No One Writes To The Colonel

Damaso, a 20-year-old man returns at dawn to the small room he shares with his wife, Ana, who is six months pregnant. Damaso finds Ana sitting on their bed, fully clothed. Damaso realizes that Ana has been "waiting for him every minute through the whole night" (77). As they embrace, Ana tells Damaso she fell asleep waiting for him and dreamed he came back "drenched with blood" (77).

Damaso pushes Ana back onto the bed, places a red kerchief in her lap, then goes out to their patio to urinate. Ana unties it to find three billiard balls, "dull and very worn from use" (77). When Damaso returns, Ana asks him what good the balls are. Damaso stashes the billiard balls in a trunk and the couple lies down in bed. Damaso tells Ana there was "nothing else" (78) in the pool hall except for "twenty-five cents in the drawer" (78). Ana tells Damaso he shouldn't have taken anything.

Damaso, sobering up, tells Ana there was "an enormous white cat" (79) in the pool hall. Then, "conscious of the risks" (79), Damaso tells Ana about "the details of his adventure" (79). Ana responds that it was "crazy" (79) and Damaso says it wasn't bad for a first attempt.

The next day, Ana prepares coffee for Damaso at a little "portable stove" (79) she's set up on their patio. As Damaso drinks his coffee, Ana tells him that the people on the patio "haven't been talking about anything else all morning" (80). Damaso asks one of the nearby girls what's happening. She tells him that someone broke into the pool hall and "walked off with everything" (80). The girl has details that convince Damaso the story is true.

Damaso tells Ana that no one saw him as she makes to leave the house. Ana tells Damaso to stay there so she can walk into town and find out what people are saying. She finds a crowd gathered in the empty lot by the docks. Ana remembers Damaso telling her that the "read door of the pool hall faced the empty lot" (81). Joining the crowd, Ana sees the pool hall door. It's been forced open, though the lock remains intact.

Ana asks the crowd who did this and they answer that no one knows. The crowd says it must have been a stranger because there "are no thieves in this town" (82). Ana asks an old man standing beside her if the thief took everything. The old man says the thief took "two hundred pesos, and the billiard balls" (82). Feeling the old man look at her with "unusual interest" (82), Ana leaves the crowd.

The pool hall owner stands at the hall's front door with the mayor and two policemen. The owner gives his account of what happened. Ana returns home to find Damaso in bed, smoking and waiting "with increased anxiety" (83). Ana tells Damaso that besides being a thief, he's a liar. Damaso insists there were only twenty-five cents in the drawer. Ana believes Damaso then tells him that the police think the thief is a stranger who arrived in town on Thursday. People say they saw him "walking around the docks" (83) but now he's vanished. Damaso considers the stranger "whom he'd never seen" (83).

Damaso needs three hours to dress, "as always" (83). Watching him, Ana, seventeen years his senior, feels "old and sloppy" (84). Ana asks Damaso if he has any money and he teases Ana that he has the 200 pesos. Ana gives Damaso a single peso from "a roll of bills out of her bosom" (84). Damaso meets with his friends in the plaza and goes to a movie starring Cantinflas, a Mexican comedic actor. During the movie, the police storm in and beat a black man, shouting "Thief! Thief!" (84). As the police haul the man away, Damaso hears the black man crying, "Murderers, murderers" (85) at the police.

After the movie, Damaso returns home. Half-asleep, Ana tells Damaso that they "caught the stranger" (85) at the movie. Ana gives Damaso the "distorted version of the arrest" (86) she heard from the neighbors. Damaso doesn't correct her. Ana calls the black man a "poor man" (86), which upsets Damaso. He tells Ana she'd rather have Damaso "be the one in the trap" (86).

In the night, Ana feels Damaso get out of bed, rummage around their room, then scrape around under their bed for fifteen minutes. Ana realizes that Damaso has buried the billiard balls under their bed.

On Monday, the pool hall reopens. The owner has placed a sign on the wall that reads, "No balls, no billiards" (86). Damaso, a longtime visitor, is one of the first customers. He watches the owner, Roque, set up card games because the new billiard balls won't arrive for a month. Roque tells Damaso they've been "starving" (87) the black man since Saturday but he still hasn't told the police where he hid the balls. Damaso says he must have thrown them in the river then asks about the two hundred pesos. Roque says they only found thirty on him then gives Damaso a look that feels to Damaso like "a relationship of complicity" (87).

