The Discreet Hero (33 page)

As he went up the seawalk to Avenida Sánchez Cerro, he decided not to go to the office. It was a quarter to six, and the reporters would swarm like flies around Narihualá Transport as soon as they learned the news. Better to shut himself up in his house, lock the door to the street, and not go out for a few days until the storm had calmed down. Thinking about the scandal sent chills up and down his spine.

He walked up Calle Arequipa toward his house, feeling anxiety pooling again in his chest and making it difficult to breathe. So Miguelito had a grudge against him, had hated him even before he forced him to do military service. The feeling was mutual. No, not true, he’d never hated his bastard son. That was different from never having loved him because he sensed they didn’t have the same blood. But he didn’t remember showing a preference for Tiburcio. He’d been a fair father, careful to treat them both identically. It’s true he’d made Miguel spend a year in the barracks. It was for his own good. So that he’d get on track. He was an awful student, he only liked to have fun, kick around soccer balls, drink in the chicha bars. He’d caught him guzzling drinks in seedy bars and restaurants with evil-looking friends, spending his allowance in brothels. Things would go very badly for him if he continued down that path. “If you keep this up, I’ll put you in the army,” he’d warned him. He kept it up, and he put him in. Felícito laughed. Well, it hadn’t really straightened him out if he ended up doing what he’d done. Let him go to jail, let him find out what that meant. Let’s see who’d give him work after that, with that kind of record. He’d come out more of a bandit than when he went in, just like everyone else who passed through the prisons, those universities of crime.

He was in front of his house. Before opening the large studded door, he walked over to the corner and tossed some coins into the blind man’s jar.

“Good afternoon, Lucindo.”

“Good afternoon, Don Felícito. God bless you.”

He went back, feeling the tightness in his chest, breathing with difficulty. He opened the door and closed it behind him. From the vestibule he heard voices in the living room. Just what he needed. Visitors! It was strange, Gertrudis didn’t have women friends who dropped in unannounced, she never gave teas. He stood uncertainly in the vestibule until he saw his wife’s broad shape appear in the doorway to the living room. He saw her come toward him, enclosed in one of those dresses that looked like a habit, speeding up that laborious walk of hers. What was with that expression on her face? Well, she must have heard the news by now.

“So now you know everything,” he murmured.

But she didn’t let him finish. She pointed toward the living room and spoke hurriedly.

“I’m sorry, I’m very sorry, Felícito. I’ve had to put her up here in the house. There was nothing else I could do. It’ll only be for a few days. She’s running away. It seems they might kill her. An incredible story. Come on, she’ll tell you herself.”

Felícito Yanaqué’s chest was a drum. He looked at Gertrudis, not really understanding what she was saying, but instead of his wife’s face he saw Adelaida’s, transformed by the visions of her inspiration.

XVI

Why was Lucrecia taking so long? Don Rigoberto paced back and forth like a caged animal in front of the door of his Barranco apartment. His wife still hadn’t come out of the bedroom. He was dressed in mourning and didn’t want to be late for Ismael’s funeral, but because of Lucrecia and her incorrigible dawdling, her ability to find the most absurd pretexts to delay their departure, they’d get to the church after the funeral party had already left for the cemetery. He didn’t want to attract attention by showing up at Los Jardines de la Paz after the burial service had already begun, drawing the glances of everyone there. No doubt there’d be many people, as there had been the night before at the vigil, not only out of friendship for the deceased but because of the unhealthy Limeño curiosity to finally see in person the widow in the scandal.

But Don Rigoberto knew there was nothing he could do but resign himself and wait. Probably the only fights he’d had with his wife in all the years they’d been married had been due to Lucrecia’s tardiness whenever they went out, regardless of whether it was to a movie, a meal, an art show, the bank, or on a trip. At first, when they were newlyweds, when they had just started living together, he believed his wife was late because of a simple dislike or contempt for punctuality. Because of it they argued, lost their tempers, quarreled. Gradually, by observing her and reflecting, Don Rigoberto realized that his wife’s dallying when it was time to leave for any engagement wasn’t something superficial, the negligence of a pampered woman. It was a response to something deeper, an ontological state of mind, because without her being conscious of what was happening to her, each time she had to leave a place (her own house, the house of a friend she was visiting, the restaurant where she’d just had dinner) she was seized by a hidden anxiety, an insecurity, a dark, primitive fear of having to leave, go away, change where she was, and so she invented all kinds of excuses (getting a handkerchief, changing her handbag, finding her keys, making sure the windows were locked, the television or the stove turned off, or the telephone not off the receiver), anything that would delay for a few minutes or seconds the terrifying act of leaving.

