"One of these days," Nora Jacob said, "I'm going to get tired of this hiding and I'm going to tell the whole world."
He didn't look at her until he was completely dressed. She became aware of her firm breasts and without stopping talking she covered herself up to the neck with the sheet.
"I can't see the time," she went on, "so let's have breakfast in bed and stay here until afternoon. I'm capable of putting up a lampoon myself."
He gave a broad laugh.
"Little old Benjamin would die," he said. "How's that going?"
"You can imagine," she said. "Waiting for Nestor Jacob to die."
She saw him wave goodbye from the door. "Try to make it back on Christmas Eve," she told him. He promised. He tiptoed across the courtyard and went out into the street through the main door. There was an icy dew that just dampened the skin. A shout came up to meet him as he reached the square.
"Halt!"
A flashlight was turned on into his eyes. He averted his face.
"Oh, shit!" the mayor said, invisible behind the light. "Look what we've found. Are you coming or going?"
He turned off the flashlight and Mateo Asis saw him, accompanied by three policemen. His face was fresh and washed and he had the submachine gun slung.
"Coming," said Mateo Asis.
The mayor came forward to look at his watch in the light of the street lamp. There were ten minutes left till five. With a signal directed at the policemen, he ordered an end to the curfew. He remained in suspension until the end of the bugle call, which put a sad note into the dawn. Then he sent the policemen away and accompanied Mateo Asis across the square.
"That's that," he said. "The mess with the papers is over."
More than satisfaction, there was weariness in his voice.
"Did they catch the one who was doing it?"
"Not yet," the mayor said. "But I just made the last rounds and I can assure you that today, for the first time, not a single piece of paper will see the light of dawn. It was a matter of tying up their pants."
On reaching the main door of his house, Mateo Asis went ahead to tie up the dogs. The servant women were starting to move about in the kitchen. When the mayor entered he was greeted by an uproar of chained dogs, which, a moment later, was replaced by the steps and sighs of peaceful animals. The widow Asis found them sitting and drinking coffee on the stone bench in the kitchen. It had grown light.
"An early-rising man," the widow said, "a good spouse but a bad husband."
In spite of her good humor, her face revealed the mortification of an intense night vigil. The mayor answered her greeting. He picked the submachine gun off the floor and slung it over his shoulder.
"Drink all the coffee you want, Lieutenant," the widow said, "but don't bring any shotguns into my house."
"On the contrary." Mateo Asis smiled. "You should borrow it to go to mass with. Don't you think?"
"I don't need junk like that to defend myself," the widow replied. "Divine Providence is on our side. The Asises," she added seriously, "were people of God before there were priests for many miles around."
The mayor took his leave. "I've got to get some sleep," he said. "This is no life for a Christian." He made his way among the hens and ducks and turkeys who were beginning to invade the house. The widow Asis shooed the animals away. Mateo Asis went to his room, bathed, changed clothes, and went out again to saddle up his mule. His brothers had left at dawn.
The widow Asis was taking care of the cages when her son appeared in the courtyard.
"Remember," she told him, "it's one thing to look after your hide and something else to know how to keep your distance."
"He only came to have a mug of coffee," Mateo Asis said. "We walked along talking, almost without realizing it."
He was at the end of the porch, looking at his mother, but she hadn't turned when she spoke. She seemed to be addressing the birds. "I'm just going to tell you this," she replied. "Don't bring any murderers into my house." Having finished with the cages, she occupied herself entirely with her son:
"And you, where have you been?"
That morning Judge Arcadio thought he'd discovered ominous signs in the minute episodes that make up daily life. "It gives you a headache," he said, trying to explain his uneasiness to his wife. It was a sunny morning. The river, for the first time in several weeks, had lost its menacing look and its raw-meat smell. Judge Arcadio went to the barbershop.
"Justice," the barber received him, "limps along, but it gets there all the same."
The floor had been oiled and the mirrors were covered with brushstrokes of white lead. The barber began to polish them with a rag while Judge Arcadio settled into the chair.