Damaso comes home "dancing like a boxer" (87). Damaso tells Ana that Roque ordered new balls and the black man will go free if the police can't find the billiard balls. After dinner, when they go to bed, Damaso tells Ana he has an idea to go from town to town stealing billiard balls then selling them. Ana says they'll shoot him. Damaso denies it. He says he's going to "buy a row of suits" (88) and "fifty pairs of shoes" (88). Ana feigns indifference and says Damaso's plans are "very far away" (88) from her. She reminds Damaso of their age difference and he tells her not to "be silly" (88). She lights his cigarette for him and they lie in bed.

Damaso asks Ana if she knows that billiard balls are made of elephant tusk. Ana tells Damaso to go to sleep. Damaso spends the next day smoking and sleeping, then gets ready to go out. He asks Ana for money. She says she only has eleven pesos, which is for their rent. Damaso tells her to lend them to him but she won't. Damaso tries to convince her but she still doesn’t yield. Damaso takes Ana to a movie then tells her that if she won't lend him the money, he'll have to steal it. He tells her that he'll "club the first person" (89) he finds then go to jail for murder.

The next morning, Damaso dresses "with visible and ominous haste" (90) and leaves, telling Ana he's never coming back. Ana tells Damaso to "have a good trip" (90). Damaso spends his day in the pool hall though it's clear that "the establishment had lost its attractiveness" (90). After the pool hall closes for the night, Damaso wanders through the town, following "the sound of some happy, distant music" (90). He finds himself at "an enormous, empty dance hall" (90) and sits down at the bar. A girl approaches him and asks, "What's new, Valentino?" (90). She tries to buy him a drink but Damaso says he's hungry.

After they eat, Damaso goes with the girl to a room "at the back of a dark patio" (91). Inside, the girl's infant son sleeps on the bed. She moves him into a wooden box and places it on the floor. Damaso worries that mice will eat him and asks the girl who the infant’s father is. The girl says she doesn’t have "the slightest idea" (91) then leaves the room. Damaso smokes then sleeps until the girl returns, drunk, at 4 a.m.

In the morning, the girl wakes Damaso to tell him everyone is going to the harbor to see the black man who stole the billiard balls. The police are going to take him away. The girl, like Ana, calls him a "poor man" (92). Without pity, Damaso says no one "made him into a thief" (92). The girl tells Damaso that it wasn't the black man. She knows because the black man spent the night of the robbery with her friend, Gloria. Damaso says Gloria could tell the police. The girl says the black man told the police and they turned Gloria's room "upside down" (92) and threatened to arrest her as an accomplice. They finally settled the matter for twenty pesos. When Damaso makes to leave, the girl asks him to stay with her.

The same morning, Ana, now on her own, collects the neighbors' clothes to wash for the week then goes down to the harbor "to witness the departure" (93) of the black man. She sees Damaso there. He asks Ana what she's doingand Ana says she came to see him off. Later, the police bring the black man out, his wrists bound with rope, and lead him towards the boat. He looks like a boxer after a fight, with a split lip and swollen eyebrow from his beating by the police. He moves through the crowd "with passive dignity" (93). On the boat, the police bind the man's hands and feet to an oil drum. As the boat leaves the harbor, Ana whispers, "Poor man" (94). Damaso chastises Ana for saying this aloud.

Ana walks with Damaso to the pool hall and tells him to go home and change because he looks like a beggar. The crowd from the harbor has gathered in the pool hall and Roque has trouble waiting on all the tables at once. Damaso offers his help and stays until the pool hall closes.

Early the next morning, Damaso returns to Ana's, drunk. She tells him to feel their child kicking in her womb. Damaso shows "no sign of enthusiasm" (94). He spends a week coming to Ana's only to sleep and smoke in bed for a while when he wakes. Ana remembers a time earlier in their relationship when Damaso acted the same way and had punched her in the face when she tried to help him. This time she lets Damaso sulk.

In the middle of July, Damaso arrives at Ana's early one evening. They eat together then Damaso tells Ana he wants to leave the town. Ana looks around the room at the faded pictures of movie stars pasted to the walls. Ana tells Damaso he's bored with her but he counters he's bored with this town. Ana says it's just "like every other town" (95). Damaso complains that he can't sell the billiard balls. Ana tells him as long as she can do the laundry Damaso "won't have to go around taking chances" (95). Ana says she doesn't know how "that business" (95) of robbing the pool hall "ever occurred" (95) to Damaso. She doesn't understand why he took the billiard balls. Damaso says he took them "without thinking" (96) because it would have been "too much work to come away empty-handed" (96).

