The Discreet Hero (27 page)

“I told you nobody saw me. I swear nobody did. At least tell me if you liked it.”

“I didn’t like anything and I hate you with all my heart, just so you know,” Mabel said, slipping out of Miguel’s hands and standing up. “Go on, leave right now and don’t let anybody see you go out. Don’t come back here, you idiot. You’ll get us sent to prison, you son of a bitch, why can’t you see that.”

“All right, I’m going, don’t be like that,” said Miguel, sitting up. “I’m putting up with your insults because you’re so stressed. Otherwise, I’d knock them down your throat, sweetie.”

She could hear Miguel dressing in the semidarkness. Finally he bent over to kiss her and at the same time, with the vulgarity that erupted from all the pores of his body at intimate moments, he said, “For as long as I like you, I’ll come here to fuck you every time my prick tells me to, baby.”

“Eight to ten years in prison is a lot of years, Mabelita,” said Captain Silva, changing his voice again; now he seemed sad and compassionate. “Especially if you’re in the women’s prison at Sullana. A hell, I can tell you, I know it like the back of my hand. There’s no water or electricity most of the time. The inmates sleep in piles, two or three in each cot along with their kids, a lot of them on the floor, stinking of shit and piss because the bathrooms are almost always out of order, and they take care of their needs in buckets or plastic bags that are emptied only once a day. A body can’t put up with that system for very long. Least of all a nice little woman like you, accustomed to a different kind of life.”

Even though she wanted to shout and insult him, Mabel remained silent. She’d never been inside the women’s prison at Sullana, but she’d seen it from the outside, passing by. She sensed that the captain wasn’t exaggerating at all in his description.

“After a year or a year and a half of that kind of life, surrounded by prostitutes, murderers, thieves, drug traffickers, many of them driven crazy in prison, a young, beautiful woman like you gets old, ugly, and half nuts. I don’t want that for you, Mabelita.”

The captain sighed, filled with pity over the possible fate of the lady of the house.

“You might say that it’s perverse to tell you these things and paint this kind of picture for you,” the implacable chief continued. “You’d be wrong. The sergeant and I aren’t sadists. We don’t want to frighten you. What do you say, Lituma?”

“Of course not, just the opposite,” the sergeant declared, shifting again in the armchair. “We’ve come with good intentions, señora.”

“We want to spare you those horrors.” Captain Silva grimaced, contorting his face, as if he’d had an awful hallucination, and raised his hands in alarm. “The scandal, the trial, the interrogations, the prison bars. Can you imagine it, Mabel? Instead of paying the penalty for complicity with those thugs, we want you to be free, no strings attached, living the good life you’ve been living for years. Do you see why I told you our visit was for your own good? It is, Mabelita, believe me.”

Now she could sense what this was about. From panic she’d moved on to rage and from rage to profound dejection. Her eyelids were heavy, and again she felt a weariness that made her close her eyes for a few moments. How marvelous it would be to sleep, to lose consciousness and memory, to doze off right here, curled up in the chair. To forget, to feel that none of this had happened, that life was what it had always been.

Mabel brought her face close to the windowpane and after a little while saw Miguel go out and disappear a few meters farther on, swallowed up by the dark. She looked over the area carefully. She couldn’t see anyone. But that didn’t reassure her. The cop could be standing in the doorway of a nearby house and could have seen him from there. He’d report to his bosses and the police would inform Don Felícito Yanaqué: “Your son and employee, Miguel Yanaqué, visits your mistress’s house at night.” The scandal would explode. What would happen to her? As she bathed, changed the sheets, and then lay down, the lamp on the night table lit, trying to sleep, she asked herself again, as she had so often in the past two and a half years since she’d begun to see Miguel in secret, how Felícito would react if he ever found out. He wasn’t the kind of man who pulled a knife or a revolver in defense of his honor, the kind who thinks that sexual affronts are washed away with blood. But he’d leave her. She’d be on the street. Her savings would last barely a few months, and only if she cut expenses drastically. At this point it wouldn’t be so easy for her to establish another relationship as comfortable as the one she had with the owner of Narihualá Transport. She’d been stupid. An idiot. It was her own fault. She always knew that sooner or later she’d have to pay the price. She was so depressed that sleep eluded her. This would be another night of insomnia and nightmares.

