Dona Nicanora's Hat Shop (40 page)

It seemed to everyone who spoke about it in the months to come that there was a momentary pause in which all thoughts and action were held in abeyance. As the last firework lit the sky, it was answered by a shot from the forest, as if the spirits of the swamp were replying
with their own firework display. Arturo was the only one among them to understand – too late to warn anyone what was taking place. In that second, he realised exactly why Claudia had visited him in the night, and to where she had led her pursuers.

At the moment the shots from the forest were fired, Nena, who was standing beside her mother, looked across at the barber's shop and saw a familiar face in the crowd. ‘He's here, he's here, he's come back!' she shouted. As Nicanora looked up, she too saw the hatless figure of Don Bosco appear from round the corner of the shop. Nena let go of her mother's hand and ran to meet him. She did not make it past the feet of the Virgin.

As Don Bosco stepped forward, his face beaming with delight at the expression of joy that covered Nicanora's, the computer screen burst into life. According to the onlookers, it first flickered and then shimmered, as if it had collided with another world, before it shattered into tiny pieces. The shroud fell from the Virgin, lights momentarily flashed around her head before she, too, disappeared in a shower of minute fragments. Nena fell to the ground at the Virgin's feet, a small pool forming under her that slowly trickled across the plaza in a delicate red stream. Bottles of beer smashed to the ground, their contents mixing with the debris now filling the plaza as the sound of explosions echoed across the town. Don Bosco tried to make his way through the chaos to the place where Nena had fallen, grabbing at people as they ran in panic-driven circles and pushing them in the direction of safety and cover. He saw the doctor running into the centre of the crowd, tears streaming from his eyes, waving a white handkerchief above his head, oblivious to the risk he was taking. When Don Bosco finally reached the spot where the broken Virgin had stood, he found the Gringito kneeling, weeping, holding Nena in his arms.

As the mortars hit their target, the boxes at the side of the barber's shop flew into the air and then fell apart above the spot where the impostor Virgin had stood. Those who remained in the plaza stood still, watching, as a cloud of feather-plumed hats gently floated down, covering the destruction beneath.

The town was filled with visitors, more visitors than had ever been thought possible, visitors who were fast outstaying their welcome. Word quickly reached the city through the commander, who radioed to the general to report that the carefully planned assault on the rebel town had been executed, a mistake had been made, and then a miracle had occurred.

‘It seems', the commander informed the general, ‘that we have the wrong location.'

‘The wrong location?' the general replied. ‘How can you have the wrong location? You've been watching it for weeks. I thought you said they had the rebel flag flying.'

‘It seems it was meant to be the national flag,' the commander said. ‘Apparently they didn't have any yellow paint.'

‘What about the communications equipment?'

‘A computer. Some idiot had the idea of starting an Internet café.'

‘But the rebels? You told me a few days ago you had tracked the group to a camp outside the town. What about the foreigner who's leading them?'

‘Turns out he's the wrong one,' the commander said languidly.

‘Wrong one? How can he be the wrong one? Who is he? What's he doing there?'

‘Nobody seems to know. Just hanging out apparently.'

‘Hanging out?' the general said. ‘Why would anybody want to hang out in a place like that?'

‘Beats me,' the commander said.

‘And the van? The man you saw leaving the town, followed by the van a few days later? I thought you had them under surveillance.'

‘We did,' the commander said. ‘According to the locals in the villages it was most unusual to have all that coming and going. The van was carrying suspicious packages.'

‘So,' the general shouted through the crackling radio, ‘have you found any of the weapons of destruction that they were transporting?'

‘We made a direct hit on the target,' the commander replied.

‘I told you not to fire unless absolutely necessary,' the general said. ‘Why did you mortar?'

‘It was self-defence,' the commander said. ‘They fired rockets.'

‘Rockets,' the general confirmed. ‘So they did have weapons stockpiled then?'

‘Not really,' the commander said. ‘Turns out they were letting off fireworks. They made a hell of a bang.'

‘So what was in the packages?'

‘Hats,' the commander replied.

‘Hats?' the general said.

‘Yes, hats,' the commander confirmed. ‘Hundreds of the bloody things.'

There was a silence on the other end of the line.

‘What a total fuck-up,' the general said at last. ‘The media will love this.'

‘Quite,' the commander replied.

Helicopters had been arriving all day and the plaza had turned into an impromptu landing pad. Television crews sat drinking coffee at the little tables outside the barber's shop, preparing for the day's filming. Doña Nicanora and Doña Gloria rushed back and forth trying to keep up with the orders.

‘Do you do banana pancakes, love?' one of the crew asked Nicanora as he walked into the barber's to set up the scene for the interview. Large cables criss-crossed the plaza as the satellite equipment was installed for the live broadcast. Don Bosco stood waiting patiently to tell his story. The barber, it seemed, had the most interesting tale of all and everyone wanted their share of it to sell. He had saved the lives of many of the townsfolk as he pulled them out of the range of the mortar fire. He had also been, apparently quite by chance, the first person to witness the reappearance of the Virgin.

