Ladies and gentlemen! I have come to your beautiful village tonight … and I offer this compliment without irony, with no hint of ridicule, for your village is, indeed, beautiful. Far more beautiful than even you who dwell here know. I have come tonight to give you a jolt from the electric truth of my existence. It is my belief that among you there is an individual with an irresistible affinity for that truth, someone whose drab mental sphere I intend to illumine as though it were a bubble filled with lightning, so they may continue the grand traditions of my kind. I know, I know! Doubtless you are saying, "This fool must think us unsophisticated. Every carnival that travels the length and breadth of Honduras carries with it a man who calls himself Señor Volto. A man who straps a car battery to his chest and attaches paddles to his hands in order to transmit shocks to whoever grasps them. None of them offer illumination, only the chance to measure one's resistance to pain." But I am not those other men, my friends. I am the one and only Señor Volto, and to prove the point, before I provide you with the opportunity to test yourselves, I will tell you my story.

My name is Aurelio Ucles and I was born in Trujillo on the north coast. When I was twenty-two, my father died and left me the deed to the Hotel Christopher Columbus, a blue-green rectangle of concrete block that occupied a choice section of beach property, with a pool and a mahogany-paneled bar that opened onto a deck. Few tourists came to Trujillo, put off by the high incidence of violent crime and drug trafficking in the region, yet I managed the hotel successfully for the next twelve years. The larger part of my clientele consisted of officials and guards who worked at the state prison located near the center of town, an edifice hidden behind a high yellow wall. They used the hotel as a place where they could bring their women and after a time they took me into their confidence and allowed me to assist in dispersing the cocaine they stole from imprisoned traffickers and laundering the money they received in return. I was never their friend, merely a useful associate. The fact is, I feared them. They carried pistols and cattle prods and treated me with contempt. Though I prospered, though my wife, Marta, bore me two healthy sons, I yearned for respect, both that of the prison guards and of the common people of the town, many of whom repudiated me for my criminal activities. This lack of respect, I believed, was all that kept me from contentment; but I have since concluded that my discontent was less associational than intrinsic. I was an unhappy child and had grown into an unhappy man. No ordinary sinecure, however honorable and profitable, would have sufficed to placate my inner demons. It may be I was looking for a judgment to complete my life. We tend to hide such desires from ourselves, to dress them in more reasonable cloth, knowing we will never be able to satisfy the standards against which we seek to be measured.

If such was the case, then judgment came to me in the form of a mechanic. It would be nearly as accurate to claim it was a woman, but I am appalled by clichés, even those attendant upon my nature, and since it was the mechanic who contrived the shape of the judgment rendered, I am inclined to give him credit. The woman, Sadra Rosales, was only a conduit, though perhaps I do her a disservice by this dismissal. Unlike most of the women who patronized the bar in my hotel, she held a position of some respect—editor of an English language newspaper. Yet like those other women she had a history of drugs and romantic mistakes, and was always on the look-out for a fresh mistake, one that would temporarily present an impersonation of hope. She was thirtyish, with a broad Mayan face, a little thick in the waist: on the scale of Honduran beauty, she was no more than attractive, but she had a buoyant energy that lent her the gloss of beauty and though I did not love her, I was in no mood to resist her. She suited the moment, she pleased my heart, she excited my body, and she was grounds for divorce. The problem of what I might tell my wife and of how divorce would affect my children, all the accompanying karmic issues … these questions troubled me, but I was never able to confront them because Sadra's problems pushed my own into the background. It was one thing after another. An assistant was sabotaging her at work; the father of her child was suing for sole custody; her best friend, Flavia, was telling lies about her sexual practices. The latest and most pressing problem concerned her pride and joy, a gray Toyota whose dented grille expressed the automotive approximation of weary disillusionment. She had taken it to a mechanic, a friend named Tito Obregon, for a brake alignment and claimed he had stolen the new engine, replaced it with an inferior one. Now the car wheezed, stalled, and smoked. The police would do nothing—Tito was the lieutenant's closest friend. Sadra was considering a lawsuit.

