—he's got everything."
   "Wine?"
   "Quince wine?"
   "I'd give everything I've got," the other swore solemnly and exactly, "—except the centavos, that's to say—for some real genuine grape wine." Somewhere down the hill by the river a drum was beating: one, two, one, two: and the sound of marching feet kept a rough time—the soldiers—or the police—were going home to bed.
   "How much?" the beggar repeated impatiently.
   "Well, I would give you the fifteen pesos and you would get the wine for what you cared to spend."
   [99] "You come with me."
   They began to go down the hill: at the corner where one street ran up past the chemist's shop towards the barracks and another ran down to the hotel, the quay, the warehouse of the United Banana Company, the man in drill stopped. The police were marching up, rifles slung at ease. "Wait a moment." Among them walked a half-caste with two fang-like teeth jutting out over his lip. The man in drill standing in the shadow watched him go by: once the mestizo turned his head and their eyes met. Then the police went by, up into the plaza. "Let's go. Quickly."
   The beggar said: "They won't interfere with us. They're after bigger game."
   "What was that man doing with them, do you think?"
   "Who knows? A hostage perhaps."
   "If he had been a hostage, they would have tied his hands, wouldn't they?"
   "How do I know?" He had the grudging independence you find in countries where it is the right of a poor man to beg. He said: "Do you want the spirits or don't you?"
   "I want wine."
   "I can't say he'll have this or that. You must take what comes."
   He led the way down towards the river. He said: "I don't  even know if he's in town." The beetles were flocking out and covering the pavements: they popped under the feet like puffballs, and a sour green smell came up from the river. The white bust of a general glimmered in a tiny public garden, all hot paving and dust, and an electric dynamo throbbed on the ground-floor of the only hotel. Wide wooden stairs crawling with beetles ran up to the first floor. "I've done my best," the beggar said; "a man can't do more."
   On the first floor a man dressed in formal dark trousers and a white skin-tight vest came out of a bedroom with a towel over his shoulder. He had a little grey aristocratic beard and he wore braces as well as a belt. Somewhere in the distance a pipe gurgled, and the beetles detonated against a bare globe. The beggar started talking earnestly, and once as he talked the light went off altogether and then flickered unsatisfactorily on again. The head of the stairs was littered with wicker rocking-chairs, [100] and on a big slate were chalked the names of the guests—three only far twenty rooms.
   The beggar turned back to his companion. "The gentleman," he said, "is not in. The manager says so. Shall we wait for him?"
   "Time to me is of no account."
   They went into a big bare bedroom with a tiled floor. The little black iron bedstead was like something somebody has left behind by accident when moving out. They sat down on it side by side and waited, and the beetles came popping in through the gaps in the mosquito wire. "He is a very important man," the beggar said. "He is the cousin of the Governor—he can get anything for you, anything at all. But, of course, you must be introduced by someone he trusts."
   "And he trusts you?"
   "I worked for him once." He added frankly: "He has to trust me."
   "Does the Governor know?"
   "Of course not. The Governor is a hard man."
   Every now and then the water-pipes swallowed noisily. "And why should he trust me?"
   "Oh, anyone can tell a drinker. You'll have to come back for more. It's good stuff he sells. Better give me the fifteen pesos." He counted them carefully twice. He said: "I'll get you a bottle of the best Vera Cruz brandy. You see if I don't." The light went off, and they sat on in the dark: the bed creaked as one of them shifted.
   "I don't want brandy," a voice said. "At least not very much."
   "What do you want then?" "I told you—wine."
   "Wine's expensive."
   "Never mind that. Wine or nothing."
   "Quince wine?"
   "No, no. French wine."
   "Sometimes he has California wine."
   "That would do."
   "Of course himself—he gets it for nothing. From the customs."
   The dynamo began throbbing again below and the light came dimly on. The door opened and the manager beckoned the [101] beggar; a long conversation began. The man in the drill suit leant back on the bed: his chin was cut in several places where he had been shaving too closely: his face was hollow and ill—it gave the impression that he had once been plump and round-faced but had caved in. He had the appearance of a business man who had fallen on hard times.
