The secret poet shivered.
He braked and got off the scooter. And he joined the doctor, stood by his side, shared a silence for two — will he suspect me? No, it often happens during carnival that a random stranger follows your steps, Doctor, poor doctor, or rather happy doctor, as far as women were concerned. Even though it was only Carnavalito — Puelles thought — that parade of imps and monsters was just like the grown-up Black and White Carnival that was coming soon: the jaws were identical. A jubilant racket ran up and down the street: toy drums; goblins and clowns faced each other. The doctor turned his face towards him — no child’s face could be more innocent or happy — and he drew a bottle of aguardiente from his pocket and deliberately poured half on the ground: the aguardiente seemed to boil on the paving stones.
“For the dead,” he cried.
Puelles shivered again; such a greeting almost unhinged him.
“Here’s to them,” he answered.
The doctor held the bottle out to him; Puelles took a long swig. The doctor did not take his eyes off the townhouse:
“When will they open?”
“That house is a night-time business,” the poet said.
“Well, love should be morning, noon and night, for the incurable. Now I’ll have to wait.” The doctor took back the bottle and looked at him attentively. “Would you like to have lunch with me?”
The poet Puelles stopped shivering.
The doctor’s eyes scanned Mandarina’s house again. He drank thirstily.
“The time will pass more quickly,” he said.
They left the scooter safe in a garage, and did not have lunch: without agreeing it, without discovering who was leading who, they went from the illuminated street of the Carnavalito into a sort of subterranean labyrinth — like they jumped down into it — a bar near Mandarina’s house, with neither name nor windows, just a metal door and a few steps resembling a descent into Hell, Puelles thought; they came out into a room half lit by ruddy candles, where music was pounding from rectangular black speakers hanging from the ceiling; in the space completely filled with bodies, shadows were dancing to “La Múcura” and singing along: a single voice, a single body, and one and the same sweat — the smell of hot, damp clothing — eyes like torches, hundreds of eyes glowing white in the gloom, because still further in there was no light, only that massed glow of eyesabove concealed bodies, linked together, sleeping bodies that danced.
And they walked in, feeling their way like blind men.
At the table they ordered aguardiente. Nearly all the tables were occupied by couples embracing, tightly clasped. What a place to talk, Puelles thought, but only if he was drinking could he talk to the doctor—dare to talk, he thought — and something similar might happen to the doctor: he might talk to his heart’s content, even confirm once and for all that the float was a lie, and everyone would be happy. But what if the float exists? He said it out loud, as a waiter poured their aguardiente: “What if the float exists?”
“What did you say?” the unsuspecting doctor enquired from the other side of the table. With “La Múcura” blasting out it was hard to hear.
“Does the float exist or not?” the poet made up his mind to bellow, then drank the aguardiente down in one.
The doctor hesitated a moment. In the end he gave a shrug. He nodded silently — not as though responding, only as if talking to himself — and drank his aguardiente, adjusted the ridiculous hat, put a banknote on the table and stood up.
“Don’t go, Doctor Proceso,” Puelles held him back. “Doctor Justo Pastor Proceso López. Sit down just for a minute, I have to tell you something of interest to you. Afterwards you can go where you like. To Mandarina’s? I’ve had a visit pending too since I was fifteen, but listen and the time will pass more quickly, as you want it to.”
The doctor sat down again. Who was this ghost? Did he know him? He had seen him somewhere before.
So they were going to kill him.
At least, that is what the kid shouted into his ear, in an exaggerated whisper. What extraordinary news: according to the kid he should make a “quick” visit to Mandarina’s place, and then pack his bags and skip the country “until it’s all blown over,” they don’t call Pasto Colombia’s “Surprise City” for nothing.
“Are you having me on? You’re making fun of me.”
“No, Doctor, I’m not: Innocents’ Day already came and went. I’m just warning you, it’s up to you. Remember the beating crazy Chivo got? Who shook up Cangrejito Arbeláez, artist of the enemy? Now things are going from bad to worse, Doctor, now they won’t just do you over, they’ll send you to the other side. You’ll see. Cheers.”
“And all this over Bolívar’s carriage?” the doctor puzzled. “Who are you people?”
“We still don’t know,” Puelles said. Did he suddenly seem sad? “Or they don’t know,” he said hurriedly. “I’m not with them anymore.”
Doctor Proceso had another drink and remembered: this skinny kid was the same one who had been reading outside his house, the night of the thirty-first. So they had been following him since then. He was a student — a pupil of Chivo’s of course, one of those who had kicked Chivo through the streets to the hospital — turned dissenter. What was going on with the young? Not long ago Chivo himself had told him they had “imported” a distinguished philosophy professor from Italy; under his aegis, students not only started dressing in black and frowning like bitter old men, but many killed themselves and left suicide notes giving the same explanation: despair at existence, or something like that. Why were the kids bowing down? Why did they allow themselves to descend into idiocy? Because they were kids — he answered his own question — but these ones were different, faddish revolutionaries, and it seemed he was an enemy of the people, public enemy number one. What can I do?
“So my time’s a bit tight for popping to Mandarina’s?” he asked as a joke.
“You’ve got the time it takes a rooster with his hen,” Puelles joked back. Quite a guy, this doctor — he thought — you have the courage to laugh, but you cannot imagine how serious the warning is, Doctor.
The music had changed: just as ear-splitting but, even so, they understood each other well enough as they drank outrageously. Puelles wanted to go to Mandarina’s that very day, the day of the Carnavalito, when they opened — if they opened — and with or without the doctor — he wanted to visit that house as soon as possible — but the why of the doctor’s visit piqued his curiosity: he knew of his wife, the famous Primavera Pinzón, eldest of the Pinzón girls, knew enough to dream about her, what a wild beast of a woman, what a magnificent drop of pure water:
“Why the hell do you need the whorehouse, Doctor?”
“I’m looking for a woman to take to a friend,” the doctor said.
“A commendable service, señor. I’m just looking for my very first. Cheers.”
From one moment to the next they found themselves walking through the streets of Pasto, far from the bar, how long had they been talking? Now it was night-time, minutes earlier Puelles had sat on the pavement to puke, now they were passing for the third time in front of Mandarina’s “house of crossed legs,” as Puelles put it. No doubt the girls aren’t working during Carnavalito, the doctor said, they take their kids out to it too. Or they’re in the procession themselves, Puelles said, and they went up steep narrow streets, they wanted to keep right on going till they got to the volcano, but their own talking stopped them on a corner, the doctor heard himself saying, from a people sunk in misery, with no industry, no hospitals, from a people without schools, without… from a… what can come of it? And Puelles’s voice from somewhere: “They say revolution, señor.” Yes, the doctor laughed in astonishment, but it lasts only a minute, because the people get drunk and go back to sleep, sleep for centuries, dream, as happened… when did it happen last? Even the dogs got drunk.