ON THE OCCASION of the celebration of the new century, there was an innovative program ofpublic ceremonies, the most memorable of which was the first journey in a balloon, the fruit of theboundless initiative of Dr. Juvenal Urbino. Half the city gathered on the Arsenal Beach to expresstheir wonderment at the ascent of the enormous balloon made of taffeta in the colours of the flag,which carried the first airmail to San Juan de la Ci閚 aga, some thirty leagues to the northeast asthe crow flies. Dr. Juvenal Urbino and his wife, who had experienced the excitement of flight atthe World's Fair in Paris, were the first to climb into the wicker basket, followed by the pilot andsix distinguished guests. They were carrying a letter from the Governor of the Province to themunicipal officials of San Juan de la Ci閚 aga, in which it was documented for all time that thiswas the first mail transported through the air. A journalist from the Commercial Daily asked Dr.
Juvenal Urbino for his final words in the event he perished during the adventure, and he did noteven take the time to think about the answer that would earn him so much abuse.
"In my opinion," he said, "the nineteenth century is passing for everyone except us."Lost in the guileless crowd that sang the national anthem as the balloon gained altitude,Florentino Ariza felt himself in agreement with the person whose comments he heard over the din,to the effect that this was not a suitable exploit for a woman, least of all one as old as FerminaDaza. But it was not so dangerous after all. Or at least not so much dangerous as depressing. Theballoon reached its destination without incident after a peaceful trip through an incredible bluesky. They flew well and very low, with a calm, favourable wind, first along the spurs of the snow-covered mountains and then over the vastness of the Great Swamp.
From the sky they could see, just as God saw them, the ruins of the very old and heroic cityof Cartagena de Indias, the most beautiful in the world, abandoned by its inhabitants because ofthe cholera panic after three centuries of resistance to the sieges of the English and the atrocities ofthe buccaneers. They saw the walls still intact, the brambles in the streets, the fortificationsdevoured by heartsease, the marble palaces and the golden altars and the Viceroys rotting withplague inside their armour.
They flew over the lake dwellings of the Trojas in Cataca, painted in lunatic colours, withpens holding iguanas raised for food and balsam apples and crepe myrtle hanging in the lacustrinegardens. Excited by everyone's shouting, hundreds of naked children plunged into the water,jumping out of windows, jumping from the roofs of the houses and from the canoes that theyhandled with astonishing skill, and diving like shad to recover the bundles of clothing, the bottlesof cough syrup, the beneficent food that the beautiful lady with the feathered hat threw to themfrom the basket of the balloon.
They flew over the dark ocean of the banana plantations, whose silence reached them like alethal vapour, and Fermina Daza remembered herself at the age of three, perhaps four, walkingthrough the shadowy forest holding the hand of her mother, who was almost a girl herself,surrounded by other women dressed in muslin, just like her mother, with white parasols and hatsmade of gauze. The pilot, who was observing the world through a spyglass, said: "They seemdead." He passed the spyglass to Dr. Juvenal Urbino, who saw the oxcarts in the cultivated fields,the boundary lines of the railroad tracks, the blighted irrigation ditches, and wherever he looked hesaw human bodies. Someone said that the cholera was ravaging the villages of the Great Swamp.
Dr. Urbino, as he spoke, continued to look through the spyglass.
"Well, it must be a very special form of cholera," he said, "because every single corpse hasreceived the coup de grace through the back of the neck."A short while later they flew over a foaming sea, and they landed without incident on abroad, hot beach whose surface, cracked with niter burned like fire. The officials were there withno more protection against the sun than ordinary umbrellas, the elementary schools were therewaving little flags in time to the music, and the beauty queens with scorched flowers and crownsmade of gold cardboard, and the brass band of the prosperous town of Gayra, which in those dayswas the best along the Caribbean coast. All that Fermina Daza wanted was to see her birthplaceagain, to confront it with her earliest memories, but no one was allowed to go there because of thedangers of the plague. Dr. Juvenal Urbino delivered the historic letter, which was then mislaidamong other papers and never seen again, and the entire delegation almost suffocated in thetedium of the speeches. The pilot could not make the balloon ascend again, and at last they wereled on muleback to the dock at Pueblo Viejo, where the swamp met the sea. Fermina Daza wassure she had passed through there with her mother when she was very young, in a cart drawn by ateam of oxen. When she was older, she had repeated the story several times to her father, who diedinsisting that she could not possibly recall that.
