The Discreet Hero (2 page)

“You don’t seem to think it’s very serious,” Felícito protested.

“For the moment it isn’t,” the sergeant admitted with a shrug. “This is only a crumpled piece of paper, Señor Yanaqué. It might be nothing but bullshit. But if it becomes serious, the police will act, I assure you. Well, let’s get down to business.”

It took a while for Felícito to recite his personal and business information. Sergeant Lituma wrote everything down in a green notebook, using a pencil stub he kept wetting in his mouth. The trucker answered the questions, which seemed useless to him, growing increasingly disheartened. Coming here to file a complaint had been a waste of time. This cop wouldn’t do anything. Besides, didn’t everybody say the police were the most corrupt of the public institutions? The letter with the spider had probably come from this foul-smelling cave. When Lituma said the letter had to remain in the police station as proof of the charge, Felícito made a gesture of annoyance.

“I’ll want to make a photocopy first.”

“We don’t have a photocopier here,” the sergeant said, indicating with his eyes the Franciscan austerity of the station. “Lots of places on the avenue make copies. Just go and come right back, sir. I’ll wait for you here.”

Felícito went out to Avenida Sánchez Cerro and found what he was looking for near the General Market. He had to wait while some engineers made copies of a pile of blueprints, and he decided he would not submit to more of the sergeant’s questions. He handed the copy of the letter to the young officer at the reception desk, and instead of returning to his office plunged again into the center of the city filled with people, horns, heat, loudspeakers, mototaxis, cars, and noisy trolleys. He crossed Avenida Grau, walked in the shade of the tamarinds on the Plaza de Armas, resisted the temptation to have a frozen fruit drink at El Chalán, and headed for La Gallinacera, the old slaughterhouse district along the river where he’d spent his adolescence. He prayed that Adelaida would be in her little shop. It would do him good to talk to her. She’d raise his spirits and, who knows, the holy woman might even give him some good advice. The heat was at its height and it wasn’t even ten o’clock. He felt the dampness on his forehead and a spot that was burning hot on the back of his neck. He walked quickly, taking short, fast steps, bumping into the people who crowded the narrow sidewalks that smelled of piss and fried food. A radio at top volume blared the salsa number “Merecumbé.”

Felícito sometimes told himself—and had even said so on occasion to his wife, Gertrudis, and to his children—that God, to reward his lifelong efforts and sacrifices, had placed two people in his path, the grocer Lau and the holy woman Adelaida. Without them, things wouldn’t have gone well for him in business, his transport company wouldn’t have moved forward, he wouldn’t have created a respectable family or enjoyed his robust good health. He’d never had many friends. Ever since poor Lau had been carried off to the next world by an intestinal infection, he had only Adelaida. Fortunately, she was there, at the counter of her small shop that sold herbs, figures of saints, notions, and odds and ends, looking at photographs in a magazine.

“Hello, Adelaida,” he said, extending his hand. “Gimme five. I’m glad to see you.”

She was an ageless mulatta, short, fat-bottomed, big-breasted, who walked barefoot on the dirt floor of her shop; her long, curly hair hung loose to her shoulders, and she was wearing her usual coarse, clay-colored tunic or habit that fell to her ankles. She had enormous eyes and a gaze that seemed to bore into rather than look at you, softened by an amiable expression that gave people confidence.

“If you’ve come to visit me, something bad’s happened or’s gonna happen to you.” Adelaida laughed and patted his back. “So what’s your problem, Felícito?”

He handed her the letter.

“They left it on my front door this morning. I don’t know what to do. I filed a complaint at the police station, but I think it was a waste of time. The cop I talked to didn’t pay much attention to me.”

Adelaida touched the letter and smelled it, inhaling deeply as if it were perfume. Then she raised it to her mouth and Felícito thought she actually tasted an edge of the paper.

“Read it to me, Felícito,” she said, giving it back to him. “I can see it’s not a love letter, hey waddya think.”

She listened very seriously as he read her the letter. When he finished, she made a mocking pout and spread her arms. “Waddya want me to say, baby?”

“Tell me if this thing is serious, Adelaida. If I ought to worry or not. Or if it’s just a lousy trick. Clear this up for me, please.”

The holy woman gave a laugh that shook her entire hefty body hidden beneath the wide mud-colored tunic.

“I’m not God—I don’t know those things,” she exclaimed, raising and lowering her shoulders and fluttering her hands.

