"It was dark by then. Gabriel walked under the balconies and the eaves, dashing from beneath one balcony to the next, from the eaves of one house to the next, trying to stay as dry as possible. But it wasn't raining so hard anymore, and it was pleasant to breathe in the fresh, clean air, it was pleasant to walk through empty streets. 'I turned up my collar,' he said. 'I thought about eating my pandeyuca in two bites so I could put my hands in my pockets, but then I thought it could keep my hands warm since it was fresh from the oven. I was determined to have a good long walk, even if I gave myself pneumonia. It was just so quiet, Sara, I wasn't going to miss it.' It was simply a matter of walking cautiously, taking care not to slip on the paving stones, which were terrible when it rained, and he was focusing all his attention on that. And so, looking down at the ground and walking steadily forward like a horse with blinkers on, with a warm pandeyuca in the pocket of his jacket, he ended up at the plaza, among other reasons because all the streets in a small town like ours lead to the plaza, to such an extent one wonders why they bother giving it a name. Plaza de los Libertadores, the Duitama one's called, but no one in the history of the town has ever had to say the full name. The plaza is the plaza. That day it was all decorated for the recent holidays, images of the baby Jesus hanging on doors and balconies and leaning in the windows of the cafes. And Gabriel walked around the plaza looking in the shop windows and the cafe windows, and inside the cafes a few people were sheltering, most of them farm laborers freezing to death and smelling of wet ponchos. From one of those cafes, where there weren't any peasants but people in ties who worked in the town hall, someone called him, firmly but without raising his voice. It was Villarreal, Papa's friend.
"He asked him what he was doing out there in the rain, if he needed anything. He had his car around the corner, he said, he could give him a lift somewhere. 'He spoke to me so courteously that I immediately forgot the most incredible thing: that he'd called me by name, by my full name, having only heard it once, and only in passing.' But Villarreal was like that with everybody. When Gabriel explained that he was just out for a walk, that he liked strolling at night because there were never any people in the streets in Duitama, Villarreal seemed to understand completely, and he even began to recommend routes to him, not just in Duitama, but also in Tunja and in Soata and in the center of Bogota. He was an extremely cultured man who knew, or seemed to know, the history of every corner. They talked about the church that was still under construction, right there, on the other side of the plaza. 'A few days ago, on a Sunday, I went into the building site to see it from inside,' said Villarreal. 'If it works out as planned, it's going to be bellisima.' Gabriel liked the way he pronounced his double ls, that liquid sound that has been lost; no one pronounces their double ls like that anymore. And maybe it was because of those double ls, or maybe it was Villarreal's manners, but afterward, after they'd said good-bye, Gabriel carried on walking around the edge of the plaza under the eaves and the balconies and the colonial street lamps, which were lit though they didn't cast any light, and he crossed the road and looked around to make sure no one could see him. It was absurd, because going into a building site shouldn't be illegal. 'But when I thought that, it was already too late, I was already inside. And I don't regret it, Sara, I'm not sorry. The nave of a cathedral under construction is a staggering thing to see.'
"He was sheltered by immense walls, but it was colder than outside. It was the dampness of the cement, of course, it was cold cement in his nostrils when he took a deep breath. Near the altar, or near the place where the altar would be, there were two piles of sand as high as a man and a smaller one of bricks, and beside them was the mixer. By the door side were stones, beams, more stones and more beams. The rest was scaffolding, scaffolding everywhere, a seamless monster that went right round the nave and rose up to the windows without their stained glass. There inside, it was as if he'd become color-blind. All was gray and black. And then there was the silence, such perfect silence that Gabriel held back an urge to shout to see if a nave under construction had an echo. 'I felt good,' he told me later. 'I felt calm for the first time in days. Almost blind and almost deaf, that's how I felt, and it was a kind of serenity, as if someone had forgiven me.' He wanted to sit down, but the ground was wet, there were buckets and trowels all over the place, there was unmixed cement and sand, and from one corner came the smell of urine. So he stood. At that moment he remembered the pandeyuca, took it out, pulled off a couple of threads that had stuck to it from his pocket, and began to chew.
"It was cold by then, of course, but it tasted good. Gabriel ate slowly, taking small unhurried bites, trying with all his might not to think about old Konrad's death but about anything else at all, about the taste of cassava and cheese, for example, about the smell of the cathedral cement, about the arrangement of the pews when they put them in, about the pulpit and the priest, about how long it would take to build, and he thought about all that, and then he thought about the hotel, he thought about me, thought he loved me, thought about my father, thought about Villarreal, thought about Bolivar, thought about the battle of the Pantano de Vargas, thought about the name of the plaza, Liberators, and that's where he'd got to when the men appeared. The place was so dark that Gabriel didn't manage to see their faces beneath their hats, and didn't know which one asked him if he was Santoro, the one from Bogota. Maybe the one who asked was the same one who took out his machete first; it seems quite logical. Question, answer, machete. They'd come in through the cathedral door, or rather through the space for the door, so Gabriel had to start running toward the altar, confident he'd be able to escape out of the back of the building site. He slipped on the gravel but didn't fall, he kept running over the loose boards of the scaffolding, but he had to get through between a column and a pile of sand, and when he stepped on the sand his foot sank in and his shoe slipped and Gabriel fell to the ground. He lifted up his right hand to protect himself from the machete blow, but closed his eyes when he saw the blade coming down, and then he didn't open them again.