   The beggar came back. He said: "The gentleman's busy, but he'll be back soon. The manager sent a boy to look for him."
   "Where is he?"
   "He can't be interrupted. He's playing billiards with the Chief of Police." He came back to the bed, squashing two beetles under his naked feet. He said: "This is a fine hotel. Where do you stay? You're a stranger, aren't you?"
   "Oh, I'm just passing through."
   "This gentleman is very influential. It would be a good thing to offer him a drink. After all, you won't want to take it all away with you. You may as well drink here as anywhere else."
   "I should like to keep a little—to take home."
   "It's all one. I say that home is where there is a chair and a glass."
   "All the same—" Then the light went out again, and on the horizon the lightning bellied out like a curtain. The sound of thunder came through the mosquito-net from very far away like the noise you hear from the other end of a town when the Sunday bull-fight is on.
   The beggar said confidentially: "What's your trade?"
   "Oh, I pick up what I can—where I can."
   They sat in silence together listening to the sound of feet on the wooden stairs. The door opened, but they could see nothing. A voice swore resignedly and asked: "Who's there?" Then a match was struck and showed a large blue jaw and went out. The dynamo churned away and the light went on again. The stranger said wearily: "Oh, it's you."
   "It's me."
   He was a small man with a too large pasty face and he was dressed in a tight grey suit. A revolver bulged under his waistcoat. He said: "I've got nothing for you. Nothing."
   The beggar padded across the room and began to talk earnestly in a very low voice: once he gently squeezed with his bare toes the other's polished shoe. The man sighed and blew [102] out his cheeks and watched the bed closely as if he feared they had designs on it. He said sharply to the one in the drill suit: "So you want some Vera Cruz brandy, do you? It's against the law."
   "Not brandy. I don't want brandy."
   "Isn't beer good enough for you?"
   He came fussily and authoritatively into the middle of the room, his shoes squeaking on the tiles—the Governor's cousin. "I could have you arrested," he threatened.
   The man in the drill suit cringed formally. He said: "Of course, your Excellency ..."
   "Do you think I've got nothing better to do than slake the thirst of every beggar who chooses ..."
   "I would never have troubled you if this man had not …"
   The Governors cousin spat on the tiles.
   "But if your Excellency would rather that I went away …"
   He said sharply: "I'm not a hard man. I always try to oblige my fellows ... when it's in my power and does no harm. I have a position, you understand. These drinks come to me quite legally."
   "Of course."
   "And I have to charge what they cost me."
   "Of course."
   "Otherwise I'd be a ruined man." He walked delicately to the bed as if his shoes were cramping him and began to unmake it. "Are you a talker?" he asked over his shoulder.
   "I know how to keep a secret."
   "I don't !t mind you telling—the right people." There was a large rent in the mattress: he pulled out a handful of straw and put in his fingers again. The man in drill gazed out with false indifference at the public garden, the dark mud-banks, and the masts of sailing-ships: the lightning flapped behind them, and the thunder came nearer.
   "There," said the Governor's cousin, "I can spare you that. It's good stuff."
   "It wasn't really brandy I wanted."
   "You must take what comes."
   "Then I think I'd rather have my fifteen pesos back."
   The Governor's cousin exclaimed sharply: "Fifteen pesos!" [103] The beggar began rapidly to explain that the gentleman wanted to buy a little wine as well as brandy: they began to argue fiercely by the bed in low voices about prices. The Governor's cousin said: "Wine's very difficult to get. I can let you have two bottles of brandy."
   "One of brandy and one of ..."
   "It's the best Vera Cruz brandy."
   "But I am a wine drinker ... you don't know how I long for wine. …"
   "Wine costs me a great deal of money. How much more can you pay?"
   "I have only seventy-five centavos left in the world."
   "I could let you have a bottle of tequila."
   "No, no."
