The Discreet Hero (13 page)

“Another of the boy’s feverish imaginings,” Doña Lucrecia would remark later. “He’ll never stop surprising us. I mean, a man appears and only he sees him, right there on his school’s soccer field. What an extravagant imagination he has, my God!”

But later, she was the one who urged Rigoberto to go to Markham, without telling Fonchito about it, to talk to Mr. McPherson, the director. The conversation caused Don Rigoberto a good deal of grief.

“Naturally, he didn’t know and hadn’t ever heard of Edilberto Torres,” he told Lucrecia that night, when they usually talked. “And then, as was to be expected, the gringo felt free to mock me. It was absolutely impossible for a stranger to have entered the school, let alone the soccer field. Nobody who isn’t a teacher or an employee is authorized to set foot there. Mr. McPherson also believes this is one of those fantasies that intelligent, sensitive boys tend to have. He told me there was no reason to give the matter any importance. At my son’s age, it’s perfectly normal for a child to see a ghost occasionally, unless he’s a dolt. We agreed that neither of us would tell Foncho about the interview. I think he’s right. What’s the point of playing along with something that makes no sense.”

“Well, if it turns out that the devil does exist, it seems he’s Peruvian and his name is Edilberto Torres.” Lucrecia had a sudden fit of laughter. But Rigoberto noticed it was a nervous laugh.

They were lying down, and it was obvious by this time that there would be no stories, no fantasies, and no lovemaking. This had been happening more often recently. Instead of inventing stories that excited them both, they began to talk, and often they enjoyed it so much that time slipped away until they were overcome by sleep.

“I’m afraid it’s no laughing matter.” A moment later she reversed herself and became serious again. “This has gone too far, Rigoberto. We have to do something. I don’t know what, but something. We can’t just look away, as if nothing were going on.”

“At least now I’m certain that it’s a fantasy, something very typical of him,” Rigoberto reflected. “But what’s he trying to do with these stories? Things like this aren’t unprovoked, they come from somewhere, with roots in the unconscious.”

“Sometimes he’s so quiet, so closed within himself, that I want to die of sorrow, my love. I feel that the boy is suffering in silence and it breaks my heart. Since he knows we don’t believe in his apparitions, he doesn’t tell us about them anymore. And that’s even worse.”

“He might be having visions, hallucinations,” Don Rigoberto digressed. “It happens to the most normal people, whether they’re clever or stupid. They think they’re seeing what they don’t see, what’s only in their head.”

“Sure, of course they’re inventions,” Doña Lucrecia concluded. “We assume the devil doesn’t exist. I believed in him when I met you, Rigoberto. In God and the devil, what every normal Catholic family believes. You convinced me they were superstitions, the foolish beliefs of ignorant people. And now it turns out that the one who doesn’t exist has interfered with our family, and what do you have to say to that?” She gave another nervous little laugh and then fell silent. To Rigoberto she seemed quiet and pensive.

“To be honest, I don’t know whether he exists or not,” he admitted. “The only thing I’m sure about now is what you just said. He might exist, I could get as far as that. But I can’t accept that he’s a Peruvian named Edilberto Torres, and that he devotes his time to stalking the students at Markham Academy. Please don’t fuck with me.”

They discussed the matter from every angle and finally decided to take Fonchito for a psychological evaluation. They made inquiries among their friends. Everyone recommended Dr. Augusta Delmira Céspedes. She had studied in France and was a specialist in child psychology, and those who’d placed their sons or daughters with problems in her care had high praise for her skill and good judgment. They were afraid Fonchito might resist and took every precaution to present the matter to him delicately. But to their surprise, the boy didn’t raise the slightest objection. He agreed to see her, went to her office several times, took all the tests Dr. Céspedes gave him, and always had the best attitude in the world when he talked to her. When Rigoberto and Lucrecia went to her office, the doctor received them with an encouraging smile. She was close to sixty, rather plump, agile, amiable, and droll.