I went with Sadra one afternoon to see Tito at his shop on the outskirts of town, a low yellow building of concrete block with an enormous blue Aguazul logo painted on its side, like the flag of a proud nation. It stood at the center of an acre of ochre dirt and was hedged in back by the lip of the jungle. Weeds, banana trees, palms. A group of ragged kids were playing soccer out front and two teenage boys were leaning against Tito's tow truck, smoking and looking bored. Sadra insisted I stay in the car. She said she didn't want to involve me, but of course she had already done so by bringing me along. As they talked just inside the door, or—more precisely—as Sadra talked to him, Tito stared in my direction the entire time. Had Sadra, I wondered, trusted her car to a jilted ex-lover to fix? Such a stupidity would be in keeping with her character: a stew of feminism, manipulative pettiness, and a kind of sprained innocence.

It grew ovenlike inside the car. The soccer ball bounced out onto the highway and a tiny kid in red shorts ran to retrieve it, darting across the path of a bus that never slowed and missed him by a fraction. A smoky gray mist began folding itself over the crests of the hills behind the shop and Tito came to lean in the doorway, wiping his hands on an oily rag. He was skinny and vulpine, with prematurely gray hair and a heavy beard shadow, wearing chinos and a Hard Rock Cafe tank top. I looked away from his stare. Beyond the weedy vacant lot on the opposite side of the road, a wedge of the bay was visible, slate blue water armored with an unyielding glitter. Soon Sadra returned, threw herself behind the wheel, and slammed the door.

"Puto! He says he doesn't care what I do." She swerved out into traffic, telling me everything Tito had said, interpreting his perfidy, initiating a monologue that continued long into the night over shots of vodka and a quantity of excellent cocaine.

Over the course of the following week I felt marooned in the midst of my life and saw no sign of salvation on the horizon. More often than not I found myself sitting at the bar, gazing glumly across the deck at the untroubled waters of the bay and the desolate point of land that, enclosing it, formed the Cape of Honduras. It was just off the Cape that Christopher Columbus had anchored during his final voyage; he had been gravely ill and never set foot on the shore himself, thereby, I conjectured, establishing the pattern that governed our trickling tourist trade. A group of Americans returning from the Miskitia jungle booked rooms on Wednesday morning, bringing an uncommon and not altogether pleasing energy to the hotel, splashing and shouting in the pool, spilling drinks at dinner, and staying up until all hours playing cards. On Friday some prison guards installed several women from La Ceiba in the third floor suite. The women never ventured into the bar, and the guards—those not occupied with the women—would sit at a table on the edge of the deck and drink. They were of a set, these men. Swarthy, thick-waisted, with oily hair and froglike faces, dressed in slacks and short-sleeved shirts. Their wrists and hands heavied with gold rings and watches looted and extorted from prisoners. While most of them took their turns visiting with the women, the senior guard, Jorge Espinal, the widest and shortest among them, only strayed from the table to walk down to the beach and relieve himself. On occasion he would summon me and ask for more beer and snacks. He refused to place orders with my bartender, preferring to treat me as a menial. Whenever I came over, he would greet me with false effusiveness and wink at the others as if sharing a private joke, then laugh uproariously when I walked away. Furious, humiliated, I left the hotel early that evening, a couple of hours before I was to meet Sadra, and went striding along the beach and up through town without a thought for destination, imagining the violent humiliations I would visit upon Espinal if he were me and I him.

Across from the old graveyard in Trujillo, a weedy ruin hemmed in by a crumbling stone wall and an arched gateway with no gate, situated on a red dirt road that angled uphill and west from the center of town, lay a flea market: a row of ramshackle wooden stalls in which were displayed T-shirts, soccer jerseys, aprons; toys and dolls; kitchenware, cutlery and other household items; key chains, switchblades, barrettes, cassette tapes. All manner of cheapness. White and blue and yellow plastic banners advertising Nacional Beer were strung above the stalls and behind them was a grassy area where beer was sold from a metal cart. At the rear of this area was a little hand-cranked carousel suitable for toddlers, a circular platform no more than six feet wide that supported four tiny seats. A handful of women stood watching their children go round and round. Two of the kids were wailing and I nourished the embittered notion that they were becoming aware that this tight repetitive circle was all the ride they might expect from life. A dozen or so working-class men were drinking and talking in a group. I bought a beer and leaned against the cart. The sky was hazy, a few blurred stars showing in that muddled darkness, and the air was thick and warm, infused with the scents of roast chicken and ordure emanating from shanties tucked in among palms and banana trees beyond the carousel. Radio music contended with the crying of the children. Gradually I grew calm. I bought a second beer and debated the idea of buying a present for Sadra. Something funny to take her mind off Tito and the Toyota.

I suppose it was chance that led me to the market, but on turning from the beer cart and seeing Tito Obregon barely an arm's length away, dressed as Señor Volto in a straw hat and a farmer's rough clothing, battery strapped to his chest, braced in a harness of leather and steel that resembled some perverse sexual accessory, the cables running back to an alternator resting on the ground, a control box clipped to his belt, and narrow black paddles extending from his hands … when I saw him, I was afflicted by a frisson and had, albeit fleetingly, a more complicated understanding of the operations of chance, recognizing that coincidence and fate were likely partnered in the moment. I nodded to Tito, said, "Good evening," and started toward the street; but Tito's voice, amplified and lent a buzzing inflection, brought me up short:

"IS AURELIO UCLES AFRAID OF EVERYTHING? MUST HE ALWAYS HIDE BEHIND A WOMAN'S SKIRTS … OR DOES HE DARE TEST HIMSELF AGAINST SEÑOR VOLTO?"

One of the teenage boys who had been leaning against Tito's tow truck was holding a microphone to his mouth—Tito himself could not grasp it, thanks to the paddles strapped to his hands. The boy smirked at me and Tito said, "PERHAPS OUR AURELIO IS NOT A MAN AT ALL. PERHAPS WHAT SADRA ROSALES SAYS ABOUT HIM IS THE TRUTH."

Though it was customary for Señor Volto to offer such challenges, the anger in Tito's face was that of a scorned and possibly demented lover, and it occurred to me that Sadra was not so important that I cared to risk my well-being in a dispute concerning her. Since the battery was being powered by an alternator, it had no inhibitor and thus Tito was capable of transmitting a fatal shock. I was certain he knew that if he were to kill me, the prison guards would be more than a little upset with him over the loss of someone who served them as financial conduit and host for their debauches. Nonetheless, I balked at the thought of grasping the paddles. The working men had broken off their conversation and were drifting toward us, nudging one another and grinning.

"PERHAPS IT'S TRUE," Tito went on, "WHAT SADRA TELLS ALL HER FRIENDS AT THE NEWSPAPER—THAT THE HEAD OF AURELIO UCLES' PRICK WOULD FIT INSIDE A THIMBLE."

The working men thought this a grand joke and offered commentary. My anger building, I told Tito to fuck his mother, I wasn't going to be playing his game.

"EVEN A BOY'S GAME IS TOO MUCH FOR AURELIO!" Tito nodded at his assistant. The boy took a stand in front of him and gripped the paddles. Tito twitched the controls. Voltage sizzled. The boy stiffened, but did not release the paddles, not even when Tito turned the voltage considerably higher. At last he broke contact, smiled and displayed his reddened palms to the men who had gathered round—they voiced a murmurous approval.

"DO YOU SEE? EVEN THIS BOY IS MORE OF A MAN THAN AURELIO UCLES!"

I can't recall who it was that said everything is explicable in terms of a small child's behavior—I believe the comment was offered pertaining to the functioning of the cosmos, not merely the actions of human beings, but it was certainly applicable at that moment. A petulant rage possessed me and I thrust out my hands, intending to seize the paddles; but the boy stepped between Tito and me and demanded five lempira.

My rage was such that having to pay for the privilege of experiencing a shock did not deter me. I fumbled out some bills, flung them at the boy, then shoved him aside and confronted Tito. Daunted by his appearance, I hesitated. With his face shadowed beneath the straw hat, the battery mounted in its brace of leather and metal, cables running off beneath his arms, and those featureless black paddles lashed to his wrists, he looked the embodiment of an arcane peril. The group of men encircled us, lending a ritual symmetry to the scene, and more people were filtering between the stalls, made curious, I imagine, by the pointedness of Tito's insults. Among them I recognized the jefe of the prison, an elderly white-haired version of the squat unprepossessing men who were at that very moment carousing on my deck. The old man's contempt for me was especially poisonous, and I could not bring myself to back down from Tito's challenge with him looking on.

