On the Island
The Rector is, as usual, late for the meeting. When he arrives, his bald head glistens with perspiration, his double chin slices red lines across the knife edge of his dog-collar; he offers his usual apologies for having deliberately scheduled a conflict: "Very busy; just come from another meeting; a totally unavoidable situation."
The people gathered for this prestigious meeting rise to their feet; the outsiders are filled with awe and pleasure as they greet this elegant churchman who flashes an enormous amethyst ring; some murmur, scrape the ground with their feet, and bow their heads; others raise his fingers upwards and brush their lips briefly over the purple stone shining on his finger. "Kissing the Blarney" Don Rogelio says half to himself; then he sinks back once again in his large, plush, very uncomfortable chair.
The Rector stares at Don Rogelio for a second, and then he too sits down; he does not lead; he prefers to call himself a facilitator; thus, he lets others do all the donkey work. Then when everyone is tired of arguing, he steps in, resolves the discussion, and does what he planned to do anyway.
Although a Dominican, he is clearly of the Jesuit persuasion and his ancestors must have escaped from the Society of Jesus somewhere along the line. People murmur this behind his back. But they do so in very quiet voices, for the Rector has sharp ears and somewhat of a reputation to maintain for paying people back, but never with cash.
Now voices are raised, but not in argument or anger. The talk is loud in order to combat the noise of the air conditioning that rattles and rumbles in the ceiling overhead. It grumbles about the overtime it must work on account of the heat. The Caribbean air burning happily outside the window is appropriately chilled before it is allowed inside; off-island visitors sometimes travel with a sweater which they put on when they step indoors.
Don Rogelio has no sweater; he shivers and his teeth begin to talk to themselves, running up and down the scales of chatter. The windows have blinds and he can see nothing outside, although he can imagine the bougainvillea, the jacaranda, the flammes voyantes and the tall palm trees shimmering in the haze. The curtains too are pulled. The people are talking in semi-darkness and the conferenciantes can hardly see each other across the room. This is another reason why they are talking so loudly: in their inner darkness, they cannot read each others lips.
There are thick carpets on the floor. The machinery grumbles on and on and the air is conditioned, and reconditioned, and reconditioned once again as it replaces the sweat on Don Rogelio's skin with a shivering coolness which flickers over the surfaces of cloth and flesh.
Don Rogelio envisions the key words as they flash before his eyes and ears:
“An agreement!”
“Signed by both parties!”
“Another meeting!”
“At a more appropriate time!”
“In a more appropriate place!”
“All expenses paid!”
“Naturally!”
“To establish a better relationship!”
“We will, of course, accept the grant money!”
“But we will brook no outside interference, neither in our thoughts nor in our way of life; it is our duty, after all, to preserve those values which we still retain and for which we have struggled so long in the name of Holy Mother Church!”
This last voice belongs to the Rector. The conversation has reached the point to which he has carefully permitted it to proceed. Now he steps in again: "Gentlemen, and Lady, I am an extremely busy man! I have another meeting to attend, let's see, about ten minutes ago..." The members of the home university group laugh in good humour at the worn out and expected cliché; Don Rogelio chuckles in an attempt to be one with their merriment.
"... So let us toast this happy occasion. And raise our glasses."
Don Rogelio is about to raise his thumb and index finger to lift his spectacles from the bridge of his nose, when somebody places a glass of fruit punch in his hand. That somebody is wearing a red flowery silk blouse. She looks at him in an odd Petrarchan way and, for a few seconds, their eyes lock and their gazes hold. Has she seen him before? Do they already know each other? Is she a hostess here at the conference room? Does exchanging glances with a total stranger mean anything? As she turns back towards the bar that has unfolded from its polished cabinet of wood, Doña Fabulosa (for that is how he thinks of her) turns to look at Don Rogelio, smiles, and places a finger upon her lips, warning him to silence.
Glasses are raised triumphantly in a series of toasts:
"To us!"
"To now!"
"To the future!"
"May this moment last for ever!"
This last voice belongs to Don Rogelio. He is staring at the lady in the red silk blouse and nearly chokes on his punch as again she smiles at him for, in Renaissance mode, the eyes, after all, are windows permitting light to flood into and out of the soul. Suddenly, all words ring far away, in a distant time and place.
Don Rogelio has stomach cramps. Has he been poisoned by this drink that now trembles in his hand? Or was it the priest's lemon water, bought yesterday morning at the roadside stall while waiting for the country bus?