   "Another fifty centavos then ... It will be a large bottle." He began to scrabble in the mattress again, pulling out straw. The beggar winked at the man in drill and made the motions of drawing a cork and filling a glass.
   "There," the Governor's cousin said, "take it or leave it."
   "Oh, I will take it."
   The Governors cousin suddenly lost his surliness. He rubbed his hands and said: "A stuffy night. The rains are going to be early this year, I think."
   "Perhaps your Excellency would honour me by taking a glass of brandy to toast our business."
   "Well, well ... perhaps ..." The beggar opened the door and called briskly for glasses.
   "It's a long time," the Governor's cousin said, "since I had a glass of wine. Perhaps it would be more suitable for a toast."
   "Of course," the man in drill said, "as your Excellency chooses." He watched the cork drawn with a look of painful anxiety. He said: "If you will excuse me, I think I will have brandy," and smiled raggedly, with an effort, watching the wine level fall.
   They toasted each other, all three sitting on the bed—the beggar drank brandy. The Governor's cousin said: "I'm proud of this wine. It's good wine. The best California." The beggar winked and motioned and the man in drill said: "One more glass, your Excellency—or I can recommend this brandy."
   [104] "It's good brandy—but I think another glass of wine." They refilled their glasses. The man in drill said: "I'm going to take some of that wine back—to my mother. She loves a glass."
   "She couldn't do better," the Governor's cousin said, emptying his own. He said: "So you have a mother?"
   "Haven't we all?"
   "Ah, you're lucky. Mine's dead." His hand strayed towards the bottle, grasped it. "Sometimes I miss her. I called her 'my little friend.' " He tilted the bottle. "With your permission?"
   "Of course, your Excellency," the other said hopelessly, taking a long draught of brandy. The beggar said: "I too have a mother."
   "Who cares?" the Governor's cousin said sharply. He leant back and the bed creaked. He said: "I have often thought a mother is a better friend than a father. Her influence is towards peace, goodness, charity. … Always on the anniversary of her death I go to her grave—with flowers."
   The man in drill caught a hiccup politely. He said: "Ah, if I could too ..."
   "But you said your mother was alive?"
   "I thought that you were speaking of your grandmother."
   "How could I? I can't remember my grandmother."
   "Nor can I."
   "I can," the beggar said.
   The Governors cousin said: "You talk too much." "Perhaps I could send him to have this wine wrapped up. ... For your Excellency's sake I mustn't be seen ..."
   "Wait, wait. There's no hurry. You are very welcome here. Anything in this room is at your disposal. Have a glass of wine."
   "I think brandy ..."
   "Then with your permission ..." He tilted the bottle: a little of it splashed over onto the sheets. "What were we talking about?"
   "Our grandmothers."
   "I don't think it can have been that. I can't even remember mine. The earliest thing I can remember ..."
   The door opened. The manager said: "The Chief of Police is coming up the stairs."
   "Excellent. Show him in."
   "Are you sure?"
   [105] "Of course. He's a good fellow." He said to the others: "But at billiards you can't trust him."
   A large stout man in a singlet, white trousers, and a revolver-holster appeared in the doorway. The Governor's cousin said: "Come in. Come in. How is your toothache? We were talking about our grandmothers." He said sharply to the beggar: "Make room for the jefe."
   The jefe stood in the doorway, watching them with dim embarrassment. He said: "Well, well ..."
   "Were having a little private party. Will you join us? It would be an honour."
   The jefe's face suddenly lit up at the sight of the wine: "Of course—a little beer never comes amiss."
   "That's right. Give the jefe a glass of beer." The beggar filled his own glass with wine and held it out. The jefe took his place upon the bed and drained the glass: then he took the bottle himself. He said: "It's good beer. Very good beer. Is this the only bottle?" The man in drill watched him with frigid anxiety.
   "I'm afraid the only bottle."
   "Salud!"
   "And what," the Governor's cousin asked, "were we talking about?"
   "About the first thing you could remember," the beggar said. "The first thing I can remember," the jefe began, with deliberation, "—but this gentleman is not drinking."