I remember taking hold of the paddles, hearing the faint hum and buzz of the voltage as the prickling crawl of electricity in my palms evolved into pain; and I remember also how, as the pain grew intense, my vision reddened and my focus narrowed to encompass the lower half of Tito's face, his teeth bared in a snarl as if the pain were flowing out of his flesh into mine. This notion, that pain—or some unknown agency of which pain was a by-product—was leaving Tito's body and entering my own, was reinforced by the fact that his expression became increasingly one of relief and surprise—it seemed he, too, was aware of a sea change. Soon the only sound I could hear was the reedy whine of my nervous system, like a desperate insect trapped inside my ear. Shattering vibrations flowed along my arms. My heart bucked and stuttered. My hands were on fire and that fire darted into my chest, snagged in my bones. I wanted to let go of the paddles, I intended to let go, and there came a moment when I was certain I would let go. What inhibited this impulse, I cannot say. Stubbornness was part of it. Stubbornness and the fear of greater humiliation. Yet, another element was involved in my resistance and in the midst of pain a bubble of clarity briefly enveloped me, allowing me to consider what this element might be. I had the sense of being guarded, protected in some fashion, and I also had the impression of having bonded with that protective force and thus being sealed away from the possibility of mortal harm. Then clarity evaporated. My head shook violently; my eyes felt dry and rattling in their sockets. Fumes of smoke wisped up between my fingers and the comprehension that my flesh had begun to scorch was the last thing I remember.

The strongest proof of my thesis was yet to come. I went behind the bar, poured myself a vodka, and while I was scooping up ice cubes, Espinal pushed back his chair and walked past me without a word. He stood, I tell you, and yet he did not move from the chair. It appeared he had divided into two Espinals, one of whom headed along the corridor toward the apartment where I dwelled with my family. Though puzzled by the phenomenon, I took it more-or-less in stride and followed him, noticing that this figure was somewhat dimmer and gauzier than the one who remained seated, a colored shadow of sorts. The shadow Espinal tapped on the door of my apartment (the tapping made no sound) and was immediately admitted by my wife, wearing a flimsy peignoir that must have been a recent purchase—she had never worn it for me. I was unclear as to what I was witnessing, uncertain both of what it signified and whether it was real or a byproduct of my disorienting encounter with Señor Volto. I refused to accept the obvious, that Espinal and Marta were having an affair. After a minute, I opened the door and crept toward the master bedroom. On the bed were two Martas, one asleep on her side and the other—a somewhat less substantial and entirely naked female form—mounted atop Espinal, riding the sluggish thrusts of his hips, eyes closed and fondling her own breasts. For all their passion, there was no sound of breath or fleshly contact, but the sight of Marta thus engaged, even if she were only a phantom, tore at my spirit. I was convinced that this was at the least a shade of infidelity, the reflection of an actual event.

It was not my love for Marta that kindled violence in my heart; rather, it was violence, the allure of it, that opened me to love. Aboil with hatred and confusion, I closed my eyes; when I opened them, I saw only the sleeping Marta. Espinal and the second Marta had vanished. Watching her stir beneath the sheet, my desire to hurt Espinal was married to a recognition of how little I had valued her, how utterly I had neglected her. I stepped forward, intending to make some show of affection and forgiveness, and spotted something under the edge of the bed: Espinal's cattle prod. A shiny black cylinder with a button trigger that he usually carried hitched to his belt. He had been here, I realized. Inside my wife. The carelessness of the man, the lack of respect implicit in his carelessness, it assailed me, as did the phallic shape of the prod—I wondered if he had left it there to goad me. I picked it up, and my anger seemed to course into it, to assume the form of that cold black stick. Ignoring the pain in my hands, I gripped the handle hard and visualized myself jamming the tip into Espinal's fat neck, triggering off charge after charge. How could Marta have made love to such a toad? Recalling her abandon caused my anger to spike, and, eager to demonstrate that no man could treat me so, I hurried from the room.