Had she always been like this? Even as a girl? He didn’t dare ask. But he’d confirmed that as the years went by, this urge, mania, or calamity became more pronounced, to the point where Rigoberto sometimes thought with a shudder that the day might come when Lucrecia, with the same mildness as Melville’s character, might contract Bartleby’s metaphysical lethargy or indolence and decide never again to move from her house, perhaps her room, even her bed. “Fear of leaving behind her being, losing her being, being left without her being,” he told himself again. It was the diagnosis he’d made of his wife’s delays. The seconds passed and Lucrecia still didn’t appear. He’d already called to her three times, reminding her that it was getting late. Undoubtedly, given her distress and nervous upset since receiving the call from Armida announcing Ismael’s sudden death, her panic at losing her being, forgetting it like an umbrella or a raincoat if she went out, had gotten worse. She’d keep delaying and they’d be late for the funeral.

Finally Lucrecia came out of the bedroom. She too was dressed in black and wearing dark glasses. Rigoberto hurried to open the door for her. His wife’s face was still contorted by grief and uncertainty. What would happen to them now? The night before, during the vigil in the Church of Santa María Reina, Rigoberto saw her sob as she embraced Armida beside the open coffin where Ismael lay with a handkerchief tied around his head to keep his jaw from hanging open. At that moment Rigoberto himself had to make a great effort to control his desire to cry. To die just when he thought he’d won all his battles and felt like the happiest man in creation. Had his happiness killed him, perhaps? Ismael Carrera wasn’t used to it.

They went down in the elevator directly to the garage, and with Rigoberto at the wheel, drove quickly toward the Church of Santa María Reina, in San Isidro; the funeral party would leave from there for the cemetery, Los Jardines de la Paz, in La Molina.

“Did you notice last night that Miki and Escobita didn’t go up to Armida even once during the vigil?” Lucrecia remarked. “Not once. How inconsiderate. Those two are really mean-spirited.”

Rigoberto had noticed and, of course, so had most of the crowd who, over the course of several hours, until close to midnight, had filed past the funeral chapel covered in flowers. The wreaths, arrangements, bouquets, crosses, and cards filled the area and spread into the courtyard and then all the way to the street. Many people loved and respected Ismael, and there was the proof: hundreds saying goodbye to him. There would be as many or more this morning at the burial. But last night there had been, and would be now as well, people who viciously condemned him for marrying his servant, and even those who sided with Miki and Escobita in the lawsuit they’d brought to have the marriage annulled. Like Lucrecia’s and his own, people’s eyes at the vigil had been focused on the hyenas and Armida. The twins, dressed in mourning and in dark glasses they hadn’t removed, looked like two movie gangsters. The dead man’s widow and his sons were separated by a few meters that the twins never attempted to cross. It was almost comical. Armida, in mourning from head to toe and wearing a dark hat and veil, sat close to the coffin, holding a handkerchief and a rosary and telling the beads slowly as she moved her lips in silent prayer. Now and then she wiped away tears. Now and again, helped by the two large men with the faces of outlaws directly behind her, she stood, approached the coffin, and bent over the glass to pray or weep. Then she would receive condolences from recent arrivals. After that the hyenas would move, approach the coffin, and remain for a moment or two, crossing themselves, in distress, not turning their heads, not even once, back toward the widow.

“Are you sure those two brawny men who looked like boxers and were beside Armida all night were bodyguards?” asked Lucrecia. “They could have been relatives. Don’t drive so fast, please. One dead body is enough for now.”

“Absolutely sure,” said Rigoberto. “Claudio Arnillas confirmed it, because Ismael’s lawyer is her lawyer now. They were bodyguards.”

“Don’t you think that’s a little ridiculous?” remarked Lucrecia. “Why the devil does Armida need bodyguards, I’d like to know.”

