d celebrated the first passage of the comet, he went through the Babelic labyrinth of the commercial district, its lethal music, the labara of lottery tickets, the pushcarts with cane juice, the strings of iguana eggs, the Turks and their sunlight-faded bargains, the fearsome tapestry of the woman who had been changed into a scorpion for having disobeyed her parents, the alley of misery of women without men who would emerge naked at dusk to buy blue corbinas and red snappers and exchange mother-directed curses with the women selling vegetables while their clothes were drying on the carved wooden balconies, he smelled the rotten shellfish wind, the everyday light of the pelicans around the corner, the disorder of colors of the Negro shacks on the promontories of the bay, and suddenly there it was, the waterfront, alas, the waterfront, the dock and its spongy planks, the old battleship of the marines longer and gloomier than truth, the black dockworker woman who was too late in getting out of the way of the fearsome little wagon and felt touched by death with the sight of the sunset old man who was contemplating the waterfront with the saddest look in the world, it's him, she exclaimed with surprise, hurray for the stud, she shouted, hurray, shouted the men, the women, the children who came running out of the Chinese bars and lunchrooms, hurray, shouted the ones who held the horses' legs and blocked the coach's way so they could shake the hand of the power that was, a maneuver so swift and unforeseen that he barely had time to push aside the armed hand of his aide scolding him in a tense voice, don't be a damned fool, lieutenant, let them love me, so overwhelmed by that outpouring of love and by similar ones during the days that followed that it was hard for General Rodrigo de Aguilar to make him get out of his head the idea of riding about in an open carriage so that the patriots of the nation could see me full length, what the hell, because he didn't even suspect that the assault at the waterfront may have been spontaneous but that the ones that followed had been organized by his own security services in order to please him but without any risks, so honeyed by the breezes of love on the eve of his autumn that he dared go out of the city after many years, he started up the old train painted with the colors of the flag again and went creeping and crawling about the cornices of his vast mournful realm, opening a path through orchid sprigs and Amazonian balsam apples, rousing up monkeys, birds of paradise, jaguars sleeping on the tracks, even the glacial and deserted villages of his native barren uplands where they waited for him at the station with mournful-music bands, tolling death bells, displaying signs of welcome for the nameless patriot who sits at the right hand of the Holy Trinity, they recruited rustics from the back reaches who came down to meet the hidden power in the funereal shadows of the presidential coach, and those who managed to get close enough only saw the quivering lips, the palm of a hand with no origins which waved from the limbo of glory, while a member of the escort tried to get him away from the window, be careful, general, the nation needs you, but he would reply sleepily don't worry, colonel, these people love me, as it was on the train in the barren lands so it was the same on the wooden paddle-wheeler that went along leaving a wake of player-piano waltzes in the midst of the sweet fragrance of gardenias and rotting salamanders of the equatorial tributaries, eluding prehistoric dragons in their leather gun cases, providential isles where sirens lay down to give birth, sunsets which were the disasters of immense disappeared cities, even the burning and desolate shantytowns where the inhabitants appeared on the riverbank to see the wooden boat painted with the national colors and they could just make out an anonymous hand with a velvet glove which waved from a window of the presidential stateroom, but he saw the groups on shore who were waving malanga leaves for lack of flags, he saw those who jumped into the water with a live tapir, a gigantic yam that was as big as an elephant's foot, a cage of partridges for the presidential stewpot, and he sighed with emotion in the ecclesiastical penumbra of the stateroom, see how they come, captain, see how they love me. In December, when the Caribbean world turned to glass, he would take the closed carriage on a climb along the cornices of crags until he came to the house perched on top of the reefs and he would spend the afternoon playing dominoes with the former dictators of other nations of the continent, the dethroned fathers of other countries to whom he had granted asylum over the course of many years and who were now growing old in the shadow of his mercy dreaming in chairs on the terrace about the chimerical vessel of their second chance, talking to themselves, dying dead in the rest home he had built for them on the balcony of the sea after having received all of them as if each were the only one, for they all appeared at dawn in the dress uniform they had put on inside out over their pajamas, with a chest of money they had pilfered from the public treasury and a suitcase with a box of decorations, newspaper clippings pasted into old ledgers, and a photograph album they would show him at the first audience, as if they were credentials, saying look general, that's me when I was a lieutenant, this was the day I was inaugurated, this was the sixteenth anniversary of my taking power, here, look general, but he would give