“Whose daughter are you?”
“Sultana’s.”
“I know Sultana. She was rather naughty, but she studied. Do you know me?”
“You’re the schoolteacher.”
“Profesor Pasos, we used to say,” Rey shouts from his room, “why does he always fail us?”
He is the oldest of my pupils, and one of my few friends now. There, in his bed, a bearded sixty-year old, under the yellow light from the bare bulb, he laughs, more toothless than me: he doesn’t have his bridge in, is he not embarrassed with this girl? For the last four years, he told me once, when the commemoration takes place and his wife — his second wife, because he is a widower — goes to offer her condolences for the disappearance of Saldarriaga, he has pretended to be ill and stayed at home and done with the girl who happened to be there what he could not do the whole year long.
“So, what news?” he asks. “I was thinking about the party, profesor.”
“What party, if you please?”
“The celebration, for Saldarriaga.”
“Celebration?”
“Celebration, profesor, and forgive me, but that Saldarriaga was, or is, if he’s alive, a triple son of a bitch.”
“I haven’t come to talk about that.”
“What then, profesor, don’t you see I’m pressed for time?”
The truth is that I do not myself know why I have come: what am I going to invent? Is it this girl? Have I come here to meet this girl with her hair so recently messed?
“My knee hurts,” it occurs to me to tell Rey.
“It’s old age, profesor,” he roars. “What do you think you are, immortal?”
He is drunk, I realize. At his side, scattered on the floor, are two or three aguardiente bottles.
“I thought you just pretended to be ill,” I say, pointing to the bottles.
He laughs and offers me a glass, which I refuse.
“Go, profesor.”
“You’re throwing me out?”
“Go to Maestro Claudino’s place, and tell me about it later. He’ll fix your knee.”
“Is he still alive?”
“Say hello to him from me, profesor.”
The girl accompanies me to the door: sumptuous in her innocence, unbuttoning her blouse to save time.
I was still a boy when I met Claudino Alfaro. He is alive, then. If I am seventy, he must be a hundred, or close to it. why did I forget about him? Why did he forget about me? Instead of entrusting myself to Ordúz, the doctor, Mauricio Rey reminded me of Maestro Claudino, who I had long given up for more than dead, since I didn’t even remember him. Where have I existed these years? I answer myself: up on the wall, peering over.
And I leave the town, unwary beneath the night, walking to the cabin of Maestro Claudino, folk healer. The pain in my knee, again, urges me on.
He is alive, so, he is alive, like me, I say to myself as I walk down the road. The last lights of the town disappear with the first bend, the night grows larger, with no stars. He will go on living while he heals: he makes his patients urinate into a bottle, then he shakes the bottle, and reads, against the light, the sicknesses; he straightens out muscles, sticks bones back together. “He is as alive as I believe I am,” I say to myself, and climb Chuzo’s mountain, following the bridle path. I must have stopped several times to rest. The last time I admit defeat and decide to go back; I suddenly discover that I have to drag my leg to make any progress at all. This outing was a mistake, I say to myself but I walk uphill, from stone to stone. At a bend in the path, already in the invisible jungle of the mountain, I give up and look for a place to rest. There is no moon, the night is still pitch black; I cannot see a pace in front of me, although I know I am halfway there: the Maestro’s cabin is at the back of the mountain, not at its summit, which today I would never reach, but rather skirting around halfway up. I find a mound finally, and sit down there. Above my knee the swelling has grown to the size of an orange. I am drenched in sweat, as if caught in the rain; there is no wind, and, nevertheless, I hear that something or someone is walking on and snapping the leaves and underbrush. I freeze. I try to distinguish between the shapes of the bushes. The noise approaches; what if it is an attack? It could be that the guerrillas, or the paramilitaries, have decided to take the town tonight, why not? Captain Berrío must be at Hortensia’s house, the guest of honor. The noises stop for an instant. Expectation makes me forget the pain in my knee. I am far from town, no one can hear me. They will probably shoot first and, then, when I am already dying, come and see me and ask who I am — if I am still alive. But they could also be soldiers, training at night, I tell myself, to calm down. “All the same,” I shout at myself, “they’ll shoot me just the same.” And, at that, with an explosion of leaves and stalks parting, I perceive something, or someone, leaping upon me. I scream. I reach out my arms, hands open, to repel the attack, the blow, the ghost, whatever it is. I know that this gesture is of no use, and I think of Otilia: Tonight you will not find me in bed. I do not know how long I have my eyes closed. Something touches my shoes, sniffs me. An enormous dog puts his paws on my lap, stretches, and now licks my face in greeting. “It’s a dog,” I say aloud. “It’s just a dog, thank God,” and I do not know if I am going to laugh or cry: as if I still love life.
“Who’s that? Who’s there?”
The voice is just the same: a husky wind, elongated.
“Who’s there?”
“It’s me. Ismael.”
“Ismael Pasos. Then you’re not dead.”
“I don’t think so.”
So we were thinking the same thing: that the other was dead.
I can only see him when he is a step away from me. He is wearing a sort of sheet around his waist; he still has his hair like little tufts of cotton; I can just make out his gleaming eyes in the night; I wonder if he can distinguish my eyes, or if only his eyes shine through the black night. The incomprehensible fear he caused me as a child returns again, fleetingly, but fear it was; I stand up and feel his hand on my arm, like wire, as thin and as tight.
He holds me up.
“What’s the matter?” he says. “Does your leg hurt?”
“My knee.”
“Let’s see.”
Now his wiry hands brush my knee.
“This had to happen for you to come to see me, Ismael. One more day and you wouldn’t be able to walk. Now we have to get the swelling down, for a start. Let’s go on up.”
He wants to help me walk up the hill. I am embarrassed. He must be close to a hundred.
“I can still manage.”
“Up you go, let’s see.”
The dog goes ahead of us; I hear him run, uphill, while I drag my leg.
“I thought they were going to kill me,” I tell him.
“I thought it was the war coming down on me.”
“You thought your time had come.”
“Yes. I thought I was dead.”
“That’s what I thought four years ago.”
His voice moves away, like his story.
“It was already late and I was in the hammock, taking off my shoes, when they appeared.
“‘Come with us,’ they said.
“I told them I didn’t mind, whenever they wanted, I told them all I asked was a bit of sugar water in the mornings.
“‘Don’t complain,’ they told me. ‘We’ll give or not give you whatever we feel like, depending on our mood.’
“That was a brutal walk; at full speed, as if the soldiers were closing in on them.
“‘And this one, who is he? Why did we bring him?’ one of them said.
“None of them know me, I thought, and I didn’t know any one of them either, I’d never seen them in my life; their accents were from Antioquia; they were young and they climbed; I kept up with their pace, of course. They wanted to get rid of my dog, who was following us.