Leonardo watched the night rapidly disperse through the curtainless window. The day disturbed the tranquillity of the night and began contrasting shadow and light with the uniform darkness. Above his head, which was resting on the mattress without a pillow, hovered the foreboding of interrupted repose. There was a sense of movement in those trousers and shirt, stretched out over the chest of drawers immobilized by a marble top, and beside them a plate with a piece of bread.
He got up with a torpor weighed down by sleep. He leaned over the enamelled basin and studied the blue surface below which seemed as close as the circle of still water covering it.
Gonalo was sleeping on his stomach in the other bed, his profile propped up against the pillow, his arms outstretched and legs together, floating on the rough straw mattress. He possessed a face and hands cut out in sharp outlines at variance with the obesity of his body.
"Gonalo," Leonardo called out, not to be the only one to make the effort of getting dressed at that early hour.
There was no reply, except an imperceptible gesture with an open hand, almost vertical on the sheet, a hand so thin that it appeared to be cutting into the cloth.
"Gonalo," Leonardo called out once more.
But Gonalo went on lying there in his own warmth. Leonardo sighed, inhaling and exhaling time. Through the window-pane he could see a bare tree sharing the sorrow of his naked body.
As he put on his shirt, the muscles of his back and chest contracted on making contact with the cold cloth. He grabbed the bread with the soft core exposed and began eating it as he stood there. He could taste it in his mouth, mixed with saliva, and bringing fleeting consolation to his tongue and mucous membranes (so fleeting, in fact, that it seemed to have begun at the end).
"Gonalo," he called out once more, in the hope of at least hearing his gruff voice before grabbing the lunch box prepared the night before and starting to follow the broken line of the road.
Gonalo changed the position of his head. Leonardo now found himself looking at the back of his neck covered in long hair which touched the folds of the sheet, like grass that had been badly cut.
Suddenly the rain was running down the window-panes. The streaks wove a pattern of water which cut out any view of the street, the overhanging stems of ferns and the androgynous height of the trees.
Leonardo sat at the foot of the bed waiting for the rain to subside. Then, heartened by the thought that if he were to set off with his bed already made, on returning from the factory all he would have to do would be to lie down, he removed the sheets and blankets and piled them up on the clean floor. He spread out the sheet and remembered Raquel. He longed to have her lying on top of him, not naked but just before taking off her clothes, still wearing her dress, passive beneath that expectation about to be fulfilled. He picked up the other sheet, the two blankets in brown and black check with a fruit in each square, and finished making the bed.
Gonalo was snoring. His dormant face, which could never have been mistaken for that of a corpse, was now facing the tarnished plaster on the ceiling.
In the street, the rain was less heavy and as it died away it settled on the window-panes. On one of them, which was broken and closest to the headboard of Leonardo's bed, the water had gathered on the thread of splintered glass impeding its perpendicular descent.
Leonardo retrieved his lunch box, and at the same time could feel Gonalo's deep slumber descend over his eyelids.
He looked at the two quite different beds although both were made of polished wood and worm-eaten by tiny insects in search of food, at the chairs with wicker seats that were beginning to fray, and at the chest of drawers where the bread was still lying, often without any plate separating it from the marble top.
"Goodbye," said Gonalo with a voice like sound muffled by grass.
"Goodbye," replied Leonardo, filled with a peace which would soon escape into the damp chill on the road.
Leonardo set out on his way, after securing the drooping stalk of a geranium in the drenched soil inside a tin pot almost against the wall of the house. He had got his hands dirty, pressing down the damp soil around the plant to bury the roots. Between his skin and the copper ring, given him by Gonalo who had found it on the city outskirts, he could feel a particle of mud which would have dried up by the time he reached the factory. He must remember to wash his hands before starting work, unless it should start raining again and then he could stretch out his fingers and let the water falling down from the skies clean them.
The ferns proliferating alongside the road looked as if they had been polished. The earth had darkened and uprooted itself in gleaming clods impregnated by the rain's sperm.
Leonardo's breath played before his nose and mouth like a continuous puff of mist. He thought of Gonalo, snoring in bed, the hem of the blankets warming the back of his neck. How he longed to get back inside the stillness of night, a loose sack made without cloth.
Then suddenly it was morning, high and open, pouring out from the drenched sun. The nectar from the settled rain gave off an aroma. Leonardo quickened his pace, but he felt like slowing down so that his senses might capture the moment happening beneath his feet; miserable feet forbidden to stop.
On turning the bend in the road, he saw Raquel leaning against the wall of her house and holding a dead chicken by its wings in one hand. The bird's head kept knocking against her legs which were almost visible through her damp skirt.
A languid movement swayed her body and communicated with her black hair, parted down the middle and draped over her shoulders which were covered by a cheap blouse.
"I was waiting for you to come past," said Raquel. "They stoned the chicken to death because it belonged to a Jewish woman. Do you know what stigmas are?"
"Of course I know," replied Leonardo.
"We have stigmas," continued Raquel. "One of these days the stones will be aimed at the Jews themselves. I can't understand why people kill. The dead are a horrible sight."
Leonardo raised his free hand and placed it on Raquel's lips. He could feel her living kiss warm his body as if it had been covered by a lamb's soft fleece.
