In Evil Hour (14 page)

“Just between the two of us,” the mayor went on, “I want you to deal the cards to see if it's possible to find out who's responsible for this mess.”

She turned her head away. “I understand,” she said after a brief silence. The mayor urged her:

“I'm doing it for you people more than anything.”

She nodded.

“I've already done it.”

The mayor couldn't hide his anxiety. “It's something very strange,” Casandra went on with calculated melodrama. “The signs were so obvious that I was frightened after having them on the table.” Even her breathing had become affected.

“Who is it?”

“It's the whole town and it's nobody.”

T
HE SONS
of the widow Asís came to mass on Sunday. They were seven in addition to Roberto Asís. All founded in the same mold: heavy and rough, with something mulish in their will for hard work, and docile to their mother with a blind obedience. Roberto Asís, the youngest and the only son who had married, had only a lump on the bone of his nose in common with his brothers. With his delicate health and his conventional ways, he was a kind of consolation prize for the daughter that the widow Asís had grown tired of waiting for.

In the kitchen, where the seven Asíses had unloaded the animals, the widow walked among an outpouring of trussed-up chickens, vegetables and cheeses and brown sugar loaves and strips of salted meat, giving instructions to the servant girls. Once the kitchen was cleared, she ordered them to pick out the best of everything for Father Ángel.

The curate was shaving. From time to time he reached his hand out into the courtyard so he could wet his chin with the drizzle. He was getting ready to finish when two barefoot girls pushed open the door without knocking and in front of him poured out several ripe pineapples, red plantains, sugar loaves, cheese, and a basket of vegetables and fresh eggs.

Father Ángel winked at them. “This,” he said, “looks like Br'er Rabbit's dream.” The younger of the girls, with her eyes all wide, pointed at him:

“Priests shave too!”

The other one led her to the door. “What did you think?” The curate smiled, and added seriously: “We're human too.” Then he contemplated the provisions scattered on the floor and understood that only the house of Asís was capable of such prodigality.

“Tell the boys,” he almost shouted, “that God will give it back to them in health.”

Father Ángel, who after forty years in the priesthood had not learned to dominate the nervousness that precedes solemn acts, put away the instruments without finishing shaving. Then he picked up the provisions and piled them under the jar rack and went into the sacristy, drying his hands on his cassock.

The church was full. In the two pews closest to the pulpit, donated by them and with their respective names engraved on copper plates, were the Asíses, with mother and sister-in-law. When they reached the church, together for the first time in several months, one would have thought they were coming on horseback. Cristóbal Asís, the eldest, who had arrived from the ranch a half hour before and hadn't had time to shave, was still wearing his riding boots and spurs. Seeing that forest giant, the public but never confirmed story that César Montero was the
secret son of old Adalberto Asís seemed true.

In the sacristy Father Ángel suffered a contretemps: the liturgical ornaments weren't in their place. The acolyte found him upset, going through drawers while he carried on an obscure argument with himself.

“Call Trinidad,” the priest ordered him, “and ask her where she put the stole.”

He was forgetting that Trinidad had been ill since Saturday. Most certainly, the acolyte thought, she'd taken some things home to fix. Father Ángel then put on the ornaments reserved for funerals. He couldn't manage to concentrate. When he went up into the pulpit, impatient and still breathing irregularly, he could see that the arguments that had ripened in the days preceding wouldn't have as much strength of conviction now as in the solitude of his room.

He spoke for ten minutes. Stumbling over his words, surprised by a flock of ideas that didn't fit into the previous patterns, he spotted the widow Asís, surrounded by her sons. It was as if he had recognized them several centuries later in some hazy family photograph. Only Rebeca Asís, calming her splendid bust with the sandalwood fan, seemed human and contemporary to him. Father Ángel finished his sermon without referring directly to the lampoons.

The widow Asís remained rigid for a few short minutes, taking her wedding ring off and putting it back on with a secret exasperation, while the mass picked up again. Then she crossed herself, stood up, and left the church by the central nave, followed tumultuously by her sons.

On a morning like that, Dr. Giraldo could understand the inner mechanism of suicide. It was drizzling noiselessly, the troupial was whistling in the house next door, and his wife was talking while he brushed his teeth.

