SEÑOR SÁNCHEZ LIVED a rather nice life in our little pueblo of Dos Cuentos. He sat most days in the plaza by the statue of our pueblo’s founder, Don Antonio Segoviano, and waited, eyes closed, lips pursed in a constant little hum, with his dog Chucho panting by his side. You see, people came to him to hear him talk. They paid a few pesos, dropping them noisily into an empty Maxwell House tin that sat between Señor Sánchez and Chucho. With each clank of the heavy coins, Chucho’s ratty little ears would pop up, frisky and alert, and Señor Sánchez would smile as he leaned back into his weather-beaten foldout chair. He held his elegant, unusually small hands draped over the brass head of his cane, and he laughed, always asking the same question: “What is it you want to hear?”
And the customers would tell him.
“A sad story,” said Señora Cruz, a widow for these last ten years.
“A very funny joke,” offered our priest, Padre Olivares. And he tipped his shaggy head at Señor Sánchez, smiling. “One I can tell in my sermon next Sunday.”
“Will I ever find a wife?” asked poor, lonely Simón, the carpenter.
One day the mayor visited Señor Sánchez. I was sitting not far away at the Bar Americano, drinking my usual lunch of two (or perhaps three) bottles of Tecate beer, and I was eager to hear what the great man wanted. No noise came from the Maxwell House tin: the mayor dropped a nice fat wad of paper bills into the till. The sun hit my face, hard and true, and I put my cool bottle down with a little clink and waited for Señor Sánchez to ask his usual question. But he did not. What did he do? He smiled. That is all. And Chucho slept.
The mayor stood, frozen, for a moment or two. And then he spoke. “Speak to me as my son would,” he said, “if he were still alive.”
My heart beat hard in my throat. The whole pueblo knew of the horrible tragedy of Mario’s death in April, three months ago. It had rained so hard for six days that no one ventured out. Finally, on a Sunday, in the afternoon on the sixth day, the sun peeked out from behind the dark clouds. Some of us went out to inspect the roads and it’s there that we found him, head deep in muddy water, by the side of Calle Verdad. Mario’s body was so bloated we assumed that he had been dead for several days. And, of course, it was clearly an accident. The mayor fell into a dark sadness at the loss of his only child.
So on that day the mayor went to Señor Sánchez, I tried to listen. I saw him smile at the mayor and then I saw his lips move slowly, but although I strained and strained I could not discern a word. Señor Sánchez’s thin, almost blue lips stopped moving. The mayor jumped back as if struck hard in the chest. And for a moment the birds did not sing, the wind did not blow. I glanced at my watch and noted that the mayor did not move for a full three minutes! Finally, he straightened himself, brushed nonexistent dust from his fine blue suit, bowed slowly and elegantly, and turned on his heel. Within a few seconds he was out of view.
The odd thing was what happened afterward. When the mayor left the plaza, Señor Sánchez sighed and shook his head. Slowly he stood, folded his chair, patted Chucho’s head, and wandered off. Chucho, for some odd reason, stayed put. As he walked away, Señor Sánchez turned, ever so slowly, and caught my eye. In my embarrassment, I waved and then turned to my newspaper. He disappeared within a few moments.
Señor Sánchez never came to the plaza after that. A month later we learned that he had died in his bed. Padre Olivares said that he had lived to be 125, according to the church’s baptism records. And according to some of the older citizens, Señor Sánchez had been talking in the plaza since he was twenty years old. That is a long time to be speaking. ¿No?