Read Online In Evil Hour by Gabriel García Márquez, Gregory Rabassa - Free Book Online Page B

of his life, the mayor relaxed the tension of his muscles, and remained in the chair exhausted as the dark designs painted by the dampness on the cardboard ceiling fastened themselves in his memory, to remain until the day he died. He heard the dentist busying himself at the washstand. He heard him putting the desk drawers in order and picking up some of the objects from the floor.
    “Rovira,” the mayor called. “Tell González to come in and you two pick up the things off the floor until the place is the way you found it.”
    The policemen did so. The dentist picked up some cotton with his pincers, soaked it in an iron-colored liquid, and covered the hole. The mayor had a feeling of burning on the surface. After the dentist had closed his mouth he continued with his gaze on the ceiling, hanging on the sound of the policemen as they tried to reconstruct from memory the meticulous order of the office. It struck two in the belfry. A curlew, a minute behind, repeated the hour in the murmur of the drizzle. A moment later, knowing that they had finished, the mayor gave a sign indicating that his men should return to the barracks.
    The dentist had remained beside the chair all the while. When the policemen had left, he took the cotton out of the gum. Then he explored the inside of the mouth with the lamp, adjusted the jaws again, and took the light away. Everything was over. In the hot little room all that remained then was that strange uneasiness known to sweepers in a theater after the last actor has left.
    “Ingrate,” the mayor said.
    The dentist put his hands in the pockets of his robe and took a step backward to let him pass. “There were orders to level the house,” the mayor went on, searching for him with his eyes behind the circle of light. “There were precise instructions to
find
weapons and ammunition and documents with the details of a nationwide conspiracy.” He fixed his still damp eyes on the dentist and added: “I thought that I was doing the right thing by disobeying that order, but I was wrong. Things have changed now. The opposition has guarantees and everybody is living in peace, and still you go on thinking like a conspirator.” The dentist dried the cushion of the
chair with his sleeve and turned it over to the side that hadn’t been ruined.
    “Your attitude is harmful to the town,” the mayor went on, pointing to the cushion, without paying any attention to the thoughtful look the dentist was giving his cheek. “Now it’s up to the town government to pay for all this mess, and the street door besides. A whole lot of money, all because of your stubbornness.”
    “Rinse your mouth out with fenugreek water,” the dentist said.

J UDGE A RCADIO consulted the dictionary at the telegraph office because his was missing a few letters. It didn’t solve anything as he looked up
pasquín
, the word for lampoon:
name of a shoemaker in Rome famous for the satires he wrote against everybody
and other unimportant facts. By the same historic token, he thought, an anonymous insult placed on the door of a house could just as well be called a
marforio
. He wasn’t entirely disappointed. During the two minutes he had spent in that consultation, for the first time in many years he had felt the comfort of a duty fulfilled.
    The telegrapher saw him put the dictionary back on the shelf among the forgotten compilations of ordinances and decrees concerning the postal and telegraphic service, and cut off the transmission of a message with an energetic signal. Then he came over, shuffling the cards, ready to repeat the latest popular trick: guessing the three cards.
But Judge Arcadio paid no attention to him. “I’m very busy now,” he apologized, and went out into the roasting street, pursued by the confused certainty that it was only eleven o’clock and that Tuesday still had a lot of hours left for him to use up.
    In his office the mayor was waiting for him with a moral problem. As a result of the last