“Fonchito is the most normal boy in the world,” she assured them. “Too bad: He’s so charming I would have liked to keep him as a patient for a while. Each session with him has been a delight. He’s intelligent, sensitive, and for that very reason sometimes feels distant from his classmates. But this is absolutely normal. If you can be totally sure of anything, it’s that Edilberto Torres is no fantasy but a flesh-and-blood person, as real and concrete as the two of you and me. Fonchito hasn’t lied to you. Exaggerated things a little, perhaps. That’s what his rich imagination is for. He’s never taken his encounters with that gentleman as either heavenly or diabolical apparitions. Never! What nonsense. He’s a kid with his feet planted very firmly on the ground and his head in the right place. You’re the ones who have invented all this, and for that very reason you’re the ones who really need a psychologist. Shall I make you an appointment? I see not only children but also adults who suddenly begin to believe the devil exists and wastes his time walking the streets of Lima, Barranco, and Miraflores.”

Dr. Augusta Delmira Céspedes continued joking as she accompanied them to the door. When they said goodbye, she asked Don Rigoberto to show her his collection of erotic prints one day. “Fonchito told me it’s terrific” was her final joke. Rigoberto and Lucrecia left her office floundering in a sea of confusion.

“I told you that going to a psychologist was very dangerous,” Rigoberto reminded Lucrecia. “I don’t know why I ever listened to you. A psychologist can be more dangerous than the devil himself, I’ve known that ever since I read Freud.”

“Shame on you if you think we should joke about this the way Dr. Céspedes does,” Lucrecia said in self-defense. “I only hope you’re not sorry.”

“I don’t take it as a joke,” he replied, serious now. “I was happier thinking that Edilberto Torres didn’t exist. If what Dr. Céspedes says is true, and this person does exist and is pursuing Fonchito, tell me what the hell we’re supposed to do now.”

They did nothing, and for a long time the boy didn’t talk to them again about the matter. He continued to go about his normal life, going to school and coming home at the usual times, going to his room for an hour or sometimes two every afternoon to do his homework, and going out some weekends with Chato Pezzuolo. Though he did so reluctantly, pushed by Don Rigoberto and Doña Lucrecia, he also went out occasionally with other boys from the neighborhood, to the movies, to the stadium to play soccer, or to a party. But in their nocturnal conversations, Rigoberto and Lucrecia agreed that even though this seemed normal, Fonchito wasn’t the same boy he’d been before.

What was different? It wasn’t easy to say, but both were sure he’d changed. And that the transformation was profound. A problem of his age? It was a difficult transition from childhood to adolescence: A boy’s voice changes and becomes hoarse, and the fuzz that announces his future beard starts to appear on his face; he begins to feel he’s no longer a child but not yet a man, and in the way he dresses, sits, gestures, and talks to his friends and to girls, he tries to become the man he’ll be later on. Fonchito seemed more laconic and withdrawn, much more sparing in his answers to their questions at meals about school and his friends.

“I know what’s wrong with you, kid,” Lucrecia challenged him one day. “You’ve fallen in love! Is that it, Fonchito? Do you like some girl?”

With no hint of a blush, he shook his head no.

“I don’t have time for those things now,” he replied seriously, without a shred of humor. “Exams are coming and I’d like to get good grades.”

“I like that, Fonchito,” Don Rigoberto said approvingly. “You’ll have plenty of time for girls later on.”

And suddenly his rosy face lit up with a smile, and in Fonchito’s eyes the impish mischief of earlier times appeared.

“Besides, you know that the only woman in the world I like is you, Stepmother.”

“Oh, my God, let me give you a kiss, my boy,” Doña Lucrecia commended him. “But what do those hands mean, my husband?”

“They mean that talking about the devil suddenly sets my imagination and some other things on fire, my love.”

And for a long while they took their pleasure, imagining that the joke about the devil and Fonchito had passed on to a better life. But no, it hadn’t passed on yet.

VII

It happened one morning when Sergeant Lituma and Captain Silva, the latter distracted for a moment from his obsession with Piuran women in general and Señora Josefita in particular, were working, all five senses focused on the task, trying to find the link that would give focus to the investigation. Colonel Ríos Pardo, alias Rascachucha, the regional police chief, had reprimanded them again the night before, ranting like a madman because news of Felícito Yanaqué’s defiance of the crooks in
El Tiempo
had reached Lima. The minister of the interior had called him personally to demand that the business be resolved immediately. The press was following the story, and not only the police but the government itself was being made to look ridiculous in the public eye. The rallying cry from headquarters was: Get your hands on the extortionists and make an example of them!

