Why did I say that — he asked himself later on — how can I guarantee it? Could his house really be considered safe, with Primavera and General Aipe hanging around? The things he said. Why did he promise these people the earth?
His head hurt, but he plucked up courage from where he did not have it and, disillusioned, negotiated Pasto’s chilly streets, cluttered with debris from the fiesta. He was going to Maestro Abril’s workshop, in the far-flung hamlet.
There, in the midst of labouring artisans throwing jokes back and forth, among jugs of chicha and platters of roast pork, by shelfloads of tools, surrounded by the din of children, barking dogs fighting, shouting, banging, hammer blows, by the smell of varnish, amid the onslaught of clouds of sawdust, Bolívar’s carriage was beginning to take shape.
The promised payment was already a fiesta in advance.
For a moment the doctor was overcome with the fear that no-one would complete it after all, that a mob of drunks would end up sleeping around the unfinished float. But he cheered up when he noticed that the former Furibundo Pita was every inch the Liberator Simón Bolívar, enthroned on the float, dressed in his blue-and-red uniform from head to toe, the gold and medals, the crown on his temples. Of the twelve girls dressed as nymphs who rose up, immense, hauling the chariot, three were perfect in every detaiclass="underline" the blue faces, innocent laughter playing on their lips, their delicate arms reddened by the leather straps, their backs bent from the effort of pulling the carriage on which Bolívar lounged. They were like flesh-and-blood girls, lively and happy beneath the swags of paper roses around their wavy hair — the roses the people rained over them.
Maestro Abril and Martín Umbría, up aloft on a pile of building materials, were directing the positioning of a huge polystyrene dove that would fly around the float, a snowy dove with a stain on its breast like a drop of blood in the shape of a heart. The two maestros toasted and conversed in shouts with the doctor, without deigning to descend from the summit; they calmed him down — the robbery was not as serious as it seemed, they said, pure coincidence.
“Nobody here has talked, nor will they until you wish it,” Umbría said.
Doctor Proceso was watching the women, the children — likely reckless mouthpieces for the embryonic float. He wanted his float to be made public, fearlessly, in the parade on January 6, and then let the sky fall in; he would know what to do by then. But a sticky situation in advance, without the float having seen the light of day, made him nervous.
Zulia Iscuandé was even more distrustful, approaching the doctor to ask if he had yet put in a claim with Furibundo Pita concerning the payment. The maestros did come down from their peak then, and even the children fell silent.
“You’ll get that money,” Doctor Proceso said. “You can work without risking a thing. If the drunk doesn’t pay up for the float, I will, with all my heart.”
The answer surprised the artisans, but also reassured them, for the doctor spoke in all seriousness; he was, what’s more, a doctor: he had his finca, he had money, he had rich patients who paid him.
And, just like on Innocents’ Day, they filled him with roast pork, cheese and sweetcorn, and above all with chicha, and once again they sent him off at eleven o’clock at night, smelling of varnish and glue, tripping over himself, they waved goodbye with the roar of a general cheer and toasted his health; they did not seem hopeless drunks and, what was certain, the float was still there, growing in front of them all.
6
On the night of Friday, December 30, Doctor Justo Pastor Proceso López was more worried than ever; it was no coincidence, the whole of Pasto was in the know, he confirmed this when the guests arrived at his house, at seven on the dot: Professor Arcaín Chivo, or “the Philanthropist,” famous for his miserliness, Mayor Matías Serrano, called “the One-Armed Man of Pasto”—though missing no limbs — and Monsignor Mon-túfar, the bishop, better known as “the Wasp,” all very well informed about the float under construction.
“You’re going to get into trouble,” they warned him, each in their own way.
The doctor felt put out. He had anticipated telling them things from the beginning, with his motives well backed up, in order to win unconditional support. Now all he saw, looking back at him from the armchairs in the living room, were sceptical faces, expressing a sorrowful irony.
“Governor Cántaro and General Aipe will waste no time in taking measures,” Matías Serrano was arguing. “They’re not going to let Simón Bolívar dance to your tune, Justo Pastor, especially not up on a carnival float. It’d be different in a book: nobody reads books; on a public float there’s a name for this: disrespect towards the founding father, and that, as far as those animals are concerned, is worse than insulting the flag, coat of arms and national anthem all at once, three distinct entities in a single true God. It’ll be wretched. They’ll have the whole weight of the law on their side to smash your float, imprison you, if you insist, and give you a few warning wallops.”
“That’s if they don’t mangle your fingers, like happened to that Vicente Azuero, who published articles against Bolívar’s dictatorship in his newspaper. A colonel by the name of Bolívar, perhaps another grateful descendent, sought him out and smashed the fingers he’d written his truths with. It was a straightforward threat: break the fingers of anyone who writes against Bolívar. I’ve suffered similar experiences myself, and I can describe them, if asked.”
It was Professor Arcaín Chivo who had spoken.
He was the first to arrive, breathless in the cold: he made his journey on foot, to save the taxi fare from his house, which was on the other side of town — behind Canchala church, where they worshipped the Lord of the Good Death. He’d come all that way, and there he stood, perspiring, with arms outstretched, when Doctor Proceso opened the door. It was exactly seven o’clock in the evening.
“My dearest Justo Pastor,” Chivo began, still with his arms spread wide like a crucifix, but without taking a step forward, without yet coming in for the clinch, by which Doctor Proceso understood that he must wait for the professor’s salutation, a greeting possibly rehearsed in advance.
“The only redeeming feature of old age is that one ages alongside one’s friends,” Chivo said, jubilantly.
Tall but stooping, he had the bloodshot eyes of a hardened drinker, bushy grey hair and a leathery, yellow face. He held back a few more seconds before concluding:
“To each of us comes the same slice of sorrow, or ugliness, that the years bring with them, isn’t that right, my dear Doctor Justo Pastor Proceso López, you hermit crab, sage in solitude, one more of Pasto’s shades?”
“Must I thank you for this greeting?” the doctor asked, still without embracing the professor. “I just hope that your communal old age, with sorrow and ugliness to boot, will be a bit happier tonight, in my house.”
And they embraced.
They clapped each another heartily on the back, still inspecting one another; laughingly, they said they were going to give death the brush-off.
“Each passing year brings us closer to death, it’s true, but also closer to God,” came a sudden voice of ecclesiastical solemnity. It was the Wasp, or the Bishop of Pasto, who was in the habit of popping up like a wraith, unexpectedly. Neither the doctor nor the professor had noticed the long black Ford parking; the driver opened the door, promised to wait for His Excellency without moving from the spot, but neither the doctor nor the professor heard him, and they did not see the bishop either — who, what’s more, was not wearing the characteristic vestments of his office, just a black cassock with a small cross at the collar. Had he heard them, or did he speak of death and the passing years by chance? Hard to say: the three of them had their little tricks and their little ways, they were childhood friends, they had been through primary education together at the same school, San Francisco Javier.