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

proposing a remedy for his own confusion. “Two more won’t kill you.”
    Not only was that really true, but he was fully aware that he was awkward facing human pain. He looked for the analgesics in the naked space of the room. Up against the
walls there were half a dozen leather stools, a glass cabinet stuffed with dusty papers, and a lithograph of the president of the republic hanging from a nail. The only trace of the analgesics was the cellophane wrappings strewn on the floor.
    “Where are they?” he said desperately.
    “They don’t have any more effect on me,” the mayor said.
    The curate went over to him, repeating: “Tell me where they are.” The mayor gave a violent twitch and Father Ángel saw an enormous and monstrous face a few inches from his eyes.
    “God damn it,” the mayor shouted. “I already said they don’t do me a fucking bit of good.”
    He lifted a stool above his head and flung it with all the might of his desperation against the glass case. Father Ángel only understood what had happened after the instantaneous drizzle of glass, when the mayor began to rise up like a serene apparition in the midst of the cloud of dust. At that moment there was a perfect silence.
    “Lieutenant,” the priest murmured.
    In the door to the porch stood the policemen with their rifles at the ready. The mayor looked at them without seeing them, breathing like a cat, and they lowered their rifles but remained motionless beside the door. Father Ángel led the mayor by the arm to the folding chair.
    “Where are the analgesics?” he insisted.
    The mayor closed his eyes and threw his head back. “I’m not taking any more of that junk,” he said. “My ears are buzzing and the bones of my skull are going to sleep on me.” During a brief respite in the pain, he turned his head to the priest and asked:
    “Did you talk to the tooth-puller?”
    The priest said yes silently. From the expression that
followed that reply the mayor learned the results of the interview.
    “Why don’t you talk to Dr. Giraldo?” the priest proposed. “There are doctors who pull teeth.”
    The mayor delayed in answering. “He’ll probably say he hasn’t got any forceps,” he said. And he added:
    “It’s a plot.”
    He took advantage of the respite to rest from that implacable afternoon. When he opened his eyes the room was in shadows. He said, without seeing Father Ángel:
    “You came about César Montero.”
    He didn’t hear any answer. “With this pain I haven’t been able to do anything,” he went on. He got up to turn on the light and the first wave of mosquitoes came in through the balcony. Father Ángel was surprised at the hour.
    “Time is passing,” he said.
    “He has to be sent off on Wednesday in any case,” the mayor said. “Tomorrow arrange what has to be arranged and confess him in the afternoon.”
    “What time?”
    “Four o’clock.”
    “Even if it’s raining?”
    In a single look, the mayor liberated all the impatience repressed during two weeks of suffering.
    “Even if the world is coming to an end, Father.”
    The pain had become invulnerable to the analgesics. The mayor hung the hammock on the balcony of his room, trying to sleep in the coolness of early evening. But before eight o’clock he succumbed again to desperation and went down into the square, which was in a lethargy from a dense wave of heat.
    After roaming about the area without finding the inspiration he needed to rise above the pain, he went into the
movie theater. It was a mistake. The buzz of the warplanes increased the intensity of the pain. He left the theater before intermission and got to the pharmacy just as Don Lalo Moscote was getting ready to close the doors.
    “Give me the strongest thing you’ve got for a toothache.”
    The druggist examined the cheek with a look of stupor. Then he went to the rear of the establishment, past a double row of cabinets with glass doors which were completely filled with porcelain vials,