That same day, upon the couple’s return home after their walk to the river that Blanca knows as the Sweet and Portulinus sees as a compendium of all the rivers of Germany, Eugenia, their younger daughter, a mute creature, pale and lovely and in the flower of adolescence, gave them the news that while they were away a boy who wanted to take piano lessons had come on foot from Anapoima in search of her father. If Portulinus then asked his younger daughter, What boy? it was merely out of courtesy to her, to Eugenia of the long face, Eugenia the muddled, the daughter with her head always in the clouds, because the hunger assailing Portulinus just then rendered him more interested in the smell of pork coming from the oven than in listening to his daughter tell him about the boy, since he knew in advance that what she told him would be vague, because everything his daughter said was vague, while Blanca, as is known from what she would later write in her diary, was already in the kitchen, dealing with the pork roast and ignorant of their conversation. And yet Eugenia answered her father in a more spirited way than usual, saying, A handsome blond boy, with a knapsack on his back.
Portulinus, friendly and hospitable so long as he wasn’t muddled — and anyway why not welcome a handsome blond boy who has arrived exhausted after traveling by foot from Anapoima? — asked whether his daughter had invited the visitor in, whether she had at least offered him some lemonade, but no, the boy wouldn’t accept anything, he’d just announced that if the piano teacher wasn’t there, he’d return the next day. That settled, the family sat down at the table with Nicasio, the steward with the perpetual flu, Nicasio’s wife, and a pair of salesmen from Sasaima, and were served the pork roast with golden creole potatoes and steamed vegetables. Portulinus was clearheaded and charming and questioned those present about the state of his or her health, and in the middle of the boisterous conversation, the girl Eugenia said, though no one was listening, that the blond boy had brought some lead soldiers in his knapsack. He let me play with them while he was waiting for you to come, Eugenia told them, but they didn’t hear her, and we set them up in three rows in the hall and he whistled military marches and said that we had staged a great parade; he also told me that the soldiers were just a few he’d brought with him since they were his favorites, but that he had left many more at home in Anapoima.
WHO’S OUTSIDE, MOTHER? asks Agustina, Who’s outside, Aminta? She’s talking about her first house, the one from before the family moved north, the white-and-green house in Teusaquillo, on Caracas Avenue, and there’s someone outside and they won’t tell her who it is. The school bus comes to pick me up early in the morning, someone blows the horn, and Aunt Sofi laughs and says, That poor bus moos like a sick cow. Where are my notebooks, Aminta, where are my pencils? But they won’t let me go, they refuse to open the gate, they look out the peephole, the day had to come when even Aminta was scared of something. Mr. Leper, stand aside and let the girl by! shouts Aunt Sofi, who doesn’t live with us yet but who’s the only one who knows how to fix things, Stand aside, please, Mr. Leper, Señor. Let me go, Aunt Sofi, I’m on my way to school, but she hugs me tight against her, covering my head with her white orlon sweater, the one with fake pearls instead of buttons, and we hurry out into the street like that, so that I can’t see. So that I can’t see what? So that I can’t see who? but Aunt Sofi isn’t here anymore to answer me.
So that you don’t see the leper man, says Aminta, Who is he? A poor sick man. And why can’t I see him? Your mother says you shouldn’t see him, because you’ll be scared. He’s horrifying, the poor thing, deathly white, with rotting skin and cemetery breath. My head has managed to escape from Aunt Sofi’s sweater and my eyes see him, a little, or they dream of him at night, he’s a bundle of dirty rags and he’s holding a piece of cardboard in his hand, a sign. The writing is clumsy, like that of a child who hasn’t learned to write yet, the writing of a poor person: my mother says the poor are illiterate. That’s dirty, child, What’s dirty? I already know the answer, everything that comes from the street is dirty. But I want to see it, I have to see it, the leper has written something for me to read. What does it say, Aminta? What does it say, Mother? Will someone read me what it says on his dirty piece of cardboard? That we should give him money because he’s from Agua de Dios, they answer, but I don’t believe them. What’s Agua de Dios? Hurry up, Agustina, the bus will leave without you, Let it leave, I want to know what Agua de Dios is, Agua de Dios is the leprosarium where they keep people with leprosy locked up so they don’t come to the city to infect us. Then why is he here, why has he come to stand outside my house, not my house now but the one from before, did he escape from Agua de Dios to come looking for me?
Now I know why my father bars the doors at night; it’s so that the Agua de Dios contagion doesn’t creep in with its stinking white flesh that falls off in pieces. Tell me, Aminta, what is he like, what does he smell like, who says he has death written on his face? I want to know what he sees with his empty eye sockets, do his eyes turn to wax and melt? Aminta says his eyes turn to pus, Be quiet, stupid, don’t say that! Mommy, Aminta is scaring me about the leper, you’ll be sent away for lying, do you hear me, Aminta? my mommy said she’d fire you from your job if you kept scaring the children. Now I don’t have to ask anyone, because I know: I have the Power and I have the Knowledge, but I still don’t have the Word. They think I don’t understand but I do; I know the face of the horrible thing waiting in the dark, outside the door, quiet in the rain because it escaped from where it was locked up, the thing that stares with vacant eyes into our lit-up house. Turn off the lights, Aminta! but she pays no attention to me. This is our house from before, the white-and-green one on Caracas Avenue where my two brothers and I were born, I’m talking about the old days. After my father closes the shutters, I go around covering up all the holes in them with my finger, one by one, because my mother says that what happens in families is private, that no one should go around sticking their noses into other people’s business, that dirty laundry should be aired in private.
When faced with the Leper my powers are small and flicker out like a dying flame that hardly sheds any light anymore. Does he know he’ll be victorious in the end? Does he know that one day my father will go away and won’t be here to lock the doors? When we’re abandoned, the Leper will triumph, Oh, Father, take my hand and let’s go lock the doors, because if he’s escaped from Agua de Dios it’s because he already knows. Mr. Leper, stand aside and let the girl by! I don’t like it, Aminta, I don’t like it when Aunt Sofi shouts that word so loud, that word girl, because that’s me, and if he learns my name he’ll infect me, he’ll make my name his own and crawl inside of me, he’ll burrow deep in my head and make his cave there, in a nest of panic. Deep in my head there lives a panic called Leper, called Leprosarium, called Agua de Dios, that has the power to change its name whenever it wants. Sometimes, when I speak in Tongues, my panic is called the Hand of My Father, and as I grow up I realize that there are other threats.