Among the innumerable secrets José Montiel had taken with him to the grave was the

combination of
the safe. The Mayor took on the problem. He ordered the safe put in the patio, against the
wall, and two
policemen fired their rifles at the lock. All morning long the widow heard from the
bedroom the muffled
reports successively ordered by the Mayors shouts.
Thats the last straw, she thought. Five years spent praying to God to end the shooting,
and now ¡
have to thank them for shooting in my house.
That day, she made a concerted effort to summon death, but no one replied. She was
beginning to fall
asleep when a tremendous explosion shook the foundations of the house. They had had to
dynamite the
safe.
Montiels widow heaved a sigh. October was interminable with its swampy rains, and
she felt lost,
sailing without direction in the chaotic and fabulous hacienda of José Montiel. Mr.
Carmichael, an old
and diligent friend of the family, had taken charge of the estate. When at last she faced
the concrete
fact that her husband had died, Montiels widow came out of the bedroom to take care of
the house.
She stripped it of all decoration, had the furniture covered in mourning colors, and put
funeral ribbons
on the portraits of the dead man which hung on the walls. In the two months after the
funeral, she had
acquired the habit of biting her nails. One dayher eyes reddened and swollen from
crying so much
she realized that Mr. Carmichael was entering the house with an open umbrella.
Close that umbrella, Mr. Carmichael, she told him. After all the misfortune weve
had, all we need
is for you to come into the house with your umbrella open.
Mr. Carmichael put the umbrella in the comer. He was an old Negro, with shiny skin,
dressed in white,
and with little slits made with a knife in his shoes to relieve the pressure of his bunions.
Its only while its drying.
For the first time since her husband died, the widow opened the window.
So much misfortune and, in addition, this winter, she murmured, biting her nails. It
seems as
though it will never clear up.

It wont clear up today or tomorrow, said the executor. Last night my bunions
wouldnt let me
sleep.
She trusted the atmospheric predictions of Mr. Carmichaels bunions. She contemplated
the desolate
little plaza, the silent houses whose doors did not open to witness the funeral of José
Montiel, and then
she felt desperate, with her nails, with her limitless lands, and with the infinite number of
obligations
which she inherited from her husband and which she would never manage to understand.
The world is all wrong, she said, sobbing.
Those who visited her in those days had many reasons to think she had gone mad. But
she was never
more lucid than then. Since before the political slaughter began, she had spent the sad
October
mornings in front of the window in her room, sympathizing with the dead and thinking
that if God had
not rested on Sunday He would have had time to finish the world properly.
He should have used that day to tie up a few of the loose ends she used to say. After
all, he had all
eternity to rest.
The only difference, after the death of her husband, was that then she had a concrete
reason for
harboring such dark thoughts.
Thus, while Montiels widow ate herself up in desperation, Mr. Carmichael tried to
prevent the
shipwreck. Things werent going well. Free of the threat of José Montiel, who had
monopolized local
business through terror, the town was taking reprisals. Waiting for customers who never
carne, the milk
went sour in the jugs lined up in the patio, and the honey spoiled in its combs, and the
cheese fattened
worms in the dark cabinets of the cheesehouse. In his mausoleum adorned with electric-
light bulbs and
imitation-marble archangels, José Montiel was paying for six years of murders and
oppression. No one in
the history of the country had got so rich in so short a time. When the first Mayor of the
dictatorship
arrived in town, José Montiel was a discreet partisan of all regimes who had spent half
his life in his
underwear seated in front of his rice mill. At one time he enjoyed a certain reputation as a
lucky man,
.and a good believer, because he promised out loud to give the Church a life-size image
of Saint Joseph if
he won the lottery, and two weeks later he won himself a fat prize and kept his promise.
The first time
he was seen to wear shoes was when the new Mayor, a brutish, underhanded police
sergeant, arrived
with express orders to liquidate the opposition. José Montiel began by being his
confidential informer.
That modest businessman, whose fat mans quiet humor never awakened the least
uneasiness,
segregated his enemies into rich and poor. The police shot down the poor in the public
square. The rich
were given a period of twenty-four hours to get out of town. Planning the massacre, José
Montiel was

closeted together with the Mayor in his stifling office for days on end, while his wife was
sympathizing
with the dead. When the Mayor left the office, she would block her husbands ways.
That man is a murderer, she would tell him. Use your influence with the government
to get them
to take that beast away; hes not going to leave a single human being in town alive.
And José Montiel, so busy those days, put her aside without looking at her, saying,
Dont be such a
fool. In reality, his business was not the killing of the poor but the expulsion of the rich.
After the Mayor
riddled their doors with gunfire and gave them their twenty-four hours to get out of town,
José Montiel
bought their lands and cattle from them for a price which he himself set.
Dont be silly his wife told him. Youll ruin yourself helping them so that they wont
die of hunger
someplace else, and they will never thank you.
And José Montiel, who now didnt even have time to smile, brushed her aside, saying,
Go to your kitchen and dont bother me so much.
At this rate, in less than a year the opposition was liquidated, and José Montiel was the
richest and
most powerful man in town. He sent his daughters to Paris, found a consular post in
Germany for his
son, and devoted himself to consolidating his empire. But he didnt live to enjoy even six
years of his
outrageous wealth.

After the first anniversary of his death, the widow heard the stairs creak only with the
arrival of bad
news. Someone always came at dusk. Again the bandits, they used to say. Yesterday
they made off
with a herd of fifty heifers. Motionless in her rocker, biting her nails, Montiels widow
fed on nothing
but resentment.
I told you, José Montiel, she was saying, talking to herself. This is an unappreciative
town. You are
still warm in <CANNOT FIND TRANSLATION FOR THIS SEGMENT> ...the letter, a
hand different from her
daugters' had added, "Imagine! They put the biggest and prettiest carnation in the pig's
ass."
Reading that phrase, for the first time in two years Montiel's widow smiled. She went up
to her
bedroom without turning out the lights in the house and, before lying down, turned the
electric fan over
against the wall. Then, from the night-table drawer she took some scissors, a can of
Band-Aids, and a
rosary, and she bandaged the nail of her right thumb, which was irritated by her biting.
Then she began
to pray, but at the second mystery she put the rosary into her left hand, because she
couldn't feel the
beads through the bandage. For a moment she heard the vibration of distant thunder.
Then she fell
asleep with her head bent on her breast. The hand with the rosary fell to her side, and then
she saw Big
Mama in the patio, with a white sheet and a comb in her lap, squashing lice with her
thumbnails. She
asked her:
"When am I going to die?"
Big Mama raised her head.
"When the tiredness begins in your arm."