"There shouldn't be such things as Mondays," the judge said.
The barber had begun to cut his hair.
"It's all Sunday's fault," he said. "If it weren't for Sunday," he stated with a merry air, "there wouldn't be any Mondays."
Judge Arcadio closed his eyes. That time, after ten hours of sleep, a turbulent act of love, and a prolonged bath, there was nothing to reproach Sunday for. But it was a thick Monday. When the clock in the tower struck nine and in place of the pealing of the bell there was the hiss of a sewing machine next door, another sign made Judge Arcadio shudder: the silence in the streets.
"This is a ghost town," he said.
"You people wanted it that way," the barber said. "Before, on a Monday morning, I would have cut at least five heads of hair by now. Today God's first gift to me is you."
Judge Arcadio opened his eyes and for a moment contemplated the river in the mirror. "You people," he repeated. And he asked:
"Who are we?"
"You people." The barber hesitated. "Before you people this was a shitty town, like all of them, but now it's the worst of them all."
"If you're telling me these things," the judge replied, "it's because you know I haven't had anything to do with them. Would you dare," he asked without being aggressive, "say the same thing to the lieutenant?"
The barber admitted he wouldn't.
"You don't know what it's like," he said, "getting up every morning with the certainty that they're going to kill you and ten years pass without their killing you."
"I don't know," Judge Arcadio admitted, "and I don't want to know."
"Do everything possible," the barber said, "so that you'll never know."
The judge lowered his head. After a prolonged silence, he asked: "Do you know something, Guardiola?" Without waiting for an answer he went on: "The lieutenant is sinking deep into this town. And he sinks in deeper every day because he's discovered a pleasure from which there's no turning back: little by little, without making a lot of noise, he's getting rich." Since the barber was listening to him in silence, he concluded:
"I'll bet you that he won't be responsible for a single death more."
"Do you think so?"
"I'll bet you a hundred to one," Judge Arcadio insisted. "At this moment there's no better business for him than peace."
The barber finished cutting his hair, tilted the chair back, and shifted the sheet without speaking. When he finally did, there was a thread of uneasiness in his voice.
"It's strange that you should be the one to say that," he said, "and to say it to me."
If his position had allowed it, Judge Arcadio would have shrugged his shoulders.
"It's not the first time I've said it," he stated.
"The lieutenant's your best friend," the barber said.
He'd lowered his voice and it was tense and confidential. Concentrating on his work, he had the same expression a person not in the habit of writing has when he signs his name.
"Tell me one thing, Guardiola," Judge Arcadio asked with a certain solemnity. "What impression do you have of me?"
The barber had begun to shave him. He thought for a moment before answering.
"Until now," he said, "I'd have thought that you're a man who knows that he's leaving and wants to leave."
&
nbsp; "You can keep on thinking that." The judge smiled.
He let himself be shaved with the same gloomy passivity with which he would have let his throat be cut. He kept his eyes closed while the barber rubbed his jaw with a piece of alum, powdered him, and brushed off the powder with a very soft brush. When he took the sheet from around his neck, he slipped a piece of paper into his shirt pocket.
"You're only mistaken about one thing, Judge," he told him. "There's going to be a great big mess in this country."
Judge Arcadio checked to see that they were still alone in the barbershop. The burning sun, the hiss of the sewing machine in the nine-thirty silence, the unavoidable Monday, indicated something more to him: they seemed to be alone in the town. Then he took the piece of paper out of his pocket and read it.
The barber turned his back to him and put his shelf in order. " 'Two years of speeches,' " he quoted from memory. "'And still the same state of siege, the same censorship of the press, the same old officials.'" On seeing in the mirror that Judge Arcadio had stopped reading, he told him:
"Pass it around."
The judge put the paper back in his pocket.
"You're very brave," he said.
"If I'd ever made a mistake about anybody," the barber said, "I'd have been full of lead years ago." Then he added in a serious voice, "And remember one thing, Judge. Nobody's going to be able to stop it this time."