“Your inspiration doesn’t tell you anything, Adelaida? In the twenty-five years I know you, you never gave me bad advice. It’s always useful. I don’t know what my life would’ve been without you, comadre. Can’t you tell me something now?”

“No, baby, nothing,” Adelaida said, pretending to be sad. “No inspiration comes to me. I’m sorry, Felícito.”

“Well, what can you do,” the businessman said, taking out his wallet. “When it’s not there, it’s not there.”

“Waddya giving me money for if I couldn’t give you advice?” Adelaida protested. But in the end she slipped the twenty-sol bill that Felícito insisted she accept into her pocket.

“Can I sit here for a while in the shade? I’m worn out with so much running around, Adelaida.”

“Sit down and rest, baby. I’ll bring you a glass of nice cool water fresh from the filtering stone. Just make yourself comfortable.”

While Adelaida went to the rear of the store and then came back, Felícito examined in the half-light the silvery cobwebs hanging from the ceiling, the ancient shelves with packets of parsley, rosemary, coriander, and mint, and boxes of nails, screws, seeds, eyelets, and buttons, the prints and images of the Virgin, of Christ, of male and female saints and holy men and women cut from magazines and newspapers, some with lit candles in front of them and others with adornments—rosaries, amulets, and wax or paper flowers. It was because of those images that in Piura she was called a holy woman, but in the quarter century he’d known her, Adelaida had never seemed very religious to Felícito. He’d never seen her at Mass, for example. And people said the parish priests considered her a witch. Sometimes the street kids shouted at her: Witch! Witch! It wasn’t true, she didn’t do witchcraft like so many sharp-witted
cholas
in Catacaos and La Legua who sold potions for falling in love, falling out of love, or bringing bad luck, or the medicine men from Huancabamba who passed a guinea pig over the infirm, or the ones in Las Huaringas who thrust their hands into the afflicted, who paid them to be free of their ailments. Adelaida wasn’t even a professional fortune-teller. She did that work only occasionally and only with friends and acquaintances, not charging them a cent. Though if they insisted, she’d keep the little gifts they were moved to give her. Felícito’s wife and sons (as well as Mabel) mocked him for the blind faith he had in Adelaida’s inspirations and advice. He not only believed her; he’d become fond of her. He regretted her solitude and her poverty. She had no husband or family he knew of; she was always alone but seemed content with her hermit’s life.

He’d seen her for the first time a quarter of a century earlier, when he was an interprovincial truck driver and didn’t have his transport company yet, though he dreamed night and day about owning one. It happened at kilometer 50 on the Pan-American Highway, in one of those settlements where bus drivers, truck drivers, and jitney drivers always stopped to have chicken soup, coffee, a shot of chicha, and a sandwich before facing the long, burning-hot run through the Olmos desert filled with dust and stones, devoid of towns, without a single gas station or repair shop in the event of an accident. Adelaida, who already wore the mud-colored tunic that would always be her only article of clothing, had one of the stands that sold dried meat and soft drinks. Felícito was driving a truck loaded with bales of cotton from Casa Romero to Trujillo, traveling alone because his helper had backed out of the run at the last minute when Hospital Obrero informed him that his mother had fallen very ill and might pass at any moment. He was eating a tamale, sitting at Adelaida’s counter, when he noticed her giving him a strange look with her deep-set, piercing eyes. Hey waddya think, what was the matter with the woman? Her face was contorted. She looked frightened.

“What’s wrong, Señora Adelaida? Why are you looking at me like that, like you suspected something?”

She didn’t say anything. She continued to stare at him with her large, dark eyes and made a face that showed repugnance or fear, sucking in her cheeks and wrinkling her brow.

“Do you feel sick?” an uncomfortable Felícito asked.

“Better if you don’t get in that truck,” she said finally in a hoarse voice, as if making a great effort to control her tongue and throat. She gestured with her hand toward the red truck Felícito had parked at the side of the road.

“Don’t get in my truck?” he repeated, disconcerted. “And why not, if you don’t mind my asking?”

Adelaida moved her eyes away from him for a moment to look to either side, as if she were afraid that the other drivers, customers, or owners of the shops and bars in the vicinity, might hear her.

“I have an inspiration,” she said, lowering her voice, her face still upset. “I can’t explain it to you. Just believe what I’m telling you, please. Better if you don’t get in that truck.”

