"Humph ... you had your clock repaired, what of it?" Fernando said. Raul and Gabriel waited, ill at ease. "Time is for getting; get what you can before it gets you. You don't find it on a dial." With his good hand, he pushed angrily at the arm of his chair; each man heard the tick of the marble clock. "While you were away last week," said Fernando, "I sold the horses in Sector 9." The Clarín stared at Raul maliciously. "Señor Filar paid me sixty pesos per head. We've never done better. I stopped the corn planting in 21.... That sector must be kept for pasture." He beat the side of his chair. "Sitting right here, I can manage Petaca. My people understand me." His voice shrilled, broke. Raul walked over to the piano. Someone had placed Caterina's picture there, and her face comforted him. "'A house divided against itself...'" Gabriel began. "God, don't spout at me!" cried Fernando. "Have some sense. Life is cruel." "Life is what we make of it," said Gabriel, very gently. Raul accepted the truism, knowing it was one thing in his father's mind, another in Gabriel's, and another in his own. He tried to remain silent. "I don't like the bronze figure you had put on Caterina's grave," Fernando objected. "I haven't seen it yet," said Raul. "You're ostentatious," said Fernando. "It was done out of love," said Raul, moving close to the front windows where he could see the forecourt. With a jolt, Fernando remembered his love for Caterina, remembered the child reading to him, feeding him, remembered his old, old longings for affection. His fear of death came again; he floundered, hoping he might touch something kind before the end. "Yes ... yes, I'm sure ... it was love," he admitted. "What did you say?" Raul asked. "It was love ... not ostentation. But I would have put something else on her grave ... not a statue of a girl." "What would that have been?" asked Gabriel, curious at this about-face. "An animal, a frog, a bird ... I think I would have put a bird there." "I thought of putting her sundial there, her noonday cannon," said Raul. "Get me a cigarette," said Fernando, to Gabriel. "I'll light one for you," said Gabriel. The ticking of the clock came into being again. Fernando's thoughts faded backward into time: he heard his father speak. His head throbbed. Everything had grown indistinct. What was the purpose of death? Was death talking to someone who never listened? Was death shoving something inside something already black? "I want to go to bed," Fernando said. "Push me. Help me to bed, Gabriel." Raul tried to say good night but could not utter a word and neither could Fernando. A rubber tire on the wheel chair squeaked; the wind and the clock continued. His feet toward the fire, he thought of Lucienne and their mountain trip; then he got up and got his jacket and went outside, the wind whipping his hair. So the little figurine had been placed beside the grave.