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CHAPTER 4

THE DAMAGE FROM THE KNIVES WAS only a beginning for the unforgiving autopsy

that Father Carmen Amador found himself obliged to perform in Dr. Dionisio Iguaran's

absence. "It was as if we killed him all over again after he was dead," the aged priest told

me in his retirement at Calafell. "But it was an order from the mayor, and orders from the

barbarian, stupid as they might have been, had to be obeyed." It wasn't entirely proper. In

the confusion of that absurd Monday, Colonel Aponte had had an urgent telegraphic

conversation with the governor of the province, and the latter authorised him to take the

preliminary steps while he sent an investigating magistrate. The mayor was a former troop

commander with no experience in matters of law, and he was too conceited to ask anyone

who knew where he should begin. The first thing that bothered him was the autopsy. Cristo

Bedoya, who was a medical student, managed to get out of it because of his intimate

friendship with Santiago Nasar. The mayor thought that the body could be kept under

refrigeration until Dr. Dionisio Iguar_n came back, but he couldn't find a human-sized

freezer, and the only one in the market that would serve the purpose was out of order. The

body had been exposed to public view in the centre of the living room, lying on a narrow

iron cot while they were building a rich man's coffin for it. They'd brought in fans from the

bedrooms and some neighbouring houses, but there were so many people anxious to see it

that they had to push back the furniture and take down the bird cages and pots of ferns, and

even then the heat was unbearable. In addition, the dogs, aroused by the smell of death,

increased the uneasiness. They hadn't stopped howling since I went into the house, when

Santiago Nasar was still in his death throes in the kitchen and I found Divina Flor weeping

in great howls and holding them off with a stick.

"Help me," she shouted to me. "What they want is to eat his...