“Don’t worry,” he said. “You’ll have your money today.”
Was he still drunk?
He seemed to be.
Zulia Iscuandé stayed waiting for him in the loneliness of the consulting room, while the doctor went out of his house and knocked on the door of his neighbour, Furibundo Pita, the only person in Pasto who could buy his finca outright, and pay for it that very day, the eve of carnival, in cash.
“Here you are, Doctor Justo,” Furibundo Pita said, and held out a hessian bag containing the money.
He was in Furibundo’s house, in his office with its high leather chairs. Furibundo was looking at him from behind his desk. They had already signed the sale papers.
“The bag is a gift,” Furibundo went on. “You don’t need to count the money. I already counted it the customary seven times. Now, if you don’t mind me asking, what are you going to do with all that cash? Is there business on the boil? Any tasters going?”
“A lot of questions for a man in a hurry,” the doctor said, getting to his feet.
He looked elated, with the bag over his shoulder. Taller, leaner, calmer. It was a stroke of luck that Furibundo Pita did not keep all his money in the bank; he had managed to sell the finca in the blink of an eye, the finca that had belonged to his grandparents and that by rights he should keep for his daughters, but all that mattered to him now was the joy of paying the artisans, his only joy, because he wasn’t worried about his other delight, Bolívar’s carriage.
“Doctor Justo,” Furibundo Pita said, “I always knew I hadn’t killed Maestro Abriclass="underline" I knew it very well. But that old fool really deserved a drubbing, for poking fun. Don’t throw away so much money on Bolívar’s carriage; use your common sense: it would be money down the drain.”
The doctor did not answer; now everyone in Pasto knew everything, he thought. He wanted to get out of the office as soon as possible, without staying for the coffee with little achira biscuits that Alcira Sarasti offered him, as soon as she heard of his unexpected visit:
“Another time, señora.”
“What’s the hurry, for goodness’ sake?” she said. “Take it easy, it’s not Innocents’ Day and nobody’s giving you poison. I baked these biscuits myself an hour ago.” And she shook her head: “You’ve snubbed me.”
“Never. I promise I’ll see you on the sixth for White Day.”
“If you can find me,” the woman shot back.
That morning — in spite of her buttoned-up clothing, the veil for Mass on her head, her black lace blouse — the pious Sarasti struck the doctor as even more desirable than Chila Chávez. And he stole another look at the lace blouse, through which Sarasti’s skin appeared, glowing like it was on fire; the doctor seemed to doubt his judgement, surprised at himself: “it must be because I’m seeing her with my heart for the first time,” he said to himself, “and not as the idiotic doctor I’ve been up to now.”
The pious Sarasti did not take her eyes off the walls. She clasped and unclasped her hands. Furibundo Pita picked up the conversation again:
“Does Primavera know anything about the sale?”
But the doctor could not hear him anymore; he had left.
And before Zulia Iscuandé’s disbelieving eyes, he scattered the thick bundles over the consulting room’s table: he counted out the money for the float and placed it on one side — three times the winner’s prize money — then put it back in the bag. The rest he put away in his trouser pockets as best he could, like he was stuffing a guy for New Year’s Eve — that’s what Iscuandé said she thought of when she saw him doing it.
“Money,” the doctor said. “Coffin and grave of the heart.”
“Well if that’s the case, my heart can die,” Iscuandé replied.
They looked at one another without connecting: Doctor Proceso seemed not to hear her, and Zulia Iscuandé understood absolutely nothing. She had only gone there looking for the deposit, and she had received it all. And by the look of things, the doctor did not even want to know about the float.
“Don’t you want to come and see it?” she asked, genuinely shocked. And she gripped the bag in her hands. “We’ve got it well hidden.”
“Give my regards to the carriage,” the doctor said oddly. “It can surprise me on January sixth. I’ll be on some Pasto street corner waiting to see it.”
That same January 4, Puelles was giving Enrique Quiroz his surveillance report, in the street, at the doors of the parish church.
From the corner they heard the combined voice of the crowd swell, cheering — the Carnavalito was being inaugurated for the first time, a preamble to the Black and White Carnival, a copy of the main event put on by children, with their little floats, marching bands and mini-parades: they wheeled their inventions along on bicycles and wagons. It was a procession of exalted little boys and girls: they sang while they danced; some carried aguardiente bottles full of lemonade, but stumbled about as they marched past, imitating the drunkenness of their elders in every detail; proud mothers applauded. A band of musicians went by, belting out the “Miranchurito.” The secret poet strained to make out Quiroz’s whispering, his rage interrupted by the celebration:
“So you haven’t been able to track down the float.”
“Hard to follow the doctor on this scooter,” Puelles said, and pointed to the Vespa, battered and covered in mud, beside him. “The doctor went to Tumaco, to the Laguna Verde, up the volcano, he got to Las Lajas, and everywhere he went all he did was make love. This float you’re on about doesn’t exist.”
“There’s still time before tomorrow,” Quiroz said. “Speak to the little doctor, make friends with him — you’re smart, make him believe you think as he does, that you’re on his side, and he’ll tell you where the float’s hidden. Meanwhile, we’ll look for it on our own account too; we’re all working to the same end, you know? We couldn’t leave such a responsibility to you alone, you were never going to be up to the job on your own, we already knew that. Make friends with him, I tell you.”
The poet got on the Vespa, he did not want to hear another word, far better to get away from the Carnavalito than have to swallow that lunatic’s complaints. But suddenly he saw the lunatic right on top of him: it was as if the two of them were revealing their true colours for the first time. Quiroz confronted him, thrusting his face an inch away from him:
“This is serious stuff, Puelles. That little doctor is worse than the policeman. Do you understand me?”
Puelles did not.
And then he did not believe it.
It was as he supposed.
This isn’t happening, he thought.
And then:
Not me.
“That doctor is a worthless bastard,” he said. And now he could not hide his desperation. “But he’s not worth a damn. The float is just a rumour. Think of the hassle — the doctor is an innocent little angel.”
“He’s poison, and the purest kind, the worst. An anti-Bolívarian, no less. An enemy of the people. Understand, chickenshit? This time we’ll explain who we are, so there’ll be no room for doubt. This time we’ll leave our indelible signature. A new force is on the horizon. The future. Us. These people are my people, your people, our people. Are we going to defend them or not? Not one step back, not even to get a run-up — and down with the rich, dammit!”
Puelles nodded, as he switched on the Vespa and sped off without knowing where to go.
He fled.
He fled, zigzagging through the bodies lining the street, a row of blurs scattered in the Carnavalito: he saw two girls dressed in green, twins; a drunk man hugging a tree, talking to it; another drunk asleep on the pavement; three or four nuns holding hands — real nuns or fancy dress ones? And just then he spotted him: Doctor Justo Pastor Proceso López, his target — slouching, hands in pockets, tubby but tall, a huge black hat on, the kind an old hippie would wear — standing stock still. What was he staring at so attentively? The shuttered facade of Mandarina’s big old townhouse, no less.