In Evil Hour

  "I never had anything," she said.

  "I believe you," the physician replied, "but we've had to invent something in order to justify the bill."

  Ignoring the comment, the widow asked:

  "Do I have to stay in bed?"

  "On the contrary," the doctor said, "I absolutely forbid it. Go down to the living room and take care of your visitors as you should. Besides," he added with a mischievous voice, "there are a lot of things to talk about."

  "Good heavens, Doctor," she exclaimed, "don't be so gossipy. You must be the one who's putting up the lampoons."

  Dr. Giraldo reveled in the idea. On leaving, he cast a furtive look at the leather trunk with copper rivets in the corner of the bedroom, ready for the trip. "And bring me something back," he shouted from the door, "when you return from your trip around the world." The widow had taken up the patient labor of untangling her hair again.

  "Of course, Doctor."

  She didn't go down to the living room. She stayed in bed until the last visitor had left. Then she got dressed. Mr. Carmichael found her eating by the half-opened balcony door.

  She replied to his greeting without taking her eyes off the balcony. "Deep down," she said, "I like that woman: she's valiant." Mr. Carmichael also looked toward the house of the widow Asis, where the doors and windows hadn't been opened at eleven o'clock.

  "It has something to do with her nature," he said. "With insides like hers, made for males only, she couldn't be any other way." Turning his attention to the widow Montiel, he added: "And you're like a rose too."

  She seemed to confirm it with the freshness of her smile. "Do you know something?" she asked. And in the face of Mr. Carmichael's indecision she got ahead of the answer:

  "Dr. Giraldo is convinced that I'm crazy."

  "You don't say!"

  The widow nodded yes. "It wouldn't surprise me," she went on, "if he'd already talked to you about some way to send me to the insane asylum." Mr. Carmichael didn't know how to untangle himself from the confusion.

  "I haven't been out of the house all morning," he said.

  He dropped into the soft leather easy chair placed beside the bed. The widow remembered Jose Montiel in that chair, struck down by a cerebral congestion fifteen minutes before dying. "In that case," she said, shaking off the bad memory, "you might call him this afternoon." And she changed the subject with a lucid smile:

  "Did you talk to my good friend Sabas?"

  Mr. Carmichael nodded yes.

  In fact, on Friday and Saturday he had taken soundings in the abyss that was Don Sabas, trying to find out what his reaction would be if Jose Montiel's estate were put up for sale. Don Sabas--Mr. Carmichael supposed--seemed ready to buy it. The widow listened without showing any signs of impatience. If it wasn't next Wednesday, it would be Wednesday of the following week, she admitted with a relaxed firmness. In any event, she was ready to leave town before October was over.

  The mayor unholstered his revolver with an instantaneous movement of his left hand. Right down to the last muscle his body was ready to fire, when he awoke completely and recognized Judge Arcadio.

  "Shit!"

  Judge Arcadio was petrified.

  "Don't you ever mess up like that again," the mayor said, putting the revolver away. He fell back into the canvas chair. "My hearing works better when I'm asleep."

  "The door was open," Judge Arcadio said.

  The mayor had forgotten to close it at dawn. He was so tired that he'd dropped into the chair and fallen asleep instantly.

  "What time is it?"

  "It's going on twelve," Judge Arcadio said.

  There was still a tremulous chord in his voice.

  "I'm dying for sleep," the mayor said.

  Twisting in a long yawn, he had the impression that time had stopped. In spite of his diligence, of his sleepless nights, the lampoons continued. That dawn he'd found a piece of paper stuck to the door of his room: Don't waste gunpowder on buzzards, Lieutenant. On the street they were saying aloud that the very ones who made up the patrols were posting the lampoons to break the boredom of their rounds. The town--the mayor had thought--is dying with laughter.

  "Shake it off," Judge Arcadio said, "and let's go get something to eat."

  But he wasn't hungry. He wanted to sleep another hour and take a bath before going out. Judge Arcadio, on the other hand, fresh and clean, was going back home to have lunch. When he passed by the room, since the door was open, he'd gone in to ask the mayor for a pass to be on the streets after the curfew.

