In Evil Hour

  "This is your time, Father." He smiled. "Your body won't let you out of it."

  While the doctor was studying the dial, the curate examined the room with that boobish curiosity that consulting rooms tend to inspire. Hanging on the walls were a yellowing diploma, the print of a ruddy-faced girl with one cheek eaten away in blue, and the painting of a doctor fighting with death over a naked woman. In the back, behind the white iron cot, there was a cabinet with labeled bottles. Beside the window a glass cabinet with instruments and two others crammed with books. The only smell that could be defined was that of denatured alcohol.

  Dr. Giraldo's face didn't reveal anything when he finished taking the blood pressure.

  "You need a saint in this room," Father Angel murmured.

  The doctor examined the walls. "Not just here," he said. "He's needed all over town." He put the sphygmomanometer away in a leather case and closed it with an energetic tug on the zipper, and said:

  "You ought to know one thing, Father: your blood pressure's fine."

  "I imagined so," the curate said. And he added with a languid perplexity: "I never felt better in October."

  He slowly began to roll his sleeve down. With his cassock with darned edges, his cracked shoes, and the harsh hands with nails that were like singed horn, at that instant his essential condition prevailed: he was an extremely poor man.

  "Still," the doctor replied, "I'm worried about you. You have to recognize that your daily routine isn't the best for an October like this one."

  "Our Lord is demanding," the priest said.

  The doctor turned his back to him to look at the dark river through the window. "I wonder to what point," he said. "It doesn't seem to be God's work, this business of trying so hard for so many years to cover people's instinct with armor, knowing full well that underneath it all everything goes on the same." And after a long pause he asked:

  "Haven't you had the impression that during the last few days his implacable work has begun to fall apart?"

  "Every night for all of my life I've had that impression," Father Angel said. "That's why I know that I've got to begin with more strength the next day."

  He had stood up. "It's going on six," he said, getting ready to leave the doctor's office. Without moving from the window, the doctor seemed to put an arm in his path to tell him:

  "Father: one of these nights put your hand on your heart and ask yourself if you're not trying to put bandages on morality."

  Father Angel couldn't hide a terrible inner suffocation. "At the hour of death," he said, "you'll learn how heavy those words are, Doctor." He said good night and softly closed the door as he left.

  He couldn't concentrate on his prayers. When he was closing up the church, Mina came over to tell him that only one mouse had fallen in two days. He had the impression that with Trinidad's absence the mice had proliferated to the point of threatening to undermine the church. Still, Mina had set the traps. She'd poisoned the cheese, followed the trail of the young ones, and plugged up the new nests that he himself helped her to find with tar.

  "Put a little faith into your work," he'd told her, "and the mice will come into the traps like lambs."

  He gave a lot of turns on the bare mattress before falling asleep. In the enervation of wakefulness he became fully aware of the obscure feeling of defeat that the doctor had implanted in his heart. That disquiet, and then the troop of mice in the church and the frightful paralysis of the curfew, all plotted so that a blind force would drag him into the turbulence of his most fearsome memory:

  Having just arrived in town, he'd been awakened in the middle of the night to give the last rites to Nora Jacob. He'd received a dramatic confession, given in a serene way, concise and detailed, in a bedroom prepared to receive death: all that remained were a crucifix at the head of the bed and several empty chairs against the walls. The dying woman had revealed to him that her husband, Nestor Jacob, was not the father of the daughter who had just been born. Father Angel had conditioned absolution on her repeating the confession and finishing the act of contrition in the presence of her husband.

  OBEYING the rhythmic orders of the impresario, the gangs pulled up the stakes and the canvas deflated in a solemn catastrophe, with a moaning whistle like that of the wind in the trees. By dawn it was folded up and the women and children were eating breakfast among the trunks, while the men put the wild animals on board. When the launches gave their first whistle, the marks left by the bonfires on the vacant lot were the only sign that a prehistoric animal had passed through the town.

