Evelio Rosero - Feast of the Innocents

Gales of laughter united them like a colossal embrace — in the living room, which was all ashake.

“If it didn’t happen that way,” the professor said, “it should have done.”

“Impossible to check whether the story is completely accurate, but it did happen,” the doctor said with great difficulty, and laughed along with the rest, including the Bishop of Pasto.

And the fact was, Fátima and her grandmother’s end, their tragedy, had strangely overexcited them, to the point of hysteria. Once again, they drank aguardiente —as they had been doing during the whole unfolding of the tale. Once again, Primavera offered it generously around to each of them — with genuine affection? — the professor wondered. She offered it right on the back of the guffawing which boomed out, a manly sound; that’s how Primavera heard it, from all sides, like the laughter of hairy hunters around the fireplace applauding a joke, she thought, and I’m the only woman here: the fire.

Arcaín Chivo, slumped in his easy chair, was adoring her. And he suffered, sighing over her, when she leaned towards him, offering aguardiente. He snatched up a glass and drank it down in one, stole another straight away, and slurped from it noisily.

“When it comes to drinking,” he said, “I drink like a poet, and if a woman like you is pouring the booze, Primavera, what other hope is there but to drink? You are the unattainable woman, the impossible dream.”

Doctor Proceso heard him too. At that point the mayor spoke into his ear:

“Wouldn’t it be best, Justo Pastor, to wind up the evening now? Our dear Chivo is starting to flirt with your wife.”

“Ah, Chivo,” the doctor replied in a whisper. “Chivo the wise, Chivo the temperate, his intelligence overwhelmed by a good pair of legs, my wife’s legs.”

“What are you laughing about?” the bishop asked, swapping to a nearby seat. “Are you going to let me in on the joke?”

Doctor Proceso felt a little tipsy; he had thought the mayor and bishop were not far behind him, but as the story unfolded he had discovered quite the opposite: Primavera’s presence did not captivate them, and they were not even drunk. They’re pretending to drink, he realized, and in the last exchange he detected their eagerness to find any excuse and disappear. Worse still, as far as Bolívar’s carriage was concerned, they had not confirmed whether they approved of it or not. They’ll wash their hands of it and go, he thought.

“And the music?” Chivo said, “Shouldn’t we round off the sad tale we brought back to life with some music?”

“It’s a bit late for music,” Primavera said, taking them by surprise, given that not long before she had been offering around the aguardiente and laughing. “My daughters are sleeping. I think it’d be best to make coffee, would you like some?”

The Bishop of Pasto thanked her by quickly clapping his hands.

“It’ll be coffee for the road,” he said. “We really must go, it won’t be long till dawn.”

“We need coffee,” said the mayor, and threw the professor a sardonic look.

Arcaín Chivo took another glass, in a hurry. He set off behind Primavera, who was already on her way down the corridor:

“Allow me to keep you company while you make that coffee, señora. Let me tell you another story about independence, one worthy of your ears.”

Primavera neither consented nor refused. She headed silently for the kitchen; she felt pursued by the professor as if by a dog, she thought, a dog sniffing about. The others had already picked up their conversation again, but, nonetheless, the professor did not go straight into the kitchen: he seemed to hesitate at the bend in the corridor, as if an inopportune moment of lucidity were going to prevent him committing his indiscretion. Then he went back to the living room, but no-one there paid him any attention now, they were once again embroiled in plans for the carnival float, the bishop insisting on scrapping the spectacle: “You’ll run into serious problems, Justo Pastor, nobody’s going to allow it.” Matías Serrano described the idea as picturesque, but pointless: he said the world would go on as ever.

Chivo sank down into his chair, panting. For a few minutes he felt sorry for the doctor, with his obvious efforts to get his influential friends to commit to the undertaking. Efforts the bishop and the mayor repaid with little conviction. “Count on us in any case,” the mayor said, “to the extent that we’re permitted.” The bishop fretted: “We need to arrange another get-together; we could meet on the second of January.” Chivo was watching them — how ugly they looked, he thought, how horrible, how old, how skeletal; cheerio, corpses, I’m out of here with the beauty, he yelled in his head. The bishop’s indifference encouraged him to drink more aguardiente , and to run stealthily in pursuit of the fleeing Primavera.

Primavera was in front of the stove, about to filter the coffee, when Professor Chivo came in, hot on her trail. Dishevelled, his face shiny with sweat, he threw himself without thinking at Primavera’s tiny feet — more naked than ever in the rope-soled alpargatas —he knelt before them as if in ecstasy and kissed her toes rapidly, silently, many times.

“What are you doing?” Primavera asked. And then provided the answer herself, unable to credit it: he’s kissing my feet.

She tried moving her feet away, but the professor’s hands were gripping her ankles. The voices of the bishop and mayor could be heard in the living room. Chivo, on his knees, raised his intoxicated, inflamed face; it was as if he was catching a glimpse of Primavera in Heaven and he was much further away, in Hell.

“You are to be adored,” he said, as if crying.

“Get up from there,” Primavera urged, in an anxious whisper that sounded like a warning but also a celebration. In response, the professor simply crouched down again and redoubled his kisses, this time around her ankles, and then he moved lower down and started to plant kisses between Primavera’s toes, while she opened her mouth, incredulous, bowled over by a wave of heat. And he’s still kissing my feet, she cried inwardly, paralysed: now she could not even attempt to move her feet backwards. My feet? — she asked herself — not just my feet, because the kneeling professor was kissing her calves and had suddenly lifted a burning hand and was sliding it over her knee towards Primavera’s thighs, underneath her skirt.

“My dear Don Arcaín,” Primavera managed to blurt in surprise — with pleasure or annoyance? — and she thought that having said “My dear Don” to him, which she never said to anyone, and saying it in such a tone, she was calling him to order, “I could scream, they could hear me.”

And yet, in spite of everything, an immeasurable delight took hold of her, against her will; the presentiment that they could be discovered at any moment: that was what worried her most, that her husband and the bishop and the mayor might come into the kitchen at any time — above all the bishop, she thought — but she felt the professor’s hands moving even higher up her thighs, like dizzying, burning wings, pushing her legs apart; will I faint? — she wondered, leaning over the professor, who trembled on his knees as if praying — I will faint; and she opened her mouth to gulp down air because she could not breathe and it looked as though she were going to scream so the professor stopped his marauding: he lowered his scalding hands to encircle just one calf and left them there, as though shackling her.

“You,” he said at once, not giving her time to react, “you are the remote Virgin of my childhood, surely it was for a kiss from your lips that my great-grandfather killed himself, or that he was killed, or that there was that war between two peoples, each of their kings wanting to abduct you and throw you on the marriage bed and gulp you down thirstily, Primavera, like a drop of water in the desert,” and meanwhile he was looking fleetingly at her knees, and raised his gaze, fleetingly, to the place where her sex must be underneath her skirt, and from there he moved up fleetingly to her eyes, nothing daunted, and held her shocked, liquid blue gaze, held it without wavering while she stretched her mouth wide and exposed her teeth as though laughing silently, and yet it seemed she did it out loud, he thought, a torrent of feminine mirth cascading over him, encouraging him to keep talking, to provoke another silent, obliging laugh, she was challenging him to make her laugh more, or lose the game and see the laughter turn to contempt.