"I remember the trip very well, and what you say is accurate," he told her, "but it happened atleast five years before you were born."Three days later the members of the balloon expedition, devastated by a bad night of storms,returned to their port of origin, where they received a heroes' welcome. Lost in the crowd, ofcourse, was Florentino Ariza, who recognised the traces of terror on Fermina Daza's face.
Nevertheless he saw her again that same afternoon in a cycling exhibition that was also sponsoredby her husband, and she showed no sign of fatigue. She rode an uncommon velocipede thatresembled something from a circus, with a very high front wheel, over which she was seated, anda very small back wheel that gave almost no support. She wore a pair of loose trousers trimmed inred, which scandalised the older ladies and disconcerted the gentlemen, but no one was indifferentto her skill.
That, along with so many other ephemeral images in the course of so many years, wouldsuddenly appear to Florentino Ariza at the whim of fate, and disappear again in the same way,leaving behind a throb of longing in his heart. Taken together, they marked the passage of his life,for he experienced the cruelty of time not so much in his own flesh as in the imperceptiblechanges he discerned in Fermina Daza each time he saw her.
One night he went to Don Sancho's Inn, an elegant colonial restaurant, and sat in the mostremote corner, as was his custom when he ate his frugal meals alone. All at once, in the largemirror on the back wall, he caught a glimpse of Fermina Daza sitting at a table with her husbandand two other couples, at an angle that allowed him to see her reflected in all her splendour. Shewas unguarded, she engaged in conversation with grace and laughter that exploded like fireworks,and her beauty was more radiant under the enormous teardrop chandeliers: once again, Alice hadgone through the looking glass.
Holding his breath, Florentino Ariza observed her at his pleasure: he saw her eat, he saw herhardly touch her wine, he saw her joke with the fourth in the line of Don Sanchos; from hissolitary table he shared a moment of her life, and for more than an hour he lingered, unseen, in theforbidden precincts of her intimacy. Then he drank four more cups of coffee to pass the time untilhe saw her leave with the rest of the group. They passed so close to him that he could distinguishher scent among the clouds of other perfumes worn by her companions.
From that night on, and for almost a year afterward, he laid unrelenting siege to the owner ofthe inn, offering him whatever he wanted, money or favours or whatever he desired most in life, ifhe would sell him the mirror. It was not easy, because old Don Sancho believed the legend that thebeautiful frame, carved by Viennese cabinetmakers, was the twin of another, which had belongedto Marie Antoinette and had disappeared without a trace: a pair of unique jewels. When at last hesurrendered, Florentino Ariza hung the mirror in his house, not for the exquisite frame but becauseof the place inside that for two hours had been occupied by her beloved reflection.
When he saw Fermina Daza she was almost always on her husband's arm, the two of them inperfect harmony, moving through their own space with the astonishing fluidity of Siamese cats,which was broken only when they stopped to greet him. Dr. Juvenal Urbino, in fact, shook hishand with warm cordiality, and on occasion even permitted himself a pat on the shoulder. She, onthe other hand, kept him relegated to an impersonal regime of formalities and never made theslightest gesture that might allow him to suspect that she remembered him from her unmarrieddays. They lived in two different worlds, but while he made every effort to reduce the distancebetween them, every step she took was in the opposite direction. It was a long time before hedared to think that her indifference was no more than a shield for her timidity. This occurred tohim suddenly, at the christening of the first freshwater vessel built in the local shipyards, whichwas also the first official occasion at which Florentino Ariza, as First Vice President of the R. C.
C., represented Uncle Leo XII. This coincidence imbued the ceremony with special solemnity, andeveryone of any significance in the life of the city was present.
Florentino Ariza was looking after his guests in the main salon of the ship, still redolent offresh paint and tar, when there was a burst of applause on the docks, and the band struck up atriumphal march. He had to repress the trembling that was almost as old as he was when he sawthe beautiful woman of his dreams on her husband's arm, splendid in her maturity, striding like aqueen from another time past the honour guard in parade uniform, under the shower of paperstreamers and flower petals tossed at them from the windows. Both responded to the ovation witha wave of the hand, but she was so dazzling, dressed in imperial gold from her high-heeledslippers and the foxtails at her throat to her bell-shaped hat, that she seemed to be alone in themidst of the crowd.
