A Place for the Night

It happened in a remote mountainous area in the south of Spain.

It was a June night, and the small full moon was at its zenith, but its light, slightly pinkish, as it sometimes is on hot nights after the brief daytime downpours that are so common at the time the lilies are in flower, nonetheless lit the passes of the low mountains, covered in low-growing southern forests, so brightly that the eye could make them out clearly right up to the horizons.

A narrow valley ran between these passes to the north. And in the shadow from their heights on the one side, in the deathly quiet of this desolate night, there was the monotonous noise of a mountain stream and the mysterious, continual floating of fireflies, lucciole, regularly going out and regularly flaring up, now like amethyst, now like topaz. The heights opposite receded from the valley, and along the low ground below them lay an ancient stony road. And on it, on that low ground, just as ancient seemed the little stone town, into which, at this already quite late hour, at walking pace on a bay stallion which was lame in the right foreleg, there rode a tall Moroccan in a wide white woolen burnous and a Moroccan fez.

The little town seemed dead, abandoned. And that is what it was. The Moroccan at first rode down a shady street between the stone shells of houses with yawning black voids in place of windows and with gardens run wild behind them. But then he rode out onto a light square, on which there was a long waterhole with an awning, a church with a blue statue of the Madonna above the portal, a few still-inhabited houses, and ahead, by the way out, an inn. There, on the lower floor, the small windows were lit up, and the Moroccan, who was already dozing, came to and pulled the reins taut, which made the limping horse start to drum more briskly over the bumpy stones of the square.

At this drumming, out onto the threshold of the inn there stepped an emaciated little old woman, who could have been taken for a beggar, and there leapt a round-faced girl of about fifteen with a fringe on her forehead, with espadrilles on otherwise bare feet, and in a light little dress the colour of a faded glycinia, and there rose a huge black dog with a smooth coat and short ears standing on end, which had been lying beside the threshold. The Moroccan dismounted by the threshold, and at once the dog moved forwards with its eyes flashing, baring its fearsome white teeth as if in loathing. The Moroccan waved his whip, but the girl forestalled him:

“Negra!” she cried in fright in a ringing voice. “What’s wrong with you?”

And dropping its head, the dog slowly walked away and lay down facing the wall of the building.

The Moroccan gave a greeting in bad Spanish and began asking if there was a blacksmith in the town – the horse’s hoof needed to be looked at the next day – where the horse could be put for the night, and whether any fodder could be found for it, and for him some sort of supper. The girl looked with lively curiosity at his great height and small, very swarthy face, eaten away by smallpox, and threw wary sidelong glances at the black dog, which was lying quietly, but as though offended, while the old woman, hard of hearing, replied hurriedly in a raucous voice: there was a blacksmith, the hired hand was asleep in the cattle yard next to the house, but she would wake him up straight away and let him have some fodder for the horse – and as far as food was concerned, the guest must forgive them: they could fry up egg and pork fat, but from supper only a few cold beans and some vegetable ragout remained… And half an hour later, having dealt with the horse with the help of the hired hand, an eternally drunk old man, the Moroccan was already sitting at the table in the kitchen, eating greedily and greedily drinking yellowish white wine.

The inn building was old. Its lower floor was divided into two halves by a long lobby, at the end of which was a steep staircase to the upper floor: to the left was a spacious, low-ceilinged room with plank beds for the common people, to the right was a similarly spacious, low-ceilinged kitchen which also served as a dining room, with its ceiling and walls all densely blackened by smoke, with small windows, very deep because of the very thick walls, a hearth in the far corner, crude, bare tables, and benches, slippery with age, beside them, and an uneven stone floor. A kerosene lamp burned in the room, hanging down from the ceiling on a blackened iron chain, and there was the smell of stoking and burnt pork fat – the old woman had kindled the fire in the hearth, heated up the already sour ragout, and was frying eggs for the guest while he ate the cold beans dressed with vinegar and green olive oil. He had not taken his things off, had not removed his burnous, and he sat with his feet set wide apart, in thick leather shoes, above which, gathered tightly at the ankle, were wide trousers of the same white wool. And the girl, helping the old woman and waiting on him, kept taking fright at his quick, sudden glances at her, at the bluish whites of his eyes, which stood out on the dry and pockmarked, dark, thin-lipped face. She, at least, found him terrifying. Very tall, he was broad because of the burnous, and all the smaller did his head in the fez seem. Around the corners of his upper lip curled coarse dark hairs. Similar ones curled in places on his chin as well. His head was thrown slightly back, which made his large Adam’s apple particularly prominent under his olive skin. On his slender, almost black fingers, silver rings showed up white. He ate, drank and was silent all the time.

When, having heated up the ragout and fried the eggs, the old woman sat down exhausted on a bench beside the extinguished hearth and asked him raucously where he was from and where he was going, he tossed her just one throaty phrase in reply:

“Far away.”