Whatever: something has taken his intestines and squeezed them like rags through an iron mangle. Could it have been the luke-warm mayonnaise at last night's celebration dinner? Or the scrambled eggs this morning? At first, he had thought the scrambled eggs were filled with raisins, but when the cook flapped her cloth, the raisins rose up and buzzed away. Don Rogelio had been unable to escape the scrambled eggs for, in this land of the extremes or richness and poverty, to turn down food was a terrible crime. Thus, with all the hunger and poverty around him, he did not dare to refuse the scrambled eggs that the cook placed onto his waiting plate.
At this very moment, Don Rogelio is troubled. Water has started to squeeze out through the pores of his skin, and soon he will be dry as a sponge. What then? Then the shivering will begin in earnest. He has managed to establish a minimal control over his bowels. True, they ached this morning, and they still ache now; but he has managed to go through this meeting without them leaving him stranded high and dry, or should that be low and wet? “So far,” he thinks to himself; “so good! Now if I can only keep control.”
But it won’t be for long. Is it the image of the eggs? Is it the mayonnaise? The lemonade? He's almost sure it was the lemonade that has turned his guts to water, his body to sweat, and his consciousness to this burning pain that suddenly sears like an express train through the dark, long, urgent tunnel of his writhing guts.
"Excuse me!"
He interrupts the meeting's chorus of happiness. Conversation dies and people stop, mid-word, and look at him.
“Yes?” The Rector raises his eyebrow, the left one, in a delicate quirk. “Can I be of assistance?”
"I need the bathroom! And quick! Please! El baño and I mean pronto!"
A hint of amusement tugs at the fleshy Cupid’s bow lips above the Rector's double chin. “These foreigners,” he thinks to himself. “So weak. So unsubtle. So unsuitable. They have so much to learn. We have so much to teach them.”
As Don Rogelio leaves the room, he hears someone whisper: "El turista. You know, the tourist bug. In Mexico they call it Montezuma's Revenge. In the Dominican Republic, they call it the Return of Don Enriquillo, because it keeps coming back. Here, on our little island, we call it el turista or just la peste, the plague.”
Now Don Rogelio is on his knees in the bathroom. It is a long time since Don Rogelio has prayed, but now he is praying: " ... have mercy on me, a swinger, now and at the hour of ..."
Suddenly, he makes odd, prehistoric noises, never written down on paper. His intestines tighten and cramp together; so do his chest, his stomach, his lungs. As if in a miracle he is granted a vision of the conquest: it is carved in wood downtown in the city centre on the huge cathedral doors. Priests, soldiers, dogs, arrive together on the beaches of this Caribbean island; behind them, the enormous Spanish galleons, fluttering their flags. He seems to watch it all from behind a tree; then suddenly the dogs race forward, straight towards him and they seize Don Rogelio and tear his flesh with their sharp white teeth. And there is this smell, and this pain, this terrible pain in the gut, and the pain is caused by tearing canine teeth, fiercely invasive. The vision fades into darkness. He half rises, slumps forwards and bangs his head as he tumbles to the floor. Half-conscious, he hears a muffled knocking. He rises, fumbles with the lock, and falls into the arms of a lady in a nurse's white hat who is wearing a red silk blouse covered with flowers.
Doña Fabulosa's nurse's hat has a little red cross on it; in her hand she carries a shiny needle. Don Rogelio sees the needle first: "Bastards!" he mutters, half-stunned, his eyes blurred, his teeth clenched tight against the pain. "Bastards! You're going to kill me! You're going to throw my body from the reef for the sharks! No! No-o-o-oh!" Then he recognizes Doña Fabulosa and he attempts to smile; she whispers something to him and he relaxes slightly. Like a moth in the trap of an overgrown Venus plant, he quivers for a little, more and more weakly, then the needle slips into his arm and he slides into silence and oblivion.
The Rector, youngest and most trusted son of Monsignor, the celibate President of the People’s Democratic Republic, and Chief Prelate of the Island, frowns at the indecorous language. He does not fail to notice the cherishing glance that Doña Fabulosa casts on Don Rogelio. Is there something deeper in the mother hen protectiveness she lavishes on this stranger? Does Doña Fabulosa need to stretch her wings? Is Doña Fabulosa about to fly the ecclesiastical coop?
The Rectorial frown deepens. He takes a pencil from his pocket, moistens the point with the tip of his tongue, just like a police officer in an old, black and white movie, and places a tiny question mark against a certain name in a certain place in his little black book.
On Wednesdays, Doña Fabulosa works as a nurse in the local private hospital. She does not work for money because she does not need any more money. She already has $10 million US in a numbered Swiss bank account. Or is it $100 million? She hasn’t checked recently. Anyway, she doesn’t care. She is spending the money as fast as she can. Still unmarried, it will revert to the church and the university if she dies childless. And Doña Fabulosa is in no hurry to get married, not to have children. She’s having too much fun collecting collector item sports cars to be serious about people. And marriage on these small Caribbean islands is a serious undertaking, especially marriage without the blessing of the church.
No, Doña Fabulosa is a nursing volunteer. She nurses for Christian Charity. And for fun. Especially for fun. Luckily for Don Rogelio, Doña Fabulosa is still a member of the university board, enlisted, as the rubric has it, for her grace and social skills. There is no mention on her citation of the charitable donation of $1.5 million US which she gave to the new library dedicated to the memory of the current rector. One of her tasks is to call for an ambulance when tourists pass out. And this she does with grace and competence. Then she climbs into the ambulance with her nursing uniform still on and drives to her hospital with this funny Canadian professor who so much delights her, intrigues her, and promises so much.
Poor Don Rogelio: at present he does not seem made for fun. His face below the bandage which Doña Fabulosa has bound professionally across his brow, is pale; not just pale, though: it is pallid with a sort of waxy yellowy bilious paleness!
Doña Fabulosa is a perfectionist and this is not yet perfection. She wrinkles her nose and sniffs at the perfumed lace of her pocket handkerchief which she always keeps tucked away in her sleeve. She finds it useful, on hotter days, when she is forced to walk from her car to the door, picking her way through the rotten, fly-covered garbage littering the streets where dogs and children root out tasty morsels and sometimes scrap over the scraps.
Doña Fabulosa can wait; she knows the value of patience. After all, her father was a doctor and made millions of dollars, patiently, from his patients: that’s why their called patients! Then he left her this little private hospital, this hospital where she works for charity, totting up her gifts of hours, seconds, minutes in a little book which, just before her death, she will hand to her father confessor, who also doubles as the Rector’s twin brother.
"Look!" She plans on saying: "Here are my good deeds. You must throw them into the right side of the scales to counter my occasional slips from grace: your grace, Your Grace. For I know that you are always the first, to see my best side, not my worst."
Don Rogelio is wheeled to a room with a concrete floor. He is stripped naked by two giggling nuns who nod and chatter and leave him lying there on a plastic sheet. Then, when he awakes, they say in chorus: “Don’t worry! We’ve seen it all before!” Then they point and giggle again, and his body shrivels up then flushes a warm, bright pink. They wheel him over to the bathroom and stand him in the shower, where they turn lukewarm water from a hose upon him, then place him in front of an electric fan to dry. When he is clean and in the pink again, they drape him in a short operation gown, open at the back, and he is admitted to a private hospital room.
Doña Fabulosa is already there. She moves to the window as he comes in and checks the blinds; she has already turned back the top sheet on his bed. The patient’s papers and passport and wallet have been removed from his clothes and placed in a plastic bag on top of the bedside table. His clothes are sealed in another plastic bag; these will be washed and dried, downstairs, by the nuns. It is cheaper than sending them to the laundry. Don Rogelio is currently short on clothing, for he travelled to this island with only a small shoulder bag and a change of underclothes and shirts. However, he is not short of money.
Doña Fabulosa senses this as she counts the multiple US $100 dollar bills that stuff her patient’s billfold. She checks his credit cards, too. And glances briefly at his health policy. An overcharge here, an oversight, a quick processing of the insurance claims and she could soon persuade him to buy himself some new clothes....
... on the other hand, she could just be patient, for this patient will not leave this room until the clothes in the plastic bag have been thoroughly washed and dried and neatly ironed. The nuns will, in their perpetual acts of charity, sew on any loose buttons and mend any nicks or tears. Unknown to the nuns, the mending costs, suitably inflated of course, will be added to the hospital bill which this man, or at least his insurance company, can so obviously afford.
How beautiful is Doña Fabulosa as she crosses the room. The red flowery silk of her still clean blouse whispers unmentionable promises as she paces up and down. How she looks at Don Rogelio as he lies there, head nodding, relaxed from the second injection, falling asleep. He has been shot full of that secret something that will cure him while sending him such pleasant dreams. Addictive? Only slightly, and Doña Fabulosa, of course, holds the key to the island’s only source of supply. There are many interesting people among her clients and several, just like Don Rogelio, have lain here before, nursed by Doña Fabulosa, back to health and (inter)dependence, in this very room.
Doña Fabulosa waits a moment, until she sees Don Rogelio’s eyelids close. "Buen día, caballero. Good day to you sir." She whispers to him as he lies on the bed, in another land, in a dream land just out of her reach. She smiles. And her eyes are gentled, her skin is tightened and for a moment she looks like a million dollars, she looks in fact just like her name: Doña Fabulosa.
Tall, blonde, thin, dark blue eyes, a Caribbean islander, yet strongly proud of her raw-boned, ancestral Irish beauty, she was after all born the grand-daughter of an Irish O’Donajú. She moves over to Don Rogelio's bed, sits on the edge and feels his forehead. It is cold, and he is shivering slightly. She frowns, draws back the sheet, and snuggles in beside him in a warming promise that promises more warmth and a very personal attention to come.
Don Rogelio meanwhile dreams of bright blossoms. He dreams of noche buena and flamme voyante; he dreams of red silk blouses flowering in an earthly paradise as he wanders hand in hand with someone he met once, in a twinkling of an eye, while standing in a crowded room and holding a glass of something in his hand. Glass in his hand; something fragile; something he dare not squeeze, in fear that it might break in two and leave him abandoned. Forever.
Forty-eight hours later, Don Rogelio is standing at the hospital door with his back to the reception desk. The street outside is narrow. To the left: a crossroads; to the right: a small café that sells cheap breakfasts. There is a crowd of people in the street and the street is under repair. Sand has been heaped on the sidewalk; middle class pedestrians avoid the sand; their shoes are highly polished like the silver status symbols on the hoods of the air-conditioned luxury cars, the Jaguars, the Lincoln Continentals, the Mercedes-Benz, the Acura Integras, the BMW’s which whisper to each other, silently, of limitless money cocooned in plush leather. The interior air conditioning whispers gently as the cars they slide past the lepers, hands stretched out, begging with open sores, in the shadows of the doorways and in the searing heat of the street.
A black Cadillac, long enough to have a candlepin bowling alley, in the back ghosts past. Behind darkened windows, it is impossible to see the amethyst ring, the double chin, the knife edge of the dog collar worn by the churchman sitting in the car's back seat. As the car stops outside the hospital, the wise old chauffeur rolls down the window and makes, at his master's dictation, little black marks in a little black book.
"¡Hola! Don Rogelio!"
"Hello! Doña Fabulosa!"
"You must be hungry!" says Doña Fabulosa.
"Why do you say that?"
"Because you are devouring me with your eyes."
Doña Fabulosa smiles and her teeth are all the pearls in all the mouths of all the sharks in all the seas off all the islands in the Caribbean. A certain wizened chauffeur makes a note of this in the aforementioned book.
Don Rogelio is embarrassed.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean ..."
"Of course you didn’t; don’t apologize."
Doña Fabulosa puts her hand on his arm and gives it a gentle squeeze. Then with a wave of her hand, she walks away, crossing to the far side of the road. He follows the movement of her hips, her shoulders, and sways for a second with the rhythm of her sway. He stands there, sweating, breathing heavily; there is a flicker of warmth in his eyes; his hand is half-raised to wave; his right eyebrow has lifted ever so tentatively ... And then he runs across the road and catches her up.
"Doña Fabulosa..."
They stop and smile at each other.
“Don Rogelio..."
They walk arm in arm to the crossroads. When they get there, the lights are on red. Don Rogelio stares at the red light. It is almost the same shade as Doña Fabulosa's bright silk blouse. True, it is the red of danger; but he has also seen that shade of red on chocolate boxes shaped as hearts and beribboned for St. Valentine's Day. It is the red of passion. The red of youthful love. The red of blood calling to blood. The red of massacre. The red of the St. Valentine’s Day massacre. The red of shed blood crying out for vengeance. But who will avenge Don Rogelio if his blood is shed here, on this tiny Caribbean island? Especially if he perishes of love? He stands at the roadside, side by side with Doña Fabulosa; the two of them are clad for a moment in a garment of warmth and silence as they wait for the lights to turn green.