It was raining again, not bleak, but criss-crossed with sunshine. A sprinkling of watery light that flickered on their faces only to disappear. It faded without trace on that numb skin harmonizing with the floor.
"I must be going," said Leonardo, deeply sorry that he could not see her home. "Tonight you'll stay with me and Gonalo." He took another look at Raquel's anxious face, her dark eyes flinching apprehensively.
"I'll cook the chicken for dinner," she said.
She covered it with her dress in case Leonardo might see its crushed head, with dangling stalactites of coagulated blood.

They ate the bird that evening.
Stretched out horizontally at the foot of the bed, with legs bent and bare feet resting on the ground, his broad frame resembling a lid, Gonalo watched Leonardo and Raquel, their eyes united with steadfast looks.
Little by little the room joined in the intemporality of this night drained of sounds and forms. It was becoming chilly. Gonalo drew in his legs and put on his socks.
"I might as well get to bed," he muttered in a low voice, lest their eyes should separate.
On the floor, his huge feet resembled anchored ships. The hulls had holes which were the uncertain openings of his socks, virginal openings for they would never be sewn and therefore widen until they completely released his feet. He went up to a window and traced out a linear movement with clenched fist. A sharp pain ran through his fingers, caused by a cut from a broken pane. He put them to his mouth and without feeling any nausea, sucked his own blood.
He then imagined he could hear a shrill cry, from afar, piercing the darkness and coming in his direction. He spread his hands over the glass to shut out the noise, afraid that it might express hatred for Raquel and her race.
"It's already night," he heard Leonardo say. "Don't think about tomorrow."
"Five hours to go before daybreak," Raquel whispered anxiously.
The distant noise grew fainter, tailing off into complete silence.
"We'd better go to bed," Gonalo said once more, suddenly impatient to see the light go out.
Using his shirt, he covered the naked table-lamp which cast its dim light over the room. He threw back the bedclothes whereupon the whiteness of the sheet underneath shone in the dark, like a wall resting from its vertical position.
Leonardo switched off the light. Gonalo could hear him undressing and stretch out beside him so as to allow Raquel to sleep in his own bed. Their quiet breathing was another form of vague penumbra marked by the half-closed window-shutters, and which completely vanished into the soothing darkness concealing Raquel's body.
Day then dawned in Leonardo's mind, chilling his arms and legs with the anticipated sensation of setting off along the road at first light between ferns lacquered with night dew and trees lulled by their powerful roots.
Gonalo had fallen asleep. The volume of his body submerged that of Leonardo. His breathing rose like some living symbol of sleep.
Leonardo got up and leaned over Raquel's bed. Raquel had one hand resting on her breast, clenched with fear lest she might somehow be hurt.
Leonardo lay down with his arms by his sides, his head thrown back just like that of a corpse. Gonalo's left arm dropped across his chest.
When dawn broke, faint and iridescent because of the colours defined by first light, Leonardo turned his face towards Raquel and lay there watching her chiselled profile in the retreating shadows. Then he got dressed, struggling with the weight of his own body. He could feel the chill from those frosted window-panes spreading over his body. Now and then he would stop to gaze at Raquel as she slept. He found the next stage more bothersome: tightening his shirt-collar and forcing on his shoes caked with mud.
"Today I'm staying," he suddenly said in a low voice, with the joy one feels when tomorrow is Sunday.
But then anguish began to creep in, as inopportune as a shrill cry before a corpse.
"Gonalo," he called out leaning over his bed in order not to awaken Raquel.
Gonalo opened his eyes and slowly moved his head silenced by sleep.
"I'm going," continued Leonardo.
"Go," was all Gonalo said before appearing to go back to sleep.
Leonardo left. But before setting out on to the road he decided to take another peep into the room through the window-panes. The night's humidity had transformed them into opaque lakes where only the blood which had come from Gonalo's hand that evening showed the spot where the glass was broken.
When he returned home at night, the first thing he remembered was not Raquel but the unmistakable taste of bread lying on the marble top. He took a bite as he lit the lamp. The glaring light on his bed made him think of Raquel. It haloed each fruit with the splendor of midday reaching its zenith.
"She was frightened. She's gone to her brothers' house," said Gonalo who had watched dusk fall as he sat by the window which formed a second headboard. "Each night day descends from a cross. The address is written down on a piece of paper."
He stopped speaking and then simply said:
"And it descends."
"I can't go looking for her," replied Leonardo with a despondency which soured the white taste of bread in his mouth. "Did you buy a new light bulb?"
"The other one was very weak."
They got into bed without any light, half-buried in the nocturnal darkness.
Leonardo remembered to pray: "My God, I need Raquel and peace," before correcting himself: "I need peace and Raquel."
He then felt his bladder swell with urine. He got up, put on his jacket and went out on to the road. He peed on a cluster of ferns. The drenched ferns glistened beneath the luminous rays of the moon.
When he went back inside he found the room in darkness as if he had suddenly been blindfolded.
Before falling asleep it occurred to him that the dead are buried lying down because that is the most comfortable position of all in which to remain for any length of time.
Next morning, the rain was so heavy that it seemed to have swallowed up the darkness.

Translated by Giovanni Pontiero