  The mayor hadn't slept. After watching the loading of the circus from the balcony, he mingled in the turmoil of the port, still wearing his field uniform, his eyes irritated from lack of sleep, and his face hardened by a two-day beard. The impresario spotted him from the roof of the launch.

  "Hello, Lieutenant," he shouted to him. "I leave you your kingdom there."

  He was wrapped in ample and worn overalls, which gave his round face a priestly air. He carried the whip rolled in his fist.

  The mayor went over to the edge of the dock. "I'm sorry, General," he shouted good-humoredly in turn, his arms open. "I hope that you'll be honest enough to tell them why you're leaving." He turned to the crowd and explained in a loud voice:

  "I revoked his license because he refused to give a free performance for the children."

  The final whistle of the launches and the noise of the engines drowned out the impresario's reply. The water exhaled a breath of stirred mud. The impresario waited until the launches had made their turn in the middle of the river. Then he leaned over the rail and using his hands as a megaphone, he shouted with all the power of his lungs:

  "Goodbye, you son-of-a-bitch cop."

  The mayor didn't react. He waited, his hands in his pockets, until the sound of the engines disappeared. Then he made his way through the crowd, smiling, and went into Moises the Syrian's shop.

  It was almost eight o'clock. The Syrian had begun to put away the merchandise exhibited by the door.

  "So you're leaving too," the mayor said to him.

  "In a little while," the Syrian said, looking at the sky, "it's going to rain."

  "It doesn't rain on Wednesdays," the mayor stated.

  He leaned his elbows on the counter, observing the thick clouds that floated over the docks until the Syrian finished putting away the merchandise and told his wife to bring them some coffee.

  "At this rate"--he sighed as if to himself--"we'll have to get people on loan from other towns."

  The mayor drank his coffee with spaced sips. Three more families had left town. With them, according to Moises the Syrian's calculations, it made five that had left in one week.

  "Sooner or later they'll be back," the mayor said. He scrutinized the enigmatic marks left by the coffee in the bottom of the cup and commented with an absent air: "Wherever they go, they'll remember that their umbilical cords are buried in this town."

  In spite of his prognostication, he had to wait in the store for the passing of a violent cloudburst that sank the town into a deluge for a few minutes. Then he went to the police barracks and found Mr. Carmichael, still sitting on a stool in the center of the courtyard, soaked by the downpour.

  He paid no attention to him. After receiving the report from the policeman on guard, he had them open the cell where Pepe Amador seemed to be in a deep sleep face down on the brick floor. He turned him over with his foot and for a moment observed with secret pity the face disfigured by the blows.

  "How long since he's eaten?" he asked.

  "Since night before last."

  He ordered them to pick him up. Dragging him by the armpits, three policemen hauled the body through the cell and sat it on the concrete platform jutting from the wall at a height of two feet. In the place where his body had been, a damp shadow remained.

  While two policemen held him sitting up, another supported his head by grasping the hair. One would have thought that he was dead but for the irregular breathin
g and the expression of infinite weariness on his lips.

  On being abandoned by the policemen, Pepe Amador opened his eyes, gripped the edge of the concrete by feel. Then he lay down on the platform with a hoarse moan.

  The mayor left the cell and ordered them to give him something to eat and let him sleep awhile. "Then," he said, "keep working on him until he spits up everything he knows. I don't think he'll be able to resist for long." From the balcony he saw Mr. Carmichael in the courtyard, his face in his hands, huddled on the stool.

  "Rovira," he called. "Go to Carmichael's house and tell his wife to send him some clothes. Then," he added in a peremptory way, "bring him to the office."

  He'd begun to fall asleep, leaning on the desk, when they knocked on the door. It was Mr. Carmichael, dressed in white and completely dry, with the exception of the shoes, which were swollen and soft like those of a drowned man. Before dealing with him, the mayor ordered the policeman to come back with a pair of shoes.

  Mr. Carmichael raised an arm toward the policeman. "I'm all right this way," he said. And then, addressing the mayor with a look of severe dignity, he explained:

  "These are the only ones I own."

