In Evil Hour (12 page)

“There's a secret life,” he started to say, without managing any conclusion. “Seriously, Father, I don't see what can be done.”

The priest sat down at his desk. “You ought to know,” he said. “After all, it's nothing new to you.” He covered the room with a vague look and said in a different tone:

“It would be a matter of doing something before Sunday.”

“Today's Thursday.” The mayor was precise.

“I'm aware of the time,” the priest replied. And he added with a hidden impulse, “But maybe it's not too late for you to fulfill your duties.”

The mayor tried to twist the neck of the bottle. Father Ángel watched him go from one side of the room to the other, serious and slim, with no sign of physical aging, and he felt a definite sense of inferiority.

“As you can see,” he stated, “it's not a question of anything exceptional.”

It struck eleven in the belfry. The mayor waited until the last resonance had dissolved and then he leaned toward the priest, his hands resting on the desk. His face had the same repressed anxiety that his voice was to reveal.

“Look at one thing, Father,” he began. “The town is calm, the people are beginning to have confidence in the authorities. Any show of force at this time would be too big a risk for something of such small importance.”

Father Ángel approved with his head. He tried to explain:

“I'm referring, in a general way, to certain means of authority.”

“In any case,” the mayor went on without changing his stance, “I'm taking the circumstances into consideration. You know, I have six policemen here locked up in the barracks, drawing a salary without doing anything. I haven't been able to get them replaced.”

“I know that,” Father Ángel said. “I'm not blaming you for anything.”

“Actually,” the mayor went on vehemently, indifferent to interruptions, “It's no secret to anybody that three of them are common criminals, released from jail and disguised as policemen. The way things are, I'm not going to run the risk of putting them out on the streets hunting ghosts.”

Father Ángel opened his arms.

“Of course, of course,” he acknowledged decisively. “That, naturally, is out of the question. But why not have recourse, for example, to the good citizens?”

The mayor stretched, drinking from the bottle with listless swallows. His chest and back were soaked in sweat. He said:

“The good citizens, as you call them, are dying with laughter over the lampoons.”

“Not all of them.”

“Besides, it's no good alarming people over something that in the long run isn't that important. Frankly, Father,” he ended good-humoredly, “until tonight it hadn't occurred to me to think that you and I would have anything to do with this mess.”

Father Ángel assumed a maternal attitude. “Up to a certain point, yes,” he replied, and began a laborious justification employing ripened paragraphs from the sermon he had been ordering mentally since the day before at lunch with the widow Asís.

“It's a question, if one might say so”—he came to the high point—“of a case of terrorism in the moral order.”

The mayor gave an open smile. “Fine, fine,” he almost interrupted him. “And it's not a case of putting philosophy onto the pieces of paper, Father.” Leaving the unfinished bottle on the desk, he acceded in his most agreeable manner:

“If you put things to me this way, we'll have to see what can be done.”

Father Ángel thanked him. It wasn't at all pleasant, as he revealed, to go up into the pulpit on Sunday with a worry like that. The mayor had tried to understand him. But he realized that it was getting late and he was making a night owl out of the curate.

T
HE DRUM ROLL
reappeared like a specter out of the past. It burst forth in front of the poolroom at ten o'clock in the morning and held the town balancing on the very center of its gravity until the three energetic warnings were drummed at the end and anxiety was reestablished.

“Death!” exclaimed the widow Montiel, seeing doors and windows open and people pour out into the square from everywhere. “Death has come!”

Having recovered from her initial impression, she opened the balcony curtains and observed the tumult around the policeman who was preparing to read the decree. There was in the square a silence too great for the voice of the crier. In spite of the attention with which she tried to listen, the widow Montiel was only able to understand two words.

Nobody in the house could tell her what it was about.
The decree had been read with the same authoritarian ritual as always; a new order reigned in the world and she could find no one who had understood it. The cook was alarmed at her paleness.

“What was the decree about?”

“That's what I'm trying to find out, but nobody knows anything. Of course,” the widow added, “ever since the world has been the world, no decree has ever brought any good.”

Then the cook went out into the street and came back with the details. Starting that night and until the causes that motivated it had ceased, a curfew was reestablished. No one could go out onto the streets after eight o'clock and until five in the morning without a pass signed and stamped by the mayor. The police had orders to call Halt three times at anyone they found on the street and if they were not obeyed, they had orders to shoot. The mayor would organize patrols of civilians, appointed by him, to collaborate with the police in the nocturnal vigil.

Biting her nails, the widow Montiel asked what the reasons for the measure were.

“They didn't spell it out in the decree,” the cook answered, “but everybody says it's the lampoons.”

“My heart told me so,” the terrified widow said. “Death is feeding on this town.”

