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"What is that to us?"

He stood at the window. The upper room was hot, unbearably, awfully, horribly hot. He didn’t know how they’d stood it.

“They will at least have fresh air, now,” he said, and wiped the sweat from his eyebrows with his heavy tweed sleeve, and said it again because if you say something three times it comes true.

In the street, distorted by the smeary pane, the old woman fought. An officer smacked her relentlessly, she went down, sagging between the soldiers who threw her in the back of the truck like a sack of potatoes.

Children on the way home from school flocked on a corner and watched. Faces appeared at other windows along the street.

He unclenched his fist and suddenly remembered the scrip in his hand. He suddenly had the urge to run down to the street, to run to the officer and give the money back, to just throw it at him. He was turning, running through the door, downstairs; no, he was standing in place and the devalued currency was fluttering down like rusted autumn leaves.

And the truck pulled away.

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