“I understand, Primavera, I understand. Don’t worry,” the bishop said, and allowed the radiant woman to kiss the episcopal ring on his finger.
“I’ve brought you empanadas de pipián and anisette,” she went on, once more in control of her words. “Genoveva, Conchita, what’s taking so long?”
Genoveva Sinfín and the maid emerged from the shadows, both holding vast trays, over the tops of which peeped the dainty peanut and potato empanadas and endless glasses of aguardiente.
“Do the señores need us, or can we go?” Sinfín asked unceremoniously, while setting down the trays in a bad mood.
The bishop felt embarrassed, and took pity on them.
“Go in peace, ladies,” he said. “We’ll look after ourselves.”
Sinfín and the girl recognized him. They both crossed themselves; it looked as though they were going to fall to their knees.
“Most Reverend Father, we didn’t see you,” Sinfín said.
“Go in peace,” the bishop repeated, blessing them.
Genoveva Sinfín and the girl needed no persuading. They vanished as if they were fleeing.
“I’ll be back in two minutes,” Primavera said. “But without this ñapanga costume, so as not to cause a stir. I just want to sit with you, señores, and listen.”
So Primavera left the living room, taking the party with her, and the guests took a further, long minute to recover themselves; no-one looked at anyone else, there were no words; all converged on the trace of perfumed air that the costumed Primavera had left in her wake.
“You should feel proud of a woman like that,” the professor said. “She’s left us stunned. Who was expecting her? I wasn’t.”
And he began tucking in to the steaming empanadas. They all followed suit. No-one drank the aguardiente.
Doctor Proceso did not respond straight away. He came round with difficulty.
Yes, he said to himself, why would one not feel proud of an unpredictable woman.
Matías Serrano extracted him from the sticky situation:
“Confess that all this business with the ñapanga costume is designed to draw attention to Nariño’s history, to your Bolívar float, isn’t that so? I admit you’ve got us on tenterhooks: maybe we’re being hasty to criticize it without first hearing your motives.”
“That’s right,” the doctor exhaled. “That was just the beginning.”
“A magnificent beginning,” the professor ribbed him. “Worthy of you, Justo Pastor.”
“I don’t know whether to wait for Primavera to come back,” the doctor said.
“So, she really is coming?” Chivo said in surprise.
“She should hear this,” the doctor replied. And he called to her: “Shall we wait for you, Primavera?”
There was silence.
“Coming!” They heard her voice clearly, and immediately saw her arrive, no longer in her ñapanga costume — just the rope-soled alpargatas—but in a comfortable outfit — wool sweater, mid-length print skirt — she arrived as though walking on tiptoe, bathing them all in her habitual splendour, all the more splendid as she sat on the sofa, letting herself fall onto the cushions like a great flower opening and closing, stirring a breeze from her own self, from deep in her bones, next to the Bishop of Pasto no less — who shifted uneasily, as if afraid of her.
8
“Tell them, Doctor Donkey,” Primavera said, and met the doctor’s eyes just for an instant, because afterwards she just looked into space, “tell them about your float for January: you’ll give them a lot more to talk about than my ñapanga costume.”
There was a silence no-one wanted to break, because they could not. Did Primavera just say Doctor Donkey? Did we hear right? Doctor Proceso ignored the nickname. His voice sounded beyond naturaclass="underline" indifferent.
“That’s the mystery,” he said, “how you came to hear about the float, when it was only yesterday the artisans started working on it. What to put that down to? The city I live in? Little town, living hell; walls have ears in Pasto. But I’m not going to give you each the third degree to find out how you heard about it. I want to get people talking about the float, let’s hope much more than about my wife’s ñapanga miniskirt; I want to display snippets of our memory, on a carnival float.”
And he described as best he could, summoning strength from where he had none, the carriage in which the so-called Liberator would ride, the emperor’s crown on his head, the twelve girls like stooping nymphs, and Cangrejito’s reliefs around the edges — Bolívar fleeing as if the Devil were on his heels, the sculptures, the models, the masks, the history of the south in fragments.
Following his words, a silence mightier than a wall rose up in the midst of them all. They could do nothing but raise their glasses — with a stifled reticence.
“I’m listening,” the doctor told his friends. “That’s why I spoke.”
No-one responded.
“Propose the key events, señores, the ones to show on the float.”
The silence continued, but the invitation exerted a powerful influence over the guests: their eyes moved uneasily.
“What do you think?” the doctor coached them, opening his arms.
“More bad business,” Arcaín Chivo said.
The bishop’s meditative voice was heard:
“They’re not going to let you do that to Bolívar, Justo Pastor, in any city in the country, or in any town, or any village.”
“In Pasto they will,” the doctor said.
“Maybe so,” Matías Serrano said. “Maybe in Pasto, if Pastusos remembered. But nobody in Pasto remembers anymore, Justo Pastor. They’ve been efficiently incorporated into the fine history of Colombia, with its whole host of heroes and angels.”
“Don’t you believe it,” the doctor said. And he told them of Zulia Iscuandé and her grandfather’s words: “Bolívar was always a complete son of a bitch.” While repeating the sentence he could do no less than excuse himself in the bishop’s direction, as Arcaín Chivo had done earlier: “Begging the pardon of those present.”
“Do let’s stop asking for the pardon of those present,” the bishop said.
“Yes,” the professor said, “let the people speak how they speak.”
“But how,” the mayor continued, “how will the governor judge the float? What will he decide? He’s a Pasto man, but, like many others, at the front of the queue when it comes to not knowing who Agualongo was, who our hero Agustín Agualongo really was, and he won’t have read Sañudo, and he doesn’t think, he brays; it’s unbelievable the amount of rot a human being can hold inside, not in the gut but in the mind. He’ll confiscate your carriage like he’d confiscate a gun at a party: he’ll return the gun when the party’s over, if he returns it at all, and that’s what he’ll do with your float, he’ll return it after carnival, if he doesn’t destroy it first, along with all the artisans’ good intentions. Don’t make them work in vain, Justo Pastor. Don’t be naive.”
“Naive?” Doctor Proceso asked no-one in particular, his tone pouring scorn on the word, then he got up and walked over to a large piece of pine furniture, to one side of the crackling fire. The watercolour of Primavera Pinzón en plein air presided over the cabinet, and the doctor fretted, bent over the compartments and drawers: he kept part of his research into Simón Bolívar’s life in there. So many years pursuing dates and facts and events, without ever settling down to organize them, he thought, surprised at himself: he felt the presence of the tattered exercise books with their green covers like an accusatory chaos.