Don Rogelio and Doña Fabulosa sit in the Parque Duende de Todos los Santos and listen to the Misa Criolla sung by the children's choir in the church of Nuestra Señora de la Triste Figura, which translates into English, roughly, as Our Lady of the Doleful Countenance -- or should it be woeful? -- or would Sorrowful be better? -- or just plain Sad, perhaps? It’s so enigmatic, this translation business. Either way, up there, where they sit, slightly higher on the island’s mountain and a little further from the town centre, there is a constant breath of fresh air that blows through streets and squares.
In Duende de Todos los Santos Square, the children are jugando a la esquina,; that is to say, they are playing musical lamp posts. They fly like a wave of tropical birds through shadow to sunlight and back to shadow again. For just a second, they are blinded by the brightness of their gaily coloured cotton shirts, and then like Blue Jays and Orioles, like Alouettes and Cardinals, they are driven from their lamp post bases, from their positions of security and power.
Doña Fabulosa is playing with them in the park. She has a bright red flower in her hand: Don Rogelio plucked it for her from a tree. When a little boy shrieks "¡Esquinita!", Don Rogelio gets to his feet and hurries to the nearest vacant lamp post. Doña Fabulosa follows him, and they stand there holding hands.
"¡Esquinita!"
Together they run across the square and stand by another lamp post.
"¡Esquinita!"
They run again and take refuge from the terrors of the game in a quick embrace.
"¡Esquinita!"
But now, there are no longer any lamp posts left. They have been eliminated from the game and the children have exiled them. Laughing together, they move to another area of the park where they can watch the more thoughtful children playing chess on the concrete slabs marked out in an alternating pattern of black and white squares. Each child is dressed up as a chess piece. The players call out their names and the children move as their names are called, walking from square to square, replacing each other, one by one, as they are captured.
"What are you, young lady?"
"I am the white Queen, señor."
"And what are you, young man?
"I am the black bishop, señora."
Don Rogelio and Doña Fabulosa sit on a bench in the shade and watch the children play out their roles; the voice of destiny appoints them to their anointed place:
"Bishop takes Queen, check!”
The little girl steps off the board; the little boy moves forward and stands on the square she occupied.
"King to Rook One.”
“Bishop to King Five. Mate!”
"A double bishop mate!" says Don Rogelio. "You don’t see that often. It’s a complicated ending.”
"What do you mean?"
"It doesn't matter."
"It may matter one day."
"Sleep with me!"
"Yes!"
"When?"
"Today! Right now!"
"No!”
“This evening?”
“Your place or ...”
“Mine ... but first .... “
"... we must buy ..."
"... some ...."
As they leave the park, walking hand in hand down the street towards the centre of the town, a small, wizened man watches them carefully and makes little black marks in a little black book. On the other side of the square, a black Cadillac, grown to thirty foot long, waits without a driver. It is impossible to see who is sitting in the back seat.
Don Rogelio and Doña Fabulosa are waiting at the corner for the traffic lights to change. They have been joking and laughing together, but now there is a brief silence. They look at each other and turn as red as the traffic lights at the corner. But the traffic lights do not stay red for long and soon enough they are green with jealousy and the people can cross the road. Why do people cross the road? To get to the other side of course. They’re not afraid of the rushing traffic that sometimes stops at the red lights and sometimes rushes right through them and sometimes knocks the people down and sometimes just drives away and leaves them there, struggling and helpless. But Don Rogelio and Doña Fabulosa not afraid: after all, they’re not chickens. So they cross the road, just to get to the other side.
Don Rogelio and Doña Fabulosa are holding hands. They walk together back down the hill to the city centre where the huts of the poor huddle together for protection. There are no armed guards here, but there are policemen and militia on the sidewalks outside the poor people’s houses to keep them in order. These little huts have shoe shine boys, but the occupants wear no shoes. They also have servants: but they are the servants of other people for the huts themselves contain very little with which the occupants can serve themselves. Moreover, the huts have no gardens and their inner rooms have no vases and no flowers, but open directly onto the street.
