The sergeant's brandy did no good. Neither did the fresh water they poured on his face, the brandy they rubbed into his wrists. All this they had to tell him later.
He remembered nothing about the lorry. The bus he remembered; the driver, the flowered-cretonne slip cover on the driver's seat, the farmer, joining the kid in No Pasarán. He remembered jumping from the bus, crawling for water, giving up the ghost when the bugs crawled into his throat. And the rocks. There was that mound of rocks.
Now there was a narrow bed in a small room. A man's room, obviously a man's room. Desk, lounging chair, worn grass rug. For some reason Fernando Souza was sitting in the lounging chair. Another man was standing near the bed, looking down at Hall, his fingers pressed to Hall's pulse.
"Is that you, Souza?" Hall asked, and the night clerk of the Bolivar left the chair and joined the doctor.
"You will be well now," Souza said.
"The pulse is coming back," the doctor said, to Souza. He let go of Hall's wrist. When he went to the desk, Hall could see the military trousers beneath his white coat.
"Can you talk, Don Mateo?" Souza asked.
"I think so. Where am I? What day is it?"
The doctor went to the door. He held a whispered conversation with a soldier who was waiting on the other side of the door. Then he took Souza's chair. "Such cursing," he laughed. "When they brought you in, Señor Hall, you had no pulse, you had the temperature of cold beer, and your heart had just about three beats left. You were biologically more dead than alive. But I swear, before I gave you the first ampule of adrenalin, the curses were pouring out of your lips like the waves of the ocean. How do you feel now?"
"Very tired."