Florentino Ariza waited for them on the bridge with the provincial officials, surrounded bythe crash of the music and the fireworks and the three heavy screams from the ship, whichenveloped the dock in steam. Juvenal Urbino greeted the members of the reception line with thatnaturalness so typical of him, which made everyone think the Doctor bore him a special fondness:
first the ship's captain in his dress uniform, then the Archbishop, then the Governor with his andthe Mayor with his, and then the military commander, who was a newcomer from the Andes.
Beyond the officials stood Florentino Ariza, dressed in dark clothing and almost invisible amongso many eminent people. After greeting the military commander, Fermina seemed to hesitatebefore Florentino Ariza's outstretched hand. The military man, prepared to introduce them, askedher if they did not know each other. She did not say yes and she did not say no, but she held outher hand to Florentino Ariza with a salon smile. The same thing had occurred twice in the past,and would occur again, and Florentino Ariza always accepted these occasions with a strength ofcharacter worthy of Fermina Daza. But that afternoon he asked himself, with his infinite capacityfor illusion, if such pitiless indifference might not be a subterfuge for hiding the torments of love.
The mere idea excited his youthful desires. Once again he haunted Fermina Daza's villa,filled with the same longings he had felt when he was on duty in the little Park of the Evangels,but his calculated intention was not that she see him, but rather that he see her and know that shewas still in the world. Now, however, it was difficult for him to escape notice. The District of LaManga was on a semi-deserted island, separated from the historic city by a canal of green waterand covered by thickets of icaco plum, which had sheltered Sunday lovers in colonial times. Inrecent years, the old stone bridge built by the Spaniards had been torn down, and in its stead wasone made of brick and lined with streetlamps for the new mule-drawn trolleys. At first theresidents of La Manga had to endure a torture that had not been anticipated during construction,which was sleeping so close to the city's first electrical plant whose vibration was a constantearthquake. Not even Dr. Juvenal Urbino, with all his prestige, could persuade them to move itwhere it would not disturb anyone, until his proven complicity with Divine Providence intercededon his behalf. One night the boiler in the plant blew up in a fearful explosion, flew over the newhouses, sailed across half the city, and destroyed the largest gallery in the former convent of St.
Julian the Hospitaler. The old ruined building had been abandoned at the beginning of the year, butthe boiler caused the deaths of four prisoners who had escaped from the local jail earlier that nightand were hiding in the chapel.
The peaceful suburb with its beautiful tradition of love was, however, not the most propitiousfor unrequited love when it became a luxury neighbourhood. The streets were dusty in summer,swamp-like in winter, and desolate all year round, and the scattered houses were hidden behindleafy gardens and had mosaic tile terraces instead of old-fashioned projecting balconies, as if theyhad been built for the purpose of discouraging furtive lovers. It was just as well that at this time itbecame fashionable to drive out in the afternoon in hired old Victorias that had been converted toone-horse carriages, and that the excursion ended on a hill where one could appreciate theheartbreaking twilights of October better than from the lighthouse, and observe the watchfulsharks lurking at the seminarians' beach, and see the Thursday ocean liner, huge and white, thatcould almost be touched with one's hands as it passed through the harbour channel. FlorentinoAriza would hire a Victoria after a hard day at the office, but instead of folding down the top, aswas customary during the hot months, he would stay hidden in the depths of the seat, invisible inthe darkness, always alone, and requesting unexpected routes so as not to arouse the evil thoughtsof the driver. In reality, the only thing that interested him on the drive was the pink marbleParthenon half hidden among leafy banana and mango trees, a luckless replica of the idyllicmansions on Louisiana cotton plantations. Fermina Daza's children returned home a little beforefive. Florentino Ariza would see them arrive in the family carriage, and then he would see Dr.
Juvenal Urbino leave for his routine house calls, but in almost a year of vigilance he never evencaught the glimpse he so desired.
One afternoon when he insisted on his solitary drive despite the first devastating rains ofJune, the horse slipped and fell in the mud. Florentino Ariza realised with horror that they werejust in front of Fermina Daza's villa, and he pleaded with the driver, not thinking that hisconsternation might betray him.
"Not here, please," he shouted. "Anywhere but here."Bewildered by his urgency, the driver tried to raise the horse without unharnessing him, andthe axle of the carriage broke. Florentino Ariza managed to climb out of the coach in the drivingrain and endure his embarrassment until passersby in other carriages offered to take him home.