  The lieutenant said simply: "No." Then, in a paternal way, he justified himself:

  "It's better for you to be safe at home."

  Judge Arcadio lighted a cigarette. He stood contemplating the flame of the match, waiting for the rancor to decline, but he found nothing to say.

  "Don't take it so badly," the mayor added. "Believe me, I'd like to change places with you, going to bed at eight o'clock at night and getting up whenever I felt like it."

  "Of course," said the judge. And he added with accentuated irony: "That's all I needed: a new daddy at the age of thirty-five."

  "Judge." Judge Arcadio turned toward him and they looked into each other's eyes. "I'm not going to give you the pass. Understand?"

  The judge bit his cigarette and began to say something, but he repressed the impulse. The mayor heard him going slowly down the stairs. Suddenly, leaning over, he shouted:

  "Judge!"

  There was no answer.

  "We're still friends," the mayor shouted.

  He didn't get any answer that time either.

  He remained leaning over, waiting for the reaction of Judge Arcadio, until the door closed and he was alone with his memories once more. He made no effort to sleep. He was sleepless in the middle of the day, bogged down in a town that remained impenetrable and alien, many years after he had taken charge of its fate. On the dawn when he had disembarked furtively with an old cardboard suitcase tied with cord and the order to make the town submit at all costs, it was he who'd come to know terror. His only pretext was a letter for an obscure partisan of the government, whom he was to meet the following day sitting in his shorts by the door of a rice bin. With his instructions and the implacable will of the three hired assassins who accompanied him, the task had been accomplished. That afternoon, though, unaware of the invisible cobweb that time had been spinning about him, he would only have needed an instantaneous burst of vision to have wondered who had submitted to whom.

  He dreamed with his eyes open by the balcony lashed by the rain until a little after four. Then he bathed, put on his field uniform, and went down to the hotel to have breakfast. Later he made a routine inspection at the barracks, and suddenly he found himself standing on a corner with his hands in his pockets and not knowing what to do.

  The owner of the poolroom saw him enter at dusk, with his hands still in his pockets. He greeted him from the back of the empty establishment, but the mayor didn't answer.

  "A bottle of mineral water," he said.

  The bottles made a loud noise as they were shifted about in the cooler.

  "One of these days," the proprietor said, "they're going to have to operate on you and they'll find your liver all full of bubbles."

  The mayor looked at the glass. He took a sip, belched, and remained with his elbows on the bar and his eyes fixed on the glass, and he belched again. The square was deserted.

  "Well," the mayor said. "What's the matter?"

  "It's Sunday," the proprietor said.

  "Oh!"

  He put a coin on the table and left without saying goodbye. On the corner of the square, someone who was walking as if he were dragging an enormous tail told him something that he didn't understand. A moment later he reacted. In a confused way he understood that something was going on and he went to the barracks. He bounded up the stairs without paying attention to the groups that were forming by the door. A policeman came out to meet him. He gave him a piece of paper and he needed only a g
lance to see what it was all about.

  "He was handing it out at the cockpit," the policeman said.

  The mayor ran down the hall. He opened the first cell and remained with his hand on the latch, scrutinizing the shadows until he was able to see: it was a boy of about twenty, with a sharp and sallow pockmarked face. He was wearing a baseball cap and glasses with broken lenses.

  "What's your name?"

  "Pepe."

  "Pepe what?"

  "Pepe Amador."

  The mayor observed him for a moment and made an effort to remember. The boy was sitting on the concrete platform that served the prisoners as a bed. He seemed calm. He took off his glasses, cleaned them with his shirttail, and squinted at the mayor.

  "Where have we seen each other?" the mayor asked.

  "Around," said Pepe Amador.

  The mayor didn't step into the cell. He kept looking at the prisoner, pensive, and then he started to shut the door.

  "Well, Pepe," he said, "I think you fucked yourself up."

  He turned the key, put it in his pocket, and went to the waiting room to read and reread the clandestine flier.