   "I will have a little brandy."
   "Salud!"
   "Salud!"
   "The first thing I can remember with any distinctness is my first communion. Ah, the thrill of the soul, my parents round me ..."
   "How many parents, then, have you got?"
   "Two, of course."
   "They could not have been around you—you would have needed at least four—ha, ha."
   "Salud!"
   "Salud!"
   "No, but as I was saying—life has such irony. It was my painful duty to watch the priest who gave me that communion [106] shot—an old man. I am not ashamed to say that I wept. The comfort is that he is probably a saint and that he prayed for us. It is not everyone who earns a saint's prayers."
   "An unusual way ..."
   "But then life is mysterious."
   "Salud!"
   The man in drill said: "A glass of brandy, jefe?"
   ''There is so little left in this bottle that I may as well ..."
   "I was very anxious to take a little back for my mother."
   "Oh, a drop like this. It would be an insult to take it. Just the dregs." He turned it up over his glass and chuckled: "If you can talk of beer having dregs." Then he stopped with the bottle held over the glass and said with astonishment: "Why, man, you're crying." All three watched the man in drill with their mouths a little open. He said: "It always takes me like this—brandy. Forgive me, gentlemen. I get drunk very easily and then I see ..."
   "See what?"
   "Oh. I don't know, all the hope of the world draining away."
   "Man, you're a poet."
   The beggar said: "A poet is the soul of his country." Lightning filled the windows like a white sheet, and thunder crashed suddenly overhead. The one globe flickered and faded up near the ceiling. "This is bad news for my men," the jefe said, stamping on a beetle which had crawled too near.
   "Why bad news?"
   "The rains coming so early. You see they are on a hunt."
   "The gringo ...?"
   "He doesn't really matter, but the Governor's found there's still a priest, and you know what he feels about that. If it was me, I'd let the poor devil alone. He'd starve or die of fever or give up. He can't be doing any good—or any harm. Why, nobody even noticed he was about till a few months ago."
   "You'll have to hurry."
   "Oh, he hasn't any real chance. Unless he gets over the border. We've got a man who knows him. Spoke to him, spent a night with him. Let's talk of something else. Who wants to be a policeman?"
   "Where do you think he is?"
   "You'd be surprised."
   [107] "Why?"
   "He's here—in this town, I mean. That's deduction. You see, since we started taking hostages from the villages, there's really nowhere else. ... They turn him away, they won't have him. So we've set this man I told you about loose like a dog—he'll run into him one day or another—and then …"
   The man in drill said: "Have you had to shoot many hostages?"
   "Not yet. Three or four perhaps. Well, here goes the last of the beer. Salud!" He put the glass regretfully down. "Perhaps now I could have just a drop of your—sidral, shall we call it?"
   "Yes. Of course."
   "Have I met you before? Your face somehow …"
   "I don't think I've had the honour."
   "That's another mystery," the jefe said, stretching out a long fat limb and gently pushing the beggar towards the bed-knobs, "how you think you've seen people—and places—before. Was it in a dream or in a past life? I once heard a doctor say it was something to do with the focusing of the eyes. But he was a Yankee. A materialist."
   "I remember once ..." the Governor's cousin said. The lightning shot down over the harbour and the thunder beat on the roof: this was the atmosphere of a whole state—the storm outside and the talk just going on—words like "mystery" and "soul" and "the source of life" came in over and over again, as they sat on the bed talking, with nothing to do and nothing to believe and nowhere better to go.
   The man in drill said: "I think perhaps I had better be moving on."
   "Where to?"
   "Oh ... friends," he said vaguely, sketching widely with his hands a whole world of fictitious friendships.
   "You'd better take your drink with you," the Governor's s cousin said. He admitted: "After all you paid for it."
   "Thank you, Excellency." He picked up the brandy bottle. Perhaps there were three fingers left. The bottle of wine, of course, was quite empty.
   "Hide it, man, hide it," the Governor's cousin said sharply.