them asylum without paying any more attention to them or inspecting credentials because the only document of identity for an overthrown president should be his death certificate, he would say, and with the same disdain he would listen to the illusory little speech of I accept for this short time your noble hospitality while the justice of the people brings the usurper to account, the eternal formula of puerile solemnity which a while later he would hear from the usurper, and then from the usurper's usurper as if the God-damned fools didn't know that in this business of men if yon fall, you fall, and he put all of them up for a few months in the presidential palace, made them play dominoes until he had fleeced them down to their last cent, and then he took me by the arm over to the window looking out onto the sea, he helped me grieve over this meat-beating life that only goes in one direction, he consoled me with the illusion that I go over there, look, over there to that big house that looked like an ocean liner aground on the top of the reefs where I have some lodgings with good light and good food, and plenty of time to forget along with other companions of misfortune, and with a terrace overlooking the sea where he liked to sit on December afternoons not so much for the pleasure of playing dominoes with that bunch of boobs but to enjoy the base good fortune of not being one of them, to look at himself in the instructive mirror of their misery while he wallowed in the great slough of felicity, dreaming alone, tiptoing like an evil thought in pursuit of the tame mulatto girls who swept government house in the dimness of dawn, he sniffed out their public dormitory and drugstore hairgrease trail, he would lie in wait for the chance to catch one alone and make rooster love to her behind office doors while they would burst with laughter in the shadows, what a devil you are general, such a great man and still so horny, but he would be sad after making love and would start singing to console himself where no one could hear him, bright January moon, he would sing, see how sad I am standing on the gallows by your window, he would sing, so sure of his people's love on those Octobers with no evil omens that he would put up a hammock in the courtyard of the suburban mansion where his mother Bendición Alvarado lived and sleep his siesta in the shade of the tamarind trees, without an escort, dreaming about the errant fish who swam in the colored waters of the bedrooms, a nation is the best thing that was ever invented, mother, he would sigh, but he never waited for the answer from the only person in the world who dared scold him for the rancid onion smell of his armpits, but he returned to the presidential palace through the mam door in exaltation with that miraculous season of the Caribbean in January, that reconciliation with the world at the end of old age, those mellow soft afternoons after he had made peace with the papal nuncio and the, latter would visit him without an appointment to attempt to convert him to the faith of Christ while they had chocolate and cookies, and bursting with laughter he would allege that if God is the man you say he is tell him to rid me of this beetle that's buzzing in my ear, he would tell him, he would unbutton the nine buttons of his fly and show him his huge tool, tell him to deflate this creature, he would tell him, but the nuncio went along with his shepherd's work with patient stoicism, tried to convince him that everything that is truth, no matter who says it, comes from the Holy Spirit, and he would see him to the door when the first lights went on, dying with laughter as had rarely been seen, don't waste your gunpowder on buzzards, father, he told him, why should you want to convert me since everything I'm doing is just what you people want, what the hell. That floating calmness shattered its hull suddenly at a cockpit on a faraway plain when a bloodthirsty cock tore the head off his adversary and ate it, pecking at it before an audience that was maddened by blood and a drunken brass band that celebrated the horror with festive music, and he was the only one who spotted the evil omen, and he sensed that it was so clear and so imminent that he secretly ordered his escort to arrest one of the musicians, that one, the one playing the tuba, and, indeed, they found a sawed-off shotgun on him and under torture he confessed that he had planned to shoot him during the confusion as the people left, it was quite obvious, of course, he explained, because I was looking at everybody and everybody was looking back at me, but the only one who didn't dare look at me one single time was that son of a bitch with the tuba, poor devil, and still be knew that that wasn't the ultimate reason for his anxiety, because he kept on feeling it at night in government house even after his security service had shown that there was no reason for worry general sir, everything was in order, but he had clung to Patricio Aragonés as if he were himself after he had received the omen at the cockpit, he gave him his own food to eat, he gave him his own honey to drink with the same spoon so that he would at least die with the consolation that they had both died together in case the things had been poisoned, and they went like fugitives through forgotten rooms, walking on the rugs so that no one would hear their great furtive Siamese elephant steps, navigating together in the intermittent light from the beacon as it came in through the windows and flooded the rooms of the house every thirty seconds with