Don Alfonso looked at the mouth, now half-open in sleep, which a few minutes before had uttered an accusation that was far too sordid and unnuanced, and based on a false motive (jealousy!), but was, in fact, just. Yes, he had sent Manuel Mandujano to his death. He tried once more to feel remorse, but the small wave, artificially generated, subsided in his heart.

The years had destroyed his belief in the sacred character of life. Of this life, anyway. If the young priest’s life hadn’t been cut short, what then? He would have become a respectable parish priest, or perhaps reached a higher rank. And perhaps, from the seat of his power, whatever it was, he would have sent one or another of his subordinates to his death.

Pain and guilt, Don Alfonso meditated, are the two banks of the river of adversity. He had crossed its rushing waters long before. And from his side he contemplated with a remote gaze the heartsick woman who was snoring, her body flung haphazardly across the sofa.

XXVII

CHAPTER XXVII

THE CROWD, which was slowly growing larger with a succession of new arrivals, remained in front of the Palacio Episcopal for a long time. People cast frequent, furtive and rapid glances towards the windows and doors, waiting in some obscure way for the appearance of a leader who would guide their actions, who would decide for them, who would pronounce the words that would describe and justify their conduct.

Someone whispered the name of the municipal president. After all, he was the town’s highest authority and they should turn to him in a moment of crisis like this.

The name echoed meaninglessly in many ears. Who was he? Oh, yes, that old man, fat and benevolent; it was murmured that he was the one who had allowed many women of easy virtue from the coast—“seagulls”—to set up shop in Ciudad Real.

His position was familiar to all of them. Who hadn’t invoked it in order to curse it, on crossing a street mined with potholes the Ayuntamiento hadn’t bothered to fill in? Who didn’t blame him for every one of the small calamities that plagued the town: completely irrational sales taxes, the lack of security at night, unjustified arrests, extortionate property taxes levied without appeal, the proliferation of vice? Who hadn’t secretly aspired at least once to occupy that dignified office, whose holders left it with an inevitable diminishment of prestige, but rich? A municipal president is an institution that is accepted, tolerated and required under normal circumstances. But in an emergency like this one, a municipal president has nothing to do.

And the commandante of the garrison? This suggestion wasn’t even worth discussing. The commandante of the garrison was a foreigner in the pay of the government of the Republic. Those two factors alone were enough to disqualify him. It would have been madness to trust him.