When he left the barbershop, Judge Arcadio felt his palate was all dry. He asked for two double shots at the poolroom, and after drinking them, one after the other, he saw that he still had a lot of time to kill. At the university, one Holy Saturday, he'd tried to apply a jackass cure to uncertainty: he went into the toilet of a bar, perfectly sober, threw some gunpowder on a chancre, and lighted it.
With the fourth drink, Don Roque moderated the dosage. "At this rate"--he smiled--"they'll carry you out on their shoulders like a bullfighter." He, too, smiled with his lips, but his eyes were still extinguished. A half hour later he went to the toilet, urinated, and before leaving flushed the clandestine note down the toilet.
When he got back to the bar he found the bottle next to the glass, the level of the contents marked with a line in ink. "That's all for you," Don Roque told him, fanning himself slowly. They were alone in the place. Judge Arcadio poured himself half a glass and began to drink slowly. "Do you know something?" he asked. And since Don Roque showed no signs of having understood, he told him:
"There's going to be a great big mess."
Don Sabas was weighing his bird breakfast on the scale when he was told of another visit by Mr. Carmichael. "Tell him I'm sleeping," he whispered into his wife's ear. And indeed, ten minutes later he was asleep. When he awoke, the air had become dry again and the house was paralyzed with the heat. It was after twelve.
"What did you dream about?" his wife asked.
"Nothing."
She'd waited for her husband to awaken without being roused. A moment later she boiled the hypodermic syringe and Don Sabas gave himself an injection of insulin in the thigh.
"It's been about three years now that you haven't dreamed anything," his wife said with slow disenchantment.
"God damn it," he exclaimed. "What do you want now? A person can't be forced to dream."
Years before, in a brief midday dream, Don Sabas had dreamed of an oak tree which, instead of flowers, bore razor blades. His wife interpreted the dream and won a piece of the lottery.
"If not today, tomorrow," she said.
"It wasn't today and it won't be tomorrow," Don Sabas replied impatiently. "I'm not going to dream just so you can act like a jackass."
He stretched out again on the bed while his wife put the room in order. All types of cutting or stabbing instruments had been banished from the room. When a half hour had passed, Don Sabas arose in varying tempos, trying not to excite himself, and began to dress.
"So," he asked then, "what did Carmichael say?"
"That he'll be back later."
They didn't speak again until they were sitting at the table. Don Sabas picked at his uncomplicated sick man's diet. She served herself a full lunch, at first sight too abundant for her fragile body and languid expression. She'd thought it over a lot before she decided to ask:
"What is it that Carmichael wants?"
Don Sabas didn't even lift his head.
"Money. What else?"
"I thought so," the woman sighed. And she went on piously: "Poor Carmichael, rivers of money passing through his hands for so many years and living off public charity." As she spoke, she lost her enthusiasm for lunch.
"Give it to him, Sabitas," she begged. "God will reward you." She crossed her knife and fork over the plate and asked, intrigued: "How much does he need?"
"Two hundred pesos," Don Sabas answered imperturbably.
"Two hundred pesos!"
"Just imagine!"
Completely unlike Sunday, which was his busiest day, Don Sabas had a peaceful afternoon on Mondays. He could spend long hours in his office, dozing in front of the electric fan while the cattle grew, fattened, and multiplied on his ranches. That afternoon, however, he couldn't manage an instant of rest.
"It's the heat," the woman said.
Don Sabas let a spark of exasperation be seen in his faded eyes. In the narrow office, with an old wooden desk, four leather easy chairs, and harnesses piled in the corners, the blinds had been drawn and the air was warm and thick.
"It could be," he said. "It's never been this hot in October."
"Fifteen years ago, when there was heat like this, there was an earthquake," his wife said. "Do you remember?"
"I don't remember," said Don Sabas distractedly. "You know that I never remember anything. Besides," he added grouchily, "I'm in no mood to talk about misfortunes this afternoon."
Closing his eyes, his arms crossed over his stomach, he feigned sleep. "If Carmichael comes," he murmured, "tell him I'm not in." An expression of entreaty altered his wife's face.
"You're in a bad mood," she said.
But he didn't speak again. She left the office without making the slightest sound as she closed the screen door. Toward dusk, after having really slept, Don Sabas opened his eyes and in front of him, like the prolongation of a dream, he saw the mayor waiting for him to wake up.
"A man like you"--the lieutenant smiled--"shouldn't sleep with the door open."
Don Sabas showed no expression that could reveal his upset. "For you," he said, "the doors of my house are always open." He reached out his hand to ring the bell, but the mayor stopped him with a gesture.
"Don't you want some coffee?" Don Sabas asked.
"Not right now," the mayor said, looking over the room with a nostalgic glance. "It was very nice here while you were asleep. It was like being in a different town."
Don Sabas rubbed his eyelids with the back of his fingers.
"What time is it?"
The mayor looked at his watch. "It's going on five," he said. Then, changing his position in the chair, he softly went into what he wanted to say.
"So shall we talk?"
"I suppose," said Don Sabas, "that I've got very little choice."
"It wouldn't be worth the trouble not to," the mayor said. "After all, this isn't a secret to anybody." And with the same restful fluidity, without forcing his gestures or his words at any moment, he added:
"Tell me one thing, Don Sabas: how many head of cattle belonging to the widow Montiel have you had cut out and branded with your mark since she offered to sell to you?"
Don Sabas shrugged his shoulders.
"I haven't got the slightest idea."
"You remember," the mayor stated, "that a thing like that has a name."
"Rustling." Don Sabas was precise.
"That's right," the mayor confirmed. "Let us say, for example," he went on without changing his tone, "that you've cut out two hundred head in three days."
"I wish I had," Don Sabas said.
"Two hundred, let's say," the
mayor said. "You know what the conditions are: fifty pesos a head in municipal tax."
"Forty."
"Fifty."
Don Sabas made a pause of resignation. He was leaning against the back of the swivel chair, turning the ring with the polished black stone on his finger, his eyes fixed on an imaginary chessboard.
The mayor was observing him with an attention completely devoid of pity. "This time, however, things don't stop there," he went on. "From this moment on, wherever they might be, all cattle belonging to the estate of Jose Montiel are under the protection of the town government." Having waited uselessly for a reaction, he explained:
"That poor woman, as you know, is completely mad."
"What about Carmichael?"
"Carmichael," the mayor said, "has been in custody for two hours."
Don Sabas examined him then with an expression that could have been one of devotion or one of stupor. And without any warning, the bland and voluminous body exploded over the desk, shaken by uncontainable interior laughter.
"What a miracle, Lieutenant," he said. "This all must seem like a dream to you."
At dusk Dr. Giraldo possessed the certainty of having gained much ground on the past. The almond trees on the square were dusty again. A new winter was passing, but its stealthy footprints were leaving a profound imprint in his memory. Father Angel was returning from his afternoon walk when he found the doctor trying to put his key into the lock of his office.
"You see, Doctor." He smiled. "Even to open a door you need the help of God."
"Or a flashlight." The doctor smiled in turn.
He turned the key in the lock and then gave all his attention to Father Angel. He saw him thick and hazy in the dusk. "Wait a moment, Father," he said. "I don't think everything's working right with your liver." He held him by the arm.
"You don't think so?"
The doctor turned on the light by the doorway and with an attention more personal than professional examined the curate's face. Then he opened the screen door and turned on the light in the office.
"It wouldn't be too much to devote five minutes to your body, Father," he said. "Let's have a look at that blood pressure."
Father Angel was in a hurry. But at the doctor's insistence he went into the office and prepared his arm for the sphygmomanometer.
"In my time," he said, "those things didn't exist."
Dr. Giraldo put a chair in front of him and sat down to apply the sphygmomanometer.
In Evil Hour Page 14