  The mayor had him sit down. Twenty-four hours earlier Mr. Carmichael had been led into the armored office and subjected to an intense interrogation concerning the situation of the Montiel estate. He had given a detailed exposition. Finally, when the mayor revealed his proposal to buy the estate at a price fixed by municipal experts, he had announced his inflexible determination not to permit it until the will had been probated.

  That afternoon, after two days of hunger and exposure to the elements, his reply revealed the same inflexibility.

  "You're a mule, Carmichael," the mayor told him. "If you wait for the will to be probated, that bandit Don Sabas will have put his brand on all the Montiel cattle."

  Mr. Carmichael shrugged his shoulders.

  "All right," the mayor said after a long pause. "We all know that you're an honest man. But remember one thing: five years ago Don Sabas gave Jose Montiel the complete list of the people in contact with the guerrilla groups, and that's why he was the only leader of the opposition who could remain in town."

  "Another one stayed," Mr. Carmichael said with a touch of sarcasm. "The dentist."

  The mayor ignored the interruption.

  "Do you think that a man like that, capable of selling out his own people, is going to care if you've been sitting outside for twenty-four hours rain or shine?"

  Mr. Carmichael lowered his head and began to look at his nails. The mayor sat on the desk.

  "Besides," he said finally in a soft tone, "think about your children."

  Mr. Carmichael didn't know that his wife and his two oldest children had visited the mayor the night before and he had promised them that he'd be released within twenty-four hours.

  "Don't worry," Mr. Carmichael said. "They know how to take care of themselves."

  He didn't lift his head until he heard the mayor walking from one end of the office to the other. Then he gave a sigh and said: "You still have another way out, Lieutenant." Before continuing, he looked at him with soft gentleness:

  "Shoot me."

  He didn't receive any reply. A moment later the mayor was sleeping deeply in his room and Mr. Carmichael had gone back to the stool.

  Only two blocks away from the barracks, the secretary of the court was happy. He'd spent the morning dozing in the back of the office, and without being able to avoid it, he'd seen the splendid breasts of Rebeca Asis. It was like a lightning flash at noon: suddenly the door of the bathroom had opened and the fascinating woman, with nothing on but a towel wrapped around her head, gave a silent shout and hurried to close the window.

  For half an hour the secretary went on suffering the bitterness of that hallucination in the half light of the office. Toward twelve o'clock he put the padlock on the door and went to feed his memory something.

  As he passed by the telegraph office, the postmaster signaled to him. "We're going to have a new priest," he told him. "The widow Asis wrote a letter to the apostolic prefect." The secretary waved him off.

  "The greatest virtue in a man," he said, "is knowing how to keep a secret."

  On the corner of the square he ran into Mr. Benjamin, who was thinking twice before leaping over the puddles in front of his store. "If you only knew, Mr. Benjamin," the secretary began.

  "What?" asked Mr. Benjamin.

  "Nothing," the secretary said. "I'll carry this secret with me to the grave."

  Mr. Benjamin shrugged his shoulders. He watched the secretary leap over the puddles with such a youthful agility that he, too, threw himself into the adventure.

  In his absence someone had placed a lunch carrier in three sections, plates, and silverware, and a folded tablecloth, in the rear of the store. Mr. Benjamin spread out the cloth on the table and put the things in order to have lunch. He did everything with extreme neatness. First he had the soup, yellow, with a large circle of grease floating, and a stripped bone. On another plate he ate white rice, roasted meat, and a piece of fried cassava. The heat was starting up, but Mr. Benjamin paid no attention to it. When he'd finished lunch, having piled up the plates and put the sections of the lunch carrier in place, he drank a glass of water. He was getting ready to hang up his hammock when he heard someone coming into the store.

  A sleepy voice asked:

  "Is Mr. Benjamin here?"

  He stuck out his neck and saw a woman dressed in black with her hair wrapped in a towel and ash-colored skin. It was Pepe Amador's mother.

  "I'm not in," Mr. Benjamin said.

  "It's you," the woman said.

