Actually, yes. On the verge of it. And that boy had guessed it. She felt her legs trembling, but more than anything she felt unbounded rage that they might notice. What if they did flour her? With that flour in her hair, with it all over her face, how not to cry, she wondered.
And she broke into a run, heading further into the park. Her speedy dash left the boys standing; they were not expecting it; they thought she would give in, and they were wrong. Without thinking twice, they belted after Floridita. She had a good head start, but they managed to catch up with her by some tall eucalyptus trees; that is where they cornered her.
The boy who had spoken caught hold of her by the sleeve, at the same time as the others threw handfuls of flour — not just at Floridita, but at her captor.
“Not me, you idiots,” he yelled.
They seemed submerged in a dense fog, in clouds of fog, it was the flour smacking against her hair, her face; she closed her eyes and felt one of the boys — the one who had spoken? — no, it was all the boys, all their hands lifting her dress up to her neck; now she felt great lashings of flour under her clothes like mild stings. She began to cry and only then did the boy who had spoken let go of her. The others stopped throwing flour.
She was already moving away when she was halted by a tremendous clatter of wings in the sky, like applause. She and the boys raised their eyes: above, gliding over their heads, a flock of carrier pigeons was surging up, like the tip of a spear, then wheeling down like a circle, in dizzying hieroglyphics; now the flock seemed to brush against their heads, and swam up into the sky again, vertically, ascending; suddenly, it hung motionless for a few seconds, and, in a whirl of distress, with no order whatsoever, the birds tore off to seek out their pigeon lofts, or any protective niche in the walls. And all because, at the very instant the pigeons fled, there was a harsh, hungry cry of a hawk not far off; the children spotted it — a fast-moving smudge in the sky — and soon they could make it out above them: its broad, blunt wings, predatory beak, yellow eyes scanning for prey. The instant it shrieked, the pigeons scattered, to any roof, any roost, and the hawk’s cry cornered them again, terrifying them with its deadly raucousness. In a second, the sky was left empty of pigeons and the hawk kept on going, high in the sky, flying to the volcano; the volcano looked completely black now against the evening blue, a dark triangle silhouetted against the sky; the children remained looking at it as though it dazzled them; into the middle of its blackness the hawk vanished, swallowed up, just as the boy who had spoken appeared in Floridita’s memory: he was the steward Seráfico’s son, and those were his friends. What were they doing here? Shouldn’t they be watching the sheep? It was Toño, little Toñito, the boy she always saw around without really seeing him: at her birthday party he followed her all over the place, but only now was she able to see him.
“Now I know who you are,” she said, pointing at him. “You’re Toño, Seráfico’s son.”
“She’s recognized you,” the other boys chorused, terrified. Toño turned pale. Floridita ran away from them. But her voice was vengefuclass="underline"
“I’ll get you back, you’ll see.”
Zulia Iscuandé saw her arrive home: she was a girl with the hair of an old woman, bright white, and she must have been floured all over because she ran along as if floating on white clouds. For some minutes Maestro Abril’s wife had been on the doorstep, without making up her mind to ring the bell. She wanted to speak to Doctor Proceso. The girl’s arrival brought her wavering to an end: when the door opened she would ask for the doctor.
Zulia Iscuandé took a step backwards; the girl, enveloped in the cloud of flour, which billowed around her at every step, not only pressed the bell without let-up, but gave the door a kick; the cloud got bigger, whiter still. Genoveva Sinfín opened the door. The girl went in like a wave, but when she heard her father being asked for she turned around, fuming.
“Papá isn’t here,” she shouted. “Doctor Donkey is never here.”
And she disappeared.
“How odd, my dear Zulia: the girl has told the truth this time,” Sinfín said. “Her father isn’t here. But wait for him, come in and have a coffee, just in case.”
The two women walked over the trail of flour Floridita had left, right through the house.
4
Doctor Justo Pastor Proceso López did not manage to get back home until January 4, in the early hours of the morning. Zulia Iscuandé was waiting for him at the front door, a persistent visitor for the past three days.
The doctor was returning from slaking a thirst that had lasted years: the widow had revived him. “You’ve turned me inside out, Chila,” he said on parting, “now I believe in another world.” They had entwined amorously in the most unexpected corners of the vast house — to occupy it, they said — and in truth they took the place apart with passion on a grand scale: upstairs and down, out the back, in every nook and cranny, on the roof terrace, with half of Pasto spying on them, including the secret poet.
They were seen dancing bambucos in the streets, their madness anticipating carnival, with no respect for the departed, witnesses said; they were seen glittered over with cold, right at the top of Las Lajas cathedral; and on the shores of Lake Cocha, eating pink trout with their fingers, drinking aguardiente from the bottle. They swam naked in the hot, green waters of Laguna Verde — they lost themselves there and were found — they went up and leaned fearlessly into the belching mouth of Galeras, and in just one day drove all the way to the ocean at Tumaco and back again. Nobody in Pasto could tell who was the drunker of the two, both of them going up and down the country in the Land Rover. That it never broke down, or crashed, was a miracle performed by Saint Aguardiente, witnesses said.
And they arranged to meet on Black Day, but they would never see each other again.
News of the doctor’s adventures reached the ears of Primavera Pinzón — who could not and did not want to believe them. The pious Alcira Sarasti, Furibundo Pita’s wife, heard about them too, and the thought nipped at her like a saucy pinch. Similarly, Zulia Iscuandé found out about his exploits: she had been laying siege to the doctor’s house, waiting for him every morning for the past three days; she was after the deposit, an advance, at least, for the float, which was just about ready. She was worried that her doctor, so generous with words, might not be with money. And she was nearly right: Bolívar’s carriage now mattered less to Doctor Justo Pastor Proceso López than reliving the memory of the widow Chila Chávez dancing naked boleros on her roof terrace — her face smeared with hand-spun local ice cream.
He had forgotten all about Bolívar, the carriage, the artisans, his pledge. For the first time in his life, all he was thinking about was the Black and White dance. If life was a vale of tears, as his grandparents had maintained, he did not want to live in it, and if life was a macabre circus enjoyed only by a few madmen — as they had also maintained — he intended to go mad for the years remaining to him, who knew how many there would be.
Impossible to imagine he had only three days left.
I couldn’t care less about Bolívar, he said to himself: they make a god out of him, they go on making gods, I care only about my widow’s honeypot.
But he was a man of his word, and that morning, when he recognized Zulia Iscuandé lying in wait for him at the door — Zulia Iscuandé no less, she who had said “Bolívar was a complete son of a bitch”—he acknowledged his recent past: he took her by the arm and led her into the consulting room and offered her a glass of sacramental wine.