   "Oh, of course, Excellency, I will be careful."
   [108] "You don't have to call him Excellency," the jefe said. He gave a bellow of laughter and thrust the beggar right off the bed onto the floor.
   "No, no, that is ..." He sidled cautiously out, with a smudge of tears, under his red sore eyes and from the hall heard the conversation begin again—"mystery," "soul"—going interminably on to no end.
 
   The beetles had disappeared: the rain had apparently washed them away: it came perpendicularly down, with a sort of measured intensity, as if it were driving nails into a coffin lid. But the air was no clearer: sweat and rain hung together on the clothes. The priest stood for a few seconds in the doorway of the hotel, the dynamo thudding behind him, then he darted a few yards into another doorway and hesitated, staring over past the bust of the general to the tethered sailing—boats and one old barge with a tin funnel. He had nowhere to go: rain hadn't entered into his calculations: he had believed that it would be possible just to hang on somehow, sleeping on benches or by the river.
   A couple of soldiers arguing furiously came down the street towards the quay—they just let the rain fall on them, as if it didn't matter, as if things were so bad anyway you couldn't notice. ... The priest pushed the wooden door against which he stood—a cantina door coming down only to the knees—and went in out of the rain: stacks of gaseosa bottles and a single billiard table with the score strung on rings, three or four men—somebody had laid his holster on the bar. The priest moved too quickly and jolted the elbow of a man who was making a shot. He turned furiously: "Mother of God!": he was a Red Shirt. Was there no safety anywhere, even for a moment?
   The priest apologized humbly, edging back towards the door, but again he was too quick—his pocket caught against the wall and the brandy bottle chinked. Three or four faces looked at him with malicious amusement: he was a stranger and they were going to have fun. "What's that you've got in your pocket?" the Red Shirt asked. He was a youth not out of his teens, with gold teeth and a jesting conceited mouth.
   "Lemonade," the priest said.
   "What do you want to carry lemonade with you for?"
   [109] "I take it at night—with my quinine."
   The Red Shirt swaggered up and poked the pocket with the butt of his cue. "Lemonade, eh?"
   "Yes, lemonade."
   "Let's have a look at the lemonade." He turned proudly to the others and said: "I can scent a smuggler at ten paces." He thrust his hand into the priest's pocket and hauled at the brandy bottle: "There," he said. "Didn't I tell you—" The priest flung himself against the swing door and burst out into the rain. A voice shouted: "Catch him." They were having the time of their lives.
   He was off up the street towards the plaza, turned left and right again—it was lucky the streets were dark and the moon obscured. As long as he kept away from lighted windows he was almost invisible—he could hear them calling to each other. They were not giving up: it was better than billiards: somewhere a whistle blew—the police were joining in.
   This was the town to which it had been his ambition to be promoted, leaving the right kind of debts behind at Concepcion: he thought of the cathedral and Montez and a canon he once knew, as he doubled this way and that. Something buried very deep, the will to escape, cast a momentary and appalling humour over the whole situation—he giggled and panted and giggled again. He could hear them hallooing and whistling in the dark, and the rain came down: it drove and jumped upon the cement floor of the useless fronton which had once been the cathedral (it was too hot to play pelota and a few iron swings stood like gallows at its edge). He worked his way down-hill again: he had an idea.
   The shouts came nearer, and then up from the river a new lot of men approached: these were pursuing the hunt methodically—he could tell it by their slow pace, the police, the official hunters. He was between the two—the amateurs and the professionals. But he knew the door—he pushed it open, came quickly through into the patio, and closed it behind him.
   He stood in the dark and panted, hearing the steps come nearer up the street, while the rain drove down. Then he realized that somebody was watching him from a window, a small dark withered face, like one of the preserved heads tourists buy. He came up to the grille and said: "Padre José?"
   [110] "Over there." A second face appeared behind the other's shoulder, lit uncertainly by a candle-flame, then a third: faces sprouted like vegetables. He could feel them watching him as he splashed back across the patio and banged on a door.
