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

papers.”
    Although the drizzle persisted, Father Ángel went out to take his afternoon walk. It was still early for his appointment with the mayor, so he went to the flooded part of town. All he found was the corpse of a cat floating among the flowers.
    While he was coming back, the afternoon began to dry out. It was getting intense and bright. A barge covered with tar paper was coming down the thick and motionless river. From a half-collapsed house a child ran out, shouting that he’d found the sea inside a shell. Father Ángel put the shell to his ear. Indeed, there was the sea.
    Judge Arcadio’s wife was sitting by the door of their house as if in ecstasy, her arms folded over her stomach and her eyes fixed on the barge. Three houses beyond, the shops began, the showcases with their trinkets and the impassive
Syrians sitting in the doorways. The afternoon was dying with intense pink clouds and the uproar of parrots and monkeys on the opposite shore.
    The houses began to open up. Under the dirty almond trees on the square, around the refreshment carts, or on the worn granite benches in the flower beds, the men were gathering to chat. Father Ángel thought that every afternoon at that instant the town went through the miracle of transfiguration.
    “Father, do you remember the concentration camp prisoners?”
    Father Ángel didn’t see Dr. Giraldo, but he pictured him smiling behind the screened window. In all honesty he didn’t remember the photographs, but he was sure he’d seen them at one time or another.
    “Go into the waiting room,” the doctor said.
    Father Ángel pushed open the screen door. Stretched out on a mattress was a child of indefinite sex, nothing but bones, covered all over by yellowed skin. Two men and a woman were waiting, sitting by the partition. The priest didn’t smell any odor, but he thought that that creature should have been giving off an intense stench.
    “Who is it?” he asked.
    “My son,” the woman answered. And she added, as if excusing herself, “For two years he’s been shitting a little blood.”
    The patient made his eyes turn toward the door without moving his head. The priest felt a terrified pity.
    “And what have you done for him?” he asked.
    “We’ve been giving him green bananas for a long time,” the woman said, “but he hasn’t wanted to take them, even though they’re nice and binding.”
    “You have to bring him to confession,” the priest said.
    But he said it without conviction. He closed the door
carefully and scratched on the window screen with a fingernail, putting his face close in order to see the doctor inside. Dr. Giraldo was grinding something in a mortar.
    “What’s he got?” the priest asked.
    “I still haven’t examined him,” the doctor answered. And he commented thoughtfully, “There are things that happen to people by God’s will, Father.”
    Father Ángel let the comment pass.
    “None of the dead people I’ve seen in my life seemed as dead as that poor boy,” he said.
    He took his leave. There were no vessels at the dock. It was beginning to get dark. Father Ángel understood that his state of mind had changed with the sight of the sick boy. Realizing that he was late for his appointment, he walked faster toward the police barracks.
    The mayor was collapsed in a folding chair with his head in his hands.
    “Good evening,” the priest said slowly.
    The mayor raised his head and the priest shuddered at the eyes reddened by desperation. He had one cheek cool and newly shaved, but the other was a swampy tangle of an unguent the color of ashes. He exclaimed in a dull moan:
    “Father, I’m going to shoot myself.”
    Father Ángel felt a certain consternation.
    “You’re getting drunk from so many aspirins,” he said.
    The mayor shuffled over to the wall, and clutching his head in both hands, he pounded it violently against the boards. The priest had never witnessed such pain.
    “Take two more pills,” he said, consciously