A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings:
On
the third day of rain they had killed so many crabs inside the house
that Pelayo had to cross his drenched courtyard and throw them into the
sea, because the newborn child had a temperature all night and they
thought it was due to the stench. The world had been sad since Tuesday.
Sea and sky were a single ash-gray thing and the sands of the beach,
which on March nights glimmered like powdered light, had become a stew
of mud and rotten shellfish. The light was so weak at noon that when
Pelayo was coming back to the house after throwing away the crabs, it
was hard for him to see what it was that was moving and groaning in the
rear of the courtyard. He had to go very close to see that it was an old
man, a very old man, lying face down in the mud, who, in spite of his
tremendous efforts, couldn't get up, impeded by his enormous wings.
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