The Discreet Hero (43 page)

“May I say something, Don Felícito?”

“Go on, Sergeant.”

“I never imagined anyone could say those awful things you said to your son in the prison. My blood ran cold, I swear.”

“He isn’t my son,” said the trucker, raising his hand.

“I’m really sorry, I know that,” the sergeant apologized. “Of course I agree with you, what Miguel did is unforgivable. But even so. Don’t get angry, but those were the cruelest things I’ve ever heard anybody say, Don Felícito. I’d never have believed it of a person as good-hearted as you. I don’t understand why the boy didn’t attack you. I thought he would, which is why I opened my holster. I was ready to pull out the revolver, I tell you.”

“He didn’t dare to because I won the moral battle,” replied Felícito. “What I said might have been harsh, but did I lie or exaggerate, Sergeant? I might have been cruel, but I only told him the absolute truth.”

“A terrible truth that I swear I won’t repeat to anybody. Not even Captain Silva. My word of honor, Don Felícito. On the other hand, you’ve been very generous. If you drop all charges against him, he’ll go free. One other thing, changing the subject. That expression, ‘shoot their load.’ I heard it as a kid but had forgotten it. I don’t think anybody says it nowadays in Piura.”

“There aren’t so many gangs of men shooting their load as there used to be,” the taxi driver interposed, laughing with some nostalgia. “When I was a kid there were a lot. Soldiers don’t go down to the river anymore or to the farms to fuck the
cholas
. Now things are stricter in the barracks and they’re punished if they shoot their load. They even force them to get married, hey waddya think.”

They said goodbye at the entrance to the police station, and the trucker ordered the taxi to take him to his office, but when the car was about to stop outside Narihualá Transport, he suddenly changed his mind. He told the driver to go back to Castilla and leave him as close as possible to the Puente Colgante. As they drove through the Plaza de Armas, he saw Joaquín Ramos, the reciter of poetry, dressed in black, wearing his monocle and dreamy expression, walking undaunted in the middle of the road, pulling his she-goat along. Cars swerved, and instead of insulting him, the drivers waved a hand in greeting.

The narrow street that led to Mabel’s house was, as usual, full of ragged barefoot kids, emaciated mangy dogs, and you could hear, through the music and commercials on the radios played at top volume, barking and cackling and a shrieking parrot that kept repeating “cockatoo, cockatoo.” Clouds of dust obscured the air. And now, after being so confident during his meeting with Miguel, Felícito felt vulnerable and unmanned as he thought about the encounter he was about to have with Mabel. He’d been postponing it since she left prison, provisionally free. At times he thought that perhaps it would be preferable to avoid it, to use Dr. Castro Pozo to conclude final details with her. But he’d just decided that nobody could replace him in this task. If he wanted to begin a new life, it was necessary, as he’d just done with Miguel, to settle accounts with Mabel. His hands were perspiring when he rang the bell. No one responded. After waiting a few seconds, he took out his key and opened the door. He felt his blood and breath quicken when he recognized the objects, the photographs, the llama, the flag, the pictures, the wax flowers, the Sacred Heart of Jesus that presided over the room. Everything as bright, orderly, and clean as it had been before. He sat down in the living room to wait for Mabel without removing his jacket or vest, only his hat. He shivered. What would he do if she came back to the house accompanied by a man who held her arm or had his hand at her waist?

But Mabel came in alone a short while later, when Felícito Yanaqué, because of the nervous tension of waiting, was yawning and beginning to feel an invading fatigue. He gave a start when he heard the street door. His mouth was very dry, like sandpaper, as if he’d been drinking chicha. He saw her frightened face and Mabel exclaimed (“Oh my God!”) when she found him in the living room. He saw her turn as if to run out.

“Don’t be frightened, Mabel.” He reassured her with a serenity he didn’t feel. “I’ve come in peace.”