   He didn't for a second or two recognize Padre José—in the absurd billowing nightshirt, holding a lamp. The last time he had seen him was at the conference, sitting in the back row, biting his nails, afraid to be noticed. It hadn't been necessary: none of the busy cathedral clergy even knew what he was called. It was odd to think that now he had won a kind of fame superior to theirs. He said "José" gently, winking up at him from the splashing dark.
   "Who are you?"
   "Don't you remember me? Of course, it's years now ... don't you remember the conference at the cathedral? …"
   "Oh, God," Padre José said.
   "They are looking for me. I thought perhaps just for tonight you could perhaps ..."
   "Go away," Padre José said, "go away."
   "They don't know who I am. They think I'm a smuggler—but up at the police station they'll know."
   "Don't talk so loud. My wife ..."
   "Just show me some corner," he whispered. He was beginning to feel fear again. Perhaps the effect of the brandy was wearing off (it was impossible in this hot damp climate to stay drunk for long: alcohol came out again under the armpits: it dripped from the forehead) or perhaps it was only that the desire of life, which moves in cycles, was returning—any sort of life.
   In the lamplight Padre José's face wore an expression of hatred. He said: "Why come to me? Why should you think ? I'll call the police if you don't go. You know what sort of a man I am."
   He pleaded gently: "You're a good man, José. I've always known that."
   "I'll shout if you don't go."
   He tried to remember some cause of hatred. There were voices in the street—arguments, a knocking—were they searching the houses? He said: "If I ever offended you, José, forgive [111] me. I was conceited, proud, overbearing—a bad priest. I always knew in my heart you were the better man."
   "Go," José screeched at him, "go! I don't want martyrs here. I don't belong any more. Leave me alone. I'm all right as I am." He tried to gather up his venom into spittle and shot it feebly at the others face: it didn't even reach, fell impotently through the air. He said: "Go and die quickly. That's your job," and slammed the door to. The door of the patio came suddenly open and the police were there. He caught a glimpse of Padre José peering through a window and then an enormous shape in a white nightshirt engulfed him and drew him away—whisked him off, like a guardian spirit, from the disastrous human struggle. A voice said: "That's him." It was the young Red Shirt. He let his fist open and dropped by Padre José's wall a little ball of paper: it was like the final surrender of a whole past.
   He knew it was the beginning of the end—after all these years. He began to say silently an act of contrition, while they picked the brandy bottle out of his pocket, but he couldn't give his mind to it. That was the fallacy of the deathbed repentance—penitence was the fruit of long training and discipline: fear wasn't enough. He tried to think of his child with shame, but he could only think of her with a kind of famished love—what would become of her? And the sin itself was so old that like an ancient picture the deformity had faded and left a kind of grace. The Red Shirt smashed the bottle on the stone paving and the smell of spirit rose all round them—not very strongly: there hadn't really been much left.
   Then they took him away: now that they had caught him they treated him in a friendly way, poking fun at his attempt to escape—except the Red Shirt whose shot he had spoiled. He couldn't find any answer to their jokes: self-preservation lay across his brain like a horrifying obsession. When would they discover who he really was? When would he meet the half-caste, or the lieutenant who had interrogated him already? They moved in a bunch slowly up the hill to the plaza. A rifle-butt grounded outside the station as they came in: a small lamp fumed against the dirty whitewashed wall: in the courtyard hammocks swung, bunched around sleeping bodies like the nets [112] in which poultry is tied. "You can sit down," one of the men said, and pushed him in a comradely way towards a bench. Everything now seemed irrevocable: the sentry passed back and forth outside the door, and in the courtyard among the hammocks the ceaseless murmur of sleep went on.
   Somebody had spoken to him: he gaped helplessly up. "What?" There seemed to be an argument in progress between the police and the Red Shirt—as to whether somebody should be disturbed. "But it's his duty," the Red Shirt kept on repeating: he had rabbity front teeth. He said: "I'll report it to the Governor."