  "I know," he said, "but it's just as if I weren't because I know why you're looking for me."

  The woman hesitated by the small door to the rear of the shop, while Mr. Benjamin finished putting up the hammock. With every breath a thin whistle escaped from her lungs.

  "Don't stand there," Mr. Benjamin said harshly. "Go away or come in."

  The woman occupied the chair by the table and began to sob in silence.

  "Excuse me," he said. "You have to realize that you compromise me by standing there in sight of everybody."

  Pepe Amador's mother uncovered her head and dried her eyes with the towel. Out of pure habit, Mr. Benjamin tested the resistance of the ropes when he finished putting up the hammock. Then he saw to the woman.

  "So," he said, "you want me to write you a writ."

  The woman nodded.

  "That's right," Mr. Benjamin went on. "You go right on believing in writs. These days," he explained, lowering his voice, "justice doesn't depend on writs; it depends on bullets."

  "Everybody says the same thing," she answered, "but the fact is that I'm the only one whose boy is in jail."

  While she was talking she undid the knots on the handkerchief she'd been holding in her fist until then, and took out a few sweaty bills: eight pesos. She offered them to Mr. Benjamin.

  "It's all I've got."

  Mr. Benjamin observed the money. He shrugged his shoulders, took the bills, and laid them on the table. "I know it's useless," he said. "But I'm going to do it just to prove to God that I'm a stubborn man." The woman thanked him silently and began weeping again.

  "In any case," Mr. Benjamin advised her, "try to get the mayor to let you see the boy and convince him to tell what he knows. Without that it would be like throwing writs to the hogs."

  She wiped her nose with the towel, covered her head again, and left the store without turning her face.

  Mr. Benjamin slept his siesta until four o'clock. When he went into the courtyard to wash, the weather had cleared and the air was full of flying ants. After changing his clothes and combing the few threads of hair he had left, he went to the telegraph office to buy a sheet of stamped paper.

  He was coming back to the store to write the writ when he saw that something was happening in town. He heard distant shouts. He asked a group of boys who ran past him
what was going on, and they answered without stopping. Then he went back to the telegraph office and returned the sheet of stamped paper.

  "I don't need it now," he said. "They've just killed Pepe Amador."

  Still half asleep, carrying his belt in one hand and buttoning his tunic with the other, the mayor went down the steps from his bedroom in two leaps. The color of the light mixed up his sense of time. He understood before he knew what was going on that he had to go to the barracks.

  The windows were being closed as he passed. A woman with her arms open came along in the middle of the street, running in the opposite direction. There were flying ants in the clean air. Still not knowing what was going on, the mayor unholstered his revolver and started to run.

  A group of women was trying to force the door of the barracks. Several men were struggling with them to keep them out. The mayor beat them away, put his back against the door, and aimed at all of them.

  "I'll drop anyone who takes a step."

  A policeman who'd been holding it from inside then opened the door, with his rifle at the ready, and blew his whistle. Two other policemen ran out onto the balcony, fired several shots in the air, and the group scattered to the ends of the street. At that moment, howling like a dog, the woman appeared on the corner. The mayor recognized Pepe Amador's mother. He gave a leap inside the barracks and from the stairway ordered the policeman:

  "Take charge of that woman."

  Inside there was complete silence. The mayor really didn't find out what had happened until he moved aside the policemen who were blocking the entrance to the cell and saw Pepe Amador. Lying on the floor, curled up, he had his hands between his thighs. He was pale, but there were no signs of blood.

  After convincing himself that there was no wound, the mayor laid the body out face up, tucked in the shirttail, and buttoned the fly. Finally he fastened the belt.

  When he stood up he'd recovered his calm, but the expression with which he faced the policemen revealed a beginning of weariness.

  "Who did it?"

  "All of us," the blond giant said. "He tried to escape."

  The mayor looked at him thoughtfully, and for a few seconds seemed not to have anything else to say. "Nobody's going to buy that story," he said. He advanced toward the blond giant with his hand outstretched.