She stopped and turned. She stood looking at him, her mouth open, her eyes uneasy, not saying anything. She looked thinner. Wearing no makeup, with a simple kerchief holding back her hair, dressed in a plain housedress and old sandals, she seemed much less attractive than the Mabel in his memory.

“Sit down and let’s talk awhile.” He indicated one of the easy chairs. “I haven’t come to reproach you or demand an explanation. I won’t take much of your time. As you know, we have some matters to settle.”

She was pale. Her mouth was closed so tightly that her face looked contorted. He saw her nod and sit on the edge of the chair, her arms crossed over her belly, as if for protection. Uncertainty and alarm were in her eyes.

“Practical things that only you and I can deal with directly,” the trucker added. “Let’s begin with the most important thing. This house. The agreement with the owner is to pay the rent to her every six months. It’s paid through December. Starting in January, it’ll be up to you. The contract’s in your name, so you’ll see what you want to do. You can renew it or cancel it and move. You’ll decide.”

“All right,” she whispered, her voice barely audible. “I understand.”

“Your account at the Banco de Crédito,” he continued, feeling more confident when he saw Mabel’s fragility and fear. “It’s in your name, though it has my guarantee. For obvious reasons, I can’t continue my endorsement. I’m going to withdraw it, but I don’t think they’ll close the account because of that.”

“They already did,” she said. She fell silent, and after a pause explained: “I found the notice here when I got out of prison. It said that under the circumstances, they had to cancel it. The bank only accepts honorable clients with no police record. I have to stop by and withdraw the balance.”

“Have you done that yet?”

Mabel shook her head.

“I’m embarrassed,” she confessed, looking at the floor. “Everybody knows me at that branch. I’ll have to go one of these days, when I run out of money. For daily expenses there’s still something left in the drawer of the night table.”

“They’ll open an account for you at any other bank, with or without a record,” Felícito said drily. “I don’t think you’ll have any problem with that.”

“All right,” she said. “I understand perfectly. What else?”

“I just visited Miguel,” he said, more on edge, gruffer, and Mabel went rigid. “I made him a proposition. If he agrees to change the name Yanaqué before a notary, I’ll withdraw all legal charges and won’t testify for the prosecution.”

“Does that mean he’ll go free?” she asked. She wasn’t afraid now, she was terrified.

“If he accepts the deal I’m offering, yes. You will both be free, if there’s no civil charge. Or the sentence will be very light. At least that’s what my lawyer told me.”

Mabel had raised her hand to her mouth. “He’ll want revenge, he’ll never forgive me for betraying him to the police,” she murmured. “He’ll kill me.”

“I don’t think he’ll want to go back to prison for murder,” Felícito said brusquely. “Besides, my other condition is that when he gets out of prison he must leave Piura and never set foot here again. So I doubt he’ll do anything to you. Anyway, you can ask the police for protection. Since you cooperated with the cops, they’ll give it to you.”

Mabel had begun to cry. Tears wet her eyes and the effort she made to hold back her sobs gave her face a distorted, somewhat absurd expression. She’d shrunk into herself, as if she were cold.

“Even though you don’t believe me, I hate that man with all my heart,” he heard her say after a time. “Because he ruined my life forever.”

She let out a sob and covered her face with both hands. It made no impression on Felícito. “Is she sincere or is this nothing but an act?” he wondered. It didn’t really matter, either way, it was all the same to him. Ever since everything had happened, in spite of his rancor and anger, he’d had moments when he thought of Mabel with affection, even longing. But at this moment he felt none of that, not even desire; if he’d had her naked in his arms, he wouldn’t have been able to make love to her. It was as if the eight years of accumulated feelings Mabel had inspired in him had at last been eclipsed.

“None of this would have happened if you’d told me when Miguel started hanging around.” Again he had the strange sensation that none of this was occurring, he wasn’t in this house, Mabel wasn’t there beside him, crying or pretending to cry, and he wasn’t saying what he was saying. “We both would’ve saved ourselves a lot of headaches, Mabel.”