“I appreciate your advice, señora, and I’m sure you mean well. But I have to earn my bread. I’m a driver, I make my living with trucks, Doña Adelaida. How would I feed my wife and two little boys if I didn’t?”

“Then at least be very careful,” the woman begged, lowering her eyes. “Listen to me.”

“I’ll do that, señora. I promise. I always am.”

An hour and a half later, at a curve on the unpaved road, the bus from La Cruz de Chalpón came skidding and screeching out of a thick, grayish-yellow cloud of dust and hit his truck with a great clamor of metal, brakes, shouts, and squealing tires. Felícito had good reflexes and managed to swerve, turning the front part of the truck out of the way, so that the bus crashed into the chute and cargo, which saved his life. But until the bones in his back, shoulder, and right leg healed, he was immobilized in a sheath of plaster that not only hurt but also caused a maddening itch. When he was finally able to drive again, the first thing he did was go to kilometer 50. Señora Adelaida recognized him right away.

“Well, well, I’m glad you’re better now. The usual tamale and a soda?”

“I beg you, Señora Adelaida, for the sake of what you love best, tell me how you knew the bus from La Cruz de Chalpón would run into me. It’s all I think about ever since it happened. Are you a witch, a saint, or what?”

He saw her turn pale, and she didn’t know what to do with her hands. She lowered her head in confusion.

“I didn’t know anything about that,” she stammered, not looking at him, as if she’d been accused of something very serious. “I just had an inspiration, that’s all. It happens sometimes, I never know why. And hey waddya think, I don’t want it to happen, I swear. It’s a curse that’s fallen on me. I don’t like it that Almighty God made me like this. I pray every day for Him to take back this gift He gave me. It’s something terrible, believe me. It makes me feel like I’m to blame for all the bad things that happen to people.”

“But what did you see, señora? Why did you tell me that morning it would be better not to get into my truck?”

“I didn’t see anything, I never see the things that are going to happen. Didn’t I tell you that? I just had an inspiration that if you got into that truck, something could happen to you. I didn’t know what. I never know what it is that’s going to happen. Just that there are things it’s better not to do because they’ll turn out bad. Are you going to eat that tamale and drink your Inca Kola?”

They’d been friends since then and soon began to use familiar address with each other. When Señora Adelaida left the settlement at kilometer 50 and opened her little shop selling herbs, notions, odds and ends, and religious images in the area near the old slaughterhouse, Felícito came by at least once a week to say hello and chat for a while. He almost always brought a little present—some candy, a cake, sandals—and when he left he placed a bill in her hands, as hard and callused as a man’s. He’d consulted her about all the important decisions he’d made in those twenty-some years, especially since the establishment of Narihualá Transport: the debts he assumed, the trucks, buses, and cars he bought, the places he rented, the drivers, mechanics, and clerks he hired or fired. Most of the time, Adelaida laughed at his questions. “Hey waddya think, Felícito, what do I know about that? How can I tell you if a Chevrolet or a Ford is better, how can I tell you about the makes of cars if I’ve never had one and never will?” But from time to time, though she didn’t know what it was about, she’d have an inspiration and give him some advice: “Yes, get into that, Felícito, it’ll be good for you, I think.” Or “No, Felícito, that’s not a good idea. I don’t know what it is but something about it smells bad.” For him the words of the holy woman were revealed truths, and he obeyed them to the letter, no matter how incomprehensible or absurd they might seem.

“You fell asleep, baby,” he heard her say.

It was true, he’d dozed off after drinking the glass of cool water Adelaida had brought him. How long had he been nodding in the hard rocking chair that gave him a cramp in his rear end? He looked at his watch. Good, just a few minutes.

“It was all the tension this morning, the running around,” he said, getting to his feet. “See you soon, Adelaida. Your shop is so peaceful. It always does me good to visit you, even if you don’t have an inspiration.”

And at the very instant he said the key word “inspiration,” which Adelaida used to define the mysterious faculty she’d been given, foretelling the good or bad things that were going to happen to some people, Felícito noticed that the holy woman’s expression had changed since she’d said hello, listened to him read the spider letter, and assured him it inspired no reaction at all in her. She was very serious now: Her expression was somber, she was frowning and biting a fingernail. One might say she was controlling an anguish that had begun to paralyze her. She kept her large eyes fastened on him. Felícito felt his heart beat faster.