Leaf Storm Read online

  Then after another pause, he said:

  ‘I’d like to know why you asked me that, colonel.’

  ‘It just came to me all of a sudden,’ I said. ‘Maybe after seven years I wanted to know what a man like you thinks about.’

  I was mopping my brow too. I said: ‘Or maybe I’m worried about your solitude.’ I waited for an answer that didn’t come. I saw him across from me, still sad and alone. I thought about Macondo, the madness of its people, burning banknotes at parties; about the leaf storm that had no direction and was above everything, wallowing in its slough of instinct and dissipation where it had found the taste it wanted. I thought about his life before the leaf storm had struck. And his life afterward, his cheap perfume, his polished old shoes, the gossip that followed him like a shadow that he himself ignored. I said:

  ‘Doctor, have you ever thought of taking a wife?’

  And before I could finish asking the question, he was giving an answer, starting off on one of his usual long meanderings:

  ‘You love your daughter very much, don’t you, colonel?’

  I answered that it was natural. He went on speaking:

  ‘All right. But you’re different. Nobody likes to drive his own nails more than you. I’ve seen you putting hinges on a door when there are several men working for you who could have done it. You like that. I think that your happiness is to walk about the house with a toolbox looking for something to fix. You’re even capable of thanking a person for having broken a hinge, colonel. You thank him because in that way he’s giving you a chance to be happy.’

  ‘It’s a habit,’ I told him, not knowing what direction he was taking. ‘They say my mother was the same way.’

  He’d reacted. His attitude was peaceful but ironclad.

  ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘It’s a good habit. Besides, it’s the cheapest kind of happiness I know. That’s why you have a house like this and raised your daughter the way you have. I say that it must be good to have a daughter like yours.’

  I still didn’t know what he was getting at in his long, roundabout way. But even though I didn’t know, I asked:

  ‘What about you, doctor, haven’t you ever thought about how nice it would be to have a daughter?’

  ‘Not I, colonel,’ he said. And he smiled, but then he immediately became serious again. ‘My children wouldn’t be like yours.’

  Then I didn’t have the slightest trace of doubt: he was talking seriously and that seriousness, that situation, seemed frightful to me. I was thinking: He’s more to be pitied for that than for anything else. He needed protection, I thought.

  ‘Have you heard of the Pup?’ I asked him.

  He said no. I told him: ‘The Pup is the parish priest, but more than that he’s a friend to everybody. You should get to know him.’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes,’ he said. ‘He has children too, right?’

  ‘That’s not what interests me right now,’ I said. ‘People invent bits of gossip about the Pup because they have a lot of love for him. But you have a point there, doctor. The Pup is a long way from being a prayer-monger, sanctimonious, as we say. He’s a whole man who fulfills his duties as a man.’

  Now he was listening with attention. He was silent, concentrating, his hard yellow eyes fastened on mine. He said: ‘That’s good, right?’

  ‘I think the Pup will be made a saint,’ I said. And I was sincere in that too. ‘We’ve never seen anything like him in Macondo. At first they didn’t trust him because he comes from here, because the older people remembered him from when he used to go out hunting birds like all the boys. He fought in the war, he was a colonel, and that was a problem. You know how people are, no respect for veterans, the same as with priests. Besides, we weren’t used to having someone read to us from the Bristol Almanac instead of the Gospels.’

  He smiled. That must have sounded as odd to him as it had to us during the first days. He said: ‘That’s strange, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s the way the Pup is. He’d rather show people by means of atmospheric phenomena. He’s got a preoccupation with storms that’s almost theological. He talks about them every Sunday. And that’s why his sermons aren’t based on the Gospels but on the atmospheric predictions in the Bristol Almanac.’

  He was smiling now and listening with a lively and pleased expression. I felt enthusiastic too. I said: ‘There’s still something else of interest for you, doctor. Do you know how long the Pup has been in Macondo?’

  He said no.

  ‘It so happens that he arrived the same day as you,’ I said. ‘And what’s even stranger still, if you had an older brother, I’m sure that he’d be just like the Pup. Physically, of course.’

  He didn’t seem to be thinking about anything else now. From his seriousness, from his concentrated and steady attention, I sensed that I had come to the moment to tell him what I wanted to propose:

  ‘Well, then, doctor,’ I said. ‘Pay a call on the Pup and you’ll find out that things aren’t the way you see them.’

  And he said yes, he’d visit the Pup.

  IX

  Coldly, silently, progressively, the padlock gathers rust. Adelaida put it on the room when she found out that the doctor had gone to live with Meme. My wife considered that move as a victory for her, the culmination of a systematic, tenacious piece of work she had started the first moment I decided that he would live with us. Seventeen years later the padlock is still guarding the room.

