In Evil Hour (5 page)

Leaning on her parasol, Adalgisa Montoya, the oldest of the three, was more explicit:

“We Catholic Dames have decided to intervene in the matter.”

Father Ángel reflected for a few seconds. Rebeca Asís took a deep breath, and the priest wondered how that woman could exhale such a hot smell. She was splendid and floral, possessing a dazzling whiteness and passionate health. The priest spoke, his gaze fixed on an indefinite point.

“My feeling,” he said, “is that we shouldn't pay any attention to the voice of scandal. We should place ourselves above such things and go on observing God's law as we have done up to now.”

Adalgisa Montoya approved with a movement of her head. But the others didn't agree: it seemed to them that “this calamity can bring fatal consequences in the long run.” At that moment the loudspeaker at the movie theater coughed. Father Ángel slapped his forehead. “Excuse me,” he said, while he searched in the drawer for the Catholic censorship list.

“What are they showing?”

“
Pirates of Space
,” said Rebeca Asís. “It's a war picture.”

Father Ángel looked for it in the alphabetical listing, muttering fragmentary titles while he ran his index finger over the long classified list. He stopped to turn the page.

“
Pirates of Space
.”

He was running his finger horizontally, looking for the moral classification, when he heard the voice of the manager instead of the expected record, announcing the cancellation of the performance because of bad weather. One of the women explained that the manager had made that decision in view of the fact that the public demanded its money back if rain interrupted the movie before it was half over.

“Too bad,” Father Ángel said. “It was approved for all.”

He closed the notebook and continued:

“As I was saying, this is an observant town. Nineteen years ago, when they assigned me to the parish, there were eleven cases of public concubinage among the important families. Today there is only one left and I hope for a short time only.”

“It's not for us,” Rebeca Asís said. “But these poor people …”

“There's no cause for worry,” the priest went on, indifferent to the interruption. “One has to remember how much the town has changed. In those days a Russian ballerina gave a show for men only in the cockpit and at the end she auctioned off everything she was wearing.”

Adalgisa Montoya interrupted him.

“That's just the way it was,” she said.

Indeed, she remembered the scandal as it had been told to her: when the dancer was completely naked, an old man began to shout from the stands, went up to the top bench, and urinated all over the audience. They'd told her that the rest of the men, following his example, had ended up urinating on each other in the midst of maddening shouts.

“Now,” the priest went on, “it's been proven that this is the most observant town in the whole apostolic prefecture.”

He elaborated his thesis. He referred to some difficult instances in his struggle against the debilities and weaknesses of the human species, until the Catholic Dames stopped paying attention, overwhelmed by the heat. Rebeca Asís unfolded her fan again, and then Father Ángel discovered the source of her fragrance. The sandalwood odor crystallized in the drowsiness of the room. The priest drew the handkerchief out of his sleeve and brought it to his nose so as not to sneeze.

“At the same time,” he continued, “our church is the
poorest in the apostolic prefecture. The bells are cracked and the naves are full of mice, because my life has been used up imposing moral standards and good habits.”

He unbuttoned his collar. “Any young man can do the rude labor,” he said, standing up. “On the other hand, one needs the tenacity of many years and age-old experience to rebuild morals.” Rebeca Asís raised her transparent hand, with its wedding band topped by a ring with emeralds.

“For that very reason,” she said. “We thought that with these lampoons, all your work might be lost.”

The only woman who had remained silent until then took advantage of the pause to intervene.

“Besides, we thought that the country is recuperating and that this present calamity might cause trouble.”

Father Ángel took a fan out of the closet and began to fan himself parsimoniously.

“One thing has nothing to do with the other,” he said. “We've gone through a difficult political moment, but family morals have been maintained intact.”

He stood up before the three women. “Within a few years I shall go tell the apostolic prefecture: I leave you that exemplary town. Now all that's needed is for you to send a young and active fellow to build the best church in the prefecture.”

He gave a languid bow and exclaimed:

“Then I will go to die in peace in the courtyard of my ancestors.”

The Dames protested. Adalgisa Montoya expressed the general thought:

“This is like your own town, Father. And we want you to stay here until the last moment.”

