In Evil Hour by Gabriel García Márquez, Gregory Rabassa Read Free Book Online

other hand, one needs the tenacity of many years and age-old experience to rebuild morals.” Rebeca Asís raised her transparent hand, with its wedding band topped by a ring with emeralds.
    “For that very reason,” she said. “We thought that with these lampoons, all your work might be lost.”
    The only woman who had remained silent until then took advantage of the pause to intervene.
    “Besides, we thought that the country is recuperating and that this present calamity might cause trouble.”
    Father Ángel took a fan out of the closet and began to fan himself parsimoniously.
    “One thing has nothing to do with the other,” he said. “We’ve gone through a difficult political moment, but family morals have been maintained intact.”
    He stood up before the three women. “Within a few years I shall go tell the apostolic prefecture: I leave you that exemplary town. Now all that’s needed is for you to send a young and active fellow to build the best church in the prefecture.”
    He gave a languid bow and exclaimed:
    “Then I will go to die in peace in the courtyard of my ancestors.”
    The Dames protested. Adalgisa Montoya expressed the general thought:
    “This is like your own town, Father. And we want you to stay here until the last moment.”
    “If it’s a question of building a new church,” Rebeca Asís said, “we can start the campaign tomorrow.”
    “All in good time,” Father Ángel replied.
    Then, in a different tone, he added: “As for now, I don’t want to grow old at the head of any parish. I don’t want to happen to me what happened to meek Antonio Isabel del Santísimo Sacramento del Altar Castañeda y Montero, who informed the bishop that a rain of dead birds was falling in his parish. The investigator sent by the bishop found him in the main square, playing cops and robbers with the children.”
    The Dames expressed their perplexity.
    “Who was he?”
    “The curate who succeeded me in Macondo,” Father Ángel said. “He was one hundred years old.”

T HE WINTER , whose inclemency had been foreseen since the last days of September, implanted its rigor that weekend. The mayor spent Sunday chewing analgesic tablets in his hammock while the river overflowed its banks and damaged the lower parts of town.
    During the first letup in the rain, on Monday at dawn, the town needed several hours to recover. The poolroom and the barbershop opened early, but most of the houses remained shut up until eleven o’clock. Mr. Carmichael was the first to have the opportunity to shudder at the spectacle of men carrying their houses to higher ground. Bustling groups had dug up pilings and were transferring intact the fragile habitations of wattle walls and palm roofs.
    Taking refuge under the eaves of the barbershop, his umbrella open, Mr. Carmichael was contemplating the laborious maneuvers when the barber drew him out of his abstraction.
    “They should have waited for it to clear,” the barber said.
    “It won’t clear for two days,” said Mr. Carmichael, and he shut his umbrella. “My corns tell me.”
    The men carrying the houses, sunk in the mud up to their ankles, passed by, bumping into the walls of the barbershop. Mr. Carmichael saw the tumble-down insides through the window, a bedroom completely despoiled of its intimacy, and he felt invaded by a sense of disaster.
    It seemed like six in the morning, but his stomach told him that it was going on twelve. Moisés the Syrian invited him to sit in his shop until the rain passed. Mr. Carmichael reiterated his prediction that it wouldn’t clear for the next forty-eight hours. He hesitated before leaping onto the boardwalk of the next building. A group of boys who were playing war threw a mud ball that splattered on the wall a few feet from his newly pressed pants. Elías the Syrian came out of his shop with a broom in his hand, threatening the boys in an algebra of Arabic and Castilian.
    The boys leaped merrily.
    “Dumb Turk, go to work.”
    Mr.