“I forgot what day it was today,” the doctor said.
“Shall we go? Will you come with me?”
“Where to?”
“To defend my honour. I’m going to Tulio Abril’s — the maestro. Do you know him?”
Maestro Tulio Abril was one of the most famous craftsmen in Pasto, who devoted his energy every year to the construction of a carnival float that would compete in the competitions on January 6. Doctor Proceso remembered him: a short, robust man who must be going on seventy and who, one midnight ten years ago, turned up at his house to request his services; he’d brought his wife, Zulia Iscuandé, lying on a handcart: her ninth labour had become complicated in the hands of a midwife. Doctor Proceso managed to save Zulia and the baby. Out of gratitude, Zulia Iscuandé baptised the newborn with the doctor’s names: “Justo Pastor,” adding a third—“Salvador.”
“Let’s go,” the doctor said. He wanted to know how honour was saved.
Now on Avenida de los Estudiantes they saw the truck belonging to Pasto’s firefighters go by like a reddish meteorite, firemen aloft like drunken acrobats, not off to put out fires and dam floods but taking part in the fiesta: they shot great jets of water from the hose, straight at a dense knot of revellers dancing up on the sloping parapet around the Obelisk, the jets denser still, like blows, pushing them to the ground, sweeping them along amid shrieks of delight; one of these white jets, worse than a clout, hit the back of Furibundo Pita’s jeep, instantly drowning the six hens he was carrying; Don Furibundo wanted to brake, but thought better of it. “I’ll charge my hens to the firefighters,” he said. “They’ll pay me for every last feather, dammit,” and he roared with colossal laughter and accelerated, honking at all and sundry.
They left the avenue heading for Chachagüí, near the airport, but soon abandoned the main highway and went up a dirt road, bordered by large brick houses, submerged in mist, facing into the void. Half-dressed children were playing in the mud, celebrating Innocents’ Day in their own way: they threw lumps of sludge in each other’s faces, ran off, returned to the fray. Furibundo Pita’s jeep did not escape the onslaught: it was hard to make out the track through the filthy windscreen; Don Furibundo hurled curses out the window; honked incessantly; on one of the bends he had to get out to clean the windscreen: that was when the children, a dozen or more, surrounded them, perplexed. “It’s him,” they shouted, “it’s really him.” No-one threw any more mud; they looked at Don Furibundo in panicked silence. And when Furibundo set off again they ran behind, escorting them; they managed to catch up to the driver’s window, pointing at him and shouting: “It’s him, it’s really him.”
The doctor looked over at Furibundo enquiringly, but he pretended not to see him. Who does this man remind me of? — the doctor wondered, intrigued, and it was in that instant that Furibundo Pita, with his sharp face, dark sunken eyes, prominent cheekbones, heavy brows, curly hair, slight body — sharp, narrow shoulders and bony knees — reminded him of someone or of the likeness of someone very close to him, very well known, but who? He could not guess.
It began to drizzle.
Sticking his narrow head far out of his window, Don Furibundo asked a peasant approaching on his donkey the whereabouts of Maestro Abril’s workshop. “It’s possible Tulio’s still there behind the church,” the peasant answered, open-mouthed in surprise at encountering Furibundo Pita’s unmistakeable face before him. The peasant’s eyes, his voice, seemed wreathed in unfathomable cunning. Don Furibundo accelerated without saying thank you, leaving behind the leathery, smiling face that scoffed covertly, who knows about whom, or why, the doctor mused.
They went up the muddy track until they reached the top of the hill, the children who had followed them now outdistanced, and began to descend, slipping in the mire, honking loudly at every bend. And thus they burst, hooting, onto a lane as slippery as glass, with dilapidated houses set around a circular plaza, where a tiny church stood.
“I won’t believe it till I see it,” Don Furibundo said.
Doctor Proceso was beginning to regret the riotous outing. He no longer felt any curiosity to discover his neighbour’s disputes over honour. How did I end up here, he wondered, shouldn’t I be celebrating Floridita’s birthday?
Beneath the increasingly heavy drizzle, which seemed never-ending there, on one side of the church, they could just make out Maestro Abril’s workshop, looking as though it was huddled in a nest of fog on the narrow street. Don Furibundo stopped the jeep beside the large metal door, slick with rain, almost a mirror; through a hole in the middle, where a chain and an old padlock stuck out, they thought a face peeped for a moment, an almost wooden-looking face that saw them and vanished. Don Furibundo gave two, three, four honks on his horn, but everything remained as it was, no-one came.
In that brief time, the children caught up with them, running, but without shouting, without a sound.
The doctor and Furibundo got out.
On either side of the door was a long, crumbling wall that surrounded the workshop where Maestro Abril worked. And protruding above the wall, jagged against the sky, the formidable shrouded skeleton of a carnival float could be made out, its vague silhouette, the mystery Maestro Abril had been assembling, step by step, for months, in order to compete in the procession of floats on January 6. Only the monumental proportions of the form could be seen, not its spirit, it was covered with huge tarpaulins that protected it from rain and curious glances. Every so often, from inside, they could hear the hammering of labourers hard at work, occasional voices or laughter, a woman’s complaints. Maestro Abril worked alongside his inseparable comrade Martín Umbría — also a master craftsman — and was helped by Zulia Iscuandé, their sons, daughters in-law and grandchildren, and others from the neighbourhood, sporadic apprentices who put their faith in the maestro’s imagination year after year. Many years earlier, Tulio Abril had won, and this was a matter of sufficient pride to encourage him to build floats every subsequent year of his life. He invested all his time and savings in the construction of the yearly float, and went on building it in sickness and in health, with unassailable determination; from time to time Zulia Iscuandé threatened to leave him — because the paltry and rigged prizes handed out by the government did not repay even half the investment — nevertheless, after the annual arguments, the domestic setbacks, no-one was interested in anything but the contest on January 6, and went on every year underpinning what they had dreamed up: another carnival float. It was the same for the rest of the artisans, alone or in company, alive or dead — the doctor mused — because for time immemorial, even from beyond the grave, they would go on competing, making floats for a carnival of the dead — he thought, as he observed the bare bones of the half-built float, bandaged in coloured cloths.
He regained his curiosity when he heard Furibundo Pita using the pad-lock to pound on the door.
The voices inside stopped talking.
“It’s Arcángel de los Ríos,” Don Furibundo said. “I need to see Maestro Abril.”
The silence continued, then came more pounding with the padlock.
“Get Maestro Abril,” Don Furibundo reiterated.
The drizzle got heavier. At the summit of Galeras a band of fog, rough with grainy sleet, seemed to start to fall.
“Open up, you pricks, it’s Don Furibundo Pita himself,” Don Furibundo Pita himself shouted in the end.
“It is him,” the children confirmed, in unison. “It really is.”
Don Furibundo rounded on the children, who retreated, startled; even so, like the peasant on his donkey, they harboured a dark, biting mockery. Clearly — the doctor realized — that underlying jeer reminded Furibundo Pita of something that had reached his ears, some gossip: news about the spirit of the float Maestro Abril was preparing. Don Furibundo was about to knock again when a strong hand poked out through the hole in the door, grabbed the chain and padlock and opened up without hesitation; the door creaked on its hinges; on the other side, Maestro Tulio Abril appeared, bushy-moustached, as short as Don Furibundo, but feisty and holding himself erect. He was wearing overalls, had a dark scarf around his head, and held what looked like the door of a jeep, six times larger than life, made from papier mâché.