She dozed off from time to time and had intermittent attacks of panic. She was a practical woman and never wasted time feeling sorry for herself or crying over her mistakes. What she regretted most in life was giving in to the insistent young man who had pursued her, caught up with her, courted her, and with whom she’d flirted without suspecting he was Felícito’s son. It had begun two and a half years earlier, when in the streets, stores, restaurants, and cafeterias in the center of Piura, she realized she was often running into a white, athletic, good-looking, well-dressed boy who gave her suggestive looks and flirtatious smiles. She learned who he was when, after making him beg more than a little, and accepting fruit juice from him in a pastry shop, going out to eat with him, going dancing a couple of times in a discotheque along the river, she agreed to go to bed with him in a motel in Atarjea. She was never in love with Miguel. Well, Mabel hadn’t been in love with anybody since she was a kid, maybe because that was who she was or maybe because of what happened with her stepfather when she was thirteen. She’d been so disappointed with her first loves as a girl that from then on she’d had affairs, some longer than others, some very brief, but they had never involved her heart, only her body and her reason. She thought that’s how her affair with Miguel would be, that after two or three encounters it would dissolve on her own terms. But this time it didn’t happen that way. The boy had fallen in love. He stuck to her like a leech. Mabel realized the relationship had become a problem and tried to break it off. She couldn’t. The only time she hadn’t been able to get rid of a lover. A lover? Not really, since because he was either very poor or a tightwad, he rarely gave her presents, didn’t take her to nice places, and even warned her they’d never have a formal relationship because he wasn’t one of those men who wants to be a father and have a family. In other words, his only interest in her was sex.

When she tried to force the break, he threatened to tell his father everything. From that moment on she knew the story would end badly, and that of the three, she’d suffer the most.

“Effective cooperation with the justice system,” Captain Silva explained, smiling enthusiastically. “That’s what it’s called in legal jargon, Mabelita. The key word isn’t ‘cooperation,’ it’s ‘effective.’ It means that the cooperation has to be useful and productive. If you cooperate honestly and help us to put the crooks who got you involved in this mess behind bars, you’re exempt from prison, even from being tried. And with good reason, because you’re a victim too. No strings attached, Mabelita! Imagine what that means!”

The captain took a couple of drags on his cigarette, and she saw the little clouds of smoke thicken the rarefied atmosphere of the living room and then gradually disperse.

“You must be asking yourself what kind of cooperation we want from you. Why don’t you explain, Lituma.”

The sergeant agreed.

“For now, we want you to continue pretending, señora,” he said, very respectfully. “Just like you’ve pretended all this time with Señor Yanaqué and with us. Exactly the same. Miguel doesn’t know we know everything, and you, instead of telling him, will keep acting as if this conversation never took place.”

“That’s exactly what we want from you,” Captain Silva agreed. “I’ll be frank, give you more proof of our confidence. Your cooperation can be very useful to us. Not to nab Miguel Yanaqué. He’s already fucked and can’t make a move without our knowing about it. But we’re not sure about his accomplices. We don’t know who they are. With your help, we’ll set a trap and send them to prison, where gangsters should be, instead of on the street, making life hard for decent people. You’d be doing us a great service. And we’ll return it, pay you back with another great favor. I’m speaking for the National Police and the justice system. This deal has the prosecutor’s approval. You heard right, Mabelita. The prosecutor himself, Dr. Hermando Símula! You won the lottery with me, girl.”

From then on, she continued seeing Miguel only so he wouldn’t carry out his threat to tell Felícito about their affair “even if the spiteful old man puts a bullet in you and another in me, sweetie.” She knew the insane things a jealous man could do. Deep down, she hoped something would happen—an accident, an illness, anything to get her out of this. She did her best to keep Miguel at a distance, inventing excuses not to go out with him or have sex with him. But from time to time she couldn’t help it, and though she was unwilling and frightened, they went out to eat in sleazy bars, to dance in shabby discotheques, and to have sex in small hotels that rented rooms by the hour on the road to Catacaos. Only rarely did she let him visit her in the house in Castilla. One afternoon, she and her friend Zoila went into El Chalán for tea and Mabel ran into Miguel face-to-face. He was with a very young, very pretty girl, and they were lovey-dovey, holding hands. She watched as the boy became confused, blushed, and turned his head to avoid greeting her. Instead of jealousy, she felt relief. Now the break would be easier. But the next time they saw each other, Miguel whimpered, begged her to forgive him, swore he’d repented, Mabel was the love of his life, etcetera. And she, stupid, so stupid, forgave him.

