Behind him, like shadows scattered under the zinc roof, craftsmen young and old were working away, Zulia Iscuandé too, all seated on tree stumps and rocks, polishing the components of a colossal jeep: one had a tyre, another the rearview mirror, over here a lit headlamp made of sheet aluminium, over there the exhaust pipe, the bumper, the mudguards, the enormous windows.
The maestro and Furibundo Pita contemplated one another for what must have seemed to them a never-ending moment, for they both appeared painfully overwhelmed; it was as if they were meeting face to face for the first time — after thinking about it day and night for years.
And both, ultimately, seemed disappointed.
“Let us in,” Don Furibundo said.
“By all means,” Maestro Abril replied.
He put the papier-mâché jeep door to one side and held out his calloused hand to the two men. He did not recognize downcast Doctor Proceso, sunk inside his raincoat, but he greeted him deferentially.
But before the men could follow him, the children, of one accord, and without anyone inviting them, darted into the workshop and dispersed to every corner like watchful birds.
In the murky drizzle, they saw Furibundo Pita suddenly run off, go up to the skirts of the float and pull urgently on one of the tarpaulins as if someone were trying to stop him, and no-one did stop him, but he could not get the cloth off: after several tugs he was just able to tweak apart a fold. What did he discover? Only a papier-mâché woman’s calf, voluminous and white, not yet painted. The next tarpaulin was tangled around one of the protrusions. The impossibility of exposing the float with a single jerk made Don Furibundo turn pale: he dithered painfully, working out the best way to uncover it, then seemed about to attack it tooth and nail on a grand scale when, at a signal from the maestro, the children scrambled up and with a “one, two, three” laid it bare, revealed its vast outline, white as frost, exposed to everyone the spirit of the float, which Don Furibundo contemplated open-mouthed, eyes goggling, as did his companion Doctor Proceso and the rest of those present — as if they too were seeing it for the first time.
Way up high, whiter and a hundred times more massive, was Furibundo Pita himself, seated at the wheel of his still-unfinished jeep — a jeep with a spectacular flatbed, crammed not only with pigs and hens, but tigers biting polystyrene arms and legs; there were dragons breathing fire between overflowing cardboard milk churns — it was a contraption imbued with life that leapt forward rather than rolled along on four monstrous wheels, Furibundo’s vast hand steering it, the other hand bearing down on the horn or klaxon or hooter, which was like a giant trumpet reaching up to the sky and, fleeing terrified in front of Furibundo and his Willys jeep — desperation on her face, flamboyant skirt flying above her waist, exaggerated buttocks — was Furibundo Pita’s own wife, the pious Alcira Sarasti, the kind-hearted, languid woman who went to Mass at the Franciscan church every evening and who, any day of the week, on leaving the church, had to face her husband, the brawling Arcángel de los Ríos, “father of my children” as she called him, who stalked her, chased her in his jeep, caught up with her, overtook her, came back at her and confronted her, fenced her in, and honked and accelerated and slowed down and honked and harassed until he had her cornered, after along and shameful pursuit, up against the front door of their house.
There was no-one in the whole of Pasto who had not seen this happen at some point.
Tulio Abril and Zulia Iscuandé knew the devout Sarasti very well, and not only felt sorry for her, but complained — as did many others — about this weekly abuse, and they also visited the grounds of the Franciscan church from time to time, as Mass was ending, just in case they should come across the pursued woman, suffering the Stations of her Calvary at a trot, across the twelve ill-fated and scandalous blocks that separated her from salvation.
“So you wanted to surprise me, Tulio,” Furibundo Pita said slowly, his gaze now fixed on the dirt floor while he shook his head, “and not just me, but Pasto too, the whole of Pasto, but at my expense, no?”
He gave the mud a kick.
No-one said anything. Martín Umbría and the oldest craftsmen positioned themselves around the maestro, as though they were protecting him. Only Zulia Iscuandé had opened her mouth and she was approaching him with a silent smile when Don Furibundo cut her off: “I didn’t come here to speak to women.”
And he stood firm in front of the maestro.
“You can’t do this to me,” he said. “Not to me, not to my wife. Who gives you the right to make fun of others, Tulio? Who do you think you are — God?”
The maestro did not answer.
“You succumbed to temptation. I know they call me Furibundo Pita because I like honking the horn too much, but so what? Who am I hurting? Have I ever run over my wife?”
He looked again at each and every one of them around him, as if scolding them all. Now he shouted: “Who’s to say she doesn’t like it? Who’s to say that the fact I chase her isn’t a game for her? It is a game, gentlemen, a game between me and her, between the two of us, so mind your own business, you utter bastards, you swine.”
Doctor Proceso was astonished by the words, and Don Furibundo confronted him too, as if railing against him.
“What would become of carnival,” he asked, “if we devoted ourselves to airing the sins of others? Or their humiliations? Or their embarrassments?”
The doctor immediately thought of Primavera. Don Furibundo kicked the ground again.
“I came here as a friend,” he said. “I brought half a dozen hens in the Willys, Tulio. The firemen drowned them with a hosing down, but there’s nothing wrong with them: they’ll make a good stew. Let’s eat and drink as friends.”
He looked at the float again out of the corner of his eye.
“But first,” he said, stressing his words, “first I want you to destroy this travesty with your own hammer, by God, Tulio, or I’ll get drunk right here, right now, Tulio.”
These last words, uttered as a terrible threat, made everyone freeze. Don Furibundo was getting hoarse, no more air in his lungs.
“You can be sure that if I’m drunk things will go rather differently,” he managed to say. “Who knows what I might take it into my head to do.”
He took a deep breath, let it out:
“So? Friends?”
“Friends,” the maestro said, with a sigh.
And he looked up at the foggy grey sky, and put his hands in his pockets and lowered his head.
“But I will finish my float,” he said.
Don Furibundo sagged. The maestro went on unperturbed: “I’m nobody’s enemy. I show what this year has seen, what we’ve all seen in Pasto for ages. That’s why we make floats, to remember the years, señor.”
Don Furibundo moved still closer to the maestro.
“You haven’t understood me,” he said. And he ordered the children to fetch the chickens. In no time at all, six appeared at the maestro’s feet.