Collected Stories (22 page)

‘I’d get away from this town if I could,’ he sobbed as he tossed. ‘I’d go straight to hell or anywhere else if I could only get twenty pesos together.’

From that night on and for several weeks,
the smell remained on the sea. It impregnated the wood of the houses, the food, and the drinking water, and there was nowhere to escape the odor. A lot of people were startled to find it in the vapors of their own shit. The men and the woman who had come to Catarino’s place left one Friday, but they were back on Saturday with a whole mob. More people arrived on Sunday. They were in and out of
everywhere like ants, looking for something to eat and a place to sleep, until it got to be impossible to walk the streets.

More people came. The women who had left when the town died came back to Catarino’s. They were fatter and wore heavier make-up, and they brought the latest records, which didn’t remind anyone of anything. Some of the former
inhabitants of the town returned. They’d gone off
to get filthy rich somewhere else and they came back talking about their fortunes but wearing the same clothes they’d left with. Music and side shows arrived, wheels of chance, fortunetellers and gunmen and men with snakes coiled about their necks who were selling the elixir of eternal life. They kept on coming for many weeks, even after the first rains had come and the sea became rough and the
smell disappeared.

A priest arrived among the last. He walked all over, eating bread dipped in light coffee, and little by little, he banned everything that had come before him: games of chance, the new music and the way it was danced, and even the recent custom of sleeping on the beach. One evening, at Melchor’s house, he preached a sermon about the smell of the sea.

‘Give thanks to heaven,
my children,’ he said, ‘for this is the smell of God.’

Someone interrupted him.

‘How can you tell, Father? You haven’t smelled it yet.’

‘The Holy Scriptures,’ he said, ‘are quite explicit in regard to this smell. We are living in a chosen village.’

Tobías went about back and forth in the festival like a sleepwalker. He took Clotilde to see what money was. They made believe they were betting
enormous sums at roulette, and then they figured things up and felt extremely rich with all the money they could have won. But one night not just they, the whole multitude occupying the town, saw more money in one place than they could possibly have imagined.

That was the night Mr Herbert arrived. He appeared suddenly, set up a table in the middle of the street, and on top of the table placed
two large trunks brimful with bank notes. There was so much money that no one noticed it at first, because they couldn’t believe it was true. But when Mr Herbert started ringing a little bell, the people had to believe him, and they went over to listen.

‘I’m the richest man in the world,’ he said. ‘I’ve got so much money I haven’t got room to keep it any more. And besides, since my heart’s so
big that there’s no room for it in my chest,
I have decided to travel the world over solving the problems of mankind.’

He was tall and ruddy. He spoke in a loud voice and without any pauses, and simultaneously he waved about a pair of lukewarm, languid hands that always looked as if they’d just been shaved. He spoke for fifteen minutes and rested. Then he rang the little bell and began to speak
again. Halfway through his speech, someone in the crowd waved a hat and interrupted him.

‘Come on, mister, don’t talk so much and start handing out the money.’

‘Not so fast,’ Mr Herbert replied. ‘Handing out money with no rhyme or reason, in addition to being an unfair way of doing things, doesn’t make any sense at all.’

With his eyes he located the man who had interrupted him, and motioned
him to come forward. The crowd let him through.

‘On the other hand,’ Mr Herbert went on, ‘this impatient friend of ours is going to give us a chance to explain the most equitable system of the distribution of wealth.’ He reached out a hand and helped him up.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Patricio.’

‘All right, Patricio,’ Mr Herbert said. ‘Just like everybody else, you’ve got some problem you haven’t
been able to solve for some time.’

Patricio took off his hat and confirmed it with a nod.

‘What is it?’

‘Well, my problem is this,’ Patricio said. ‘I haven’t got any money.’

‘How much do you need?’

‘Forty-eight pesos.’

Mr Herbert gave an exclamation of triumph. ‘Forty-eight pesos,’ he repeated. The crowd accompanied him in clapping.

‘Very well, Patricio,’ Mr Herbert went on. ‘Now, tell
us one thing: what can you do?’

‘Lots of things.’

‘Decide on one,’ Mr Herbert said. ‘The thing you do best.’

‘Well,’ Patricio said, ‘I can do birds.’