  If there was something in my attitude, unchanged for eight years, that may have seemed unworthy in the eyes of men or ungrateful in those of God, my punishment has come about a long time before my death. Perhaps it was meant for me to expiate in life for what I had considered a human obligation, a Christian duty. Because the rust on the lock had not begun to accumulate when Martín was in my house with a briefcase full of projects, the authenticity of which I’ve never been able to find out, and the firm desire to marry my daughter. He came to my house in a four-button jacket, exuding youth and dynamism from all his pores, enveloped in a luminous air of pleasantness. He married Isabel in December eleven years ago. Nine have passed since he went off with the briefcase full of notes signed by me and with the promise to return as soon as the deal he was working on and for which he had my financial backing came through. Nine years have gone by but I have no right to think he was a swindler because of that. I have no right to think his marriage was only a pretext to convince me of his good faith.

  But eight years of experience have been of some use. Martín could have occupied the small room. Adelaida was against it. Her opposition was adamant, decisive and irrevocable. I knew that my wife wouldn’t have been bothered in the least to fix up the stable as a bridal chamber rather than let the newlyweds occupy the small room. I accepted her point of view without hesitation. That was my recognition of her victory, one postponed for eight years. If both of us were mistaken in trusting Martín, it was a mistake that was shared. There was neither victory nor defeat for either one of us. Still, what came later was too much for our efforts, it was like the atmospheric phenomena the almanac foretells, ones that must come no matter what.

  When I told Meme to leave our house, to follow the direction she thought best for her life, and afterward, even though Adelaida threw my weaknesses and lack of strength up to me, I was able to rebel, to impose my will on everything (that’s what I’ve always done) and arrange things my way. But something told me that I was powerless before the course that events were taking. It wasn’t I who arranged things in my own home, but some other mysterious force, one which decided the course of our existence and of which we were nothing but docile and insignificant instruments. Everything seemed to obey the natural and linked fulfillment of a prophecy.

  Since Meme was able to open the shop (underneath it all everybody must have known that a hard-working woman who becomes the mistress of a country doctor overnight will sooner or later end up as a shopkeeper), I realized that in our house he’d accumulated a larger sum of money than one might
have imagined, and that he’d kept it in his cabinet, uncounted bills and coins which he tossed into the drawer during the time he saw patients.

  When Meme opened the shop it was supposed that he was here, in back of the store, shut up because of God knows what bestial and implacable prophecies. It was known that he wouldn’t eat any food from outside, that he’d planted a garden and that during the first months Meme would buy a piece of meat for herself, but that a year later she’d stopped doing that, perhaps because direct contact with the man had made a vegetarian of her. Then the two of them shut themselves up until the time the authorities broke down the door, searched the house, and dug up the garden in an attempt to find Meme’s body.

  People imagined him there, shut in, rocking in his old and tattered hammock. But I knew, even in those months during which his return to the world of the living was not expected, that his impenitent enclosure, his muted battle against the threat of God, would reach its culmination much sooner than his death. I knew that sooner or later he would come out because there isn’t a man alive who can live a half-life, locked up, far away from God, without coming out all of a sudden to render to the first man he meets on the corner the accounts that stocks and pillory, the martyrdom of fire and water, the torture of the rack and the screw, wood and hot iron on his eyes, the eternal salt on his tongue, the torture horse, lashes, the grate, and love could not have made him render to his inquisitors. And that time would come for him a few years before his death.

  I knew that truth from before, from the last night we talked on the veranda, and afterward, when I went to get him in the little room to have a look at Meme. Could I have opposed his desire to live with her as man and wife? I might have been able before. Not now, because another chapter of fate had begun to be fulfilled three months before that.

  He wasn’t in his hammock that night. He’d lain down on his back on the cot and had his head back, his eyes fixed on the spot on the ceiling where the light from the candle must have been most intense. There was an electric light in the room but he never used it. He preferred to lie in the shadows, his eyes fixed on the darkness. He didn’t move when I went into the room, but I noticed that the moment I crossed the threshold he felt that he wasn’t alone. Then I said: ‘If it’s not too much trouble, doctor, it seems that the Indian girl isn’t feeling well.’ He sat up on the bed. A moment before he’d felt that he wasn’t alone in the room. Now he knew that I was the one who was there. Without doubt they were two completely different feelings, because he underwent an immediate change, he smoothed his hair and remained sitting on the edge of the bed, waiting.

  ‘It’s Adelaida, doctor. She wants you to come look at Meme,’ I said.

  And he, sitting there, gave me the impact of an answer with his parsimonious ruminant voice:

  ‘It won’t be necessary. The fact is she’s pregnant.’

  Then he leaned forward, seemed to be examining my face, and said: ‘Meme’s been sleeping with me for years.’

  I must confess that I was surprised. I didn’t feel any upset, perplexity, or anger. I didn’t feel anything. Perhaps his confession was too serious to my way of seeing things and was out of the normal course of my comprehension. I remained impassive and I didn’t even know why. I was motionless, standing, immutable, as cold as he, like his parsimonious ruminant voice. Then, after a long silence during which he still sat on the cot, not moving, as if waiting for me to take the first step, I understood what he had just told me in all of its intensity. But then it was too late for me to get upset.

  ‘As long as you’re aware of the situation, doctor.’ That was all I could say. He said:

  ‘One takes his precautions, colonel. When a person takes a risk he knows that he’s taking it. If something goes wrong it’s because there was something unforeseen, out of a person’s reach.’

