People were dancing boleros in the plaza—“Clock, don’t mark the hour, my life is at an end”—cumbias, mambos, and Gypsy paso dobles. Lightbulbs were casting festive sparks on men’s shoulders like electric flakes of dandruff, and dotting the women’s long tresses with pinheads of light. I was watching the dance, hidden under the orchestra platform beneath the patched canvas covering the iron supports. I’d yet to acquire that need to parade my deformities on the dance floor to earn my bread, as would later be the case. Fiestas don’t want misfortune, they keep the grotesque out of sight and frighten off the monstrous with guffaws of laughter. I was banned from dancing. Juan Felipe, the village idiot, bounced up and down without taking his feet off the ground, like a coiled spring of flesh dangling a thread of green spittle in time with the music. People generally pitied him and threw him crusts soaked in wine; that was his good fortune. The poor idiot. Between bounces he laughed in my direction, and his smile gave my hideout away. Poor idiot. From time to time, the lads went over and dropped bits of cabbage leaf on the back of his neck, and he laughed at their bit of fun in exchange for Saci sweets. “Don’t look this way, you idiot,” I whispered softly, signaling to him to clear off, but he was stubbornly intent on keeping an eye on me. If he gave away my hiding place, the lads would most likely beat me with sticks for a spot of fresh entertainment, so I decided to throw a stone at him, and my aim was so brilliant I cracked the center of his forehead. Juan Felipe the idiot fell to the ground in front of the orchestra like a sack of invertebrate flesh and blood. The musicians carried on playing, and nobody registered what I’d done. My deed boosted my courage, which was just what I needed. The shadows shielded me. I had successfully done the deed, and the shadows shielded me. Providence upped my valor. They rushed the idiot Juan Felipe off on their shoulders so the doctor could examine his latest gift, and on a high, I decided once again to shape my destiny.
Soppily swaying her hips, little Margarita was dancing boleros on little Santomás’s arm. I was closely observing their movements from my shadowy shelter, and with every step they took, I heartily wished they would die. I shut my eyes tight, as if the pressure from my eyelids might make my dreams come true, but the second I opened them, there they were still leaning into each other as much as decorum and respect would allow. “Dance, dance and be damned,” I winged those words their way and laughed my head off at the worm-eaten smoothness of their corpses floating in the lava storming my imagination. The gash opened by Sergeant Ceballos the day I approached his daughter with lines from Gustavo Adolfo had healed by now. Subsequently I’d kept my distance as instructed, scrupulously so, as fear warranted. Far off and over time, my adolescent feelings had transformed into ones that were less spurious and hence lustier, a lust illuminated by the phallus thrusting like a lighthouse of flesh between my legs. Now I was only interested in that girl for the primary matter of her body. I was only attracted by her elemental female smell, her circular hips, the curve of her buttocks, the extraordinary slopes of her breasts, so many magnets to my eyes. So much pampered softness within hands’ reach! I wanted to be swept up and buried in the prairie of her skin now carpeted by down as fresh as filaments of sun at daybreak. I wanted to explore that uncharted ecosystem and descend to the bubbling spring of her Nile with the morbid rapture of a great explorer. I wanted to enter her caverns of flesh and discover unimaginable treasures, make them mine, spread myself therein. The night sounded beautiful, the orchestra was melting the wax in my ears with an interminable repertoire of songs that were horrible when played, and even worse when sung. Everything was ripe for me to go into action, which is what I did. Tired of dancing, little Margarita had sat down on a stone bench to seek refuge in the gossip of other girls. Busty and bosomy, they were all amorous intrigue. Away from his little beauty, little Santomás was exercising his virility, shying at the dummies in the shooting gallery. A gang of youths joined him, all tainted by impure, adolescent thoughts, all on the brink of infamy. “Tonight I’m going to lay Juani, just look at those red-hot cheeks of hers!” I emerged from my hideaway, my mind made up. The glowing bulbs highlighted my movements, but the way my aim had struck that idiot Juan Felipe on the forehead filled me with courage, and I felt I was flying across the plaza. In fact, my bandy legs were tripping clumsily toward the girls, and that was what they could see: an approaching dwarf, a deformed creature cutting a path between the legs of the dancers, narrowly escaping being squashed. “Look, it’s Gregorito, I reckon he’s coming over.” “That eyesore wouldn’t dare, my father’s threatened him, and he’ll pickle him if he comes within a yard of me.” When girls get their periods, their hearts coarsen and they become puking brats ready to vent their ire on the most hallowed feelings of men. It’s a law of life. “Just look at that pole poking from his pants, it must be like a donkey’s, he’s a disgusting dwarf, if he comes any nearer, I’ll scream.” A hop, skip and a jump, and I landed in front of the girls. They were grinning viciously. I didn’t open my mouth; I didn’t have the extra ounce of strength that required. I simply stretched my arm out as far as I could and pinched little Margarita’s right breast, swiftly, quickly, like a driver honking before he crashes. She slumped off the bench and let out a hysterical, piercing shriek. “Aah, aah! The dwarf touched me, that dirty little dwarf touched me!”
After doing the evil deed, I scampered off to nowhere in particular. My hand still cherished a memory of cotton, the indelible feel of her flesh, you might say I would remain grasping a warm lark’s feather forever and ever. I ran off while, alerted by little Margarita’s shrill cries, people chased after me. “Get the dwarf, get the dwarf!” barked the bitch. I looked behind me as I ran and saw a huddle around her. Almost all of them were waving their arms as they scoured the pitchblack night, scrutinizing the terrain beyond the fairground lights where I was pounding away fast. Panic coursed through my body like poison. Where could I go, where could I hide? They were bound to catch me anyway, my runt’s legs weren’t up to a proper escape. I was doomed to be punished, there was no possible chance of remission. Nobody would help me, not even in my dreams. Well, they could smash me to smithereens; I’d be happy enough to take the lovely memory of a woman’s breast to the grave. So ran my thoughts, black as the grief awaiting me, not the barren grief of Federico’s ballad, but a hefty one delivered by fists and bludgeons; murky thoughts that translated into a wish to see the lot of them in the grave, their bodies dismembered, their parts decimated by insects’ bloodthirsty jaws.