She sent for Mr. Carmichael. Obeying a force more ancient and deep-rooted than an impulse, she ordered taken from the storeroom and brought to the bedroom the leather trunk with copper rivets that José Montiel had bought for his only trip, one year before he died. Out of the closet she took some clothing, underwear, and shoes, and put everything neatly in the bottom. As she did it, she began to get the feeling of absolute repose that she had dreamed of so many times, imagining herself far away from
that town and that house, in a room with a stove and a small terrace with boxes where she grew oregano, where only she had the right to remember José Montiel, and where her only worry would be to wait for Monday afternoons to read the letters from her daughters.

She had only put in clothing that was indispensable; the leather case with the scissors, the adhesive tape, and the little bottle of iodine and sewing things; and then the shoe box with her rosary and prayerbooks, and she was already tormented by the idea that she was taking more things than God could pardon her for. Then she put the plaster Saint Raphael into a stocking, arranged it carefully among her clothes, and locked the trunk.

When Mr. Carmichael arrived he found her wearing her most modest attire. That day, like a promissory sign, Mr. Carmichael wasn't carrying his umbrella. But the widow didn't notice. From her pocket she took out all the keys of the house, each with its identification typed on a piece of cardboard, and gave them to him, saying:

“Into your hands I place the sinful world of José Montiel. Do with it whatever you feel like doing.”

Mr. Carmichael had feared that moment for a long time.

“You mean,” he struggled to say, “that you want to go off somewhere while all these things are happening.”

The widow answered him with a calm voice, but quite decisively:

“I'm going away forever.”

Mr. Carmichael, without showing his alarm, gave her a synthesis of the situation. José Montiel's estate had not been settled. Many of the possessions acquired in any old way and without time to observe formalities had an uncertain legal status. Until order could be put into that chaotic fortune, of which José Montiel himself didn't even have the vaguest notion in his last years, it would be impossible to
settle the inheritance. The oldest son, in his consular post in Germany, and her two daughers, fascinated by the delirious fleshpots of Paris, would have to return or give someone power of attorney in order to evaluate their rights. Until then nothing could be sold.

The momentary illumination of the labyrinth where she had been lost for two years didn't move the widow Montiel that time.

“It doesn't matter,” she insisted. “My children are happy in Europe and want nothing to do with this country of savages, as they call it. If you want, Mr. Carmichael, make a single bundle out of everything you find in this house and throw it to the hogs.”

Mr. Carmichael didn't contradict her. With the pretense that, in any case, certain things had to be prepared for the trip, he went for the doctor.

“Now we'll see what your patriotism is made of, Guardiola.”

The barber and the group of men chatting in the barbershop recognized the mayor before they saw him at the door. “And you people too,” he went on, pointing to the two youngest. “Tonight you'll have the rifles you've wanted so much; let's see if you're rotten enough to turn them against us.” It was impossible to mistake the cordial tone of his words.

“A broom would be better,” the barber answered. “For hunting witches there's no better rifle than a broom.”

He didn't even look at him. He was shaving the neck of the first customer of the morning, and he wasn't taking the mayor seriously. Only when he saw him checking on who in the group were reservists and could therefore handle a rifle did the barber understand that, indeed, he was one of the chosen.

“Is it true, Lieutenant, that you're going to involve us in this mess?” he asked.

“Oh, shit,” the mayor answered. “You spend your lives whispering for a rifle and now that you've got one, you can't believe it.”

He stopped in front of the barber, from where he could dominate the whole group in the mirror. “Seriously,” he said, shifting to an authoritarian tone. “This afternoon at six, first-class reservists will report to the barracks.” The barber faced him through the mirror.

“What if I come down with pneumonia?” he asked.

“We'll cure you in jail,” the mayor answered.

The phonograph in the poolroom was twisting out a sentimental bolero. The place was empty, but on some tables there were bottles and half-finished glasses.

“Now, for sure,” Don Roque said, seeing the mayor enter, “it really is a mess. We'll have to close at seven.”

The mayor went straight to the back of the room, where the card tables were also deserted. He opened the door to the toilet, looked into the storeroom, and then came back to the bar. Passing by the pool table, he unexpectedly lifted the cloth that covered it, saying:

“All right, stop being jackasses.”

Two boys came out from under the table, shaking the dust off their pants. One of them was pale. The other, younger, had his ears all red. The mayor pushed them gently toward the tables at the entrance.

“So you already know,” he told them. “Six o'clock at the barracks.”

Don Roque stayed behind the counter.

“With this mess,” he said, “a person will have to turn to smuggling.”

“It's just for two or three days,” the mayor said.

The manager of the movie theater caught up to him on
the corner. “This is all I needed,” he shouted. “After twelve bells, one bugle.” The mayor patted him on the shoulder and tried to continue on.

“I'm going to expropriate you,” he said.

“You can't,” the manager said. “The movies aren't a public service.”

“In a state of siege,” the mayor said, “even the movies can be declared a public service.”

Only then did he stop smiling. He ran up the barracks stairs two steps at a time and when he got to the second floor he opened his arms and laughed again.

“Shit!” he exclaimed. “You too?”