While he was waiting, a servant of the Urbino family "ad seen him, his clothes soaked through,standing in mud up to his Knees, and she brought him an umbrella so that he could take refuge onthe terrace. In the wildest of his deliriums Florentino Ariza had never dreamed of such goodfortune, but on that afternoon he would have died rather than allow Fermina Daza to see him inthat condition.
When they lived in the old city, Juvenal Urbino and his family would walk on Sundays fromtheir house to the Cathedral for eight o'clock Mass, which for them was more a secular ceremonythan a religious one. Then, when they moved, they continued to drive there for several years, andat times they visited with friends under the palm trees in the park. But when the temple of thetheological seminary was built in La Manga, with a private beach and its own cemetery, they nolonger went to the Cathedral except on very solemn occasions. Ignorant of these changes,Florentino Ariza waited Sunday after Sunday on the terrace of the Parish Caf? watching the peoplecoming out of all three Masses. Then he realised his mistake and went to the new church, whichwas fashionable until just a few years ago, and there, at eight o'clock sharp on four Sundays inAugust, he saw Dr. Juvenal Urbino with his children, but Fermina Daza was not with them. Onone of those Sundays he visited the new cemetery adjacent to the church, where the residents ofLa Manga were building their sumptuous pantheons, and his heart skipped a beat when hediscovered the most sumptuous of all in the shade of the great ceiba trees. It was already complete,with Gothic stained-glass windows and marble angels and gravestones with gold lettering for theentire family. Among them, of course, was that of Do帽 a Fermina Daza de Urbino de la Calle,and next to it her husband's, with a common epitaph: Together still in the peace of the Lord.
For the rest of the year, Fermina Daza did not attend any civic or social ceremonies, not eventhe Christmas celebrations, in which she and her husband had always been illustrious protagonists.
But her absence was most notable on the opening night of the opera season. During intermission,Florentino Ariza happened on a group that, beyond any doubt, was discussing her withoutmentioning her name. They said that one midnight the previous June someone had seen herboarding the Cunard ocean liner en route to Panama, and that she wore a dark veil to hide theravages of the shameful disease that was consuming her. Someone asked what terrible illnesswould dare to attack a woman with so much power, and the answer he received was saturated withblack bile: "A lady so distinguished could suffer only from consumption."Florentino Ariza knew that the wealthy of his country did not contract short-term diseases.
Either they died without warning, almost always on the eve of a major holiday that could not becelebrated because of the period of mourning, or they faded away in long, abominable illnesseswhose most intimate details eventually became public knowledge. Seclusion in Panama wasalmost an obligatory penance in the life of the rich.
They submitted to God's will in the Adventist Hospital, an immense white warehouse lost inthe prehistoric downpours of Dari閚, where the sick lost track of the little life that was left tothem, and in whose solitary rooms with their burlap windows no one could tell with certainty ifthe smell of carbolic acid was the odour of health or of death. Those who recovered came backbearing splendid gifts that they would distribute with a free hand and a kind of agonised longing tobe pardoned for their indiscretion in still being alive. Some returned with their abdomenscrisscrossed by barbarous stitches that seemed to have been sewn with cobbler's hemp; they wouldraise their shirts to display them when people came to visit, they compared them with those ofothers who had suffocated from excesses of joy, and for the rest of their days they would describeand describe again the angelic visions they had seen under the influence of chloroform. On theother hand, no one ever learned about the visions of those who did not return, including thesaddest of them all: those who had died as exiles in the tuberculosis pavilion, more from thesadness of the rain than because of the complications of their disease.
If he had been forced to choose, Florentino Ariza did not know which fate he would havewanted for Fermina Daza. More than anything else he wanted the truth, but no matter howunbearable, and regardless of how he searched, he could not find it. It was inconceivable to himthat no one could even give him a hint that would confirm the story he had heard. In the world ofriverboats, which was his world, no mystery could be maintained, no secret could be kept. And yetno one had heard anything about the woman in the black veil. No one knew anything in a citywhere everything was known, and where many things were known even before they happened,above all if they concerned the rich. But no one had any explanation for the disappearance ofFermina Daza. Florentino Ariza continued to patrol La Manga, continued to hear Mass withoutdevotion in the basilica of the seminary, continued to attend civic ceremonies that never wouldhave interested him in another state of mind, but the passage of time only increased the credibilityof the story he had heard. Everything seemed normal in the Urbino household, except for themother's absence.