“She needs them now more than ever,” replied Don Rigoberto, slowing down. “The hyenas could hire a killer and have her murdered. That kind of thing happens now in Lima. I’m afraid those two degenerates will destroy that woman. You can’t imagine the fortune the brand-new widow has inherited, Lucrecia.”

“If you keep driving like this, I’m getting out,” his wife warned him. “Ah, so that was the reason. I thought she was putting on airs and had hired those giants just to show off.”

When they reached the Church of Santa María Reina, on the Gutiérrez de San Isidro Oval, the cortege was already leaving, so they joined the caravan without getting out of the car. The line of automobiles was endless. Don Rigoberto saw, as the hearse passed, many pedestrians making the sign of the cross. “Fear of dying,” he thought. As far as he could recall, he’d never been afraid of death. “At least, not yet,” he corrected himself. “All of Lima must be here.”

And in fact, all of Lima was there. The Lima of big businesses, owners of banks, insurance, mining, fishing, and construction companies, television stations, newspapers, country estates, and ranches, as well as many of the employees of the company Ismael had led until a few weeks ago, and even some humble people who must have worked for him or owed him favors. There was a military man wearing a dress uniform with gold braid, probably an aide-de-camp to the president, and the ministers of finance and foreign trade. A minor incident occurred when the coffin was taken out of the hearse and Miki and Escobita attempted to go to the head of the retinue. They succeeded for only a few seconds, because when Armida emerged from her car on the arm of Dr. Arnillas and surrounded now not by two but four bodyguards, the four immediately opened a path for her to the front of the cortege, firmly moving the twins out of the way. Miki and Escobita, after a moment’s confusion, chose to cede to the widow and fell back to either side of the coffin. They grasped the straps and followed the cortege with lowered heads. Most of those attending were men, but there were also a good number of elegant women who, during the priest’s prayer for the dead, kept staring insolently at Armida. They couldn’t see very much. Dressed all in black, she wore a hat and large sunglasses that hid a good part of her face. Claudio Arnillas—he wore his usual multicolored suspenders under a gray jacket—remained at her side, and the four security men formed a wall at her back that no one attempted to breach.

When the ceremony was over and the coffin finally hoisted into one of the recesses that was closed with a marble tablet bearing the name of Ismael Carrera and the dates of his birth and death in golden letters—he had died three weeks before his eighty-second birthday—Dr. Arnillas, his stride more unruly than usual because of his fast pace, and the four bodyguards took Armida to the exit, preventing anyone from approaching her. Rigoberto noted that once the widow had left, Miki and Escobita stood together at the tomb and many people came up to embrace them. He and Lucrecia withdrew without greeting them. (The previous night, at the vigil, they’d approached the twins to offer their condolences, and the handshake had been glacial.)

“Let’s stop by Ismael’s house,” Doña Lucrecia suggested to her husband. “Even if it’s only a moment, to see if we can talk to Armida.”

“All right, let’s try it.”

When they arrived at the house in San Isidro, they were surprised not to see a crowd of cars parked near the door. Rigoberto got out, announced himself, and after a wait of several minutes, they were shown into the garden, where they were received by Dr. Arnillas. With an air appropriate to the circumstances, he seemed to have taken control of the situation, though perhaps not completely. He seemed uncertain.

“A thousand pardons on Armida’s behalf,” he said. “She was awake all night at the vigil, and we’ve made her lie down. The doctor has ordered her to rest for a while. But come in, let’s go to the room by the garden and have something to drink.”

Rigoberto’s heart contracted a little when he saw the lawyer leading them to the room where two days earlier he’d seen his friend for the last time.

“Armida is very grateful to you both,” said Claudio Arnillas. He looked worried and very serious, pausing as he spoke. His gaudy suspenders gleamed each time his jacket opened. “According to her, you’re the only friends of Ismael she trusts. As you can imagine, the poor woman feels very helpless now. She’s going to need your support—”

“Excuse me, Doctor, I know this isn’t the right time,” Rigoberto interrupted. “But you know better than anybody everything that’s been left hanging with Ismael’s death. Do you have any idea of what’s going to happen now?”