  He sat down by the open balcony, slapping mosquitoes, while the lights in the deserted streets went on. He knew that sunset peace. At another time, during a sunset like that, he'd had the feeling of power in its fullness.

  "So they've come back," he said to himself, aloud.

  They'd come back. As before, they were mimeographed on both sides, and they could have been recognized anywhere and at any time by the indefinable mark of hesitation that clandestinity imprints.

  He thought for a long time in the shadows, folding and unfolding the piece of paper before making a decision. Finally he put it in his pocket and felt for the keys to the cell.

  "Rovira," he called.

  The man he could trust came out of the darkness. The mayor gave him the keys.

  "Take charge of that boy," he said. "Try to convince him to give you the names of the ones bringing clandestine propaganda into town. If you can't get them in a nice way," he made clear, "try any way you can to get him to talk."

  The policeman reminded him that he was on patrol that night.

  "Forget about it," the mayor said. "Don't worry about anything until you get new orders. And another thing," he added as if obeying an inspiration. "Send those men in the courtyard away. There won't be any patrols tonight."

  He called to his armored office the three men who on his orders remained inactive in the barracks. He had them put on the uniforms he kept locked up in the closet. While they were doing that, he gathered on the table the blank cartridges that he'd issued to the men on patrol on previous nights and took a handful of live ammunition out of the safe.

  "Tonight you people are going to do the patrolling," he told them, inspecting the rifles so that they'd have the best ones. "You don't have to do anything except let the people know that you're the ones who are on the street." Once they were all armed, he issued the ammunition. He stood in front of them.

  "But listen well to one thing," he warned them. "The first one who does something foolish I'll have shot against the courtyard wall." He waited for a reaction that didn't come. "Understood?"

  The three men--two Indian-looking, of ordinary appearance, and a blond with a tendency toward gigantism and eyes of transparent blue--had listened to the last words as they put bullets into the chambers. They came to attention.

  "Understood, Lieutenant, sir."

  "And something else," the mayor said, changing to an informal tone. "The Asises are in town and it wouldn't be at all surprising if you ran into one of them, drunk and looking for some mess to get into. No matter what happens, don't get involved with him." Nor did he get the expected reaction that time either. "Understood?"

  "Understood, Lieutenant, sir."

  "Then you all know," the mayor concluded. "Keep your five senses on the alert."

  When he closed the church after rosary, which he had moved up an hour because of the curfew, Father Angel got a whiff of the smell of decay. It was a momentary stench, not enough to intrigue him. Later on, frying some slices of green plantain and warming milk for his meal, he found the cause of the smell: Trinidad, ill since Saturday, hadn't removed the dead mice. Then he returned to the church, opened and cleaned out the traps, and then went to Mina's, two blocks from the church.

  Toto Visbal himself opened the door. In the small dark parlor, where there were several leather stools in disorder and prints hanging on the walls, Mina's mother and her blind grandmother were drinking something hot and aromatic in cups. Mina was making artificial flowers.

  "It's been two weeks," the blind woman said, "that we haven't seen you in this house, Father."

  It was true. Every afternoon he'd passed by the window where Mina was sitting making paper flowers, but he never went in.

  "Time passes without making any noise," he said. And then, making it clear that he was in a hurry, he turned to Toto Visbal. "I've come to ask you to let Mina come and take charge of the traps starting tomorrow. Trinidad," he explained to Mina, "has been sick since Saturday."

  Toto Visbal gave his consent.

  "It's a wish to lose time," the blind woman put in. "After all's said and done, the world is coming to an end this year."

  Mina's mother put a hand on her knee as a sign to be still. The blind woman pushed the hand away.

  "God punishes superstition," the curate said.

  "It's written," the blind woman said. "Blood will run in the streets and there won't be any human power capable of stopping it."

  The priest gave her a look of pity: she was very old, extremely pale, and her dead eyes seemed to penetrate the secret of things.

  "We'll be bathed in blood," Mina mocked.

