In the middle of the room there was a table for playing Chinese chequers, with a huge bouquet of red roses in a vase and four chairs set round about. He tried to remember the last time he had sat at this table with his daughters: it was years ago. But he could not recall them putting bunches of roses on the games table. What kind of game was this? There was a card stuck to the vase. He read, From an undying admirer, and, almost immediately, felt the presence of his wife, who had just come in, noiselessly, behind him.
“What?” she said. “Now you’re going to play with dolls?”
He did not answer. Nor did he turn around. But he detected the apprehension in Primavera’s voice, the doubt: had he read the card?
“I need the tapes,” he said in the end.
“Well of course I haven’t got them,” she replied. Her voice had gone back to normal, the same old steady mockery. “I expect the toys have them, to play with.”
He turned to look at her: she was coming towards him from the door, without hesitation. The games table stood between them. The bright light in the room shone into their faces and made them blink.
“What do you know about the float, what have they told you, what are they telling you to do about it?” the doctor asked.
“Something to do with Simón Bolívar,” she said, “the father of the nation, I believe. I know the governor has taken steps. You’re getting into a mess, and it doesn’t matter to me. I don’t care if you get yourself in all the damn messes in the world, but do it on your own. Seráfico told me you want to sell the finca. You’re dragging me and the girls into your insanity, don’t you see?”
“You never know what you’re talking about,” the doctor said. He sighed resignedly. He was about to leave when Primavera made him pause with a bitter, muffled cry.
“Idiot,” she said.
And then:
“They can even put you in prison for mocking Bolívar, the father of the nation.”“Did your General Aipe tell you that? Was he able to speak?”
“Luckily for you, he can speak now. He had to go to Bogotá, to specialists. It wasn’t serious, fortunately for you.”
He spun around, possessed; knocking two of the chairs out of the way with a sweep of his hand, he reached her in two strides and grabbed her by the hips; he was behind her, pushing her forward against the edge of the table. The vase overturned; water splashed out among the blazing roses.
“What father of what nation?” he yelled. “Father of your General Aipe, more like.” And he loomed still further over her, and, holding her around the waist with one arm, yanked up her skirt in one go with the other; her naked backside glowed, very white. “So, nobody’s ever nibbled your thighs?” he asked, as though he were choking. He did not recognize himself.
“You sod!” she shouted. “Run back to your pregnant women!”
“The father of the nation is the sod.”
And as Primavera’s skirt, which he was forcing up, had fallen back down like a curtain, he ripped it open at the seams; Primavera bellowed, wounded, she on the verge of passing out with rage, breathing hoarsely, twisting about furiously within the imprisoning arm, but he clasped her furiously and did not let her go, furious with himself, above all, because he desired her. He desired her with all his might, against his will, and it was impossible for him to kill the desire; he pulled down the zip of his trousers. There was a moment’s pause in which they both seemed to make one single body: Primavera’s rage spilled over on realizing that he intended to sink himself where none of the sixteen lovers in her life — she had them counted out — had ever dared to. She defended herself more fiercely than ever: bent her head, sinking her teeth into the hairy arm that encircled her. In answer, the doctor arched his body — he looked like a colossal, curved maggot — caught up the bunch of wet roses, grasped them by the stalks and whipped Primavera’s rosy rear, just once, smashing blooms and thorns to bits, the roses shed their petals all over the place, she felt the multiple wounding of the thorns like tiny bites and the wet petals graze her skin; if, immediately after this peculiar botanical lashing, he had kissed her, offered any caress, an entreaty of love — Primavera thought, she managed to think — she would have gladly surrendered, but right at that moment he pushed her face down on the table, her luxuriant hair fanning out, the nape of her neck offering itself, and he bit her there, bruised her, parted her buttocks and surged towards the middle of her being, while Primavera twisted about in vain; in vain she cursed him without, it’s true, failing to notice the particulars, the strange sensations linked to an ambivalence it was still impossible for him to pick up on, then she bawled “Pig! They’re watching us! Your daughters!” and turned her head in the direction of the door, and he let go and looked to the door and now could not avoid her twisting around, slippery, and she leapt and ran, letting out a laugh of loathing and mockery — because there was no-one in the doorway. No-one at all. Just Primavera’s extraordinary laughter as she fled, free of him.
He let himself fall weakly into a chair, alone again, and lonelier still because peeping from his open trousers he saw his sex, trembling and wet, more solitary than he was — tonight we’ll sleep by ourselves, he thought — and in the middle of it all, and in spite of it all, Doctor Justo Pastor Proceso López laughed, he laughed, surrounded by toys on every side.
9
The morning of Saturday, December 31, Primavera sent a message with the old cook that she would be spending New Year’s Eve at her sister’s house and would be taking the girls. The doctor, who was in his consulting room, where he slept badly and with no hope, did not have time to say goodbye to his daughters; when he went to look for them, they left: he heard them dash off. A New Year’s Eve apart, he thought, but did not think they’d mind — they won’t even think of me.
And, on top of that, he received an invitation from the wife of Arcángel de los Ríos, Alcira Sarasti, written in her own hand, to come and see out the last night of 1966 together; the New Year’s Eve parties at Furibundo Pita’s house were famous — as were all Pasto’s New Year’s Eve parties — at midnight on the dot they burned the años viejos: large dolls, which looked identical to the people setting them alight, dolls made of cloth, rope, true to life, one-eyed and toothless, drinking chicha, smoking pipes, seated on rocking chairs, legs crossed, a rotten banana for a penis; you saw them dangling from blasted trees, hanged lovers with a poem pinned to the heart, or leaning against doorways like ill-fated visitors, each with his respective will and testament around his neck, or asleep in ramshackle cots, all bloated with explosive surprises: sparklers, whistling bangers, volcanoes, firecrackers, rockets. At Furibundo Pito’s New Year’s Eve celebrations, shots were fired into the air, horses turned up in the living room, and there were chumbos—black turkeys with red coxcombs — they pumped them full of aniseed-flavoured aguardiente to sweeten the meat, inflated them; the turkeys danced drunkenly among the dancing guests and were later decapitated in the same room — even without heads, they carried on dancing — before being taken out to the kitchen, amid shouts and applause and live music. The doctor did not remember having been invited to such revelry before, only for those surprise empanaditas one Innocents’ Day years before. Maybe Furibundo Pito wanted to redeem himself? Was he afraid of being prosecuted for being trigger-happy?