Applauding a second time, Mr Herbert turned to the crowd.

‘So, then, ladies and gentlemen, our friend Patricio, who does an extraordinary job at imitating birds, is going to imitate forty-eight different birds and in that way he will solve the
great problem of his life.’

To the startled silence of the crowd, Patricio then did his birds. Sometimes whistling, sometimes with his throat, he did all known birds and finished off the figure with others that no one was able to identify. When he was through, Mr Herbert called for a round of applause and gave him forty-eight pesos.

‘And now,’ he said, ‘come up one by one. I’m going to be here
until tomorrow at this time solving problems.’

Old Jacob learned about the commotion from the comments of people walking past his house. With each bit of news his heart grew bigger and bigger until he felt it burst.

‘What do you think about this gringo?’ he asked.

Don Máximo Gómez shrugged his shoulders. ‘He must be a philanthropist.’

‘If I could only do something,’ old Jacob said, ‘I could
solve my little problem right now. It’s nothing much: twenty pesos.’

‘You play a good game of checkers,’ Don Máximo Gómez said.

Old Jacob appeared not to have paid any attention to him, but when he was alone, he wrapped up the board and the box of checkers in a newspaper and went off to challenge Mr Herbert. He waited until midnight for his turn. Finally Mr Herbert had them pack up his trunks
and said good-bye until the next morning.

He didn’t go off to bed. He showed up at Catarino’s place with the men who were carrying his trunks and the crowd followed him all the way there with their problems. Little by little, he went on solving them, and he solved so many that finally, in the store, the only ones left were the women and some men with their problems already solved. And in the
back
of the room there was a solitary woman fanning herself slowly with a cardboard advertisement.

‘What about you?’ Mr Herbert shouted at her. ‘What’s your problem?’

The woman stopped fanning herself.

‘Don’t try to get me mixed up in your fun, mister gringo,’ she shouted across the room. ‘I haven’t got any kind of problem and I’m a whore because it comes out of my balls.’

Mr Herbert shrugged
his shoulders. He went on drinking his cold beer beside the open trunks, waiting for other problems. He was sweating. A while later, a woman broke away from the group that was with her at the table and spoke to him in a low voice. She had a five-hundred-peso problem.

‘How would you split that up?’ Mr Herbert asked her.

‘By five.’

‘Just imagine,’ Mr Herbert said. ‘That’s a hundred men.’

‘It
doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘If I can get all that money together they’ll be the last hundred men of my life.’

He looked her over. She was quite young, fragile-boned, but her eyes showed a simple decision.

‘All right,’ Mr Herbert said. ‘Go into your room and I’ll start sending each one with his five pesos to you.’

He went to the street door and rang his little bell.

At seven o’clock in the
morning Tobías found Catarino’s place open. All the lights were out. Half asleep and puffed up with beer, Mr Herbert was controlling the entry of men into the girl’s room.

Tobías went in too. The girl recognized him and was surprised to see him in her room.

‘You too?’

‘They told me to come in,’ Tobías said. ‘They gave me five pesos and told me not to take too long.’

She took the soaked sheet
off the bed and asked Tobías to hold the other end. It was as heavy as canvas. They squeezed it, twisting it by the ends, until it got its natural weight back. They turned the mattress over and the sweat came out the
other side. Tobías did things as best he could. Before leaving he put the five pesos on the pile of bills that was growing high beside the bed.

‘Send everybody you can,’ Mr Herbert
suggested to him. ‘Let’s see if we can get this over with before noon.’

The girl opened the door a crack and asked for a cold beer. There were still several men waiting.

‘How many left?’ she asked.

‘Sixty-three,’ Mr Herbert answered.

Old Jacob followed him about all day with his checkerboard. His turn came at nightfall and he laid out his problem and Mr Herbert accepted. They put two chairs
and a small table on top of the big table in the middle of the street, and old Jacob made the first move. It was the last play he was able to premeditate. He lost.

‘Forty pesos,’ Mr Herbert said, ‘and I’ll give you a handicap of two moves.’

He won again. His hands barely touched the checkers. He played blindfolded, guessing his opponent’s moves, and still won. The crowd grew tired of watching.
When old Jacob decided to give up, he was in debt to the tune of five thousand seven hundred forty-two pesos and twenty-three cents.

