He falls silent. Two beds away, a nurse is closing the eyes of the first martyr of the revolution. Martín clutches his hat to his chest.
“It’s a pity it’s already too late for our comrade Florencio,” he adds.
And he crosses himself, because it’s still 1905 and, according to his own calculations, God will not die for another sixty-four years.
~ ~ ~
◊
A little while later, José appears. He strides confidently up to the bed and hugs Carlos. It’s so wonderful to have found him! He’s spent hours going from hospital to hospital in El Callao. He felt so guilty when he saw him fall; he shouldn’t have left him to the mercy of those brutes, don’t think he hasn’t been telling himself that, but what else could he do? What would Carlos have done in his place? The same thing… the same thing, of course! But the worst is over. Can he walk? Then he’s coming with him right now and leaving this paupers’ hospital; there’s a carriage waiting for him outside.
And he hugs him again, because the most important thing is that everything has turned out all right; everything is forgiven. A sergeant, accompanied by several soldiers, comes to intercept them as Carlos is getting out of bed. He says he can’t let them leave, it’s impossible. There are procedures and protocols that can’t just be shrugged off; recent events have been quite serious, and statements must be taken from those involved. José sighs. He holds out a piece of paper that he has already prepared. The sergeant goes pallid when he sees the last name on the letterhead. He doesn’t even dare to read the full document. He returns it, awestruck, and tells the soldiers that it’s all been a misunderstanding, that the young men have been released and are free to go whenever they wish. With all due respect.
Carlos returns home at dusk. He’s almost all better; the aide has said all he needs is a little arnica and a change of bandage once a day. But his mother does not agree: their personal doctor must be called; Carlos must be kept awake in case of internal bleeding; the criminals who tried to kill her son must be reported to the police. She looks shaken and her eyes are red. She has been weeping and praying all day, ever since the driver informed her of the young man’s disappearance and they started searching for him in the jail, the morgue, the hospitals. For the first time in a long time, Carlos hears her shout, and with every shout she seems to become a little more real, filling in that years-long silence. His sisters emerge from their bedrooms and run down the stairs to kiss him, still wearing their nightgowns.
Don Augusto is fidgeting with a snuffed-out cigar. He’s anxious too, but he doesn’t chastise his son. It’s true that getting mixed up with agitators and terrorists was a numbskull thing to do, only Carlos would be capable of it, but in the end, weren’t we all young once? And at least the incident pushed Carlos into the fray for a bit of brawling — in short, made him act a bit manlier than usual, which, with regard to his son, is more reassuring than it is anything else. He’s not worried about the stitches either; he’s seen Indians still standing even with the white of their bones showing through their wounds. What’s more, the mark of the injury gives his son rather a determined look, a virility Don Augusto would never have thought possible and that he hopes is here to stay. Nevertheless, he accedes to his wife’s demands and orders his servants to fetch the doctor at once, even if they have to drag him out of bed.
And the doctor doesn’t find anything. Or, rather, he finds a clean bandage covering a few stitches — extraordinarily neat work, especially for a proletarian hospital, he thinks admiringly — and a small laceration that threatens no consequence more dire than staining the dressing a little. All he needs is a little arnica and a change of bandage once a day, and the doctor starts to say just that, but something in Señora Rodríguez’s eyes stops him. So he drags out the checkup a little longer and finally says that, come to think of it, better safe than sorry, so perhaps the boy should also rest a few days to recover from the shock and his injuries. He makes the suggestion without conviction; he’s very sleepy and wants to go home. Carlos’s mother desperately seizes on the idea. “The doctor said a week in bed!” she announces to her son after seeing the doctor to the door. Carlos says he feels perfectly fine, that he doesn’t need any rest, but in the end he gives in. Just as he allowed himself to be carried on the stretcher. Just as, eight years earlier, he endured those doses of liver-strengthening castor oil.
He spends the week in bed, and that week is enough time for a good many things to happen. He finds out about all of it through the papers, which his sisters sneak in to him on the breakfast tray (“And make sure you don’t read anything upsetting”).
The night of the riot, rocks shatter streetlights all over El Callao and Lima. The next day the people — but who or what is “the people,” really? — bury the martyr Florencio Aliaga in a grave paid for by the government. Someone writes a two-column editorial demanding that those responsible for the injured strikers be found, but even if anyone is responsible, nobody finds the culprit. Two days later the negotiations begin. At last the workers and the steamship companies reach an agreement establishing that everything will remain more or less the same, give or take a few soles. His mother’s prayers have been heeded once more, and the river of reality returns to its customary course, to what has always been and must always be.
One day Martín Sandoval shows up at the house looking for Carlos and is ushered into his bedroom. He comes bearing his own version of events — they have accepted a twenty percent increase in wages, victory is ever nearer, etc. — and a stack of books for him to read during his convalescence. Carlos, who is not allowed to get up even during visits, accepts them wordlessly from his bed: Marx, Kropotkin, Bakunin. He doesn’t know what to say. At last he says, “Thank you, they’re very nice,” and as he speaks, he realizes how stupid he sounds. But Martín doesn’t seem to care; he smiles broadly and says he must read them all. On his way out he winks and raises his left fist, and Carlos responds by raising his right. Martín laughs.
That same day, José also comes to visit. Don Augusto interrupts them a number of times during their conversation. He is thrilled to have a Gálvez, a descendant of the heroes of the Pacific, calling at his home. So he keeps reappearing under various implausible pretexts, giving exaggerated bows and plying his guest with wine and cigars that José simply must try and that José does not try. Carlos squirms in his bed. He mutters a few scathing words that his father does not hear. As he sees it, his father is behaving like a fawning footman eager to please his master with a few clever comments, and José receives the offerings with frosty graciousness. Don Augusto also brings in a newspaper describing events abroad and attempts a verbatim recitation of an article on the Russo-Japanese War he’s just memorized; in his opinion, he says, despite the Yalu River victory, the Japanese will be utterly vanquished; they’ll see when the Baltic fleet of Admiral Rozhestvensky — is he pronouncing that damned difficult name correctly? — rounds the Cape of Good Hope and surprises them from the south; Czar Nicholas isn’t going to let a bunch of yellow men from the far ends of the earth tell him where he can and cannot dock his ships. Doesn’t José agree? he asks when he runs out of ideas — which is to say, right where the article ended. Gálvez doesn’t know anything about the war, but he pretends to reflect a moment. At last he smiles a genuine smile and says he does not agree, that in fact he and his father believe just the opposite: that the Russians are out of options and that Japan is going to trounce the czar and the aforementioned Rozinsky. Don Augusto blinks a moment, stammers, rolls and unrolls the newspaper a couple of times—Why don’t you just go away, thinks Carlos, and stop making us look ridiculous? — and finally says that he hadn’t seen it like that, but, come to think of it, the Gálvez analysis does make sense, that Japan is going to win and not Russia. Indeed, he has no doubt, and it is so obvious now that he has considered it carefully, he is embarrassed to have thought otherwise. He leaves.