“If it's a question of building a new church,” Rebeca Asís said, “we can start the campaign tomorrow.”

“All in good time,” Father Ángel replied.

Then, in a different tone, he added: “As for now, I don't want to grow old at the head of any parish. I don't want to happen to me what happened to meek Antonio Isabel del Santísimo Sacramento del Altar Castañeda y Montero, who informed the bishop that a rain of dead birds was falling in his parish. The investigator sent by the bishop found him in the main square, playing cops and robbers with the children.”

The Dames expressed their perplexity.

“Who was he?”

“The curate who succeeded me in Macondo,” Father Ángel said. “He was one hundred years old.”

T
HE WINTER
, whose inclemency had been foreseen since the last days of September, implanted its rigor that weekend. The mayor spent Sunday chewing analgesic tablets in his hammock while the river overflowed its banks and damaged the lower parts of town.

During the first letup in the rain, on Monday at dawn, the town needed several hours to recover. The poolroom and the barbershop opened early, but most of the houses remained shut up until eleven o'clock. Mr. Carmichael was the first to have the opportunity to shudder at the spectacle of men carrying their houses to higher ground. Bustling groups had dug up pilings and were transferring intact the fragile habitations of wattle walls and palm roofs.

Taking refuge under the eaves of the barbershop, his umbrella open, Mr. Carmichael was contemplating the laborious maneuvers when the barber drew him out of his abstraction.

“They should have waited for it to clear,” the barber said.

“It won't clear for two days,” said Mr. Carmichael, and he shut his umbrella. “My corns tell me.”

The men carrying the houses, sunk in the mud up to their ankles, passed by, bumping into the walls of the barbershop. Mr. Carmichael saw the tumble-down insides through the window, a bedroom completely despoiled of its intimacy, and he felt invaded by a sense of disaster.

It seemed like six in the morning, but his stomach told him that it was going on twelve. Moisés the Syrian invited him to sit in his shop until the rain passed. Mr. Carmichael reiterated his prediction that it wouldn't clear for the next forty-eight hours. He hesitated before leaping onto the boardwalk of the next building. A group of boys who were playing war threw a mud ball that splattered on the wall a few feet from his newly pressed pants. Elías the Syrian came out of his shop with a broom in his hand, threatening the boys in an algebra of Arabic and Castilian.

The boys leaped merrily.

“Dumb Turk, go to work.”

Mr. Carmichael saw that his clothing was intact. Then he closed his umbrella and went into the barbershop, directly to the chair.

“I always said that you were a prudent man,” the barber said.

He tied a towel around his neck. Mr. Carmichael breathed in the smell of lavender water, which produced the same upset in him as the glacial vapors of the dentist's office. The barber began by trimming the curly hair on the back of his neck. Impatient, Mr. Carmichael looked around for something to read.

“Don't you have any newspapers?”

The barber answered without pausing at his work.

“The only newspapers left in the country are the official ones and they won't enter this establishment as long as I'm alive.”

Mr. Carmichael satisfied himself with contemplating his wing-tipped shoes until the barber asked about the widow Montiel. He'd come from her place. He'd been the administrator of her affairs ever since the death of Don Chepe Montiel, whose bookkeeper he'd been for many years.

“She's there,” he said.

“A person goes on killing himself,” the barber said as if talking to himself, “and there she is all alone with a piece of land you couldn't cross in five days on horseback. She must own some ten towns.”

“Three,” Mr. Carmichael said. And he added with conviction: “She's the finest woman in all the world.”

The barber went over to the counter to clean the comb. Mr. Carmichael saw his goat face reflected in the mirror and once more understood why he didn't respect him. The barber spoke, looking at the image.

“A fine business: my party gets in power, the police threaten my political opponents with death, and I buy up their land and livestock at a price I set myself.”

Mr. Carmichael lowered his head. The barber applied himself to cutting his hair again. “When the elections are over,” he concluded, “I own three towns, I've got no competition, and along the way I've managed to get the upper hand even if the government changes. All I can say is: It's the best business there is; even better than counterfeiting.”

“José Montiel was rich long before the political troubles started,” Mr. Carmichael said.

