Read No One Writes to the Colonel for Free Online Page A

He’s gota fever in his quills.’
    ‘He’ll be better next month,’ Hernán said.
    ‘I don’t want him anyway,’ the colonel said.
    Hernán’s pupils bore into his.
    ‘Realize how things are, colonel,’ he insisted. ‘The main thing is for you to be the one who puts Agustín’s rooster into the ring.’
    The colonel thought about it. ‘I realize,’ he said. ‘That’s why I’ve kept him until now.’ He clenched his teeth, andfelt he could go on: ‘The trouble is there are still two months.’
    Hernán was the one who understood.
    ‘If it’s only because of that, there’s no problem,’ he said.
    And he proposed his formula. The other accepted. At dusk, when he entered the house with the package under his arm, his wife was chagrined.
    ‘Nothing?’ she asked.
    ‘Nothing,’ the colonel answered. ‘But now it doesn’t matter. The boyswill take over feeding the rooster.’
    ‘Wait and I’ll lend you an umbrella, friend.’
    Sabas opened a cupboard in the office wall. He uncovered a jumbled interior: riding boots piled up, stirrups and reins, and an aluminum pail full of riding spurs. Hanging from the upper part, half a dozen umbrellas and a lady’s parasol. The colonel was thinking of the debris from some catastrophe.
    ‘Thanks, friend,’the colonel said, leaning on the window. ‘I prefer to wait for it to clear.’ Sabas didn’t close the cupboard. He settled down at the desk withinrange of the electric fan. Then he took a little hypodermic syringe wrapped in cotton out of the drawer. The colonel observed the grayish almond trees through the rain. It was an empty afternoon.
    ‘The rain is different from this window,’ he said. ‘It’sas if it were raining in another town.’
    ‘Rain is rain from whatever point,’ replied Sabas. He put the syringe on to boil on the glass desk top. ‘This town stinks.’
    The colonel shrugged his shoulders. He walked toward the middle of the office: a green-tiled room with furniture upholstered in brightly colored fabrics. At the back, piled up in disarray, were sacks of salt, honeycombs, and ridingsaddles. Sabas followed him with a completely vacant stare.
    ‘If I were in your shoes I wouldn’t think that way,’ said the colonel.
    He sat down and crossed his legs, his calm gaze fixed on the man leaning over his desk. A small man, corpulent, but with flaccid flesh, he had the sadness of a toad in his eyes.
    ‘Have the doctor look at you, friend,’ said Sabas. ‘You’ve been a little sad since theday of the funeral.’
    The colonel raised his head.
    ‘I’m perfectly well,’ he said.
    Sabas waited for the syringe to boil. ‘I wish I could say the same,’ he complained. ‘You’re lucky because you’ve got a cast-iron stomach.’ He contemplated the hairy backs of his hands which were dotted with dark blotches. He wore a ring with a black stone next to his wedding band.
    ‘That’s right,’ the colonel admitted.
    Sabascalled his wife through the door between the office and the rest of the house. Then he began a painful explanation of his diet. He took a little bottle out of his shirt pocket and put a white pill the size of a pea on the desk.
    ‘It’s torture to go around with this everyplace,’ he said. ‘It’s like carrying death in your pocket.’
    The colonel approached the desk. He examined the pill in thepalm of his hand until Sabas invited him to taste it.
    ‘It’s to sweeten coffee,’ he explained. ‘It’s sugar, but without sugar.’
    ‘Of course,’ the colonel said, his saliva impregnated with a sad sweetness. ‘It’s something like a ringing but without bells.’
    Sabas put his elbows on the desk with his face in his hands after his wife gave him the injection. The colonel didn’t know what to do withhis body. The woman unplugged the electric fan, put it on top of the safe, and then went to the cupboard.
    ‘Umbrellas have something to do with death,’ she said.
    The colonel paid no attention to her. He had left his