  I knew that kind of evasion. As always, I didn’t know where he was leading. I brought over a chair and sat down opposite him. Then he left the cot, fastened the buckle of his belt, and pulled up his pants and adjusted them. He kept on talking from the other end of the room. He said:

  ‘Just as sure as the fact that I took my precautions is the fact that this is the second time she’s got pregnant. The first time was a year and a half ago and you people didn’t notice anything.’

  He went on talking without emotion, going back to the cot. In the darkness I heard his slow, firm steps against the tiles. He said: ‘But she was ready for anything then. Not now. Two months ago she told me she was pregnant again and I told her what I had the first time: “Come by tonight and be ready for the same thing.” She told me not that day, the next day. When I went to have my coffee in the kitchen I told her that I was waiting for her, but she said that she’d never come back.’

  He’d come over by the cot, but he didn’t sit down. He turned his back on me again and began to walk around the room once more. I heard him speaking. I heard the flow of his voice, back and forth, as if he were rocking in the hammock. He was telling things calmly, but with assurance. I knew that it would have been useless to try to interrupt him. All I could do was listen to him. And he kept on talking:

  ‘Still, she did come two days later. I had everything ready. I told her to sit down there and I went to my table for the glass. Then, when I told her to drink it, I realized that this time she wouldn’t. She looked at me without smiling and said with a touch of cruelty: “I’m not going to get rid of this one, doctor. This one I’m going to have so I can raise it.”’

  I felt exasperated by his calmness. I told him: ‘That doesn’t justify anything, doctor. What you’ve done is something that’s twice unworthy: first, because of your relations inside my house, and then because of the abortion.’

  ‘But you can see that I did everything I could, colonel. It was all I could do. Afterward, when I saw there was no way out, I got ready to talk to you. I was going to do it one of these days.’

  ‘I imagine you know that there is a way out of this kind of situation if you really want to erase the insult. You know the principles of those of us who live in this house,’ I said.

  And he said:

  ‘I don’t want to cause you any trouble, colonel. Believe me. What I was going to tell you is this: I’ll take the Indian woman and go live in the empty house on the corner.’

  ‘Living together openly, doctor?’ I asked him. ‘Do you know what that means for us?’

  Then he went back to the cot. He sat down, leaned forward, and spoke with his elbows on his legs. His accent became different. At first it had been cold. Now it began to be cruel and challenging. He said:

  ‘I’m proposing the only solution that won’t cause you any distress, colonel. The other thing would be to say that the child isn’t mine.’

  ‘Meme would say it was,’ I said. I was beginning to feel indignant. His way of expressing himself was too challenging and aggressive now and I couldn’t accept it calmly.

  But he, hard, implacable, said:

  ‘You have to believe me absolutely when I say that Meme won’t say it is. It’s because I’m sure of that that I say I’ll take her to the corner, only so I can avoid distress for you. That’s the only reason, colonel.’

  He was so sure that Meme would not attribute the paternity of her child to him that now I did feel upset. Something was making me think that his strength was rooted much deeper than his words. I said:

  ‘We trust Meme as we would our own daughter, doctor. In this case she’d be on our side.’

  ‘If you knew what I know, you wouldn’t talk that way, colonel. Pardon me for saying it this way, but if you compare that Indian girl to your daughter, you’re insulting your daughter.’

  ‘You have no reason to say that,’ I said.

  And he answered, still with that bitter hardness in his voice: ‘I do. And when I tell you that she can’t say that I’m the father of her child, I also have reasons for it.’

  He threw his head back. He sighed deeply and said:

  ‘If you took time to
spy on Meme when she goes out at night, you wouldn’t even demand that I take her away with me. In this case I’m the one who runs the risk, colonel. I’m taking on a dead man to avoid your having any distress.’

  Then I understood that he wouldn’t even go through the doors of the church with Meme. But what was serious was that after his final words I wouldn’t have dared go through with what could have been a tremendous burden on my conscience later on. There were several cards in my favor. But the single one he held would have been enough for him to win a bet against my conscience.

  ‘All right, doctor,’ I said. ‘This very night I’ll make arrangements to have the house on the corner fixed up. But in any case, I want you to be aware of the fact that I’m throwing you out of my house. You’re not leaving of your own free will. Colonel Aureliano Buendía would have made you pay dearly for the way you returned his trust.’

  And when I thought I’d roused up his instincts and was waiting for him to unleash his dark, primal forces, he threw the whole weight of his dignity on me.

  ‘You’re a decent man, colonel,’ he said. ‘Everybody knows that, and I’ve lived in this house long enough for you not to have to remind me of it.’

  When he stood up he didn’t seem victorious. He only seemed satisfied at having been able to repay our attentions of eight years. I was the one who felt upset, the one at fault. That night, seeing the germs of death that were becoming progressively more visible in his hard yellow eyes, I understood that my attitude was selfish and that because of that one single stain on my conscience it would be quite right for me to suffer a tremendous expiation for the rest of my life. He, on the other hand, was at peace with himself. He said: