In Evil Hour by Gabriel García Márquez, Gregory Rabassa Page B

latter said, “there’s nothing more just than your doing the same with me.” Pulling a chair over to the bed, he straddled it, his chest against the wicker back. César Montero concentrated his attention on the roof beams. He didn’t seem worried in spite of the fact that the damage of a long conversation with himself could be seen on the edges of his mouth. “You and I don’t have to beat about the bush,” he heard the mayor say. “You’re leaving tomorrow. If you’re lucky, in two or three months a special investigator will arrive. It’s up to us to fill him in.
On the launch arriving the following week, you’ll return convinced that you did a stupid thing.”
    He paused, but César Montero remained imperturbable.
    “Later on, between courts and lawyers, they’ll get at least twenty thousand pesos out of you. Or more should the special investigator see to it that he tells them you’re a millionaire.”
    César Montero turned his head toward him. It was an almost imperceptible movement, but it made the bed-springs squeak.
    “All in all,” the mayor went on, with the voice of a spiritual adviser, “between twists and paper work, they’ll nail you for two years if all goes well for you.”
    He felt himself being examined from head to toe. When César Montero’s gaze reached his eyes, he still hadn’t stopped speaking. But he’d changed his tone.
    “Everything you’ve got you owe to me,” he said. “There were orders to do you in. There were orders to murder you in ambush and confiscate your livestock so the government would have a way to pay off the enormous expenses of the elections in the whole department. You know that other mayors did it in other towns. Here, on the other hand, we disobeyed the order.”
    At that moment he perceived the first sign that César Montero was thinking. He opened his legs. His arms leaning on the back of the chair, he responded to the unspoken charge.
    “Not one penny of what you paid for your life went to me,” he said. “Everything was spent on organizing the elections. Now the new government has decided that there should be peace and guarantees for everybody and I go on being broke on my salary while you’re filthy with money. You got yourself a good deal.”
    César Montero started the laborious process of getting
up. When he was standing, the mayor saw himself: tiny and sad, face to face with a monumental beast. There was a kind of fervor in the look with which he followed him to the window.
    “The best deal in your life,” he murmured.
    The window opened onto the river. César Montero didn’t recognize it. He saw himself in a different town, facing a momentary river. “I’m trying to help you,” he heard behind him. “We all know that it was a matter of honor, but it’ll be hard to prove. You did a stupid thing by tearing up the lampoon.” At that instant a strong nauseating smell invaded the room.
    “The cow,” the mayor said. “It must have washed up somewhere.”
    César Montero remained at the window, indifferent to the stench of putrefaction. There was nobody on the street. At the dock, three anchored launches, whose crews were hanging up their hammocks for sleep. On the following day, at seven in the morning, the picture would be different: for half an hour the port would be in a turmoil, waiting for the prisoner to embark. César Montero sighed. He put his hands into his pockets and, with a resolute air, but without haste, he summed up his thoughts in two words:
    “How much?”
    The answer was immediate:
    “Five thousand pesos in yearlings.”
    “Add five more calves,” César Montero said, “and send me out this very night, after the movies, on an express launch.”

T HE LAUNCH blew its whistle, turned around in midstream, and the crowd clustered on the dock and the women in the windows saw Rosario Montero for the last time, sitting beside her mother on the same tin-plate trunk with which she had disembarked in the town seven years