About seven, as the sun plucks the first rays off Comandante Pedernera’s bronze kepi, the La Capital truck from Rosario via Fuguet and the La Nación truck from Buenos Aires pull in at opposite ends of town. The first drops off the pile of newspapers outside the Casaricos’, the other at the hallway of the Dupuys, who will distribute it to whoever has ordered it. Fifteen minutes later the Central Alcorta bus arrives from its namesake, bound for Elordi and Toro Mocho; at most one dozy passenger gets off and steers their elongated shadow towards the houses, if they’re from town, or as far as a bench in the square to wait for the shops or offices to open if they aren’t.
By half-past seven no dew is left, except at the bases of the thickest patches of weeds, and in the sun-warmed treetops the cicadas start up their tentative drone. Until then the town has just been stretching and yawning, but now it wakes up properly. Lots of people on foot, a few cars, the odd motorcycle fill the streets; a couple of weeks later and there’ll be more activity because the start of classes will add the gleaming white of school pinafores to the bright light of day. The two banks and two service stations open, a few businesses and all the public offices. A handful of cars from neighbouring towns pull up outside the Courts, the police headquarters or the all-purpose building that houses the Inland Revenue, the Civil Registry and the Justice of the Peace’s Office. The traffic is fluid because the number of people or vehicles is never large enough for queues or traffic jams to form. Delivery trucks arrive from neighbouring towns and Malihuel sends them its own in return, with the logo of the globe and the question “What kind of delicious pasta shall we eat today?” painted on the grooved metal sides of the trucks. An hour later all the shops are open, the cemetery, the telephone exchange — still called Entel in those days — and the Post Office. This is also the time when the hotel kitchens and dining rooms come to life, with tourists and townsfolk wanting an early breakfast to make the most of the day, which promises to be a bright one: the Malihuel Grand Hotel and the Las Delicias on the square, the Los Tocayos hotel-restaurant and above all the Lagoon Hotel, towards which the trucks and vans that have finished their deliveries in the Colonia and the town advance, along the causeway across the glittering water. The stationmaster opens up his office and waits for the freight train to pass through, and at the now abandoned power plant the nightwatchman sets off for home and sleep, after a few matés with the two daytime operators.
By around nine o’clock, when the metallic sawing of the cicadas thickens the air, the heat really has begun to kick in. The Clarín van arrives and drops off its bale of newspapers — the bulkiest — outside the kiosk-cum-photocopier’s on the corner opposite the Courts. Half-an-hour later, the mail van leaves one canvas sack on the opposite corner and picks up another. By that time the bicycle traffic is all children, who also bring the playground in the square to life. Today being the last Friday of Carnival, many of them are equipped with squeezy bottles and water bombs. In kitchens the length and breadth of town, mothers are washing up the breakfast things and beginning to fill polystyrene coolers with pop, sandwiches, tomatoes and hard-boiled eggs for a day out at the lagoon. On the basketball and tennis courts of the Yacht Club the chairman switches the swags of coloured light bulbs on and off to make sure everything’s in working order for the dance that night. A patrol car carrying arrests from other towns pulls up around the back of the police headquarters and toots its horn outside the jailhouse gates. Behind it, while it waits, an orange Chevy coupé chugs and lurches beetle-like down the tarmacked street, turns right at the corner and, after two more gruelling blocks, stops outside a house with a slate-inlaid façade overlooking the square. A figure gets out on the passenger side, shades his eyes from the glare of the sun with one hand and opens the door, without a key. Before going inside he turns round and waves to the occupants of the car, one of whom is in the process of clambering from the back into the recently vacated front seat. The car pulls off with the door still open and one foot sticking out, and over the noise of the engine comes a confusion of intermingled laughter and swearing. The two doors — the car’s and the house’s — slam shut at the same instant.
It’s noon, and first the Banco Provincia then the Banco Nación close their doors to the public until the following Monday. An hour later the public offices will do the same; only the post office and the telephone exchange will reopen after siesta. This is the time when the relay stations in Rosario start broadcasting, and in the kitchens of those who have lunch at home television screens flicker into life to accompany the meal with their grey silhouettes and almost articulate static crackle. It’s still two years before colour TV and ten before the arrival of cable will lend some meaning — other than ostentation — to owning one. At other houses husbands and fathers park outside the door and get out to change, while the family loads up the car and youngsters riot in the back seat. After tactical stops at the butcher’s and the baker’s, they will join the swollen caravan of cars and even trucks from every town in this and neighbouring counties which converges on the causeway and advances single-file towards the lagoon’s two beach resorts. At 1.15 pm, when the Los Ranqueles coach bound for Rosario goes past, it will be fifteen minutes since the DRMCO grader paving the Belgrano Street section between Revoredo and Martínez has stopped work; its two operators take a break from the double reflection of sun and hot tar under the insubstantial shade of the olive trees that line the as yet non-existent commercial high school. Little by little the early din of Malihuel’s day dies away, except on the island in the lagoon, where the smoke of dozens of barbecues and the cries of children playing in the water or at Carnival amidst tables and cars rises heavenwards. In the dining room of the Lagoon Hotel most of the waiters wait patiently by the counter; only at night will things liven up.
By three in the afternoon it’s as if a flash plague had done away with all the inhabitants. The last bus from Central Alcorta bound for Toro Mocho has just passed through without stopping, and the streets are devoid of people and vehicles. They’re filled entirely by the sun, the heat and the thunderous singing of the cicadas, the only movement that of a rhinoceros bug lurching over the red-hot sand. The shade, which has been retreating over the course of the day, now crouches at the foot of the trees and in the interiors of the houses, holed up behind closed shutters. All life and movement has retreated to them — in one, a standing fan swings from one side to the other, its breath strafing bodies sprawled on sheets, separated to prevent sweating at the points of contact; in another one, glued together from head to toe, grunting and groaning in chorus to the creaking of the bed; on a cool-tiled patio children play their silent siesta games among the potted plants; in a darkened kitchen the doñas who can’t sleep for the heat switch on the television in resignation and wait for the half-past soap.