He didn’t change his expression. He jotted down the figure on a piece of paper he had in his pocket. Then he folded up the board, put the checkers in their box, and wrapped everything in the newspaper.

‘Do with me what you will,’ he said, ‘but let me have these
things. I promise you that I will spend the rest of my life getting all that money together.’

Mr Herbert looked at his watch.

‘I’m terribly sorry,’ he said. ‘Your time will be up in twenty minutes.’ He waited until he was sure that his opponent hadn’t found the solution. ‘Don’t you have anything else to offer?’

‘My honor.’

‘I mean,’ Mr Herbert explained, ‘something that changes color when
a brush daubed with paint is passed over it.’

‘My house,’ old Jacob said as if he were solving a riddle. ‘It’s not worth much, but it is a house.’

That was how Mr Herbert took possession of old Jacob’s house. He also took possession of the houses and property of others who couldn’t pay their debts, but he called for a week of music, fireworks, and acrobats and he took charge of the festivities
himself.

It was a memorable week. Mr Herbert spoke of the miraculous destiny of the town and he even sketched out the city of the future, great glass buildings with dance floors on top. He showed it to the crowd. They looked in astonishment, trying to find themselves among the pedestrians painted in Mr Herbert’s colors, but they were so well dressed that they couldn’t recognize themselves. It
pained them to be using him so much. They laughed at the urge they’d had to cry back in October and they kept on living in the midst of hope until Mr Herbert rang his little bell and said the party was over. Only then did he get some rest.

‘You’re going to die from that life you lead,’ old Jacob said.

‘I’ve got so much money that there’s no reason for me to die,’ Mr Herbert said.

He flopped
onto his bed. He slept for days on end, snoring like a lion, and so many days went by that people grew tired of waiting on him. They had to dig crabs to eat. Catarino’s new records got so old that no one could listen to them any more without tears, and he had to close his place up.

A long time after Mr Herbert had fallen asleep, the priest knocked on old Jacob’s door. The house was locked from
the inside. As the breathing of the man asleep had been using up the air, things had lost their weight and were beginning to float about.

‘I want to have a word with him,’ the priest said.

‘You’ll have to wait,’ said old Jacob.

‘I haven’t got much time.’

‘Have a seat, Father, and wait,’ old Jacob repeated. ‘And please talk to me in the meantime. It’s been a long time since I’ve known what’s
been going on in the world.’

‘People have all scattered,’ the priest said. ‘It won’t be long before the town will be the same as it was before. That’s the only thing that’s new.’

‘They’ll come back when the sea smells of roses again,’ old Jacob said.

‘But meanwhile, we’ve got to sustain the illusions of those who stay with something,’ the priest said. ‘It’s urgent that we start building the
church.’

‘That’s why you’ve come to see Mr Herbert,’ old Jacob said.

‘That’s right,’ said the priest. ‘Gringos are very charitable.’

‘Wait a bit, then, Father,’ old Jacob said. ‘He might just wake up.’

They played checkers. It was a long and difficult game which lasted several days, but Mr Herbert didn’t wake up.

The priest let himself be confused by desperation. He went all over with a copper
plate asking for donations to build the church, but he didn’t get very much. He was getting more and more diaphanous from so much begging, his bones were starting to fill with sounds, and one Sunday he rose two hands above the ground, but nobody noticed it. Then he packed his clothes in one suitcase and the money he had collected in another and said good-bye forever.

‘The smell won’t come back,’
he said to those who tried to dissuade him. ‘You’ve got to face up to the fact that the town has fallen into mortal sin.’

When Mr Herbert woke up the town was the same as it had been before. The rain had fermented the garbage the crowds had left in the streets and the soil was as arid and hard as a brick once more.

‘I’ve been asleep a long time,’ Mr Herbert said, yawning.

‘Centuries,’ said
old Jacob.

‘I’m starving to death.’

‘So is everybody else,’ old Jacob said. ‘There’s nothing to do but to go to the beach and dig for crabs.’

Tobías found him scratching in the sand, foaming at the mouth, and he was surprised to discover that when rich
people were starving they looked so much like the poor. Mr Herbert didn’t find enough crabs. At nightfall he invited Tobías to come look for
something to eat in the depths of the sea.