The Cabin [La barraca]. Vicente Blasco Ibanez

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СКАЧАТЬ beans fell, and the cabbages and lettuce, driven by the sharp steel, flew wide like severed heads, scattering their rosettes of leaves all around. No one should take advantage of his labour.

      And thus he went on mowing until the break of dawn, trampling under foot with mad stampings, shouting curses, howling blasphemies, until weariness finally deadened his fury, and casting himself down upon a furrow, he wept like a child, thinking that the earth henceforth would be his real bed, and his only occupation begging in the streets.

      He was awakened by the first rays of the sun striking his eyes, and the joyful twitter of the birds which hopped around his head, availing themselves of the remnants of the nocturnal destruction for their breakfast.

      Benumbed with weariness and chilled with the dampness, he rose from the ground. Pimentó and his wife were calling him from a distance, inviting him to come and take something. Barret answered them with scorn. Thief! After taking away his shot-gun! And he set out on the road toward Valencia, trembling with cold, without even knowing where he was going.

      He stopped at the tavern of Copa and entered. Some teamsters of the neighbourhood spoke to him, expressing sympathy for him in his misfortune, and invited him to have a drink. He accepted gratefully. He craved something which would counteract this cold, which had penetrated his very bones. And he who had always been so sober, drank, one after the other, two glasses of brandy, which fell into his weakened stomach like waves of fire.

      His face flushed, then became deadly pale; his eyes grew bloodshot. To the teamsters who sympathized with him, he seemed expressive and confiding, almost like one who is happy. He called them his sons, assuring them that he was not fretting over so little. Nor had he lost everything. There still remained in his possession the best thing in his house, the sickle of his grandfather, a jewel which he would not exchange, no, not for fifty measures of grain.

      And from his sash he drew forth the curved steel, an implement brilliant and pure, of fine temper and very keen edge, which, as Barret declared, would cut a cigarette-paper in the air.

      The teamsters paid up, and urging on their beasts, set off for Valencia, filling the air with the creaking of wheels.

      The old man stayed in the tavern for more than an hour, talking to himself, feeling more and more dizzy, until, made ill at ease by the hard glances of the landlord, who divined his condition, he experienced a vague feeling of shame, and set out with unsteady steps without saying good-bye.

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