No-one will ever be able to understand, he mused, shaking his head in agitation, why they believed in him, how he managed to impose his lie. What to blame this on — ignorance? The uncouthness of the rebel leaders of the day? Why did they send him to negotiate with the English for protection, with such poor results? Why was he named colonel, why was he chosen as commander of the Puerto Cabello fortress? Because of his wealth. Why else? Francisco de Miranda, like any other military leader, gave the buying of arms and munitions and the upkeep of the troops the importance it merited; that was why he had to enrol that bourgeois, who was incompetent by any reckoning, into his army.
And the doctor’s bitter incredulity was sincere: he saw Bolívar as a make-believe strategist, faker of victories that were not victories, or worse — victories that were not his.
He tried, then, not to let his own agitation show in his voice.
“The carriage I’m telling you about,” he explained, “existed, just as I described, one hundred and fifty-three years ago, in Venezuela.”
Once again, an astonished silence surrounded him.
Doctor Proceso was suddenly hit by the hard truth: no-one there knew anything about Bolívar other than the official lies learned at school.
“What do you know about Bolívar?” he dared to ask, and felt his own uncertainty, like a great wall of encircling ice.
“He was the Liberator,” the lookout boy said.
“Father of the nation,” Maestro Abril said, as if adding a full stop; he would not lend himself to mocking Bolívar’s memory.
Doctor Proceso thought his vision — of the Liberator’s carriage — already lay in pieces. It would be superhuman, he thought, to overcome people’s fundamental ignorance of Bolívar’s true face in just one minute. What am I doing here? What am I proposing? Isn’t this futile — more than futile, humiliating?
The artisans withdrew; that morning’s interruptions had been unusual — first a drunk, then a lunatic — best get on with some work. Then they heard Zulia Iscuandé, who had not said a word that whole time.
“My grandfather always talked about Bolívar,” she said.
She half closed her eyes, as if remembering.
“He talked to me about Bolívar,” she said.
And then, resolutely, finding the memory, seizing upon it:
“He was always talking about Bolívar, but he said Bolívar had been a complete son of a bitch.”
The workshop shook with an explosive guffaw. Doctor Justo Pastor Proceso López’s eyes were watering.
My God, he thought, there is still memory among us.
“And not just in Pasto, but right across the country,” Iscuandé continued, spurred on. “Grandfather told us Bolívar was always a complete son of a bitch, wherever he set foot.”
The doctor, who was usually temperate and controlled, asked for a glass of aguardiente, not to celebrate Zulia Iscuandé’s scorn, but her words. That was when Salvador and the rest of the children descended from the float. They had finished checking it over inch by inch.
“The three bullets hit the lady,” the watchboy gabbled. “One on the forehead, one on the bum and the other on one of her tits.”
Another guffaw. With a whistle, Maestro Umbría remembered it was Innocents’ Day, “Here’s to life!” he roared. Doctor Proceso did not want to interrupt the hullabaloo. All he saw, in front of him, was the colossal figure of the Liberator.
“Just like here today,” he said to himself, astounded, “Bolívar was never injured either, not once in his soldiering life, he always knew how to hide, he never showed his face.”
Well into the evening, the artisans took him home. They loaded him onto Martín Umbría’s truck — the one Bolívar was later to be fixed to for his procession. Even the children accompanied the doctor: Innocents’ Day overexcited them from the start. The adults proposed toasts at every corner and people out celebrating clambered up to soak them all, not just leaping into the back but also onto the running board beside the cab in which Zulia Iscuandé, Tulio Abril, the doctor in the middle and Martín Umbría — who was driving — were all drinking. Behind, on the open flatbed, the artisans and apprentices were fooling around, along with the horde of children who responded to each water attack with more water: they had a big earthenware jar full of bombs, which they hurled by the handful into the crowd. The clamour of the festivities swept over them from all sides: you could hear the din of water bombs exploding, crashing like boiling waves against the windscreen, the water like white lashes from a whip shooting over them, shouts like whistles — was that laughter or wailing? Heavy sighs, band music pulsing in the background, the traditional cries of “Viva Pasto, dammit!” from the revellers.
Right in the middle of the Avenida de los Estudiantes, at risk of being run over, a white-haired old man popped up, sitting astride a pregnant, squealing sow; delighted children urged them on at a run, and a fat woman, probably the pig’s owner, gave chase trying to catch them. A cow, completely soaked, was grazing terrified on one side of the Obelisk. Also soaked through like the cow, but happy, much more so than when he was a child and had joined in, Doctor Proceso got out of the vehicle at his lonely house, happy because he carried with him the maestros’ promise: they would create the Bolívar carnival float.
Long before the aguardiente, to prove their word as master craftsmen, the two maestros had climbed up onto the float and pulled down the devout Alcira, they toppled her bulk to the ground without hesitation; in her place they would put up the twelve girls pulling a victor’s chariot in which Bolívar would be seated with his Roman wreath on his head. And they themselves decided — to the doctor’s surprise — that around this carriage, on carved wooden panels, would go the key scenes of the War of Independence, which the doctor was to select: he would have to talk to Cangrejito Arbeláez about that, they suggested, one of Pasto’s best-known sculptors, who carved men and women and trees and animals as if breathing them into being. He was the only one who could triumph over the time left until the parade on January 6: exactly nine days.
With the maestros’ promise, Doctor Justo Pastor Proceso López said goodbye, reeling outside his house, drunk for the first time in years; it was some thirty since he had imbibed to the point of swaying about in such a fashion, but the cause was well worth the trouble, he thought, and he would not skimp: he would pay the artisans three times the float prize; he would not waste his time denouncing Furibundo, who was as rich as he was miserly — hadn’t he heard him swear he would charge the firemen for the six hens they drowned? Furibundo’s offer was a fabrication: he had wanted to trick and then startle the artisans, a ruse. The doctor would have to finance Bolívar’s carriage by himself. He was disheartened to recognize the fact that if the artisans agreed to support his idea it was purely and simply for money, three times the prize money of the winning float: why else would they work? — he said to himself — no other reason, don’t be naive, let’s not get carried away.
Because, when all’s said and done, who was he to set himself up as an expert on the true story of the Independence, and among artisans? There were nine days to go. Wouldn’t it be prudent to look for other allies? A float like the one in the offing could provoke resentment; it was Bolívar’s carriage, with his whole history on its back. He had to turn to his friends — to people who were his friends, years ago — but which ones? Doctor Proceso began to reflect on this, genuinely alarmed.