He had already turned fifty and the biography was not finished, would he die in the attempt? This ingenious prank that would make him friends with the world was indispensable — and, in passing, it would fire him with the enthusiasm to complete The Great Lie: Bolívar or the So-Called Liberator—he would go, for example, dressed as an ape to say hello to Arcángel de los Ríos, his neighbour and chess rival, prosperous dairy producer, one of the richest men in Pasto, “Don Furibundo Pita” they nicknamed him for his furious honking of his car horn, a quarrelsome drunk, but a good man when in his right mind — weren’t they close friends in their youth? — he would walk into houses with open doors and knock on closed doors and poke his ape’s face in through windows, chase women and girls and old ladies, make cats bristle, confront dogs, definitively concoct the story of an impeccable prank in Pasto, a city whose very history was forged from pranks, military or political or social pranks, bedroom or street pranks, as light as feathers or as thumping as elephants, his own would pass through, intimidating martyrs for just a fleeting moment, but a moment of particular shivery fright — is it really an ape escaped from some circus and might it kill me, they would think, didn’t a lorry full of bulls overturn one day and the angriest one charge forward, all set to gouge a notary’s door, which opened at that precise moment with Jesús Vaca right in the way, the old secretary who used to wear a hat and would have retired in three days’ time and of whom nothing was left, not even the hat? Yes, like the furious bull, a gorilla was possible in this life, just around the corner, more than one person would be terrified, sorrowful like a child facing a bloody end at the hands of an older ancestral brother.
And thus, terrorizing citizens in the streets, he would trace his famous route to the chilly centre of Pasto, to the lofty doors of the cathedral, and kneel down and pray before them as only a trained ape is in the habit of doing, convinced by the word of God, repentant, astonishing the faithful, shocking the priests, because not even the Bishop of Pasto — Monsignor Pedro Nel Montúfar, better known as “Obispo Avispa” or “the Wasp,” friend and fellow pupil from childhood — would be excluded from the joke, he would visit him in his palace, pester him, assault him and, if they let him get inside the Governor’s Palace dressed as an ape, he would annoy Governor Nino Cántaro too, another fellow pupil from primary school, but never a friend, top of the class, “the Toad,” it would be splendid to chase him down the corridors of power, but the soldiers who guard the governor’s residence would not allow it, quite likely one of those idiots would take the fact of a crazed ape on the streets of Pasto at face value and shoot not once, but three or five times, to be sure the church-going ape who dared to kneel would not be left alive.
No: a rebel ape would be unsafe; it was risky to attack the government in fancy dress.
He would settle for just being the immortal ape kneeling before the cathedral doors, and that is where the high point, the crowning moment of the prank, would take place: he would remove the ape head, revealing himself to posterity with his real face, Doctor Justo Pastor Proceso López, eminent gynaecologist, receiver of life, secret historian; “It’s Doctor Proceso,” eyewitnesses would cry, “disguised as a gorilla,” and they would say, “the worthy gynaecologist frightened almost everyone, his humour’s not just black, it’s multicoloured, he has a gift for it, he scandalized Monsignor Montúfar, he’s one of our own,” and as in a fairy tale, his prank would turn him into a beloved citizen for ever, the unforgettable ape praying on its knees at the cathedral doors, a parable with many possible interpretations, he thought, the docility of the wild beast before God’s goodness, the violent creature bowing down before celestial authority, the ape, ancestor of the human race, prostrated at God’s doors, an example for that same human race, ever more idiotic, to follow, God, God.
God.
