She didn't know whether he still lived. She hoped he lived, she
told us with simple fortitude, but of course these times one never knew.
It was just before sundown. The nuns had gone upstairs to their little
chapel for evening services. Through an open window of the chapel just
above my head their voices, as they chanted the responses between the
sonorous Latin phrases of the priest who had come to lead them in their
devotions, floated out in clear sweet snatches, like the songs of vesper
sparrows. Behind me, in a paved courtyard, were perhaps twenty wounded
men lying on cots. They had been brought out of the building and put in
the sunshine. They were on the way to recovery; at least most of them
were. I sat facing a triangular-shaped square, which was flanked on one
of its faces by a row of shuttered private houses and on another by the
principal church of the town, a fifteenth-century structure with outdoor
shrines snuggled up under its eaves. Except for the chanting of the
nuns and the braggadocio booming of a big cock-pigeon, which had flown
down from the church tower to forage for spilt grain almost under my
feet, the place was quiet.
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