Siete minutos by Ismael Camacho Arango (the little red hen read aloud TXT) 📖

the girls.
“We couldn’t find you,” he said.
“I’ve been having some fun,” I said.
The mazato queen looked at him with a few pesos in her hand, before making her way to the hall, where the major spoke about the town to the campesinos.
“Don’t you have some spare clothes?” I interrupted his speech.
He sent us to the priest, who had to crown the queen of the jungle in another party a few streets away.
“You must enjoy the party,” he said.
We didn’t feel happy in our dirty clothes, while he crowned a few more girls. I then crowned the queen of the mini skirt, elected from 250 competitors around the region.
“Come with me behind the hut,” I pointed to something on the other side of the courtyard.
“That’s Miss Lola’s house,” she said.
I took her virginity behind some bushes where a few rats hid on hearing us and the party went on in the courtyard.
“Who is there?” a woman’s voice interrupted my pleasure.
“That’s Miss Lola,” the girl said.
She ran away from my arms, leaving a trail of blood all along the mud until she disappeared amidst the public. On leaving the bushes, I saw a small woman waiting by the entrance to the house.
“I was lost,” I said.
“I have heard that excuse before.”
“It’s the truth,” I said.
“You must be responsible for the baby.”
“What baby?”
Taking me inside the place, she offered me some of her husband’s clothes while covering her nose.
“You must have a shower first,” she said.
Then she told me she had been the queen only of the onion, the black bean, the coffee, the curuba (14) and the peanut. The elderly teacher only wore three of the crowns on her head, the base of her skull collapsing under the weight. Every seventh of August she helped to recreate the battle of Boyaca (15) but sometimes the Spaniards won the battle. As she showed me the school building, I saw the first stone someone had placed there in 1922. The children had their classes in the field, sitting on the grass next to the stone.
At first they told her she could have children of both sexes. After a detailed analysis, she realised that the normal thing was to have boys and girls, and two years later they gave her permission for the school. She has worked in the town ever since. They had an old bus, the pride of the town, and it took them to the next town where the train went past. Jaramillo joined us, looking healthy after cavorting with a few of the queens in need of money.
The healthy mountain air made us feel strong, as we drank more aguardiente but the people looked unhappy when we told them the president was the same one. The doctor, his bald head under a straw hat, wore a heavy poncho and sandals in his feet like everyone else in the town. As we drank aguardiente, he told us about the parties they had in the town hall, where everyone vomited under the palm trees by the entrance.
I smiled. “It must be horrible.”
He could diagnose people’s illness by their vomits, even if the bad diets made him sick. Aguardiente had become their main meal during the day while the night robbed them of their sanity in an alcohol induced limbo. He invited us to sleep in his house by the park and the barmaid smiled at us. I wanted to take her behind the bar to touch her pubis, but the doctor kept on talking about his life.
“This is the best place in the world,” the doctor said.
I believed him, even if I couldn’t do anything to the girl. Later that night we went into the doctor’s house while singing the Marseilles. It looked like a palace as he took us to our rooms in another part of the building. It had been built it during the conquest, and before all the beauty queens had been born.
“This is your bed,” he said.
I saw a four poster bed, amidst an old room, filled up with reminders of the past, while the pictures of a few conquistadors looked at us from the walls. They must have been the only visitors to the town for some time, I thought, lying under the net to stop the mosquitoes dining in my body. I dreamt of Homer leading me to apocalypse as something cold went over my nose. On opening my eyes, I found myself in the middle of the park.
“Ha, ha, ha,” someone said. “Margarita woke you up.”
I saw a big parrot laughing, while a snake slithered over my body. The parrot said:
“She should bite your bottom.”
I ran amongst the bushes surrounding the big patio but tripped on a turtle, as a bear went running under my legs, a monkey offered me a banana and the parrot started to sing an opera. I ate some fruit next to a fat iguana hunting for flies on a stone. Then my friend jumped out of a window chased by a tiger while the parrot laughed. A man wearing underpants greeted us by a big house.
“I’m the doctor,” he said.
I nodded. “I remember.”
He spoke to the animals in their own language. It had to be the Indian curse like Homer had told me many times in the market. Then I met a nice caiman, who served as a table in the toilet but had been dead for some time. Chucho –the monkey- brought me breakfast.
I’ll give you a few fragmented details of the story the doctor told us afterwards. I’m sorry if I’m too long but I want to tell you everything. My friend had a colleague with son who was a doctor, a nice trick of nature. It had been one of those things. Nothing else like that had happened in the family, apart from an uncle who had been the helper at court.
The man died before his son had his degree and started to study dead people. The doctor didn’t eat much to pay for the university, but after graduating, he practiced in a hospital, where he had dinner for the first time. The future was not good as he had to find a job, that’s the only way doctors can live up to the day they die. He had to live in the present now.
He went to see the health minister after earning his title but the lift didn’t work and had to go up nine floors. The secretary had forgotten her keys downstairs, asking for our friend to get them. The girl had left a message for him to come back at three o’clock by the time he got upstairs. As he found the office shut at that time, he came back two months later, when the lift had been repaired after the education minister had collapsed with a stroke because of all the stairs he had to climb.
They told him that the minister of war might need a doctor, while someone put him in contact with an architect Perez, living in Barranquilla and the president of the society for the protection of yellow beetles. Our doctor found the man on the beach, crying next to the body of a dead beetle.
“We need doctors in a town in the central cordillera,” the architect said.
A few days later the doctor arrived at the station, carrying a suitcase with a blood pressure monitor, a stethoscope and a small syringe. He also had his degree documents.
“Can I have a ticket for station X?” he said to the girl in the ticket window.
The ticket seller looked at him up and down. Then she did the same but down and up.
“You must be joking,” she said while cleaning her nails.
The doctor shrugged. “But I need a ticket for X.”
“Are you serious?” the girl asked.
“Yes, I’m.”
She went inside the office and came back a few moments later accompanied by two fat men and a skinny one. Two women came behind them.
“There he is,” the girl said.
One of the fat men removed his glasses before confronting the young man.
“Do you know about the punishment for jokers?” he asked.
“You must be ashamed of yourself,” one of the women said.
The other fat man frowned: “What a terrible thing.”
“I don’t understand,” the doctor said.
“You must come with me,” the fat man said.
After passing several offices, they entered a big room where a few men sat around a big table and the one with more authority said:
“Tell me young man, why do you want to go to that town?”
“They don’t have any doctors in the next town,” the doctor replied.
“Why do you hate doctors?”
“No, sir,” the young man said. “I’m a doctor.”
“But you want to live in town X.”
The doctor shook his head. “I’ll live in the next town.”
“Look, young man. I’ve been working in the trains for 34 years and this is the first time someone goes to town X. That town only has 17 people, why are you going there?”
“I want to go to the next town,” the doctor said.
The fat man talked to his colleagues.
“This young man has the most unusual ideas,” he said.