But such a prostration — the doctor foresaw — a chimp praying at God’s doors, would be considered a serious case of ungodliness by many, a blow to Catholicism, a despicable joke that had to be penalized not only with an impossibly high fine, but also excommunication and a dressing-down from a committee of the representatives of decency — no matter, he concluded, the wisdom of the prank would ultimately prevail over the boorishness of the tricked, the news of his disguise would appear on the front page of Pasto’s only newspaper, skilfully interpreted under the byline of the wise Arcaín Chivo, philologist, sociologist and palaeontologist — another of his old friends — better known as “the Philanthropist,” former holder of a professorship in history at the university and holder of another in a subject which he himself dubbed “Animal Philosophy,” with fundamental irony. A photograph of the doctor dressed up as an ape, or one of the ape kneeling at the cathedral doors would give an explicit idea of the historic deed, his wife and daughters would be sure to take him seriously for the first time in their lives, he would exist for them, they would be reconciled, everyone would bring him up in their daily chit-chat, it was possible the Mayor of Pasto, Matías Serrano, “the One-Armed Man of Pasto”—who was not actually one-armed, but a friend of his, unlike the governor — would issue a decree that he replay his practical joke for the fancy-dress parade, and not a single band, troupe or float would be more memorable than his disguise of a kneeling chimp praying at the Black and White Carnival.
Doctor Proceso fled from the mirror as though fleeing a cage.
He went into the living room, where the fireplace was still warm and from the golden walls, in the same photograph, the puzzled eyes of his grandparents judged him, seated around a piano in the sepia-toned atmosphere of an old house. He too sat down, in his easy chair, a sort of throne in the middle of the room, and intended to cross his legs, but the bulky costume prevented him so he remembered again he was an ape, and was reminded once more by his own reflection in the glass protecting a watercolour painted en plein air of his wife, Primavera Pinzón, represented as the country maid with the pitcher of milk, the famous story of “The Milkmaid” down to the last detail, the thoughtful, vigorous girl building castles in the air, barefoot, rosy rounded calves, threadbare skirt ripped at random by the thorns of a bush, in reality shredded by the knowing hand of the watercolourist, who had slashed it almost to the crotch, up to the curve of a buttock, close by the magnificent hips; thus was the beautiful Primavera portrayed, petite rather than tall, with golden plaits, two cherries joined at the stalk over her ear as an earring, artful mouth, shoulder bent under the weight of the jar, fleeting shadows about to obscure the magical road that would lead her to the village to sell the milk and buy the chicks and sell them and buy the hen and then the piglet and sell them and get a shed with two cows and earn more money than she ever dreamed of — before the breaking of the milk jug.
The watercolour of “The Milkmaid Primavera”—or the glass that protected it — reflected his actual appearance, a flesh-and-blood ape sprawled in the easy chair, a pensive beast with its head resting on one hand like “The Thinker,” whatever am I doing as an orangutan? — he said to himself in alarm, and sat up, experiencing a premonition of disaster, his future absurdity in the eyes of his family: his fifteen-year-old Luz de Luna and his seven-year-old Floridita and above all his wife, who would take advantage of the ape joke to remind him of it for the ensuing year, to rub it in day and night, and not as a celebration but pure derision, stressing how much she detested him; it is quite possible I am ill-prepared for an ape costume, better to take off the body and head as soon as possible and chuck this feeble attempt at conquest in the bin, although better still to burn it so not a scrap remains, how to explain a brand-new gorilla suit in the bin? Who brought this nonsense in? What were they thinking? Questions his wife and little Floridita would ask out loud, Floridita who was already beginning to hate him; the last time he tried to give her a paternal goodnight kiss she had turned her face to one side and said, “yuck, mummy’s right when she tells us you smell of pregnant women’s undies,” but what did that little girl know about the smell of pregnant women’s underwear? What kind of language was this? For God’s sake, Justo Pastor — he said to himself — he needed to burn the rubbish, get into his pyjamas on the double and get back into bed with Primavera, who would no doubt get angry at being woken in the middle of the night but who, nonetheless, would be hotter than ever under the covers, her moist crotch almost open, and would fall back into a deep sleep, allowing the gynaecologist’s expert finger to softly graze the tip of each pubic hair and then after an hour of gentle flight to land on one labia and check it over and then straight on to the other, affecting nonchalance, and after another hour of valiant and almost painful effort begin to sink itself into that font and fountain of molten lava that his wife became when she slept, his beloved — beloved in such a way, one thing in real life and another in dreams — until the final climax, hers and his, the never more alone Doctor Justo Pastor Proceso López, silently masturbating beside his wife’s blazing body, the woman who, were she to wake at such liberties would surely scream, he thought, what have we come to?