Floridita, Genoveva Sinfín, the maid and the revived gardener were leaning over the balcony. Maltilde Pinzón, recently arrived in the company of her two sons and Luz de Luna, was presiding: they were all waiting for Primavera so they could go out and watch the parade; where on earth was she? Maltilde was getting impatient: Primavera had them all used to her ways. And what a surprise; suddenly a participant in the parade itself appeared in their street, under the balcony: a gleaming carnival donkey no less, capering about in front of them, among the happy people. They even saw that the multicoloured donkey stopped by the house, bowed as if in greeting, and kicked softly at the door, like it was knocking. The music around them got louder: an explosion of tambourines and drums. They saw the man who was inside the donkey’s head emerge: his painted face was a grimace of delight, he had his hair streaked red and blue; he drew a bottle from inside his jacket and waved it about.
“And the good doctor?” he shouted up to the gathering on the balcony. “I want to drink a toast with him.”
Sinfín yelled that the doctor was not at home:
“Wait for him, he’ll be back.”
“We’ll look for him,” shouted the smiling Quiroz. He was going to get back inside the donkey head, when the little girl on the balcony caught his attention:
“Are you looking for Papá?”
“Of course,” Quiroz said.
“Well you won’t find him,” the girl hollered back. “He’s dressed up.”
Quiroz paused in suspense; the girl’s face glowed, as if she were saying: “Aren’t you going to ask me what Papá dressed up as?” At that moment Platter Ilyich came out from inside the donkey; he wiped the sweat from his forehead, his painted face was running, his hair a yellow clump.
“And what is he dressed up as?” he hollered.
The girl did not hesitate:
“An orangutan,” she told them.
And, not yet knowing why, Genoveva Sinfín felt as if the air were actually growing dim, the feeling of ill omen that was running through her that morning solidified, and she crossed herself as she heard Floridita’s reply.
And why an orangutan? Why this costume? Suffocation. Do I imagine discovering her without her discovering me, following her without her knowing who I am? How pathetic.
No-one pointed at him, his costume lacked souclass="underline" the ape was just one more participant in the carnival; Homero had really made him hate it now. He was skirting the street full of hands and heads stretching towards the avenue like branches; at least the disguise meant they did not recognize him. No floats were visible from the Obelisk; the carnival was growing apace; any arm, any hand could stretch out towards him from anywhere, stroke him, squeeze him or strangle him, he thought. At that moment he was assailed by a trio of formidable pigs, yoked together as horses from the crusades: the red crosses glowed from silk cloths covering their flanks, they squealed madly, he had to jump out the way; a dwarf couple were driving them along; very close by, a knot of black women were dancing with lit candles in their hands; one of them started to dance in front of the gorilla: her silhouette blazed amid beads of sweat; he heard horses’ hooves clattering on the pavements, heard their whinnying; he smelled the pungent smoke of marijuana; beardless young men were smoking it beside him, sucking eagerly on the joints; someone yelled that they could see the first float of the carnival coming, elbows and knees shoved him; a little girl was crying, lost, she ran without direction through the carnival, not a puff of talc on her dress — as if protected under an invisible glass dome — in her hand she was carrying a sunflower bigger than herself. A finger sank itself into his hairy chest, three, four, five times; a voice:
“I know who’s in there.”
It was Matilde Pinzón. Alone. Without Primavera.
“I still don’t,” the doctor replied.
“Can’t you find her?” she asked. Her tongue glistened very red; she seemed about to burst out laughing.
“Find who?”
“Go home and wait for her,” Matilde said, pitying him, “I’ll look for her for you.”
The doctor did not know what to reply. Matilde Pinzón looked just like Primavera, but something repulsive set her apart, she was a sad woman, her expression a perpetual sneer. It felt inexplicable to him to be discovered in his ape costume by none other than Matilde Pinzón; how did she find out?
“Justo Pastor,” she went on, “do your bit and everything will work out, you and Primavera are the ideal couple, you understand each other, you hear one another without speaking.”
“Yes,” the doctor told her, he and Primavera understood each other so well that he was forever losing things and she found them alclass="underline"
“Now, for example, I’m out looking for her.”
Matilde Pinzón started to laugh.
“Then first you’ll have to find her,” she said, “so she can tell you where she is. What a sense of humour you have, Justo Pastor, at least you still have that.”
And she moved off: an older man, who was not her husband, was waiting for her cagily, one arm open; the doctor recognized him, the fabulously wealthy but now decrepit Luisito Cetina, owner of the Luz del Pacífico hotel chain. He saw them slink furtively into the crowd. The sun grew stronger; the ape got further towards the edge of the avenue, not just pushing, but pushing people right over, and no-one complained; it was the fiesta.
He did not want to find out what or who was parading, he wanted to lose himself as soon as possible; an orchestra was announced; he felt as though they had turned some incredibly powerful lights on the day, out of nowhere; the ear-splitting orchestra began to rock the pavement to its core, the crowd thundered applause, bodies swayed desperately to and fro as one, faces daubed with powder and paint rubbed up against one another, a surge of multicoloured skirts dazzled him, two girls who were dancing — streamers and sawdust like glue in their hair — kissed greedily, far gone, happy; he craned his hairy ape head into the cleavages of celebrating women, one or another hung on to his arm a few seconds, a drunk span around crazily on one leg and did not fall, the women seemed to want him to, but the drunk did not fall, he did not fall; a bald man rubbed his eyes, bawling that they had thrown flour and lemon juice at him, the tarmac smelled of urine, dung, he forced a way through and reached the side of the avenue and leaned out; a troupe of old people were dancing a waltz: seven or nine columns of geriatrics enduring the morning sun, daintily dancing the waltz played for them by the San Pablo band, made up of musicians older than the dancers themselves. The bodies, their outer trappings — he thought, feeling sorry for them — they do what they can manage for us, what they can manage, should I get drunk? They were all at least ninety years old, he reckoned, from the Don Ezekiel Home for the Elderly— according to the banner — and some of them pretty senile, more in the next world than this one, he thought, it’s well worth dying while dancing without knowing we just died. Pushed by the crowd, a girl squashed her face against the orangutan’s hairy chest, and flapped her arms in distress; the ape embraced her and let her go, as if moved to pity, with tender little taps on her cheeks: those nearest laughed; the old people’s strange waltz started to twirl right in front of him; he heard someone asking: “Are they really old folk, or are they wearing corpse masks?” And someone answered: “Of course they’re old folk, but they dance like children; they’re made of stern stuff.” And a woman’s voice: “There are real nuns parading too, three blocks from here, and real lunatics, a lot further behind, the mad from San Rafael, the genuine article.” Another voice chipped in: “They say that in the prisoners’ troupe, the prisoners dressed as prisoners are real prisoners, and they swore to go back to jail when the carnival’s over.” “If I was a prisoner, I wouldn’t go back,” somebody said, and someone else: “I would, your word is your word, and your word is sacred.”