Damaso tells Ana that the new billiard balls still haven't arrived. Roque found out that the new balls will be more expensive than he thought and has cancelled the order. Damaso says Roque decided to sell the pool hall because it's not worth much. The billiards tables need their cloth replaced, too. The regular customers now have only the baseball championship to keep them coming to the pool hall. Damaso feels he "hurt the whole town" (96) and Ana reminds him that the worst of it "is the Negro" (96), beaten and incarcerated for nothing.

Ana tells Damaso to return the billiard balls. He says he's been thinking of that for days but "the bitch of it" (96) is figuring out how to return them. They decide to leave them in a public place though realize this won't absolve the black man, and whoever finds the balls might choose to keep them to sell. Ana and Damaso dig the balls up from under the bed, wrap them in newspaper, and put them in their trunk. They decide to "wait for the right occasion" (97).

Two weeks later, they still haven't found the right occasion. It's now August 20th, two months after the robbery. Damaso goes to the pool hall, empty except for Roque. Damaso tries to console Roque but the man dismisses his consolations "emotionlessly" (97). Damaso leaves the pool hall and walks to the dance hall. There, a lone man dances with two women. Damaso sits at the bar and orders a beer, keeping his eyes on the man. The man smiles at Damaso with "rabbit's teeth" (98) but Damaso doesn't return the gesture. A female friend of Damaso's joins him. Damaso tells her that the man looks happy.

The girl tells Damaso that the man is happy; just like all the "traveling salesman" (99). Damaso tells the girl to go with the man, then, but she doesn't.

The girl tells Damaso she's hungry and leads him to the food counter. On their way there, the dancing man crosses paths with Damaso. Damaso tells the man he doesn't like his teeth. The man replies that he doesn't either. Damaso punches the man in his face and the women begin shouting and pushing Damaso. The man, however, jumps up "like a monkey" (99) and shouts for more music. Damaso stays at the dance hall until 2 a.m. When he leaves, drunk and angry, the bartender tells him to pay his tab. Damaso pushes him aside, saying he doesn't "like queers" (100). The bartender tells Damaso he doesn't know what he's missing and lets him leave.

Damaso returns to Ana's house, feeling that he needed to "watch every one of his movements" (100) now. He enters the room without noise but Ana wakes anyway to find him rummaging in the trunk. She sits up to see Damaso with the package of billiard balls and a flashlight in his hands. He shushes her but Ana leaps out of bed to block his exit. She tells Damaso he won't leave as long as she's alive. Damaso tries to push Ana aside but she won't move. She tells Damaso that what God gave him in looks "he took away from your brains" (101). Damaso grabs her hair until she cries, then drags her to the bed. Ana yells that Damaso is going to kill the baby. They struggle on the bed and Ana tells Damaso she'll put them back herself tomorrow so no one will notice. She says they can't put her in jail because of her "condition" (101). They struggle more and Damaso strikes Ana, leaving her in pain on the floor.

Damaso leaves the room and Ana gets up and gets dressed. She sits down on the bed, making "the same mistake a second time" (102): to wait for Damaso. Damaso, though, realizes he won't be coming back. He makes his way to the pool hall and noiselessly forces the door open again, the same way he did the first time. He takes off his shoes, crosses himself, then enters the pool hall. Damaso begins to look for the billiard balls' box silently but spots the white cat he saw the first time he robbed the pool hall. This frightens him and he drops the flashlight.

The pool hall lights come on and Damaso hears Roque's voice saying, "Well!" (103). Roque approaches Damaso in his underwear, holding an iron bar. Damaso sees, for the first time, a hammock near the hall's back door. Roque strains to recognize Damaso without his glasses and Damaso tries to hide the package of balls from Roque. Roque threatens Damaso with the iron bar and Damaso gives up the package. Damaso says he came to put them back. Roque says he can't believe Damaso would do something "so stupid" (104). He asks Damaso about the 200pesos. Damaso says there was "nothing in the drawer" (105) and Roque repeats this, amused. Roque tells Damaso they're going to tell the mayor this story right now. Damaso says Roque knew "there was nothing" (105). Roque continues to smile then says there were two hundred pesos. Roque tells Damaso that they're going to take them out of his "hide" (105), not for being a thief, but for "being a fool" (105).