Anger was free in me as never before, ungoverned by its normal restraints, but upon entering the bar I was stalled in my vengeful progress by what I saw on the deck. Illuminated by the pool lights, five guards, Espinal among them, were seated around a table, talking easily, laughing, and those same five guards, or rather their colored shadows, were moving away from the table in various directions, vanishing around corners and through doors. Like bright ghosts standing up from their bodies and going off on spectral errands. At the instant these phantasmal shapes would disappear, other identical shadows stood and went off in directions different from the ones they previously had chosen. Almost the same scene repeating itself over and over, as if the seated guards were generating a flow of afterimages … and not just afterimages, I told myself. Fore-images as well. Images of what might come to pass. This was not mere speculation, for as I watched, one shadow got to its feet, extracted his car keys from a trouser pocket, saluted his companions, and went through the gate by the pool leading to the parking area, and another passed out, slumped in his chair, mouth agape, chest rising and falling regularly. Yet the first shadow I had seen, Espinal's, had been the shadow of an action taken in the past. The cattle prod was proof of that. A third guard jumped up in apparent alarm and swung a beer bottle in a forceful arc through mid-air as if showing the others how he had subdued a dangerous criminal. It seemed I was witnessing a mingling of the past and possibility. Did this indicate that the past embodied the condition of possibility, that it, too, was mutable? Before I could explore this question, anger overwhelmed me once again. I approached the table, holding the prod behind my back. Espinal glanced up. Amusement deepened the lines at the corners of his eyes. He spoke to his colleagues, words I failed to hear, and they laughed. As was my habit when exposed to such ridicule, I offered a pleasant smile, pretending to accept their laughter as expressive of a mood of good fellowship; but my smile was not its usual strained self, supported in this instance by a foundation of joyful and vengeful intent. Espinal didn't bother to look at me as I drew near; he only said, "Bring us another round of beers, Aurelio."

"Perhaps you'd care for some chips and salsa?" I asked, and jabbed him in the neck with the prod.

The shock elicited a grunt from Espinal and lifted him up from his chair to fall across the table. His arms swept empty bottles onto the floor. I jabbed him in the side and his torso spasmed, his head jittered against the tabletop. His mouth gaped, his eyes bulged, his limbs trembled. Pleased by his aghast expression, by the quivering of his muscles, I prepared to deliver a third charge, but then I sensed movement behind me and turned to see another guard swing a beer bottle at my head, the same act I had witnessed him performing moments before.

Armed with that foreknowledge, I anticipated the arc of the blow and so was able to dodge it. I jabbed the cattle prod into the guard's chest and he fell twitching onto the floor. My anger was supplanted by the eerie calm that had possessed me at the hospital. As the remaining guards came to their feet, I snatched Espinal's sidearm from its holster and told them to put their weapons on the table. Once this had been done, I ordered them to dive into the pool. They cursed and threatened, but obeyed. Seeing them so helpless, with only their heads clear, staring balefully at me, water dripping from their hair, I gave thought to shooting them. How satisfying it would be to watch them flounder as I picked them off one by one! Though this desire was fueled by a residue of anger, it was not a fierce impulse—I was already beginning to regret my intemperate actions, wondering if it might be possible to rectify the situation. I would have to hide out for a while, there was no doubt of that. Perhaps Marta's cousins in the Bay Islands would be of help. Then something struck the back of my head, sending white lights spearing into my eyes. Dazed, my skull throbbing, I realized I had fallen. Marta was standing over me, still in her nightdress, holding a beer bottle. She said something in a contemptuous tone, but the words were muted, unintelligible, as if she were speaking from behind thick glass. I heard other voices, equally muted. The guards. They gathered around me and as they began to beat me, it seemed they were multiplying infinitely, producing hundreds upon hundreds of shadow selves that separated from their bodies and hurried off to accomplish innumerable missions, moving more rapidly than humanly possible, as if God had speeded up the film of the world in order to show me everything that might then happen, the variety of my potential fates, none of which I understood.

