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42 DAYS IN THE SUN
weakened; I was no longer capable of grasping my
environment, of collecting it and retaining it in an
image; I was inspired with one thought only, to get
back into the open air.
Suddenly a peculiar sound meets my ear, frightening
every thought out of my head. It is the well-known
thump of a cradle moved by a human foot. And sure
enough, there is a cradle, close by us, almost hidden
under troughs and work-tables—an old wooden cradle,
its rockers worn shiny. The woman who is moving the
cradle with her foot is pale, with white plasters pasted
over her temples to deaden her headache. There is
brown tobacco dust in her hair and over the white
cradle linen, and edging the little distended nostrils of
the child. But the child sleeps peacefully in spite of
the noise and the venomous air. There is even a faint
glow of red on its cheeks, and a smile bursts forth at
every moment through the distorted features of the
mother’s face, illuminating them like sunlight on a
white-washed wall.
There are other cradles along the length of the tun-
nel—not less than forty. In some, the children are
sitting up and playing with tobacco leaves as if they
had already learned the business. As I bend down
over one of the little ones, and it is frightened, a
woman is heard to say: “Don’t you even know your
own father?” ‘They all laugh loudly, but the mother
in question regards me attentively for a moment and
then shakes her head with a smile.
Some of the children really have a father, who helps
them eat up their mother’s earnings; these are not the
most fortunate of children. Others have only a
mother, and this mother affords them the advantage
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