green amidst the vapor from cow flops and the mournful greetings of nocturnal ships on the sleeping seas, they would spend whole afternoons watching it rain, counting swallows on languid September afternoons like two aged lovers, so far removed from the world that he himself did not realize that his fierce struggle to exist twice was feeding the contrary suspicion that he was existing less and less, that he was lying in a lethargy, that the guard had been doubled and no one was allowed in or out of the presidential quarters, that someone had still managed to get through that strict filter and had seen the birds silent in their cages, the cows drinking at the baptismal font, the lepers and cripples sleeping in the rose beds, and everybody at midday seemed to be waiting for dawn to come since he had died as had been announced in the prophetic basins of natural causes during his sleep but the high command was delaying the notice while they tried to settle in bloody secret meetings their postponed quarrels. Although he did not know of those rumors he was aware that something was about to occur in his life, he would interrupt the slow domino games to ask General Rodrigo de Aguilar how the mess was going, friend, everything under control sir, the nation was calm, he watched for signs of premonition in the funeral pyres of cow chips that burned on the courtyard corridors and in the wells with their ancient waters but he could find no answer for his anxiety, he visited his mother Bendición Alvarado in the suburban mansion when the heat died down, they would sit and take in the cool afternoon breezes under the tamarinds, she in her maternal rocking chair, decrepit but with her soul intact, tossing handfuls of grain to the hens and the peacocks who pecked about the courtyard, and he in the large wicker chair, fanning himself with his hat, following with his look of old hunger the big mulatto women who brought him colored fruit juices to quench his hot thirst, general, thinking oh Bendición Alvarado, my mother, if you only knew that I can't stand the world any more, that I'd like to go away I don't know where, mother, far away from so much injustice, but not even his mother was shown the inside of his sighs but he would return to the presidential palace with the first lights of evening, go in through the service entrance hearing the clicking of sentries' heels as he went along the corridors and they saluted him all's well general sir, everything in order, but he knew that it wasn't true, that they were dissembling from habit, that they lied to him out of fear, that nothing was true in that crisis of uncertainty which was rendering his glory bitter and had been taking away his old desire to command ever since that fateful night at the cockpit, until very late he would stay stretched out face down on the floor without sleeping, through the open window facing the sea he could hear the distant drums and sad bagpipes that were celebrating some wedding among the poor with the same uproar with which they would have celebrated his death, he could hear the farewell of a vagabond steamer that was weighing anchor at two o'clock in the morning without permission from the port captain, he could hear the paper sound of the roses as they opened at dawn, without one moment of rest, sensing with a woodsman's instinct the imminence of the afternoon when he would be on his way back from the suburban mansion and be surprised by a mob in the street, an opening and closing of windows and a panic of swallows in the diaphanous December sky and he peeped through the curtain of the carriage to see what was going on and he said to himself this is it, mother, this is it, he said to himself, with a terrible feeling of relief, seeing the colored balloons in the sky, the red and green balloons, the yellow balloons like great blue oranges, the innumerable wandering balloons that took flight in the midst of swallows' fright and floated for an instant in the crystal light of four o'clock and suddenly broke with a silent and unanimous explosion releasing thousands and thousands of bits of paper over the city, a blizzard of broadsides which the coachman took advantage of in order to slip through the tumult of the public market without anyone's recognizing the coach of power, because everybody was busy in the scramble for the papers from the balloons general sir, they were shouting out the words on them from the balconies, from memory they repeated down with oppression, they shouted death to the tyrant, and even the sentries along the corridors of the presidential palace were reading aloud about the union of all without distinction of class against the despotism of centuries, patriotic reconciliation against the corruption and the arrogance of the military, no more blood, they shouted, no more pillaging, the whole country was awakening from its age-old sleep at the moment he was going through the coach house door and he ran into the terrible news general sir that Patricio Aragonés had been fatally wounded by a poisoned dart. Years before one night of bad moods he had proposed to Patricio Aragonés that they gamble their lives on heads or tails, heads you die, tails I die, but Patricio Aragonés made him see that they would both meet death in a tie because all corns had both their faces on both sides, he then proposed that they gamble their lives at the domino table, the best out of twenty games, and Patricio Aragonés accepted with great honor general sir, with the proviso that you grant me the privilege of being allowed to beat you, and he a