“We have to justify the police, damn it,” the ill-tempered Rascachucha bellowed from behind his enormous mustache, his eyes like red-hot coals. “A couple of hicks can’t laugh at us like this. Either you hunt them down ipso facto, or I swear by San Martín de Porres and by God Himself that you’ll regret it for the rest of your life!”

Sergeant Lituma and Captain Silva analyzed with a magnifying glass the statements of all the witnesses, made file cards, compared and cross-referenced data, shuffled through hypotheses and rejected them one after the other. From time to time, taking a breather, the captain would burst into praise, charged with sexual fever, of the curves of Señora Josefita, with whom he’d fallen in love. Very seriously, and with salacious gestures, he explained to his subordinate that those gluteals were not only large, round, and symmetrical but also “gave a little jiggle when she walked,” something that aroused his heart and his testicles in unison. For that reason, he maintained, “in spite of her age, her moon face, and her slightly bowed legs, Josefita is the goddamnedest woman.

“Hotter than gorgeous Mabel, if I’m forced to make comparisons, Lituma,” he went on, his eyes popping as if he had the backsides of the two ladies right in front of him and were hefting them both. “I acknowledge that Don Felícito’s girlfriend has a nice figure, aggressive tits, and well-formed, fleshy legs and arms, but her ass, as you must have noticed, leaves much to be desired. It’s not very touchable. It didn’t finish developing, it didn’t blossom, at some point it went into decline. According to my classification system, hers is a timid ass, if you know what I mean.”

“Why don’t you concentrate on the investigation instead, Captain?” Lituma asked him. “You saw how furious Colonel Ríos Pardo is. At this rate we won’t ever get rid of this case or be promoted again.”

“I’ve noticed that you have absolutely no interest in women’s asses, Lituma,” was the captain’s judgment, pretending to commiserate with him and putting on a grief-stricken face. But immediately afterward he smiled and licked his lips like a cat. “A defect in your manly formation, I’m telling you. A good ass is the most divine gift God gave to female bodies for the pleasure of males. I’ve been told that even the Bible recognizes this.”

“Of course I have an interest, Captain. But with all due respect, in you there’s not only interest but obsession and depravity too. Let’s get back to the spiders now.”

They spent many hours reading, rereading, and examining word by word, letter by letter, stroke by stroke the extortionists’ letters and drawings. They’d requested a handwriting analysis of the anonymous letters from the central office, but the specialist, in the hospital following hemorrhoid surgery, was on a two-week leave. It was on one of those days, as they were comparing the letters to the signatures and writing samples of criminals on file in the office of the public prosecutor, that a suspicion sprouted in Lituma’s mind. A memory, an association. Captain Silva noticed that something had happened to his colleague.

“You look like you’re in a trance all of a sudden. What’s up, Lituma?”

“Nothing, it’s nothing, Captain.” The sergeant shrugged. “It’s silly. I just remembered a guy I met. He was always drawing spiders, as I recall. Just bullshit, I’m sure.”

“I’m sure,” the captain repeated, staring at him. He brought his face up close to Lituma’s and changed his tone. “But since we don’t have anything, bullshit is better than nothing. Who was this guy? Go on, tell me.”

“A pretty old story, Captain.” The police chief noticed that Lituma’s voice and eyes were fraught with discomfort, as if it bothered him to root through those memories, though he couldn’t avoid it. “I imagine it doesn’t have anything to do with this. But, yes, I remember clearly, that motherfucker was always drawing, scribbling things that could have been spiders. On papers, on newspapers. Sometimes even on the ground in chicha bars, with a stick.”

“And who was this so-called motherfucker, Lituma? Tell me right now and don’t keep beating around the fucking bush.”

“Let’s go have some juice and get out of this oven for a while, Captain,” the sergeant suggested. “It’s a long story, and if you don’t get bored, I’ll tell it to you. My treat, don’t worry.”

They went to La Perla del Chira, a little bar on Calle Libertad next to a lot where, Lituma told his boss, in his youth there used to be a cockpit that had pretty heavy betting. He’d gone a few times but didn’t like cockfights; it made him sad to see how the poor animals were destroyed by pecking beaks and slashing razors. The place had no air-conditioning, but fans helped to cool it down. It was deserted. They ordered two eggfruit juices with lots of ice, and then lit their cigarettes.