A waiter came with the coffee and cigarettes. They sipped the coffee, smoked a cigarette, and the guard, already won over, said to Manuel:
“Take one of these benches in with you to sleep on.”
Manuel took a bench and stretched out at full length. On the previous day, though free, he had felt weak and crestfallen; now, though in custody, he felt strong. Plans piled up in his thoughts, but he could not sleep.
Physical exhaustion consumes the strength and excites the brain; the imagination wings in the darkness as do nocturnal birds; and, again like them, it takes refuge in ruins.
Manuel did not sleep; but he dreamed and planned a thousand things; some logical, the majority of them absurd. The light of day, filtering dimly in through the transom, scattered his ideas upon the future and restored him to thoughts of the immediate present.
They would soon be along to take him before the judge. Now what was he going to answer? He’d cook up a story. Accident had brought him to the Sotillo Bridge; he did not know Calatrava. But suppose they confronted him with these people? He’d surely get all muddled. It would be better to come right out with the truth and soften it down as much as he could, so as to favour his case. He had become acquainted with Calatrava through his cousin; he saw him from time to time at the Salón; he worked in a printing-shop....
He had just about decided upon this plan when a guard entered the cell.
“Manuel Alcázar.”
“At your service.”
“Proceed to the judge’s room.”