Graciela Imago Portales, dark hair parted in the middle and drawn back from her forehead, wearing a long black riding skirt and black boots, sits shuffling cards, stacking herself flushes, full houses, four of a kind, just for her own amusement. The supernumeraries have brought next to nothing to play with. She knew it would come to this: she’d thought once that by using it only in games, money would lose its reality. Wither away. Has it, or is she playing a game with herself? It seems Beläustegui has been watching her more closely since they got here. She doesn’t want to threaten his project. She’s been to bed with the solemn engineer a few times (though at first, back in B.A., she’d have sworn to you she couldn’t have drunk him even with a silver straw), and she knows he’s a gambler too. A good pair, wired front-to-front: she picked it up the first time he touched her. The man knows his odds, the shapes of risk are intimate to him as loved bodies. Each moment has its value, its probable success against other moments in other hands, and the shuffle for him is always moment-to-moment. He can’t afford to remember other permutations, might-have-beens—only what’s present, dealt him by something he calls Chance and Graciela calls God. He will stake everything on this anarchist experiment, and if he loses, he’ll go on to something else. But he won’t hold back. She’s glad of that. He’s a source of strength. She doesn’t know, if the moment came, how strong she’d be. Often at night she’ll break through a fine membrane of alcohol and optimism to see really how much she needs the others, how little use, unsupported, she could ever be.

The sets for the movie-to-be help some. The buildings are real, not a false front in sight. The boliche is stocked with real liquor, the pulpería with real food. The sheep, cattle, horses, and corrals are real. The huts are weatherproof and are being slept in. When von Göll leaves—if he ever comes—nothing will be struck. Any of the extras who want to stay are welcome. Many of them only want to rest up awhile for more DP trains, more fantasies of what home was like before the destruction, and some dream of getting somewhere. They’ll move on. But will others come? And what will the military government think of a community like this in the middle of their garrison state?