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The Feast Policarpo Varón I wanted to watch the people play pool. Since it was so hot that afternoon, I ordered a glass of ice-cold lemonade and sat down in a corner. Of course, sometimes I had to get up when the onlookers went up to the pool table for the tough shots and blocked my view. I’d crane my neck above them and it was funny ending up right in front of the short player’s butt, that guy whose name I can’t remember now, who would almost be lying flat on the table. Then the onlookers would go back to their places. It was at this moment that the man arrived. I had never seen him before. Now I know that his name is Ramón. And he had had one too many aguardientes because he came in yelling, causing quite a commotion, and brandishing an empty bottle. Then I said to myself , “It’s time to go.” But the asshole was heading toward me. “Shit, here we go,” I thought. Then the man started: “Have a drink with me, Abelardo,” and he grabbed my arm and pushed me over to a table, and then he said, “Come here, I’m paying, it’s on me, don’t let me down, man.” Well, I played along, but then he just wouldn’t let up. “I don’t drink,” I said, but the man had made up his mind. I kept saying no, he kept saying yes. I decided to slip away and go out to the plaza, but he grabbed me hard. I had to struggle a lot because the man was big. The beers were already on the table. The man picked one up and threw it at my face and then I said, “That I’m not going to take, asshole ,” and I punched him right in the face, and the guy fell on his ass 128 129 The Feast in the corner with his nose bleeding, and I said to myself, “Now you’ve really got to split. . . .” I headed for the door but the police were already advancing through the plaza; scruffy policemen, with their shirts open, just putting on their caps, positioning their rifles on their shoulders and the sergeant in front hurried them along, but those policemen looked really sleepy, and for good reason, because it was the middle of the afternoon when the heat is at its fiercest in San Bernardo de los Vientos, when you can’t bear sitting still. And the sergeant turned around and no doubt said, “Move, goddamn it, can’t you see there’s a fight,” and the policemen made like they were hurrying. And when they arrived they almost couldn’t get in because of all the people already gathered in the doorway of the café. The policemen had to go in saying, “Make way, make way, for God’s sake,” and pushing people to either side with the butts of their rifles. I was closest to the door. The other had just gotten up from the corner and was wiping his nose and his rear end with his shirtsleeve, and that was when the sergeant went up to him (I could swear the sergeant was smiling, mocking the poor guy) and he said to everyone , or looking at everyone but only asking the man and myself, “What’s going on here . . . ?” Then the man spoke. He told the sergeant that I had punched him. And that sergeant, impassive, said to me, “You come with us,” and he shoved me in the ribs. It wasn’t a shove made to keep me by his side; it was a mighty thrust that almost sent me flying into the street. And the policemen surrounded me and took me to the station and everyone was in their doorways whispering, no doubt saying, “They got Abelardo,” although I couldn’t hear them. . . . But I did hear when old Empera, who had watched everything from the corridor of her ranch, turned around and went into her house and then, with all of that fervor she always puts into everything she says, she said to her kids or to her husband (Vigilio is the old man’s name), “Shit, they got Abelardo. . . .” Empera said it, that old woman with the massive hips, big and raucous; I managed to hear her and everyone else in San Bernardo de los Vientos probably heard her too, because in...

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