The doctor had already moved towards her. They looked at one another numbly.
“A fish bone,” he repeated, and nodded.
In the shadows of the corridor it seemed as though they were trying to work out whether it really was the two of them. As though Primavera were making an effort to remember him: he looked taller and stouter to her, but a chilly aura made him different from her memory, and, for that very reason, at that moment, a stranger, someone truly unknown and dangerous and much stronger than her, alien to the house.
She felt her daughters’ absence made her vulnerable.
But she shook off the fear: it was just her husband, Doctor Donkey, hadn’t he surprised her early that morning dressed as an ape, giving her a preview of his pathetic prank from beginning to end? And wasn’t he even more pathetic now, so hesitant and ultimately deferential towards convention, as expected?
By then, with that almost magical, invisible speed of movement with which every woman dresses and conceals herself, she had finished fixing the skirt and straightened up, slightly flushed, as though with a final scrap of strength.
They both turned to look towards the door of the bathroom where early that morning Doctor Justo Pastor Proceso López had dressed up as an ape: there, through the same doorway, a head stuck out — a different head, a head with moustache and sideburns, that dithered without making up its mind to say hello.
Who can it be? — the doctor wondered.
The truth was, he expected to find a boy—an adolescent, which was the same thing as far as the doctor was concerned — given that he already knew his wife’s secret tastes, her unsuspected love, her outrageous, perpetual desire: boys. With good reason he once heard a whispered conversation between two of his lady patients, who referred to Primavera as “the Cradle Snatcher,” a nickname the doctor found very amusing.
Years before, one afternoon at the finca, he had surprised her at a bend in the river with one of the young labourers, a recently weaned colt — the doctor had thought — a prize yokel, a country boy who must have been for her, with all her respectable reasons, the most wonderful thing in the world; he discovered her right in the middle of the preliminary persuasion while they were each eating a guava, sitting very close to one another on top of a large, white boulder at the river’s edge: the foaming current chattered, swallowing up the laughter, the words. Primavera was wearing that long summer dress he knew so well, grey and frothy with a large flower embroidered on it in gold thread, a dress sprinkled with river spray, here and there, on the shoulders, on the back, wet and sticking between her open legs, where her hands were resting, and she had one foot bared, rosy and small in the grass; the sandal, not far off, lay upside down, as if the foot had freed itself by kicking it off in annoyance. Primavera’s head remained bent downwards; she seemed to be contemplating the tips of her breasts; from time to time her teeth bit into the guava, her lips sucked at it, while one of her hands ran over her long blonde hair as if untangling it; in reality she was sweeping it in shining strands across the boy’s bare shoulder, grazing his skin like real, wounding darts. Primavera never displayed such furious and mute mortification as she did that afternoon, when the doctor disturbed them, saying hello. Primavera loathed him, smiling at him; and the colt fled, stammering.
But tonight was different. This was no strapping youth who leaned out from the doorway. It was General Lorenzo Aipe, a fact that not only amazed the doctor, but disconcerted him: he hardly knew the general, they had been introduced at the governor’s house — when was that? This was not a boy: the general must have reached his half-century, just like him; together they totalled a hundred years. That made all the difference.
“General Aipe,” Doctor Proceso said.
“He can’t speak,” Primavera interrupted, “didn’t I say he’d got a fish bone stuck in his throat?”
“You did,” the doctor said.
“That fish from Tumaco that Yolandita, Gerardo’s niece, sent.”
“Yes.”
The doctor headed for the bathroom, while the moustached head remained sticking out, waiting for him without saying a word, unable to say a word, according to what Primavera herself had decreed — the doctor thought — the general must be furious, unable to speak, Primavera let slip something about a fish bone, isn’t that ingenious? Ah, bountiful Primavera — he carried on talking to himself as he made his way very slowly down the corridor, too slowly, gloomy and chill, like a ghost ship.
And how repulsive, how absurd this General Aipe seemed to him compared to the graceful savages at the finca, what a sorry, unfortunate transformation Primavera’s taste had undergone, he thought.
Primavera managed to flash her blue eyes at the doctor, dark with bitterness, as though saying to him: “If you already know what’s going on here, why don’t you leave? I’ve left you in peace plenty of times, now you leave me in peace.”
With your boy? — the doctor said to himself, and he seemed to hear Primavera reply: “With my boy.”
But that isn’t a boy — the doctor went on thoughtfully — it’s General Lorenzo Aipe.
“Let me see,” he said out loud, clapping one of his hands on the general’s shoulder, gently pushing him into the bathroom. “Supposedly, I’m a doctor.”
The general spluttered something.
“Don’t speak,” the doctor said, “it’s not a good idea for you to talk.”
General Aipe sought Primavera’s eyes, but she had lowered her head, in a confusing gesture, which could signify anger or resignation. The general was a bald man, robust and very tall, though not as tall as the doctor, and gave off a strong whiff of armpit. The doctor wondered whether Primavera, like other women, was fond of that smell. The general, embarrassed at having to submit to Primavera’s extraordinary inventiveness, the fish bone, decided to accept the situation and allowed his tongue and throat to be examined in front of the large mirror in the guest bathroom; the room was dark when the doctor approached: they had to turn the light on as they went in; all that time, the only weak light came from the bulb that illuminated the corridor, so that it seemed impossible to the general that this giant of a doctor should suspect nothing untoward, or was he pretending? The general and Primavera had been in the kitchen first, and after concluding the whirlwind of an inopportune embrace — standing up, semi-naked against the wobbling fridge — they went to the bathroom simply to adjust their clothing in front of the mirror, as they would be going off in Primavera’s Volkswagen to eat guinea pig in Catambuco; and they had just entered the bathroom, without yet switching on the light, when Primavera heard the front door open and went to have a look.
Now the general heard, inexplicably, the unbelievable doctor’s earnest voice:
“Yes, yes,” he said.
And he felt him place one of his great big fingers, overly confidently, on the top of his tongue, at the back.
“I can feel something here, General. Luckily, the bone hasn’t gone into the throat, good, very good, it’s buried itself almost completely; the tongue is a fleshy organ, making it very difficult to find a fish bone, but never fear, General, we’ll extract it, if it turns out there is, in the end, a bone there, because the body itself is capable of assimilating it, do you see? It’s quite possible your system has already absorbed it. Come with me to the consulting room, General, just for five minutes.”
The general seemed to assent with a sigh.
And this time he did exchange a reassuring look with Primavera Pinzón.
“Alright,” the general agreed unexpectedly, in his normal voice, “it’s best you help me.” And he enunciated it perfectly, the doctor discovered — a grave mistake for a general well versed in strategy, he thought, to speak so clearly with a fish bone stuck in his throat.