It was after dark when Espinal came along the corridor to my cell. He leaned against the gate, peering through the bars, his face neutral. Expressionless as a frog, you might have said. Yet even a frog's face is colored by a kind of gloating simplicity, and though Espinal bore some resemblance to that creature, neither gloating nor triumph nor emotion of any sort surfaced from his depths, as if only his bloated body were present and his soul had flown elsewhere, perhaps attached to one of the flimsy shadows that proceeded from him. He said nothing and the silence seemed to hollow out a vast space around us, to create a universe populated by a single torturer and his victim. He was dressed as for an evening out. Dark, neatly ironed slacks and a sports shirt bearing a batik pattern. A gold chain cinched his swarthy neck. The cattle prod was hitched to his belt.

My instinct was to plead with him, to reason. Where, I wanted to ask, would he find a more efficient conduit for his drugs? Now that I was in his thrall, I would prove a thoroughly malleable host. Any room he wished, any number of rooms, might be his at any hour of the day. But the silence pressed against my chest, my Adam's apple, choking me, and I could not speak. Oddly enough, I felt a measure of anticipation for what was to come, and when Espinal opened the gate, rather than cowering, I sat up alertly like a child expecting a treat.

Espinal did not bother to shut the gate behind him. He unhitched the cattle prod and showed it to me, letting the light play over the shiny black cylinder. A smile hitched up a corner of his mouth. "You truly are a stupid piece of crap, Aurelio," he said.

Though these words offered no promise of mercy, that he had acknowledged me in any way generated an ounce of hope. I marshaled my arguments, ordering them into a logical progression, but before I could state my desire to please him, Espinal stuck the cattle prod into the pit of my stomach and triggered off a charge. My memories of the next hours are fragmentary. I recall Espinal standing above my prone body, spitting into my face, cracking me with his fists, cursing me, his puffy cheeks mottled with rage. At several points he broke from his exertions, and on one such occasion, sitting with his back against the wall, smoking a cigarette, he informed me of his plans to marry Marta and thus gain ownership of the hotel.

"She's a terrific fuck," he said, "but the world is full of terrific fucks. I would never tie myself down to her if not for the hotel. You didn't understand how to make full use of either your hotel or your woman, Aurelio."

He paused, blew a smoke ring and watched it dissipate. "Women," he said musingly. "They have their subtleties, their eccentricities. But at heart they only want to be secure. Perhaps if you had been stronger, if you had been a fortress for Marta, and not a little house of straw … perhaps she would not have sought me out."

I must have made a noise of some kind, for he patted my shoulder and said, "Don't try to speak. You'll merely exhaust yourself, and we have so much farther to travel, you and I." He stubbed out his cigarette on the floor and voiced a sigh of—I thought—satisfaction. "I intended to have you disappeared, but your fit of temper makes things so much the easier. No one will initiate an inquiry if something happens to you now."

In the course of his abuse, Espinal frequently employed the cattle prod, and despite the excruciating pain, the spasms, the bile rising in my throat, and the trembling of my limbs, instead of growing weaker and more mentally disorganized, I grew stronger, centered in my outrage, as if some portion of my being were receiving a positive charge, becoming further enlivened by each and every jolt. The colored shadows that prior to Espinal's appearance in my cell had all but vanished, now proceeded from him in a continuous flow, clearly visible, giving me a preview of the torments he might soon visit upon me, and so it was that when, after another cigarette break, he bent down to retie his shoelace, I had already watched his shadow self perform this act and was able therefore to avail myself of the opportunity, lashing out with my right leg and catching him flush on the chin. He fell onto his back, moaning, still conscious. Denying the pain that attended my least movement, I scrambled up, seized the cattle prod and jabbed it into his chest, jolting him again and again, hoping to explode his flabby heart. His eyes rolled back. Thick strings of drool eeled between his lips. His belly heaved and jiggled. Yet he refused to die.

So frustrated was I by Espinal's persistence, I wrangled out his sidearm, intending to shoot him, but footsteps in the corridor awakened my desire for self-preservation. A young guard with a wispy mustache was ambling toward the cell. As he drew near, I stepped forth and ordered him to unlock the other cells, an order with which he did not hesitate to comply. Seven bleary, dispirited prisoners tottered out into the corridor, staring at me with fear and bewilderment. I bound and gagged the guard and sat him down beside Espinal. Then, turning to the prisoners, I told them that salvation was at hand.