“Sitting in his drawers by the door of a rice bin,” the barber said. “The story goes that he put on his first pair of shoes at the age of nine.”

“And even if that were so,” Mr. Carmichael admitted,
“the widow had nothing to do with Montiel's business.”

“But she played the dummy,” the barber said.

Mr. Carmichael raised his head. He loosened the towel around his neck to let the circulation through. “That's why I've always preferred that my wife cut my hair,” he protested. “She doesn't charge me anything, and on top of that, she doesn't talk politics.” The barber pushed his head forward and continued working in silence. Sometimes he clicked his scissors in the air to let off an excess of virtuosity. Mr. Carmichael heard shouts from the street. He looked in the mirror: children and women were passing by the door with the furniture and utensils from the houses that were being carried. He commented with rancor:

“Misfortune is eating at us, and you people still with your political hatreds. The persecution's been over for a year and they still talk about the same thing.”

“The state of abandonment we're in is persecution too,” the barber said.

“But they don't beat us up,” Mr. Carmichael said.

“Abandoning us to God's mercy is another way of beating us up.”

Mr. Carmichael became exasperated.

“That's newspaper talk,” he said.

The barber remained silent. He worked up some lather in a mug and anointed the back of Mr. Carmichael's neck with the brush. “It's just that a person is busting with talk,” he apologized. “It isn't every day that we get an impartial man.”

“No man can help being impartial with eleven children to feed,” Mr. Carmichael said.

“Agreed,” said the barber.

He made the razor sing on the palm of his hand. He shaved the neck in silence, cleaning off the soap on his fingers and then cleaning his fingers on his pants. Finally
he rubbed a piece of alum on the back of the neck. He finished in silence.

While he was buttoning up his collar, Mr. Carmichael saw the notice nailed to the back wall:
Talking Politics Prohibited
. He brushed the pieces of hair from his shoulders, hung his umbrella over his arm, and pointing to the notice, asked:

“Why don't you take it down?”

“It doesn't apply to you,” the barber said. “We've already agreed that you're an impartial man.”

Mr. Carmichael didn't hesitate that time to leap onto the boardwalk. The barber watched him until he turned the corner, and then he grew ecstatic over the roiled and threatening river. It had stopped raining, but a heavy cloud hung motionless over the town. A short time before one o'clock Moisés the Syrian came in, lamenting that the hair was falling out of his skull and yet, on the other hand, it was growing on the back of his neck with extraordinary rapidity.

The Syrian had his hair cut every Monday. Ordinarily he would lower his head with a kind of fatalism and snore in Arabic while the barber talked to himself out loud. That Monday, however, he awoke with a start at the first question.

“Do you know who was just here?”

“Carmichael,” the Syrian said.

“Rotten old black Carmichael,” the barber confirmed as if he had spelled out the phrase. “I detest that kind of man.”

“Carmichael isn't a man,” Moisés the Syrian said. “He hasn't bought a pair of shoes in more than three years. But in politics he does what has to be done: he keeps books with his eyes closed.”

He settled his beard on his chin to snore again, but the barber planted himself in front of him with his arms folded, saying: “Tell me one thing, you shitty Turk: When all's said
and done, whose side are you on?” The Syrian answered, unflustered:

“Mine.”

“You're wrong,” the barber said. “You ought to at least keep in mind the four ribs they broke on your fellow countryman Elías's son on orders from Don Chepe Montiel.”

“Elías is all upset that his son turned out to be a politician,” the Syrian said. “But now the boy's having a grand time dancing in Brazil and Chepe Montiel is dead.”

Before leaving the room which was in disorder from his long nights of suffering, the mayor shaved the right side of his face, leaving the other side with its week-old beard. Then he put on a clean uniform, his patent leather boots, and went down to eat in the hotel, taking advantage of the pause in the rain.

There was no one in the dining room. The mayor made his way through the small tables for four and occupied the most discreet spot in the back of the room.

“Masks,” he called.

