At night, when he went out to the beach to smoke, Gaspar thought about the procession he had led. It had been another sacrifice, like Adela’s, but this time he’d known what he was doing. He didn’t regret it. He wasn’t afraid of retaliation. He slept with a peace he had never known before. Stephen, on the other hand, though he had guided Gaspar in the massacre, and had planned it for so long with Juan, was as disconsolate as the last speaker of a dying language.
