She did not move from her place, but she closed her eyes like Nana Reja. It was impossible, however, to close her ears: she could hear the cart’s wheels and the horses’ hooves on stones and earth growing closer and closer. Closing her eyes was useless and it made it worse: what her eyes did not see, her mind imagined. So she opened them, so she stood, so she walked out to meet the cart, so she saw that neither Francisco nor Simonopio were riding on its front bench, so she concluded; she contained her breath, her body, and her tears, and she said, “He’s come home dead like his papa.”
