Homero.
“What’s going on here?” the doctor asked.
“Nothing, señor, just that Homero got drunk and nobody can wake him up,” Sinfín answered. “He’s gone round scaring half of Pasto dressed up as a monkey, but it looks like he scared himself the most.”
“Take off the costume, and let him breathe,” the doctor said, “I’ll come down.” He was going to step back from the window but a burning question got the better of him: “Where’s my wife?”
“She went to pick up Luz de Luna, who slept at her aunt Matilde’s. She’ll be back soon. She said for you to wait for her.”
Sinfín was examining him from below; her eyes, accustomed to making things out in the distance, continued to scrutinize him inside and out; her sly face smiled indulgently:
“The señora woke up with you, Doctor, it’s just that she woke up first, very early. She had to go for Luz de Luna: the girl stayed the night at her aunt’s, without permission, you see? Wait for the señora, and don’t despair, what else can you do?”
“The carriage,” the doctor said. “Has the procession started yet?”
“It will in an hour. Just stand on Avenida de los Estudiantes and you’ll see it go past sooner or later, but wouldn’t you rather wait for the señora? Wait and see it with the señora, it’ll be nicer.”
The doctor did not reply. His whole life turned on a different question: where could Primavera have gone, with whom? The excuse about Luz de Luna sounded ridiculous to him — and he considered himself ridiculous too, for doubting. He did not want to remember the details of the night before, at the late Belencito’s house, under the window with witnesses, he did not want to recall those details: their bittersweet aftertaste was embarrassing to him. He convinced himself to go out and find Primavera at the height of White Day: having her in front of him, face to face, he would know what to do, or they both would.
When he got down to the garden, Sinfín and the maid were pulling the costume from the gardener: they had just taken off the gorilla’s head, exposing his reddened face, wrinkled and wet with aguardiente. Completely drunk, he was still in a stupor, he babbled incoherently, slapping himself, and all in front of Floridita, an observer of every gesture, every stutter, deliciously fascinated. Floridita’s presence reminded him immediately of the locked-in, crying boy, a few minutes before. He was shocked observing her, so calm. He heard her say:
“He looks dead.” And she nudged the gardener with the toe of her sandal.
“Leave him, girl,” Sinfín said. “Let him sleep, he needs it.”
The doctor picked up the disguise, and, just as he had done exactly ten days earlier, slung it over his shoulder. Then he turned to his daughter:
“There was a boy locked in the linen chest.”
“So that’s where he was,” Floridita sounded surprised. “We were playing hide-and-seek yesterday. Nobody could find him, he beat us all.”
“Oh, Floridita,” Sinfín butted in, and shook her head. “It’s a wicked, wicked, wicked world.”
And she said no more.
“He ran off, that boy,” the doctor said. “Who is he?”
“Seráfico’s son,” Sinfín told him. “I thought he had already escaped, yesterday. But he’s a sharp one, he’ll know how to get to Sandoná.”
“You invited him to the flower party?” The doctor was amazed.
“He’s a good boy,” was all Sinfín said by way of an answer. “He can’t read or write, but he likes singing. Thank God he’s still alive.”
Floridita and the maid burst out laughing. Sinfín showed her disapproval with a shake of the head.
“It’s a wicked, wicked, wicked world,” she said again.
Sinfín had her eyes half-closed, sorrowing, on the verge of tears — the doctor thought — and she remained engrossed, as if she were glimpsing, on the narrow horizon of the garden, everything to come, the next few years, and years far into the future, and found them grey, unchanging, really identical, but ominous too: she gave herself little pats on the forehead while saying, like a complaint to no-one in particular, “it’s a wicked, wicked, wicked world.”
The doctor ordered Floridita to go to her room:
“No carnival for you today. Shut yourself in there, till tomorrow.”
Floridita shrugged.
“I don’t care,” she said. “I can play on my own.”
And off she went.
Then they heard a groan from the gardener, as if he were waking up.
“The poor thing’s lovesick,” Sinfín said, “and doesn’t learn; he suffers without learning a thing, suffers right in his guts.”
“Oh, my darling,” Homero said, “where am I? What did they do to me? It’s so hot, what bastards, where are they? I want my revenge.”
He opened his eyes and looked around him; he did not seem to recognize anyone, but he did seem to remember something, very far off:
“Take me to that bandit girl, she killed me, bring her to me, living without her is impossible.”
The maid, all ears, burst out laughing again; she sought the doctor’s eyes — as though summoning his approval, but the doctor did not share in the joke.
“Love is made of glass, my friend,” Sinfín said, leaning in towards the gardener’s ear, “sooner or later it shatters. Don’t let it get you down, take my advice, a good lunch and plenty of sleep, that’s all you need.”
“So feed him up,” the doctor said, “and let him sleep. You’re always right, Genoveva. Bring him back to life.”
“Doctor, dear doctor,” Homero said, recognizing him and stretching out his arms. “Give me back the monkey costume. It’s unlucky. I’ll burn it.”
But the doctor had already left the garden.
“What are you dressing up as, Papá?”
The doctor was in his room, about to put on the great ape head. Floridita was watching him from the doorway, without emotion. If that was his daughter, he thought, she was unrecognizable. Anyway, shouldn’t she be shut in her room? Why did she ask that question if she already knew what he was dressing up as? Or did she want to initiate a conversation, be forgiven? But what was that about, locking a little boy in a chest all night? And the shorn head and bird muck? How would he punish her? And yet, a kind of tenderness took hold of him: she was his baby girl.
“As an orangutan,” he said.
There was a strange silence; the doctor thought it was the first time he and Floridita had looked each other in the eye.
“Do you want me to tell you why I’m dressing up?”
He thought that he finally had the chance for a chat with his daughter. He had already thought of his answer — when she asked him why—“All the better to frighten you,” he would say, imitating the wolf in the story. Then he would give her a hug.
However, Floridita did not oblige:
“No,” she said, “I don’t want to know why.”
She said it as if she were winning a game.
She was leaning up against the door frame, looking at him with glinting eyes; at that moment she looked as though she was either going to cry or insult him; she turned and fled. He finished putting on the giant ape head: the mechanism in the throat did not work; he heard his voice just like normal. “What’s going on here?” he had said. He had his daughter’s glinting eyes engraved on his memory. “She’s another Primavera,” he thought, “she’s more like her than she is me: she hates; she’s stronger than me.”
Minutes after Doctor Justo Pastor Proceso López left his house dressed as an orangutan, a carnival donkey arrived at his door looking for him.