(7)
And then she saw that they were lying down on the ground, flabbergasted and with their features contorted, as stunned as if they had had a stroke that had left their faces the colour of jaundice. The basket was upside down and all the figs were scattered around, although they hadn’t eaten them, because she saw their lips were clean. Dídac, who was recovering, asked:
– What are they doing, Alba?
– I don’t know… C’mon, they don’t want you.
– You mean they aren’t dead?
(8)
And then Alba, who turned in realization that she had a large tear on her blouse, lifted her head to the village and opened her mouth without making a sound. In front of her, about 300 meters away, Benaura seemed to be something else, flatter; below the dust that hung like a distinguished and persistent fog, the houses crowded on top of each other as though they had been crushed by a crude hand. She closed her lips again, re-opened them, and exclaimed:
“Oh!”
And then, without remembering that the blouse no longer covered her breasts, she ran off down the road.
(9)
And there was nothing left standing in the town. The buildings had been crushed, as if suddenly the walls had wavered above the debris which had fallen through the roof. All the stones and the roof were scattered on the streets and they covered, completely, the sidewalks, but the collapse was so severe that it had left the wider roads impassable, where the water ran though the broken pipes, in some places, spouting raging geysers between the dust.
In many places, the low walls continued right, as if the inside contained runoff from the piled high flats, in some cases, between walls that, completely cracked, had resisted the fierce impulse of an annihilating attack. Why those mysterious devices had done all of that, Alba was unsure.