“And I wondered if he too had that astonished vaguely offended look that Wack had when he was pulled off his horse lying dead head down looking at me with his eyes wide open mouth wide open beside the road, but Wack had always had a fool’s face and of course death hadn’t exactly improved matters from that point of view, but probably on the contrary accentuated, in so far as it deprived the face of any mobility, the expression dazed, stupefied, as though astonished by the sudden revelation of death that is finally known no longer in the abstract form of that concept with which we have grown accustomed to live but rising up or rather striking in its physical reality, that violence that aggression, a blow of unheard-of unsuspected disproportionate unfair undeserved brutality the stupid and stupefying fury of things that have no need of reasons to strike like when you run headlong into a lamp-post you hadn’t seen lost in your thoughts as they say then becoming acquainted with the idiotic revolting and fierce wickedness of cast iron, the bullet carrying off half the head, then perhaps his face expressed that kind of surprise of reprobation but only his face because I suppose that as far as his mind was concerned it must have long since crossed the threshold beyond which nothing could surprise or disappoint him after the loss of his last illusions in the rout of a disaster, and by then already hurled into that nothingness where the shot had only sent his carcass to join him: all I could see was his back so that I had no way of knowing if every faculty of astonishment or suffering and even of reason had not already abandoned or rather liberated him so that it was perhaps only his body not his mind that enforced the absurd and mocking gesture of unsheathing and brandishing that sabre for undoubtedly he was already quite dead at that moment if as is likely the other man behind his hedge had aimed for the highest-ranking officer first and it takes less time to put ten machine-gun bullets into a body than to accomplish the series of operations consisting of seizing the sabre handle over the left thigh with the right hand unsheathing it and raising the blade, but they say that corpses are sometimes capable of reflexes of muscular contractions strong enough and even co-ordinated enough to make them move like those ducks when you cut their heads off and they go on walking running away grotesquely covering several yards before falling down for good: a mere matter of throats cut after all since according to the tradition the version the flattering family legend it was to avoid the guillotine that the other one had done it had been forced to do it. Then they should have changed their coat of arms after that replaced those three doves by a headless duck I suppose that would have been better a better symbol more explicit in any case since you could say that in any case neither one nor the other had his head any more: just a headless duck brandishing that sabre raising it glinting in the sunlight before falling to one side, horse and duck behind the burnt truck as if they had been cut down like in those farces where you suddenly pull on a rug on which someone is standing, the hedges here consisting of hawthorn or hornbeam I think it’s called little crimped or rather fluted leaves like a flange on each side of the central vein, our long shadows sliding over breaking like the right angles of a staircase, horizontal, vertical, then horizontal again, my helmet moving over the flat part to the top of the hedge, the three horses (breathing less heavily now, the nostrils of the one Iglésia was riding dilated and contracting like pistons still quivering with red veins swollen branching like streaks of lightning) walking side by side taking up most of the lane’s width, I leant over to stroke the neck but where the reins had chafed it was all wet and covered with a greyish lather and I wiped my hand on my breeches he snorted and said The bastard, and I said Does it hurt? But he didn’t answer still with that annoyed expression as if he were angry with me finally saying No I suppose it’s nothing, saying The bastard you saw that, then I saw our shadows in front of us this time What rot he said who the hell are they? Standing at the crossroads watching us come towards them without moving they looked as if they were going to or leaving Mass in their Sunday clothes dressed as though for a ceremony a party the women in dark clothes and some in hats, holding a black umbrella or their bags black too and some carrying suitcases or those rectangular rattan baskets with a handle the lid attached by a ring with a lock, and when we were near them one of the men said Get away from here, their faces were expressionless, Did you see any cavalrymen come through here I said, but the same voice repeated Get away from here, the three horses had stopped the shadows of the helmets reached almost to their black Sunday shoes I said We’re lost we fell into an ambush this morning our captain’s just been killed we’re looking, then one of the women began screaming then several voices cried out together They’re everywhere get away from here if they find you with us they’ll kill us all, Iglésia repeating Bastard but without raising his voice so I wondered if he meant them or the man who had shot at us but I couldn’t tell and at that moment I remember that I heard the sound of the urine at the same time that she moved a little to separate her thighs and I leant forward to relieve her back and I stayed that way flat on her neck looking at the ground, the yellow urine spattering everywhere and the nearest man moving away probably to keep his Sunday clothes from getting dirty, the urine winding across the recently paved road like a kind of dragon covered with bubbles the head hesitating groping searching its way right and left while the body swelled but the earth absorbed it quickly and there remained only a dark wet and tentacular spot where tiny points shiny as pinheads vanished one after the other, then I straightened up again saying All right we can’t stay here I dug my heels in and they moved aside to let us pass solemn stiff and hostile in their Sunday clothes, Those bastard peasants Iglésia said then we heard someone shouting behind us and I turned round they hadn’t moved it was a woman shouting the others still had their same hostile expressions they were looking at her now, with a kind of reprobation, What’s she saying? I said, Iglésia had turned round too, the hand holding the reins and the bridle of the third horse resting on his thigh, she repeated the same gesture with her arm several times Left he said she said You go left otherwise we’ll be surrounded, then they all began talking and gesticulating at the same time I heard their furious and contradictory voices Then which way I said then I found what I had been looking for the last few minutes since I had seen them unexpected and ceremonious dressed up not for a party but a funeral, I thought that’s why I had thought of those funerals you meet black and measured in the green fields of the countryside (he went on furiously shaking his umbrella to drive us away as if he were still screaming Get away from here!) She said we should go left, Iglésia said, but our shadows were ahead of us now I could see them advancing before us as though on stilts. I said But that way we’ll be going back towards . . . and Iglésia But she said otherwise we’ll be surrounded She may know more than you do, the sun disappeared the shadows disappeared I looked behind us again and they had disappeared hidden by the hedge, without the sun the countryside looked even more dead abandoned frightening because of its calm and familiar immobility hiding death as calm as familiar as uneventful as the woods the trees the flowery meadows . . .”