Collapsed in a folding chair, with the insouciance of an Oriental monarch, was the circus impresario. He was ecstatically smoking a sea dog's pipe. As if it were he who was in his own home, he signaled the mayor to sit down.

“Let's talk business, Lieutenant.”

The mayor pulled over a chair and sat down opposite him. Holding the pipe in the hand paved with colored stones, the impresario made an enigmatic sign to him.

“Can we speak with absolute frankness?”

The mayor nodded that he could.

“I knew it yesterday when I saw you shaving,” the impresario said. “Well—I'm accustomed to knowing people, and I know that this curfew, for you …”

The mayor was examining him with a definite aim at amusement.

“For me, on the other hand, having paid for the installation and having to feed seventeen people and nine animals, it's simply a disaster.”

“So?”

“I propose,” the impresario replied, “that you set the curfew for eleven o'clock and we'll split the profits from the evening performance.”

The mayor kept on smiling, without changing his position in the chair.

“I suppose,” he said, “that it wasn't hard for you to find someone in town who said I'm a thief.”

“It's a legitimate business deal,” the impresario protested.

He didn't notice at what moment the mayor took on a serious expression.

“We'll talk about it Monday,” the lieutenant said in an imprecise way.

“By Monday I'll have hocked my very hide,” the impresario replied. “We're oh so poor.”

The mayor took him to the stairs, patting him softly on the shoulder. “You don't have to tell me,” he said. “I know all about the business.” Once by the stairs, he said in a consoling tone:

“Send Casandra to me tonight.”

The impresario tried to turn around, but the hand on his shoulder exercised a decided pressure.

“Of course,” he said. “That's deducted.”

“Send her,” the mayor insisted, “and we'll talk tomorrow.”

Mr. Benjamín pushed the screen door with the tips of his fingers, but he didn't go into the house. He exclaimed with a secret exasperation:

“The windows, Nora.”

Nora Jacob—mature and large—with her hair cut like a man's, was lying in front of the electric fan in the half-dark living room. She was waiting for Mr. Benjamín for lunch. On hearing the call, she got up laboriously and opened the four windows to the street. A gush of heat entered the room, tiled with the same angular peacock indefinitely repeated, and its furniture covered with flowered
cloth. Every detail bespoke a poor luxury.

“What's true,” she asked, “in what people are saying?”

“They're saying so many things.”

“About the widow Montiel.” Nora Jacob was more precise. “They're going around saying that she's gone crazy.”

“I think she's been crazy for some time now,” Mr. Benjamín said. And he added with a certain disillusion, “That's how it is: this morning she tried to jump off her balcony.”

The table, completely visible from the street, was set with a place at either end. “God's punishment,” said Nora Jacob, clapping her hands for lunch to be served. She brought the fan into the dining room.

“The house has been full of people ever since this morning,” Mr. Benjamín said.

“It's a good chance to see the inside,” replied Nora Jacob.

A black girl, her head full of red bows, brought the steaming soup to the table. The smell of chicken invaded the dining room and the temperature became intolerable. Mr. Benjamín tucked his napkin into his collar, saying: “Your health.” He tried to drink from the scalding spoon.

“Blow on it, don't be a fool,” she said impatiently. “Besides, you've got to take your jacket off. Your scruples about not coming into the house with the windows closed is going to make us die of the heat.”

“It's more indispensable than ever now,” he said. “No one will be able to say that he hasn't seen from the street every move I make when I'm in your house.”

She opened up her splendid orthopedic smile, with sealing-wax gums. “Don't be ridiculous,” she exclaimed. “As far as I'm concerned, they can say whatever they want.” When she was able to drink the soup, she went on talking during the pauses.

“I might be worried, true, about what they'd say about
Mónica,” she concluded, referring to her fifteen-year-old daughter, who hadn't been home for vacation ever since she'd gone away to school for the first time. “But they can't say anything about me that everybody doesn't already know.”

Mr. Benjamín didn't give her his usual look of disapproval. They drank their soup in silence, separated by the six feet of the table, the shortest distance he would ever permit, especially in public. When she had been away at school, twenty years before, he would write her long and conventional letters, which she answered with passionate notes. During a vacation, at a picnic, Néstor Jacob, completely drunk, had dragged her into a corner of the corral by the hair and declared to her without alternatives: “If you don't marry me I'll shoot you.” They got married at the end of her vacation. Ten years later they'd separated.

“In any case,” Mr. Benjamín said, “there's no reason to stimulate people's imaginations with closed doors.”

He stood up when he'd finished his coffee. “I'm going,” he said. “Mina must be desperate.” From the door, putting on his hat, he exclaimed:

“This house is burning up.”

“That's what I've been telling you,” she said.

She waited until from the last window she saw him take his leave with a kind of blessing. Then she brought the fan into the bedroom, closed the door, and got completely undressed. Finally, as on every day after lunch, she went into the adjoining bathroom and sat on the toilet, alone with her secret.