Having finished the ragout and the eggs, he waved the already empty wine jug – there had been a lot of red pepper in the ragout – the old woman nodded her head to the girl, and when the latter, grabbing the jug, flashed through the open door out of the kitchen into the dark lobby, where fireflies were floating slowly and flaring up fantastically, he took a packet of cigarettes from out of his bosom and tossed out, still just as tersely:

“Granddaughter?”

“My niece, an orphan,” the old woman began shouting, and started off on the story of how she had so loved her late brother, the girl’s father, that for his sake she had remained a spinster, that this inn had belonged to him, that his wife had died already twelve years before, and he himself eight, and he had left everything to her, the old woman, for her lifetime, and that business had become very bad in this completely deserted little town…

Drawing on a cigarette, the Moroccan listened absent-mindedly, thinking some thoughts of his own. The girl ran in with a full jug and, glancing at her, he drew so hard on the cigarette stub that he burnt the tips of his sharp, black fingers; he hurriedly lit up a new cigarette and, addressing the old woman, whose deafness he had already noticed, said distinctly:

“It will be very nice for me if your niece pours me some wine herself.”

“That’s not her business,” snapped the old woman, who passed easily from garrulity to abrupt terseness, and she began shouting angrily:

“It’s already late, drink up your wine and go to bed, she’s going to make up a bed for you now in the upper room.”

The girl flashed her eyes animatedly and, without waiting for the order, slipped out once more and quickly started stomping up the stairs.

“And where do you both sleep?” the Moroccan asked, moving the fez back slightly from his sweaty forehead. “Upstairs too?”

The old woman shouted that it was too hot there in the summer, and when there were no guests – and there were hardly ever any now! – they slept in the other lower half of the building – over there, opposite – and she pointed towards the lobby, and again started off on complaints about bad business, and about everything having become very dear, and it being for that reason necessary, like it or not, to charge people passing through a lot…

“I’ll be leaving early tomorrow,” said the Moroccan, clearly no longer listening to her. “And in the morning you’ll give me only coffee. So you can tot up right now how much I owe, and I’ll settle up with you straight away. Let’s just see where my small change is,” he added, and he took out from under his burnous a soft red leather pouch, undid it, stretched out the strap which pulled its opening tight, spilt a little pile of gold coins onto the table, and pretended he was counting them carefully, while the old woman even half-rose from the bench beside the hearth, gazing at the coins round-eyed.

Upstairs it was dark and very hot. The girl opened the door into the stuffy, burning darkness, in which there was the sharp gleam of the cracks in the shutters, closed outside the two windows, which were just as small as those downstairs; she swerved deftly in the darkness past the round table in the middle of the room, opened a window, and, with a push, threw the shutters wide open to the shining moonlit night, to the huge bright sky with its occasional stars. It became easier to breathe, and the stream in the valley became audible. The girl leant out of the window to glance at the moon, which, still very high, was not visible from the room, and then she glanced down: down below, with its face lifted and gazing at her, stood the dog, which five years or so before had come running into the inn from somewhere as a stray puppy, had grown up before her eyes and become attached to her with that devotion of which only dogs are capable.

“Negra,” said the girl in a whisper, “why aren’t you asleep?”

The dog let out a weak yelp, shook its head upwards, and darted towards the open door into the lobby.

“Go back, go back!” the girl ordered in a hasty whisper. “Back to your place!”

The dog stopped and lifted its face again, its eyes flashing red fire.

“What do you want?” the girl, who always spoke to it as if with a person, began affectionately. “Why aren’t you asleep, silly? Is it the moon that’s worrying you so?”

As if wanting to make some reply, the dog again reached its face up, again gave a quiet yelp. The girl shrugged a shoulder. For her too the dog was the dearest, even the only dear creature in the world, whose feelings and thoughts almost always seemed comprehensible to her. But what the dog wanted to express now, what was worrying it at the moment, she did not understand, and for that reason she only wagged a finger sternly and ordered again in a whisper of feigned anger:

“Back to your place, Negra! Go to sleep!”

The dog lay down, and the girl stood by the window a little longer thinking about it… It was possible it was worried by this terrifying Moroccan. It almost always met the inn’s guests calmly and paid no attention even to those who in appearance seemed like bandits or convicts. But it was nonetheless the case that at times for some reason it would throw itself at some people like a mad thing, barking thunderously, and then just she alone could restrain it. Though there could have been another reason too for its worry, its irritability – this hot night with its full moon, so dazzling, and without the slightest movement of the air. Perfectly audible in the extraordinary quietness of this night were the noise of the stream in the valley and the stamping of the hoofs of the goat that lived in the cattle yard, when something – maybe the inn’s old mule, maybe the Moroccan’s stallion – suddenly kicked it with a thud, and it began bleating so loudly and disgustingly that this devilish bleating seemed to have resounded all over the world. And the girl leapt back cheerfully from the window, opened the other one, and threw open the shutters there too. The twilight of the room became even lighter. Besides the table, there stood in it, by the wall to the right of the entrance with their heads towards the wall, three wide beds, covered only with rough sheets. The girl threw back the sheet on the bed nearest the entrance and adjusted the bedhead, which was fantastically illuminated all of a sudden by a pellucid, delicate, pale-bluish light: it was a firefly that had landed on her fringe. She passed her hand over it, and the firefly, flickering and going out, began floating around the room. The girl started singing gently and ran out.

In the kitchen the Moroccan was standing drawn up to his full height with his back to her, and was saying something to the old woman, quietly, but insistently and irritably. The old woman was shaking her head negatively. The Moroccan jerked his shoulders upwards and turned to the girl coming in with such a malicious expression on his face that she recoiled.

“Is the bed ready?” he cried throatily.

“Everything’s ready,” the girl hurriedly replied.

“But I don’t know where I’m to go. Take me.”

“I’ll take you myself,” said the old woman angrily. “Follow me.”

The girl listened to her stomping slowly up the steep stairs and to the Moroccan’s shoes tapping after her, and then she went outside. The dog, which was lying by the threshold, leapt up at once, reared up and, trembling all over with joy and tenderness, licked her face.

“Go away, go away,” the girl whispered, pushing it aside affectionately and sitting down on the threshold. The dog sat down too on its hind paws, and the girl put her arms around its neck, kissed it on the forehead and started rocking with it, listening to the heavy footsteps and the Moroccan’s throaty voice in the upstairs room. He was saying something to the old woman more calmly now, but it was impossible to make out what it was. Finally he said loudly:

“Well, all right, all right! Only let her bring me some drinking water for the night.”

And the steps of the old woman were heard coming carefully down the staircase.

The girl went to meet her in the lobby and said firmly:

“I heard what he said. No, I won’t go to him. I’m afraid of him.”

“Nonsense, nonsense!” shouted the old woman. “So do you think I’ll go again myself with my legs, and in the dark as well, and up such a slippery staircase? And there’s no reason at all to be afraid of him. He’s just very stupid and hot-tempered, but he’s kind. He kept telling me he felt sorry for you, that you were a poor girl and no one would marry you without a dowry. And it’s true too, what sort of a dowry have you got? After all, we’re completely ruined. Who stays with us now, apart from beggarly peasants!”

“And what was he getting so angry about when I came in?” asked the girl.

The old woman grew flustered.

“What, what!” she mumbled. “I told him not to interfere in other people’s business… And so then he was offended…”

And she shouted angrily:

“Go on, quickly, get some water and take it to him. He promised to give you some sort of present in return. Go, I say!”

When the girl ran with a full jug through the open door of the upstairs room, the Moroccan was lying on the bed already completely undressed: in the bright, moonlit twilight his birdlike eyes were piercingly black, his small, closely cropped head was black, his long shirt was white and his big bare feet were sticking out. On the table in the middle of the room there shone a large revolver with a drum and a long barrel, and his outer clothing was heaped in a white mound on the bed next to his… It was all very frightening. The girl shoved the jug onto the table on the run, and darted headlong back again, but the Moroccan leapt up and caught her by the arm.

“Wait, wait,” he said quickly, drawing her towards the bed, then sat down without releasing her arm and whispered: “Sit down beside me for a minute, sit down, sit down, listen… just listen…”

Stupefied, the girl obediently sat down. And he began hurriedly swearing he had fallen madly in love with her, that for one kiss from her he would give her ten gold coins… twenty coins… that he had a whole pouchful of them…

And pulling the red leather pouch out from under the bedhead, he stretched it open with shaking hands and tipped the gold out onto the bed, mumbling:

“There, you see how many of them I have… You see?”

She shook her head desperately and leapt up from the bed. But again he caught her instantly and, stopping her mouth with his wiry, tenacious hand, he threw her onto the bed. She tore his hand away with furious strength and gave a shrill cry:

“Negra!”

He squeezed her mouth shut again, together with her nose, and with his other hand began trying to catch her bared legs, with which, kicking out, she was hitting him painfully in the stomach – but at the same moment he heard the barking of the dog, which was tearing up the staircase like a whirlwind. Leaping to his feet, he grabbed the revolver from the table, but did not have time even to catch hold of the trigger, as he was instantly knocked off his feet to the floor. Protecting his face from the jaws of the dog, which was stretched out on top of him and scalding him with its fiery canine breath, he gave a jerk, threw up his chin – and the dog, with a mortal grip, ripped out his throat.

23rd March 1949