He was answered by a very young girl with a short tight dress and breasts like stones. The mayor ordered lunch without looking at her. On her way back to the kitchen the girl turned on the radio placed on a shelf at the end of the dining room. A news bulletin came on, with quotations from a speech given the night before by the president of the republic, and then a list of new items prohibited for import. The heat grew more intense as the announcer's voice filled the space. When the girl returned with the soup, the mayor was trying to check the heat by fanning himself with his cap.

“The radio makes me sweat too,” the girl said.

The mayor began to drink his soup. He'd always thought that that solitary hotel, sustained by occasional traveling salesmen, was a different place from the rest of the town.
Actually, it antedated the town. On its run-down wooden balcony, merchants who came from the interior to buy the rice harvest used to spend the night playing cards and waiting for the coolness of dawn in order to be able to sleep. Colonel Aureliano Buendía himself, on his way to Macondo to draw up the terms of surrender in the last civil war, had slept on that balcony one night during a time when there weren't any towns for many leagues around. It was the same building then, with wooden walls and a zinc roof, with the same dining room and the same cardboard partitions, except with no electricity or sanitary services. An old traveling salesman recounted that until the turn of the century there had been a collection of masks hanging in the dining room at the disposal of the customers, and that the masked guests took care of their needs in the courtyard in full view of everyone.

The mayor had to unbutton his collar in order to finish the soup. After the news bulletin there was a record with rhyming commercials. Then a sentimental bolero. A man with a mentholated voice, dying with love, has decided to travel around the world in pursuit of a woman. The mayor gave his attention to the room while he waited for the rest of his meal; he even saw two children with two chairs and a rocker pass in front of the hotel. Behind came two women and a man with pots and tubs and the rest of the furniture.

He went to the door, shouting:

“Where did you steal that junk?”

The women stopped. The man explained to him that they were transferring their house to higher ground. The mayor asked where they'd taken it and the man pointed toward the south with his hat:

“Up there, to a lot that Don Sabas rented us for thirty pesos.”

The mayor examined the furniture. A rocker that was
falling apart at the joints, broken pots: poor people's things. He reflected for an instant. Finally he said:

“Take those houses and all your goods to the vacant lot beside the cemetery.”

The man became confused.

“It's town land and it won't cost you anything,” the mayor said. “The town government gives it to you.”

Then, turning to the women, he added: “And tell Don Sabas that I send him a message not to be a highway robber.”

He finished his lunch without tasting the food. Then he lighted a cigarette. He lighted another with the butt and was thoughtful for a long time, resting his elbows on the table while the radio ground out sentimental boleros.

“What are you thinking about?” the girl asked, clearing away the empty plates.

The mayor didn't blink.

“Those poor people.”

He put on his cap and crossed the room. Turning around from the door, he said:

“We've got to make this town a decent sort of mess.”

A bloody dogfight interrupted his passage as he turned the corner. He saw a knot of backs and legs in a whirlwind of howls and then bared teeth and one dog dragging a limb, its tail between its legs. The mayor stepped to one side and went along the boardwalk toward the police barracks.

A woman was shouting in the lockup, while the guard was sleeping his siesta lying face down on a cot. The mayor kicked the leg of the cot. The guard awoke with a leap.

“Who's she?” the mayor asked.

The guard came to attention.

“The woman who was putting up the lampoons.”

The mayor broke out in curses against his subordinates. He wanted to know who'd brought the woman there and
under whose orders they'd put her in the lockup. The policemen gave an extravagant explanation.

“When did you lock her up?”

They had jailed her Saturday night.

“Well, she comes out and one of you goes in,” the mayor shouted. “That woman was asleep in the lockup and the whole town woke up papered.”

As soon as the heavy iron door was opened, a mature woman with pronounced bones and a bumptious bun held in place by a comb came shouting out of the cell.

“You can go to hell,” she said to the mayor.

The woman loosened the bun, shook her long, abundant hair several times, and went down the stairs like a stampede, shouting: “Whore, whore.” The mayor leaned over the railing and shouted with all the power of his voice, as if not only the woman and his men but the whole town were meant to hear him:

“And stop fucking me up with those damned papers.”

Although the drizzle persisted, Father Ángel went out to take his afternoon walk. It was still early for his appointment with the mayor, so he went to the flooded part of town. All he found was the corpse of a cat floating among the flowers.