He saw
the valley, fair and green, basking in the sun; the groups of trees, the
plots of yellowish soil with the hard spikes of stubble; the hedges in
which the birds were singing--all the summer splendor of a countryside
developed and cultivated during fifteen centuries by dozens and dozens
of generations. And yet--here he was alone at the mercy of chance,
likely to perish with hunger--more alone than when he was crossing the
towering heights of the Andes--those irregular slopes of rocks and
snow wrapped in endless silence, only broken from time to time by
the flapping of the condor's wings. Nobody. . . . His gaze could not
distinguish a single movable point--everything fixed, motionless,
crystallized, as though contracted with fear before the peals of thunder
which were still rumbling around the horizon.
He went on toward the village--a mass of black walls with a few houses
still intact, and a roofless bell tower with its cross twisted by fire.
Nobody in the streets sown with bottles, charred chunks of wood, and
soot-covered rubbish. The dead bodies had disappeared, but a nauseating
smell of decomposing and burned flesh assailed his nostrils. He saw
a mound of earth where the shooting had taken place, and from it were
protruding two feet and a hand. At his approach several black forms flew
up into the air from a trench so shallow that the bodies within were
exposed to view.
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