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Date Submitted: 03/14/2012 09:01 AM
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...