Evelio Rosero - Feast of the Innocents

They were seen dancing bambucos in the streets, their madness anticipating carnival, with no respect for the departed, witnesses said; they were seen glittered over with cold, right at the top of Las Lajas cathedral; and on the shores of Lake Cocha, eating pink trout with their fingers, drinking aguardiente from the bottle. They swam naked in the hot, green waters of Laguna Verde — they lost themselves there and were found — they went up and leaned fearlessly into the belching mouth of Galeras, and in just one day drove all the way to the ocean at Tumaco and back again. Nobody in Pasto could tell who was the drunker of the two, both of them going up and down the country in the Land Rover. That it never broke down, or crashed, was a miracle performed by Saint Aguardiente, witnesses said.

And they arranged to meet on Black Day, but they would never see each other again.

News of the doctor’s adventures reached the ears of Primavera Pinzón — who could not and did not want to believe them. The pious Alcira Sarasti, Furibundo Pita’s wife, heard about them too, and the thought nipped at her like a saucy pinch. Similarly, Zulia Iscuandé found out about his exploits: she had been laying siege to the doctor’s house, waiting for him every morning for the past three days; she was after the deposit, an advance, at least, for the float, which was just about ready. She was worried that her doctor, so generous with words, might not be with money. And she was nearly right: Bolívar’s carriage now mattered less to Doctor Justo Pastor Proceso López than reliving the memory of the widow Chila Chávez dancing naked boleros on her roof terrace — her face smeared with hand-spun local ice cream.

He had forgotten all about Bolívar, the carriage, the artisans, his pledge. For the first time in his life, all he was thinking about was the Black and White dance. If life was a vale of tears, as his grandparents had maintained, he did not want to live in it, and if life was a macabre circus enjoyed only by a few madmen — as they had also maintained — he intended to go mad for the years remaining to him, who knew how many there would be.

Impossible to imagine he had only three days left.

I couldn’t care less about Bolívar, he said to himself: they make a god out of him, they go on making gods, I care only about my widow’s honeypot.

But he was a man of his word, and that morning, when he recognized Zulia Iscuandé lying in wait for him at the door — Zulia Iscuandé no less, she who had said “Bolívar was a complete son of a bitch”—he acknowledged his recent past: he took her by the arm and led her into the consulting room and offered her a glass of sacramental wine.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “You’ll have your money today.”

Was he still drunk?

He seemed to be.

Zulia Iscuandé stayed waiting for him in the loneliness of the consulting room, while the doctor went out of his house and knocked on the door of his neighbour, Furibundo Pita, the only person in Pasto who could buy his finca outright, and pay for it that very day, the eve of carnival, in cash.

“Here you are, Doctor Justo,” Furibundo Pita said, and held out a hessian bag containing the money.

He was in Furibundo’s house, in his office with its high leather chairs. Furibundo was looking at him from behind his desk. They had already signed the sale papers.

“The bag is a gift,” Furibundo went on. “You don’t need to count the money. I already counted it the customary seven times. Now, if you don’t mind me asking, what are you going to do with all that cash? Is there business on the boil? Any tasters going?”

“A lot of questions for a man in a hurry,” the doctor said, getting to his feet.

He looked elated, with the bag over his shoulder. Taller, leaner, calmer. It was a stroke of luck that Furibundo Pita did not keep all his money in the bank; he had managed to sell the finca in the blink of an eye, the finca that had belonged to his grandparents and that by rights he should keep for his daughters, but all that mattered to him now was the joy of paying the artisans, his only joy, because he wasn’t worried about his other delight, Bolívar’s carriage.

“Doctor Justo,” Furibundo Pita said, “I always knew I hadn’t killed Maestro Abril: I knew it very well. But that old fool really deserved a drubbing, for poking fun. Don’t throw away so much money on Bolívar’s carriage; use your common sense: it would be money down the drain.”

The doctor did not answer; now everyone in Pasto knew everything, he thought. He wanted to get out of the office as soon as possible, without staying for the coffee with little achira biscuits that Alcira Sarasti offered him, as soon as she heard of his unexpected visit:

“Another time, señora .”

“What’s the hurry, for goodness’ sake?” she said. “Take it easy, it’s not Innocents’ Day and nobody’s giving you poison. I baked these biscuits myself an hour ago.” And she shook her head: “You’ve snubbed me.”

“Never. I promise I’ll see you on the sixth for White Day.”

“If you can find me,” the woman shot back.

That morning — in spite of her buttoned-up clothing, the veil for Mass on her head, her black lace blouse — the pious Sarasti struck the doctor as even more desirable than Chila Chávez. And he stole another look at the lace blouse, through which Sarasti’s skin appeared, glowing like it was on fire; the doctor seemed to doubt his judgement, surprised at himself: “it must be because I’m seeing her with my heart for the first time,” he said to himself, “and not as the idiotic doctor I’ve been up to now.”

The pious Sarasti did not take her eyes off the walls. She clasped and unclasped her hands. Furibundo Pita picked up the conversation again:

“Does Primavera know anything about the sale?”

But the doctor could not hear him anymore; he had left.

And before Zulia Iscuandé’s disbelieving eyes, he scattered the thick bundles over the consulting room’s table: he counted out the money for the float and placed it on one side — three times the winner’s prize money — then put it back in the bag. The rest he put away in his trouser pockets as best he could, like he was stuffing a guy for New Year’s Eve — that’s what Iscuandé said she thought of when she saw him doing it.

“Money,” the doctor said. “Coffin and grave of the heart.”

“Well if that’s the case, my heart can die,” Iscuandé replied.

They looked at one another without connecting: Doctor Proceso seemed not to hear her, and Zulia Iscuandé understood absolutely nothing. She had only gone there looking for the deposit, and she had received it all. And by the look of things, the doctor did not even want to know about the float.

“Don’t you want to come and see it?” she asked, genuinely shocked. And she gripped the bag in her hands. “We’ve got it well hidden.”

“Give my regards to the carriage,” the doctor said oddly. “It can surprise me on January sixth. I’ll be on some Pasto street corner waiting to see it.”

That same January 4, Puelles was giving Enrique Quiroz his surveillance report, in the street, at the doors of the parish church.

From the corner they heard the combined voice of the crowd swell, cheering — the Carnavalito was being inaugurated for the first time, a preamble to the Black and White Carnival, a copy of the main event put on by children, with their little floats, marching bands and mini-parades: they wheeled their inventions along on bicycles and wagons. It was a procession of exalted little boys and girls: they sang while they danced; some carried aguardiente bottles full of lemonade, but stumbled about as they marched past, imitating the drunkenness of their elders in every detail; proud mothers applauded. A band of musicians went by, belting out the “Miranchurito.” The secret poet strained to make out Quiroz’s whispering, his rage interrupted by the celebration: