Independencia Avenue was packed with minibuses and conchos and they were honking their horns incessantly, as if the unbearable noise might unravel the blocks-long traffic jam. The driver of the concho Argenis was traveling in got out to try to make out the cause of the problem in the distance. But the problem was very far away and the driver saw how dozens of others like him were also getting out of their cars to look ahead. They had been stuck there, unmoving, for half an hour under a deluge of curses the passengers were hurling down at the country, the drivers, the government, their own lives.

Argenis got out and stepped onto the sidewalk to walk to the tailor’s shop. It was only a few blocks. When he got to the cemetery, those responsible for the traffic jam – some employees of the Electric Company – were up on a service truck’s ladder in the middle of the street, repairing a transformer. It was common for the transformers to explode and leave several blocks without electricity. A high-voltage cable had broken and fallen into the street, and a couple of technicians had roped it off. The ones who were up on the ladder were illuminating their work with lights from their hard hats—the last rays of the sun would go down at any moment.

Arzobispo Nouel Street looked dark and desolate, lit only by the lights from a colmado fed by an emergency generator. An old woman was assiduously sweeping outside the front of the tailor shop. Argenis thought it might be the mother or aunt of the tailor, but the woman, who had one eye half closed, kept sweeping until she got to the corner, then turned and disappeared. The workshop looked empty. Presumably, when he’d heard the news of the power outage, Loudón had called his clients to tell them not to come. It was dinnertime and one of his assistants was eating a plate of spaghetti with bread; she was sitting in the doorway to take advantage of the light from the colmado. It smelled of tomato sauce and cheese. In a nasal voice the woman told him that Orestes was inside.

To make it possible to work, Orestes had placed a number of candles in the four corners of the room. One was on his sewing machine, one hung over the wardrobe where he kept the pieces that were ready to be picked up, one on the bottle of the water dispenser, and the fourth right on the floor. They all surrounded a round rug that looked black by candlelight, but could have been purple or navy blue. Under the light from the water-bottle candle, Loudón was tossing a spoonful of black powder into a plastic jar. “It’s charcoal,” he told Argenis, dividing the contents into two glasses. Offering him one, he said, “Drink; this absorbs everything that’s of no use.” When Argenis, confused, brought it to his mouth, he added, “It’s good for your stomach.”