The preparations for the broadcast had been going on for some hours. Every time the television interviewer began to speak into the microphone he was stopped by a man with a set of headphones, who kept repeating the words, ‘Alpha-brava, alpha-brava, testing, testing,' before bursting into a stream of swear words. ‘The bloody rain isn't helping,' he grumbled to the interviewer, who was also fast losing patience with the stubborn equipment.

‘I wonder what has happened to that foreigner,' Don Bosco heard one of the journalists say to his colleague as they sat at the little tables.

‘According to the people I've spoken to he was staying with that waitress,' his friend said, pointing at Nicanora, and he called her over. ‘Any chance of another coffee, love?' he asked.

‘Yeah, that's what I heard,' his colleague replied. ‘Nobody seems to know where he's gone. Bloody annoying he's just disappeared like that, the day we get here. Would have been good to get his side of the story – put an interesting angle on things having it from the mouth of a foreigner. It would give the story that extra bit of credibility.'

‘Yes, bloody annoying, a lost opportunity,' the other journalist agreed. ‘I wonder what he was doing here.'

The mayor sat under the eucalyptus tree, watching the visitors. Ramon was running around trying to make himself useful to the camera crews, fiddling with cables and any stray piece of equipment he could get his hands on. ‘Will somebody get rid of this bloody annoying little man,' the sound recordist shouted to nobody in particular, as Ramon helpfully started to play with the buttons on the sound mixer.

Don Bosco stood patiently in the doorway, awaiting further instructions. The film crew were busy trying to fix a new sign above his shop. ‘I can't get the damn thing to stay up,' the man who was balancing precariously on a chair grumbled as he tried to hammer a nail into the antique fascia of the barber's. ‘The wood is too rotten to hold it.'

‘Looks much better though,' one of the men in the plaza shouted back. ‘You may just have to stand there and try to balance it from the side, if we can get you out of shot. Makes it much clearer to
viewers that it's a barber's shop now. Looked more like some old junk shop before with all those hideous hats in the window.' Nicanora and Gloria came and stood beside Don Bosco, watching the proceedings.

‘I don't know why he's looking so glum,' Gloria said, pointing to the mayor under the tree. ‘He's got exactly what he wanted.'

‘Be careful what you wish for,' Don Bosco said.

‘I feel sorry for him,' Nicanora said. ‘He's been sitting out there for days now.'

‘Serves him right,' Gloria said, but with no conviction in her voice.

‘He can't do without you, Gloria,' Nicanora replied. ‘Don't you think you've punished him long enough?'

‘I don't want him to think I've forgiven him too easily,' Gloria said with a hint of petulance.

‘Well don't leave him there too much longer,' Nicanora replied. ‘You don't want him to shrink in the rain.'

Suddenly someone shouted to Nicanora and Gloria, and one of the crew stepped forward and pushed them out of the doorway. A camera swung round and pointed at Don Bosco, who assumed the pose he had been instructed to hold, his razor held high to make it clear to the world that he was the town's barber. As Nicanora looked at Don Bosco poised ready to tell his interesting story to the world, she saw a radiance emanating from him that she had never seen before.

‘He has a glow about him,' she whispered to Gloria.

‘He's standing in the bloody light,' the camera man shouted. ‘Get
that barber out of the light, quick, make him move to the left,' and Don Bosco was roughly grabbed from behind and repositioned so that the camera could get the best shot.

‘Here I am,' the interviewer began, walking slowly round the plaza with the camera following him, ‘on the corner of this plaza, in this humid, isolated, mosquito-infested swamp town quite forgotten by time. The townsfolk here are a simple and honest people, going about their business trying to eke out a livelihood in this hostile and inhospitable environment.' The camera panned to a shot of the mayor sitting under the eucalyptus tree and Don Teofelo and Don Julio taking coffee at one of the tables outside the barber's, which had now been cleared by all the film crews for the sake of the integrity of the image. ‘The townsfolk have lived for years in peace and tranquillity, with few outsiders even knowing that the place existed,' the interviewer continued. ‘Suddenly, they have become the centre of a quite extraordinary case of mixed identity after a series of unfortunate blunders by the army, who believed them to be hiding the ringleaders of the rebel People's Liberation Front. Despite the town having been under surveillance for several weeks, and there being no evidence of any terrorist connections, yesterday they came under sustained mortar fire during their very rarely celebrated fiesta of the Virgin. A little girl was hit, the Virgin was destroyed, and then a miracle apparently took place. I am standing here outside the unassuming barber's shop that was the scene of so much activity yesterday. We will pick up the story now from the mouth of the barber himself. Mr Forest,' the interviewer said turning to Don Bosco. ‘Tell us first about the foreigner who was staying here. It seems the army mistook him for the one leading the rebel group. But what do you really know about him?'