“Sundays are strange,” she said, setting the table for
breakfast. “It's as if they were hung up quartered: they smell of raw animals.”

The doctor put his razor together and began to shave. His eyes were moist and his eyelids puffy. “You're not sleeping well,” his wife told him. And she added with a soft bitterness: “One of these Sundays you're going to wake up an old man.” She'd put on a frayed robe and her head was covered with curlers.

“Do me a favor,” he said. “Shut up.”

She went to the kitchen, put the coffeepot on the stove, and waited for it to boil, hanging first on the whistle of the troupial and a moment later on the sound of the shower. Then she went to the bedroom so her husband would find his clothes ready when he came out of the bathroom. When she brought the breakfast to the table, she saw that he was ready to leave, and he looked a little younger with his khaki pants and sport shirt.

They ate breakfast in silence. Toward the end he examined her with affectionate attention. She was drinking her coffee with her head down, a little trembly with resentment.

“It's my liver,” he excused himself.

“Nothing justifies snapping,” she replied without raising her head.

“I must be drunk,” he said. “The liver gets all clogged up with this rain.”

“You always say the same thing,” she made clear, “but you never do anything. If you don't open your eyes,” she added, “you'll have to heal thyself.”

He seemed to believe her. “In December,” he said, “we'll be two weeks at sea.” He observed the drizzle through the openings of the wooden grating that separated the dining room from the courtyard, saddened by the persistence of October, and added: “Then, at least for four months, there won't be any Sundays like this one.” She
piled up the plates before taking them into the kitchen. When she came back to the dining room she found him with his straw hat on, getting his bag ready.

“So the widow Asís came out of church again,” he said.

His wife had told him before he started brushing his teeth, but he hadn't paid any attention.

“They've gone about three times this year,” she confirmed. “Evidently they haven't found any better way to entertain themselves.”

The doctor bared his rigorous dental system.

“Rich people are crazy.”

Some women, on the way home from church, had gone in to visit the widow Montiel. The doctor greeted the group that remained in the living room. A murmur of laughs followed him to the landing. Before knocking on the door, he realized that there were other women in the bedroom. Someone told him to come in.

The widow Montiel was sitting up, her hair loose, holding the edge of the sheet against her breast. She had a mirror and a comb in her lap.

“So you decided to come to the party too,” she said to the physician.

“She's celebrating her fifteenth birthday,” said one of the women.

“Eighteenth,” the widow Montiel corrected with a sad smile. Lying down in bed again, she covered herself up to the neck. “Of course,” she added good-humoredly, “no men have been invited. Much less you, Doctor; it's bad luck.”

The doctor laid his wet hat on the dresser. “You did well,” he said, observing the patient with a pensive pleasure. “I've just realized that I've got nothing to do here.” Then, turning to the group, he excused himself:

“Will you allow me?”

When she was alone with him, the widow Montiel took on the bitter expression of a sick woman again. But the doctor didn't seem to notice. He continued speaking in the same festive tone while he laid out on the night table the things he was taking from his bag.

“Please, Doctor,” the widow begged, “no more injections. I'm like a sieve.”

“Injections”—the doctor smiled—“are the best thing ever invented for the feeding of doctors.”

She smiled too.

“Believe me,” she said, touching her buttocks through the sheet, “this whole part of me is raw. I can't even touch it.”

“Don't touch it,” the doctor said.

Then she smiled openly.

“Talk seriously, even if only on Sundays, Doctor.”

The physician uncovered her arm to take her blood pressure.

“My doctor won't let me,” he said. “It's bad for the liver.”

While he was taking her pressure, the widow observed the dial on the sphygmomanometer with a childish curiosity. “That's the funniest watch I've ever seen,” she said. The doctor remained intent on the needle until he finished squeezing the ball.

“It's the only one that tells exactly what time to get up,” he said.

When he'd finished and was rolling up the tubes of the sphygmomanometer, he observed the face of the patient minutely. He put a bottle of white pills on the table with the indication that she take one every twelve hours. “If you don't want any more injections,” he said, “there won't be any more injections. You're in better health than I am.” The widow made a gesture of impatience.

