The next day was devoted to issues connected with the trip; the following one to farewells.   Rodrigo Vanas stopped by the butcher's, the baker's, the various stalls at the market.  He said good-bye to his tailor and his shoemaker, visited his parents' graves in the cemetery high up on the hill, and so on.    His old school house was all locked up by the time he came around to it late in the afternoon.   But his classmates who were still around stood at the windows looking sadly out at him and silently waving their hands.   Tears seemed to have welled up in the windows themselves as if about to start running down the panes.   The festive dinner, only for the family, was held the night before.

Then came five o'clock, time of departure, the yellow hour.   The doctor's satchel in his left hand, the shiny black cane hanging off his other arm and with his wife on it, the kids around them, Rodrigo Vanas and his family, all dressed in black, walked solemnly down the sidewalk to the corner where he thought the yellow streetcar was going to pick him up.   The instructions weren't quite clear on that point but there was no way of finding out for sure.   Yet there was little doubt this was the spot since every other person in the neighborhood they knew who had taken the yellow streetcar had departed from there.   They came and waited.   The traffic in the street moved blithely in both directions as if it were a day like all the other, people in the street went nonchalantly about their business, and the faded blue sky stretched calmly above their heads unaware of the importance of the moment.   Far away on the other side of the river for the first time birds could be heard singing their silly, empty songs.

Then suddenly the yellow streetcar was in front of them.   It had appeared noiselessly and without any warning like a picture on the page of a magazine when the leaf is turned.   It stood huge and shiny in front of Rodrigo Vanas, its door open, ready for him to enter it.   His eyes now finally also full of tears, Rodrigo Vanas hugged his wife and unexpectedly kissed her firmly on the mouth as he hadn't done for years, bent down to kiss his kids, told everyone not to be sad, turned around, and resolutely placed his foot on the step.   He raised himself up on it, brought the other foot forward, placed it on the next step, raised himself up again, and was inside the car.   With a tinny clang, music to Rodrigo Vanas' ears, it shook and rolled forward.   They were off!  Rodrigo Vanas turned around and saw his family huddled together at the curb, as if frightened, waving at him photographs depicting his face, reproduced with different degrees of intensity, from barely visible to nearly black, with his mouth, its lips white, open like that of a fish.   Amazingly, the traffic in the street had now stopped and all the people stood still and looked at the car; some waved their hands some of which, in turn, held white handkerchiefs.

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