  Then Father Angel turned to her. He saw her rise up, with her intensely black hair and the same paleness as the blind woman's, from amidst a confused swirl of ribbons and colored paper. She looked like an allegorical vignette at a school pageant.

  "And you," he told her, "working on Sunday."

  "I already told her," the blind woman put in. "Burning ashes will rain down on her head."

  "Necessity has the face of a dog." Mina smiled.

  Since the curate was still standing, Toto Visbal brought over a chair and invited him again to sit down. He was a fragile man, with startled movements because of his timidity.

  "Thank you just the same." Father Angel refused. "The curfew will catch me on the street." He noticed the deep silence in the town and commented: "It seems later than eight o'clock."

  Then he found out: after almost two years of empty cells, Pepe Amador was in jail and the town at the mercy of three criminals. People had shut themselves up since six o'clock.

  "It's strange." Father Angel seemed to be talking to himself. "A thing getting out of hand like that."

  "Sooner or later it had to happen," said Toto Visbal. "The whole country is patched up with cobwebs."

  The priest continued to the door.

  "Haven't you seen the clandestine fliers?"

  Father Angel stopped, perplexed.

  "Again?"

  "In August," the blind woman put in, "the three days of darkness will begin."

  Mina reached out to give her a flower she'd begun. "Be still," she told her, "and stop that." The blind woman recognized the flower by touch.

  "So they've come back," the priest said.

  "About a week ago," said Toto Visbal. "Because there was one here, without anybody's knowing who brought it. You know what it's like."

  The curate nodded.

  "They say that everything's just the same as before," Toto Visbal went on. "The government changed, they promised peace and guarantees, and at first everybody believed them. But the officials are the same ones."

  "And it's true," put in Mina's mother. "Here we are with the curfew again, and those three criminals on the street."

  "But there's one thing new," Toto Visbal said. "Now they're saying that they're organizing g
uerrilla groups against the government in the interior again."

  "That's all written down," the blind woman said.

  "It's absurd," said the curate, pensive. "We have to recognize that the attitude has changed. Or at least," he corrected himself, "it had changed until tonight."

  Hours later, lying awake in the heat of his mosquito netting, he wondered, nonetheless, whether in reality time had passed during the nineteen years he'd been in the parish. Across from his very house he heard the noise of the boots and weapons that in different times had preceded rifle shots. Except this time the boots went away, passed by again an hour later, and went away once more without any shots being fired. A short while after, tormented by the fatigue of sleeplessness and the heat, he realized that the cocks had been crowing for some time.

  MATEO ASIS tried to calculate the hour why the location of the roosters. Finally he rose to the surface of reality.

  "What time is it?"

  Nora Jacob stretched out her arm in the shadows and picked up the clock with its phosphorescent dial from the night table. The answer, which she still hadn't given, woke her up completely.

  "Four-thirty," she said.

  "Shit!"

  Mateo Asis jumped out of bed. But the pain in his head and then the mineral sediment in his mouth obliged him to moderate his drive. He felt with his feet in the darkness for his shoes.

  "Daylight might have caught me," he said.

  "How nice," she said. She turned on the small lamp and recognized his knotty spine and pale buttocks. "You'd have had to stay shut up here until morning."

  She was completely naked, only covering her sex with an edge of the sheet. Even her voice lost its warm impudence when the light was turned on.

  Mateo Asis put on his shoes. He was tall and sturdy. Nora Jacob, who had received him occasionally for two years, felt a kind of frustration at the bad luck of having in secret a man who seemed to her to be made for a woman to talk about.

  "If you don't watch out you're going to get fat," she said.

  "It's the good life," he replied, trying to hide his displeasure. And he added, smiling: "I must be pregnant."

  "I wish you were," she said. "If men gave birth, they'd be less inconsiderate."

  Mateo Asis picked the condom up off the floor with his underdrawers, went to the bathroom, and threw it into the toilet. He washed, trying not to breathe deeply: at dawn any smell was her smell. When he went back into the room he found her sitting up in bed.