“I never had anything,” she said.

“I believe you,” the physician replied, “but we've had to invent something in order to justify the bill.”

Ignoring the comment, the widow asked:

“Do I have to stay in bed?”

“On the contrary,” the doctor said, “I absolutely forbid it. Go down to the living room and take care of your visitors as you should. Besides,” he added with a mischievous voice, “there are a lot of things to talk about.”

“Good heavens, Doctor,” she exclaimed, “don't be so gossipy. You must be the one who's putting up the lampoons.”

Dr. Giraldo reveled in the idea. On leaving, he cast a furtive look at the leather trunk with copper rivets in the corner of the bedroom, ready for the trip. “And bring me something back,” he shouted from the door, “when you return from your trip around the world.” The widow had taken up the patient labor of untangling her hair again.

“Of course, Doctor.”

She didn't go down to the living room. She stayed in bed until the last visitor had left. Then she got dressed. Mr. Carmichael found her eating by the half-opened balcony door.

She replied to his greeting without taking her eyes off the balcony. “Deep down,” she said, “I like that woman: she's valiant.” Mr. Carmichael also looked toward the house of the widow Asís, where the doors and windows hadn't been opened at eleven o'clock.

“It has something to do with her nature,” he said. “With insides like hers, made for males only, she couldn't be any other way.” Turning his attention to the widow Montiel, he added: “And you're like a rose too.”

She seemed to confirm it with the freshness of her smile. “Do you know something?” she asked. And in the face of
Mr. Carmichael's indecision she got ahead of the answer:

“Dr. Giraldo is convinced that I'm crazy.”

“You don't say!”

The widow nodded yes. “It wouldn't surprise me,” she went on, “if he'd already talked to you about some way to send me to the insane asylum.” Mr. Carmichael didn't know how to untangle himself from the confusion.

“I haven't been out of the house all morning,” he said.

He dropped into the soft leather easy chair placed beside the bed. The widow remembered José Montiel in that chair, struck down by a cerebral congestion fifteen minutes before dying. “In that case,” she said, shaking off the bad memory, “you might call him this afternoon.” And she changed the subject with a lucid smile:

“Did you talk to my good friend Sabas?”

Mr. Carmichael nodded yes.

In fact, on Friday and Saturday he had taken soundings in the abyss that was Don Sabas, trying to find out what his reaction would be if José Montiel's estate were put up for sale. Don Sabas—Mr. Carmichael supposed—seemed ready to buy it. The widow listened without showing any signs of impatience. If it wasn't next Wednesday, it would be Wednesday of the following week, she admitted with a relaxed firmness. In any event, she was ready to leave town before October was over.

The mayor unholstered his revolver with an instantaneous movement of his left hand. Right down to the last muscle his body was ready to fire, when he awoke completely and recognized Judge Arcadio.

“Shit!”

Judge Arcadio was petrified.

“Don't you ever mess up like that again,” the mayor said, putting the revolver away. He fell back into the canvas
chair. “My hearing works better when I'm asleep.”

“The door was open,” Judge Arcadio said.

The mayor had forgotten to close it at dawn. He was so tired that he'd dropped into the chair and fallen asleep instantly.

“What time is it?”

“It's going on twelve,” Judge Arcadio said.

There was still a tremulous chord in his voice.

“I'm dying for sleep,” the mayor said.

Twisting in a long yawn, he had the impression that time had stopped. In spite of his diligence, of his sleepless nights, the lampoons continued. That dawn he'd found a piece of paper stuck to the door of his room:
Don't waste gunpowder on buzzards, Lieutenant
. On the street they were saying aloud that the very ones who made up the patrols were posting the lampoons to break the boredom of their rounds. The town—the mayor had thought—is dying with laughter.

“Shake it off,” Judge Arcadio said, “and let's go get something to eat.”

But he wasn't hungry. He wanted to sleep another hour and take a bath before going out. Judge Arcadio, on the other hand, fresh and clean, was going back home to have lunch. When he passed by the room, since the door was open, he'd gone in to ask the mayor for a pass to be on the streets after the curfew.