That morning, after not closing her eyes all night, a more and more common occurrence recently, Mabel was depressed, her head filled with premonitions. She also felt sorry for the old man. She hadn’t wanted to hurt him. She never would’ve gotten involved with Miguel if she’d known he was Felícito’s son. How strange that he had a son so white and so good-looking. Felícito wasn’t the type a woman falls in love with, but he did have the qualities that make a woman feel affection for a man. She’d grown used to him. She didn’t think of him as a lover but as a close friend. He gave her security, made her think that as long as he was nearby, he’d get her out of any situation. He was a decent person, with good intentions, one of those men you can trust. She’d be very sorry to embitter him, or hurt him, or offend him. Because he’d suffer so much if he found out she’d gone to bed with Miguel.

At about midday, when the police knocked at the door, she had the feeling that the threat she’d sensed since the previous night was about to materialize. She opened the door and saw Captain Silva and Sergeant Lituma in the doorway. My God, my God, what was going to happen?

“Now you know what the deal is, Mabelita,” said Captain Silva. He looked at his watch and stood up, as if he were remembering something. “You don’t have to answer me now, of course. I’ll give you till tomorrow, at this time. Think about it. If that lunatic Miguel comes to visit you again, don’t even think about telling him about our conversation. Because that would mean you’d sided with the gangsters against us. An aggravating circumstance in your file, Mabelita. Isn’t that right, Lituma?”

As the captain and the sergeant were walking toward the door, she asked them, “Does Felícito know you’ve come here to make me this offer?”

“Señor Yanaqué doesn’t know anything about it, and even less that the spider extortionist is his son Miguel and you’re his accomplice,” the captain replied. “When he finds out, he’ll have a fit. But that’s life, as you know better than anybody. When you play with fire, somebody gets burned. Think about our proposition, sleep on it, and you’ll see it’s the best thing for you to do. We’ll talk tomorrow, Mabelita.”

When the police left, she closed the door and leaned her back against the wall. Her heart was pounding. “I’m fucked, I’m fucked. You did it to yourself, Mabel.” Leaning against the wall, she dragged herself into the living room—her legs were trembling and sleep was still irresistible—and let herself drop into the nearest armchair. She closed her eyes and immediately fell asleep, or passed out. She had a nightmare she’d had before. She’d fallen into quicksand and was sinking through that gritty surface; both legs were already entangled in viscous filaments. Making a great effort, she was able to move toward the closest shore, but it wasn’t her salvation: Instead, crouching there, waiting, was a shaggy beast, a dragon from the movies, with sharp tusks and piercing eyes, watching and waiting for her.

When she woke her neck, head, and back hurt, and she was soaked in sweat. She went to the kitchen and sipped a glass of water. “You’ve got to calm down, have a cool head. You’ve got to think calmly about what you’re going to do.” She went to lie down in the bed, taking off only her shoes. She didn’t feel like thinking. She would have liked to take a car, a bus, a plane, get as far as possible from Piura, go to a city where nobody knew her. Start a new life from the beginning. But it was impossible, wherever she went the police would find her, and running away would only make her guilt worse. Wasn’t she a victim too? The captain had said so and it was absolutely true. Maybe it had been her idea? Not at all. She’d discussed it with that imbecile Miguel when she found out what he was planning. She agreed to take part in the farce of the kidnapping only when he threatened her—again—with telling the old man about their affair. “He’ll throw you out like a dog, sweetie. And then how will you live as well as you’re living now?”

He’d forced her, and she had no reason to be loyal to a son of a bitch like him. Maybe all she could do was cooperate with the police and the prosecutor. Her life wouldn’t be easy, of course. There’d be revenge, she’d become a target, they’d put a bullet or a knife in her. What was better? That or prison?