After preparing the meal and serving it, Petra postponed the
dish-washing, and left the house to meet her son.
Night had not yet fallen. The sky was vaguely red, the air stifling,
heavy with a dense mist of dust and steam. Petra went up Carretas
Street, continued through Atocha, entered the Estacion del Mediodia
and sat down on a bench to wait for Manuel....
Meanwhile, the boy was approaching the city half asleep, half
asphyxiated, in a third-class compartment.
He had taken the train the night before at the railway station where
his uncle was superintendent. On reaching Almazan, he had to wait more
than an hour for a mixed train, so he sauntered through the deserted
streets to kill time.
To Manuel, Almazan seemed vast, infinitely sad; the town, glimpsed
through the gloom of a dimly starlit night, loomed like a great,
fanastic, dead city. The pale electric lights shone upon its narrow
streets and low houses; the spacious plaza with its arc lights was
deserted; the belfry of a church rose into the heavens.
Manuel strolled down towards the river. From the bridge the town
seemed more fantastic and mysterious than ever; upon a wall might be
made out the galleries of a palace, and several lofty, sombre towers
shot up from amidst the jumbled dwellings of the town; a strip of moon
gleamed close to the horizon, and the river, divided by a few islets
into arms, glittered as if it were mercury.
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