Evelio Rosero - Feast of the Innocents

“We still don’t know,” Puelles said. Did he suddenly seem sad? “Or they don’t know,” he said hurriedly. “I’m not with them anymore.”

Doctor Proceso had another drink and remembered: this skinny kid was the same one who had been reading outside his house, the night of the thirty-first. So they had been following him since then. He was a student — a pupil of Chivo’s of course, one of those who had kicked Chivo through the streets to the hospital — turned dissenter. What was going on with the young? Not long ago Chivo himself had told him they had “imported” a distinguished philosophy professor from Italy; under his aegis, students not only started dressing in black and frowning like bitter old men, but many killed themselves and left suicide notes giving the same explanation: despair at existence, or something like that. Why were the kids bowing down? Why did they allow themselves to descend into idiocy? Because they were kids — he answered his own question — but these ones were different, faddish revolutionaries, and it seemed he was an enemy of the people, public enemy number one. What can I do?

“So my time’s a bit tight for popping to Mandarina’s?” he asked as a joke.

“You’ve got the time it takes a rooster with his hen,” Puelles joked back. Quite a guy, this doctor — he thought — you have the courage to laugh, but you cannot imagine how serious the warning is, Doctor.

The music had changed: just as ear-splitting but, even so, they understood each other well enough as they drank outrageously. Puelles wanted to go to Mandarina’s that very day, the day of the Carnavalito, when they opened — if they opened — and with or without the doctor — he wanted to visit that house as soon as possible — but the why of the doctor’s visit piqued his curiosity: he knew of his wife, the famous Primavera Pinzón, eldest of the Pinzón girls, knew enough to dream about her, what a wild beast of a woman, what a magnificent drop of pure water:

“Why the hell do you need the whorehouse, Doctor?”

“I’m looking for a woman to take to a friend,” the doctor said.

“A commendable service, señor . I’m just looking for my very first. Cheers.”

From one moment to the next they found themselves walking through the streets of Pasto, far from the bar, how long had they been talking? Now it was night-time, minutes earlier Puelles had sat on the pavement to puke, now they were passing for the third time in front of Mandarina’s “house of crossed legs,” as Puelles put it. No doubt the girls aren’t working during Carnavalito, the doctor said, they take their kids out to it too. Or they’re in the procession themselves, Puelles said, and they went up steep narrow streets, they wanted to keep right on going till they got to the volcano, but their own talking stopped them on a corner, the doctor heard himself saying, from a people sunk in misery, with no industry, no hospitals, from a people without schools, without… from a… what can come of it? And Puelles’s voice from somewhere: “They say revolution, señor .” Yes, the doctor laughed in astonishment, but it lasts only a minute, because the people get drunk and go back to sleep, sleep for centuries, dream, as happened… when did it happen last? Even the dogs got drunk.

“Like us,” Puelles said.

“What can come of it?” the doctor repeated.

“Dreams, you said it.”

The last groups of children were dispersing now: kids with their costumes over their shoulders, almost asleep, some still singing, holding their parents’ hands, others whistling, climbing trees, precariously balanced, rebellious birds, we don’t want to go home, it’s Carnavalito . Were they actually drunk? Very possibly, Rodolfo Puelles replied; the doctor said children were happy because they did not know about love. And above all they don’t know about old age, the young Puelles added. They laughed over that for a minute, ludicrously, howling, choking, they could hardly manage to speak, saying in unison: “poor kids when they get old.”

Another great swig steadied them.

A truck went by, full of young people protesting about the shoddy government, political slogans right in the middle of Carnavalito — against Yankee imperialism, against the bloodsucking oligarchy: “And the living and the dumb, kill them every one,” they chorused, “And the donkey and the horse, one by one, of course.” So the revolution comes from there, the doctor said. Did Puelles really believe in that? Revolution with those animals, no way, Puelles rebelled. Revolutionaries killing to left and right, the doctor went on, did you hear them? They included donkeys and horses on their list, with such a project in hand I don’t think they’ll die in the attempt, they’ll die old, still trying. I’m not involved in that anymore, Puelles said, exasperated. How to proclaim it to the four corners of the earth that he was a poet, that when he spoke, he was voicing his poetry? If I was up to it, I’d recite at the top of my voice all this humorous love that is springing from my pores, and sooner or later some girl would redeem me, he thought.

They were sitting very close together on one of the wooden benches in the children’s park, a few blocks from the doctor’s house, their clothes soggy with aguardiente ; someone had stolen the doctor’s hat — a hand stretching down from a balcony — Puelles’s eyes were red, staring, as if he were hallucinating, his hands were shaking, they were each drinking from their own bottle; my problem, Puelles suddenly said as if renouncing life, isn’t being alone, it’s being with myself, Doctor, imagine a man who couldn’t even be friend to a dog anymore. Want me to tell you something, señor ? I’ve killed; do you realize what I just said? I’m a murderer; do you know what that means? It takes an enormous effort just for me to be with myself, and Puelles wondered if he was going to cry. Don’t say that, the doctor said and tried to stand up, or are you going to murder me? Never — Puelles said in surprise — and the doctor countered: one death is enough? Better kill me off at once, don’t keep me hanging about, and a shared fit of the giggles surfaced again, choking them, the doctor attempted to get up and did not manage it.

“I have to go home,” he said, “Mandarina can wait till tomorrow.”

“Doctor,” Puelles asked, facing him, and clutching one of his arms, “why don’t you leave Bolívar in peace? Put an end to this aggravation and everything will be alright.” The doctor waved his hands about, drank:

“You can’t leave the dead in peace if they won’t leave the living in peace,” he announced. “Well,” he corrected himself, stunned, “I thought that once, now I don’t know what I think. I’m at peace with the living and the dead: the, only, thing, I, want, is, to, love.”

“Really?” Puelles said, reviving. “Go back to the merry widow? You’re after fresh bread, how lovely she is, widows here are often almost girls, Doctor; pastures new for the old bull, eh?” Unlike the doctor, Puelles was able to get up and he opened his arms wide, flapped them, leapt up onto the bench, pulled himself erect — my freedom takes flight within me, he shouted without knowing why, still as a statue, the doctor sat looking up at him from below. Statues have mattered very little to me my whole life, but today I started to despise them; there are a great many statues in Pasto to pull down, we could do it — the doctor proposed excitedly — it always seemed outrageous to me that such a cretin of Liberty should have it his own way all these years, his great big lie rides through every village on horseback, every park, every town square, inside every brick — it should be buried in Pasto cemetery. What good does it do to broadcast that truth? I don’t know, but I’m not going to stop my float from fulfilling its destiny: it is my hope, do you see? So — Puelles said, apropos of nothing, as if in response — you don’t believe they torture our lot? Of course, the doctor said — it seemed they had been talking about torture for ages — and I’m sure, what’s more, that you people torture the others, and torture comes and torture goes, and generations pass by. The doctor tried to get up again, a hand stopped him, he sat down — what was Professor Arcaín Chivo doing there? Since when?