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166
ight had already fallen when I crossed to the other
side of the station and came out on to the road. It
was still raining, a little. I would find them in one of
the arches under the bridge, as he had told me. I would see
light. I arrived outside, I waited. We waited. They opened. We
entered. We were given a handout. Inside you could see up to
a point, then dark. I sat on the dirt floor among the others,
ten, more or less, some of them with their dogs. On the left
the wall crumbling. Two more coming from there. Three.
Lights, high up opposite blue, green on the right and white
lamps hanging, five or six, from the ceiling exactly above us,
lit except one. On one side the women. Three around a cut-
down oil drum, another one fetching newspapers. They tore
some up and threw them inside. Fire. It went out. Again.
When they moved back for a moment, close to the wall, you
could hardly discern them, was it their clothes or the light
that was making it look like that. And they kept opening and
closing their eyes all the time, like spasms reaching as far as
their mouth - apart from the one on the left that was
probably younger. Now this man, passing them naked to the
waist with a broken brick or stone? in his hand and coming
our way. A scar like a word on his chest, from his neck
downwards. Sits down, takes two pieces of wood, hammers,
he made a cross. Sticks it in the mud. To the side a glass and
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