   A policeman said: "You plead guilty, don't you?"
   "Yes," the priest said.
   "There. What more do you want? It's a fine of five pesos. Why disturb anybody?"
   "And who gets the five pesos, eh?"
   "That's none of your business."
   The priest said suddenly: "No one gets them."
   "No one?"
   "I have only twenty-five centavos in the world."
   The door of an inner room opened and the lieutenant came out. He said: "What in God's name is all the noise ...?" The police came raggedly and unwillingly to attention.
   "I've caught a man carrying spirits," the Red Shirt said. The priest sat with his eyes on the ground ... "because it has crucified ... crucified ... crucified ..." Contrition stuck hopelessly over the formal words. He felt no emotion but fear.
   "Well," the lieutenant said. "What is it to do with you? We catch dozens."
   "Shall we bring him in?" one of the men asked.
   The lieutenant took a look at the bowed servile figure on the bench. "Get up," he said. The priest rose. Now, he thought, now ... he raised his eyes. The lieutenant looked away, out of the door where the sentry slouched to and fro. His dark pinched face looked rattled, harassed. …
   "He has no money," one of the policemen said.
   "Mother of God," the lieutenant said, "can I never teach you ...?" He took two steps towards the sentry and turned. "Search him. If he has no money, put him in a cell. Give him some work. …" He went outside and suddenly raising his [113] open hand he struck the sentry on the ear. He said: "You're asleep. March as if you had some pride ... pride," he repeated again, while the small acetylene lamp fumed up the whitewashed wall and the smell of urine came up out of the yard and the men lay in their hammocks netted and secured.
   "Shall we take his name?" a sergeant said.
   "Yes, of course," the lieutenant said, not looking at him, walking briskly and nervously back past the lamp into the courtyard: he stood there unsheltered, looking round while the rain fell on his dapper uniform. He looked like a man with something on his mind: it was as if he were under the influence of some secret passion which had broken up the routine of his life. Back he came. He couldn't keep still.
   The sergeant pushed the priest ahead into the inner room: a bright commercial calendar hung on the flaking white-wash—a dark-skinned mestizo girl in a bathing-dress advertised some gaseous water: somebody had pencilled in a neat pedagogic hand a facile and over-confident statement about man having nothing to lose but his chains.
   "Name?" the sergeant said. Before the priest could check himself he had replied: "Montez."
   "Home?"
   He named a random village: he was absorbed in his own portrait. There he sat among the white-starched dresses of the first communicants. Somebody had put a ring round his face—to pick it out. There was another picture on the wall too—the gringo from San Antonio, Texas, wanted for murder and bank robbery.
   "I suppose," the sergeant said cautiously, "that you bought the drink from a stranger …"
   "Yes."
   "Whom you can't identify?"
   "No."
   "That's the way," the sergeant said approvingly: it was obvious he didn't want to start anything. He took the priest quite confidingly by the arm and led him out and across the courtyard: he carried a large key like the ones used in morality plays or fairy-stories as a symbol. A few men moved in the hammocks—a large unshaven jaw hung over the side like something left over on a butcher's counter: a big torn ear: a [114] naked black—haired thigh. He wondered when the mestizo's face would appear, elated with recognition.
   The sergeant unlocked a small grated door and let out with his boot at something straddled across the entrance. He said: "They are all good fellows, all good fellows here," kicking his way in. An appalling smell lay on the air and somebody in the absolute darkness wept.
   The priest lingered on the threshold trying to see; the lumpy blackness seemed to shift and stir. He said: "I am so dry. Could I have water?" The stench poured up his nostrils and he retched.
   "In the morning," the sergeant said, "you're drunk enough now," and laying a large considerate hand upon the priest's back, he pushed him in, then slammed the door to. He trod on a hand, an arm, and pressing his face against the grille, protested in feeble horror: "There's no room. I can't see. Who are these people?" Outside among the hammocks the sergeant began to laugh. "Hombre," he said, "hombre, have you never been in jail before?"