As he carried on his investigation, he learned about other events he had not known of or intowhich he had made no enquiries, including the death of Lorenzo Daza in the Cantabrian villagewhere he had been born. He remembered seeing him for many years in the rowdy chess wars atthe Parish Caf? hoarse with so much talking, and growing fatter and rougher as he sank into thequicksand of an unfortunate old age. They had never exchanged another word since theirdisagreeable breakfast of anise in the previous century, and Florentino Ariza was certain that evenafter he had obtained for his daughter the successful marriage that had become his only reason forliving, Lorenzo Daza remembered him with as much rancour as he felt toward Lorenzo Daza. Buthe was so determined to find out the unequivocal facts regarding Fermina Daza's health that hereturned to the Parish Caf?to learn them from her father, just at the time of the historic tournamentin which Jeremiah de Saint-Amour alone confronted forty-two opponents. This was how hediscovered that Lorenzo Daza had died, and he rejoiced with all his heart, although the price of hisjoy might be having to live without the truth. At last he accepted as true the story of the hospitalfor the terminally ill, and his only consolation was the old saying: Sick women live forever. On thedays when he felt disheartened, he resigned himself to the notion that the news of Fermina Daza'sdeath, if it should occur, would find him without his having to look for it.
It never did, for Fermina Daza was alive and well on the ranch, half a league from the villageof Flores de Mar韆, where her Cousin Hildebranda S醤 chez was living, forgotten by the world.
She had left with no scandal, by mutual agreement with her husband, both of them as entangled asadolescents in the only serious crisis they had suffered during so many years of stable matrimony.
It had taken them by surprise in the repose of their maturity, when they felt themselves safe frommisfortune's sneak attacks, their children grown and well-behaved, and the future ready for themto learn how to be old without bitterness. It had been something so unexpected for them both thatthey wanted to resolve it not with shouts, tears, and intermediaries, as was the custom in theCaribbean, but with the wisdom of the nations of Europe, and there was so much vacillation as towhether their loyalties lay here or over there that they ended up mired in a puerile situation thatdid not belong anywhere. At last she decided to leave, not even knowing why or to what purpose,out of sheer fury, and he, inhibited by his sense of guilt, had not been able to dissuade her.
Fermina Daza, in fact, had sailed at midnight in the greatest secrecy and with her facecovered by a black mantilla, not on a Cunard liner bound for Panama, however, but on the regularboat to San Juan de la Ci閚 aga, the city where she had been born and had lived until heradolescence, and for which she felt a growing homesickness that became more and more difficultto bear as the years went by. In defiance of her husband's will, and of the customs of the day, heronly companion was a fifteen-year-old goddaughter who had been raised as a family servant, butthe ship captains and the officials at each port had been notified of her journey. When she madeher rash decision, she told her children that she was going to have a change of scene for threemonths or so with Aunt Hildebranda, but her determination was not to return. Dr. Juvenal Urbinoknew the strength of her character very well, and he was so troubled that he accepted her decisionwith humility as God's punishment for the gravity of his sins. But the lights on the boat had not yetbeen lost to view when they both repented of their weakness.
Although they maintained a formal correspondence concerning their children and otherhousehold matters, almost two years went by before either one could find a way back that was notmined with pride. During the second year, the children went to spend their school vacation inFlores de Mar韆, and Fermina Daza did the impossible and appeared content with her new life.
That at least was the conclusion drawn by Juvenal Urbino from his son's letters. Moreover, at thattime the Bishop of Riohacha went there on a pastoral visit, riding under the pallium on hiscelebrated white mule with the trappings embroidered in gold. Behind him came pilgrims fromremote regions, musicians playing accordions, peddlers selling food and amulets; and for threedays the ranch was overflowing with the crippled and the hopeless, who in reality did not come forthe learned sermons and the plenary indulgences but for the favours of the mule who, it was said,performed miracles behind his master's back. The Bishop had frequented the home of the Urbinode la Calle family ever since his days as an ordinary priest, and one afternoon he escaped from thepublic festivities to have lunch at Hildebranda's ranch. After the meal, during which they spokeonly of earthly matters, he took Fermina Daza aside and asked to hear her confession. She refusedin an amiable but firm manner, with the explicit argument that she had nothing to repent of.
Although it was not her purpose, at least not her conscious purpose, she was certain that heranswer would reach the appropriate ears.