These poorer houses which you pass as you walk or drive down other streets to get to the street on which Doña Fabulosa lives are composed of a single, boxlike compartment, with a curtain dividing the interior into smaller rooms. Because of the heat, and the lack of air conditioning, all cooking is done on the street outside, with a battered pan over a grid on an oil drum filled with flame and smoke. The food cooked over these oil drums is delicious; but the tourists avoid it like the plague because it gives them the plague. As Don Rogelio passes by, he smacks his lips, then watches as one of the cooks changes her baby’s soiled nappies, then wipes her hands on her apron, to clean them, before returning to the cooking.
When the noisy bead curtains, covering the front door, are raised, or pulled aside, anyone passing by can stop and look inside. But: no cameras, please. It wouldn’t be the first time that the island police have found evidence of theft and crime recorded in the innocent lens of a tourist’s camera that has recorded the secret’s of a poor district interior.
Doña Fabulosa’s house, in contrast, finds itself parked at the end of a tree-lined avenue. It is surrounded by armed guards and has seven luxury cars stationed in the front yard, each with its own colour and its own chauffeur, in case she doesn’t want to drive herself. There’s one car in the yard for every day of the week, for every passing whim, and there are more in the garage.
Doña Fabulosa lives in a large house with gardens and those armed guards who patrol in teams, 24 / 7 in case of an island 9 / 11, in the course of which, Doña Fabulosa might be a prime target. In her gardens are flowers and fruit trees: orchids mix with lemons, and double cream poinsettias languish under the peach tree, while African violets are sheltered beneath the gentle plum. There is so much peace, so much quiet, so much to enjoy. She especially enjoys the seven Mercedes-Benz she has parked quietly in her drive for this week’s entertainment. She drives a different Mercedes, each one a different colour, each day of the week. For church, on Sundays, she likes to be driven by a chauffeur who collects her in her own Cadillac.
A couple of days later, Don Rogelio and Doña Fabulosa are in the shopping district. On the Calle de la Fama, they will purchase the ring that will cement their recent promise. They walk hand in hand and gaze in all of the windows of all of the shops. They have all the time in the world. There is no reason to hurry. Why should they hurry? Hurrying is for those who have no time left: and these two have all the time in the world ...
They enter the jewellery store. The sales clerk asks them how she can help. They laugh. It is just like the story in the Beginning Spanish Course that Don Rogelio studied before he came to this island. In his text book there were three participants, the sales clerk, the man (Don Rogelio), and the lady (Doña Fabulosa); that particular chapter’s vocabulary centred around a shoppig expedition. The verbs were simple: to look at = mirar; to want = querer; to buy = comprar. The students who read the book are taught to count their metallic money in hundreds, tens, and units. There is no word for magic plastic card in the beginner’s text book.
Doña Fabulosa has a philosophy rather similar to that of René Descartes: “J’achète, donc je suis.” She whispers to herself. Don Rogelio, on the other hand, is reminiscent of Julius Caesar: “I came, I saw, I bought!” Or could that be : “We came, she saw, he bought?”
The ring they wish to purchase sits on black velvet and shines with a thousand facets. It is an expensive ring. It would be a pearl of great price, if it were not a diamond. It winks and blinks and promises them an eternity of long life and happiness. The sales clerk takes the ring from the velvet and Don Rogelio slips it onto Doña Fabulosa's finger. It fits perfection to perfection.
The little man who has just entered the store is wearing an army cap. He looks at some marks in his little black book; he puts the book in a pocket, then takes off his cap and salutes them.
"Good day!"
"Good day!"
"Life is very bad right now and it is a Christian's duty to help the poor."
"Times are hard. It is a great pity."
"Wouldn't you like to help me out? I have a wife and three children, one boy and two girls."
"I am sorry, we cannot." Don Rogelio and Doña Fabulosa shake their heads in unison.
The little man puts his hand in his other pocket and draws out an automatic pistol. He holds it in his right hand and points it towards Don Rogelio and Doña Fabulosa.
"Now would you like to help? I have four children, two boys and two girls. They are starving of hunger."
They stand there, hand in hand, frozen, in spite of the warmth.
The man holds out his cap towards them; it hangs in its own space, like the offertory plate in the mass. Don Rogelio and Doña Fabulosa look at it in silence. The girl comes out from behind the counter and places five pesos in the hat.
"Go now!" She says to the little man who still carries the automatic pistol threateningly in his hand. "We pay you people well. You know that. We want no violence in this store. Go now! With these five pesos, you can feed your five children. Look: one peso per child!"
The little man is pointing his automatic pistol at Don Rogelio and Doña Fabulosa; he shakes his head from side to side.
"No!" He says, "I won't go! I am a widower. My wife has just died and I must feed my six children. Besides, there is a task I must perform!" He puts his cap back on his head, puts his left hand in his pocket and pulls something out: "See: it is written down here in this little black book!"
The sun shines brightly on the jewels in the shop window. Somewhere, a clock strikes the quarter: Westminster Chimes, so familiar. So far away.
"Help me!" Says the man with the gun, "Help me now!"
"We can't," says Doña Fabulosa; "We're about to get married."
"Married?" Says the little man, "You talk to me about marriage when my wife has just died and I have seven children whom I cannot feed?"
"I'm sorry!" says Don Rogelio, "It's got nothing to do with me. I'm only a visitor. Turista. A tourist!"
The little man waves his pistol up and down, from side to side, as if he were conducting an orchestra or the traffic. He is aiming his gun, now at Don Rogelio and now at Doña Fabulosa, and all the while, he is tightening his finger on the trigger and tightening his finger on the ...
"¡Por Dios, señor! In the name of God!"
Don Rogelio can hear the beggars on the sidewalk outside the shop. They are holding out their leprous hands and waving their scabs and open sores to the sky and sun and demanding with threatening gestures. Lepers! And the town has a leper hospital and a leper colony, and Don Rogelio has seen a man with elephantiasis, his lower limb blown up to the size of an elephant's foot. But Don Rogelio will give them nothing, nothing at all, for he knows that if he once breaks down and gives to one, word will get round and he'll be followed all round town and he will never recover his peace of mind and bit by bit he’ll give away all his pocket money, coin by coin, until the beggars have it all; but even then, the beggars will be no better off, for they’ll spend that money on alcohol and drugs.
"No!" Say Don Rogelio and Doña Fabulosa to the gun-waving man in the shop. He seems to be conducting, with his pistol, a seemingly well-rehearsed chorus. "There is no money. We have no money."
The little man looks at the diamond ring on Doña Fabulosa's finger.
"That ring!" he says. "Give me that ring!"
"No!" say Don Rogelio and Doña Fabulosa again in unison.
The little man's finger is tightening on the trigger.
Somewhere in the street, a car backfires and startled, the pigeons crack their wings with a noise like even more gunshots; they take to the air and fly round and round the cathedral clock.
A second car backfires, and a third one and a fourth one; or perhaps the first car backfires again and again; anyway: the little children in the Parque de Casi Todos los Santos stop playing and, for a moment or two, they abandon their chess and their game of esquinita. They forget to make their calls and they stand there, motionless, listening to the air being ripped apart by the sounds of many cars backfiring at once.
The little man hastens away from the jeweller's shop, walks around the corner, takes off his army cap and stuffs it in his pocket. He throws the little black book into the open window of an enormous black Cadillac, at least forty foot long, which has been parked illegally, seemingly without a driver.
Back in the shop, the girl behind the counter holds a smoking gun in her hand; she is shouting: "Help! Police! These two! They stole that ring! They were trying to rob my shop! Help! Police!"
Somewhere, in a dream, Don Rogelio and Doña Fabulosa are asleep in each other’s arms. They lie on a spreading field of bright red silk where the flowers bloom and the wind is warm and the sun is hot (but not too hot) and never, never again will they be apart.
Now there is the tramp of army boots and the men in blue move in followed by the men in white.
Somewhere, in the distance, in a speeding car, there is the flash of an amethyst. The wizened chauffeur of an elegant churchman with a double chin overhanging the knife edge of his dog collar rolls up the window of the black Cadillac, shrunk now to twenty foot in length. He turns up the air conditioning, and speeds down the coast road towards the airport.
When questioned about it tomorrow, the witnesses will tell the police that this is an area reserved for pedestrians. They will all swear that there were no cars on that particular street that particular day.
On Doña Fabulosa's finger, the symbol of Don Rogelio's undying love flashes for a moment and its rainbow of sun is caught and framed forever, a bright speck of light in the lens of the camera of the police photographer who has forgotten to load any film.
In the long black Cadillac, an elegant churchman with a double chin is listening to words mumbled as the car speeds along:
“Father, I have sinned.”
The little man is driving with one hand on the wheel and with the other, closed, in a fist, he is beating his breast.
The churchman raises his hand, makes the sign of the cross in the air and says:
“ You are forgiven, my son. Ite, mission est.”