Dr. Juvenal Urbino used to say, not without a certain cynicism, that it was not he who was toblame for those two bitter years of his life but his wife's bad habit of smelling the clothes herfamily took off, and the clothes that she herself took off, so that she could tell by the odour if theyneeded to be laundered even though they might appear to be clean. She had done this ever sinceshe was a girl, and she never thought it worthy of comment until her husband realised what shewas doing on their wedding night. He also knew that she locked herself in the bathroom at leastthree times a day to smoke, but this did not attract his attention because the women of his classwere in the habit of locking themselves away in groups to talk about men and smoke, and even todrink as much as two litres of aguardiente until they had passed out on the floor in a brickmason'sdrunken stupor. But her habit of sniffing at all the clothing she happened across seemed to him notonly inappropriate but unhealthy as well. She took it as a joke, which is what she did witheverything she did not care to discuss, and she said that God had not put that diligent oriole's beakon her face just for decoration. One morning, while she was at the market, the servants aroused theentire neighbourhood in their search for her three-year-old son, who was not to be found anywherein the house. She arrived in the middle of the panic, turned around two or three times like atracking mastiff, and found the boy asleep in an armoire where no one thought he could possiblybe hiding. When her astonished husband asked her how she had found him, she replied: "By thesmell of caca."The truth is that her sense of smell not only served her in regard to washing clothes or findinglost children: it was the sense that oriented her in all areas of life, above all in her social life.
Juvenal Urbino had observed this throughout his marriage, in particular at the beginning, when shewas the parvenu in a milieu that had been prejudiced against her for three hundred years, and yetshe had made her way through coral reefs as sharp as knives, not colliding with anyone, with apower over the world that could only be a supernatural instinct. That frightening faculty, whichcould just as well have had its origin in a millenarian wisdom as in a heart of stone, met itsmoment of misfortune one ill-fated Sunday before Mass when, out of simple habit, Fermina Dazasniffed the clothing her husband had worn the evening before and experienced the disturbingsensation that she had been in bed with another man.
First she smelled the jacket and the vest while she took the watch chain out of the buttonholeand removed the pencil holder and the billfold and the loose change from the pockets and placedeverything on the dresser, and then she smelled the hemmed shirt as she removed the tiepin andthe topaz cuff links and the gold collar button, and then she smelled the trousers as she removedthe keyholder with its eleven keys and the penknife with its mother-of-pearl handle, and finallyshe smelled the underwear and the socks and the linen handkerchief with the embroideredmonogram. Beyond any shadow of a doubt there was an odour in each of the articles that had notbeen there in all their years of life together, an odour impossible to define because it was not thescent of flowers or of artificial essences but of something peculiar to human nature. She saidnothing, and she did not notice the odour every day, but she now sniffed at her husband's clothingnot to decide if it was ready to launder but with an unbearable anxiety that gnawed at herinnermost being.
Fermina Daza did not know where to locate the odour of his clothing in her husband'sroutine. It could not be placed between his morning class and lunch, for she supposed that nowoman in her right mind would make hurried love at that time of day, least of all with a visitor,when the house still had to be cleaned, and the beds made, and the marketing done, and lunchprepared, and perhaps with the added worry that one of the children would be sent home earlyfrom school because somebody threw a stone at him and hurt his head and he would find her ateleven o'clock in the morning, naked in the unmade bed and, to make matters worse, with a doctoron top of her. She also knew that Dr. Juvenal Urbino made love only at night, better yet in absolutedarkness, and as a last resort before breakfast when the first birds began to chirp. After that time,as he would say, it was more work than the pleasure of daytime love was worth to take off one'sclothes and put them back on again. So that the contamination of his clothing could occur onlyduring one of his house calls or during some moment stolen from his nights of chess and films.
This last possibility was difficult to prove, because unlike so many of her friends, Fermina Dazawas too proud to spy on her husband or to ask someone else to do it for her. His schedule of housecalls, which seemed best suited to infidelity, was also the easiest to keep an eye on, because Dr.
Juvenal Urbino kept a detailed record of each of his patients, including the payment of his fees,from the first time he visited them until he ushered them out of this world with a final sign of thecross and some words for the salvation of their souls.
In the three weeks that followed, Fermina Daza did not find the odour in his clothing for afew days, she found it again when she least expected it, and then she found it, stronger than ever,for several days in a row, although one of those days was............