“I know, I know, I was a coward and a fool,” he heard her say. “Do you think I haven’t regretted it? I was afraid of him and didn’t know how to get rid of him. Aren’t I paying for it? You don’t know what the women’s prison in Sullana was like. Even though I was there for just a few days. And I know I’ll keep dragging this behind me for the rest of my life.”

“The rest of your life is a very long time,” Felícito said sarcastically, still speaking calmly. “You’re very young and have plenty of time to start your life over. That’s not true for me, of course.”

“I never stopped loving you, Felícito,” he heard her say. “Though you won’t believe me.”

He let out a mocking little laugh. “If you did what you did loving me, what would you have done if you’d hated me, Mabel.”

And hearing himself say this, he thought those words might be the lyrics of one of the songs by Cecilia Barraza that he liked so much.

“I’d like to explain it to you, Felícito,” she begged, her face still hidden by her hands. “Not so you’ll forgive me, not so everything can go back to the way it was before, but just so you’d know that things weren’t what you think, they were very different.”

“You don’t have to explain anything to me, Mabel,” he said, speaking now in a resigned, almost friendly way. “What had to happen happened. I always knew it would, sooner or later. That you’d get tired of a man so much older than you and fall in love with someone younger. That’s a law of life.”

She shifted in her seat.

“I swear on my mother that it isn’t what you think,” she whimpered. “Let me explain, tell you at least how everything was.”

“What I couldn’t imagine was that the young man would be Miguel,” the trucker added in a hoarse voice. “Not to mention the spider letters, of course. But it’s over now, and the best thing is for me to leave. We’ve settled all the practical things and there’s nothing left hanging. I don’t want this to end with an argument. Here’s the key to the house.”

He placed it on the table in the living room next to the wooden llama and the Peruvian flag, and stood up. She still had her face buried in her hands, and she was crying.

“At least, let’s still be friends,” he heard her say.

“You know very well you and I can’t be friends,” he answered, not turning around to look at her. “Good luck, Mabel.”

He went to the door, opened it, went out, and closed it slowly behind him. The brightness of the sun made him blink. He walked through whirlwinds of dust, the noise of radios, the ragged children and mangy dogs, thinking he’d never again walk along this dusty street in Castilla and no doubt wouldn’t see Mabel again either. If they happened to run into each other on a street in the center of town, he’d pretend he hadn’t seen her and she’d do the same. They’d pass each other like two strangers. He thought too, without sadness or bitterness, that though he wasn’t a useless old man yet, he probably wouldn’t make love to a woman again. He wasn’t about to look for another girlfriend, or visit a brothel at night and go to bed with whores. And the idea of making love to Gertrudis after so many years didn’t even enter his mind. Maybe he’d have to jerk off occasionally, like a boy. Whatever the course of his future, one thing was certain: There wouldn’t be a place in it for pleasure or for love. He didn’t regret that, and he didn’t despair. That’s the way life was, and ever since he was a kid without shoes in Chulucanas and Yapatera, he’d learned to accept it just as it came.

Without his being aware of it, his steps had been leading him to his friend Adelaida’s shop filled with herbs, sewing articles, saints, Christs, and Virgins. There was the holy woman, short, thickset, barefoot, wearing the tunic of unbleached linen that hung down to her ankles, watching him from the door of her house with her enormous, piercing eyes.

“Hello, Felícito, long time no see,” she said in greeting, waving. “I was beginning to think you’d forgotten me.”

“Adelaida, you know very well you’re my best friend and I’ll never forget you.” He gave her his hand and patted her back affectionately. “I’ve had a lot of problems recently, you must know all about it. But here I am. Will you bring me a glass of that distilled water you have, it’s so clean and cool. I’m dying of thirst.”

“Come in, come in and sit down, Felícito. I’ll bring you a glass right this minute, sure I will.”

Compared to how hot it was outside, it was cool inside Adelaida’s shop, submerged in its customary half-light and stillness. Sitting in the rocker of woven straw, he contemplated the cobwebs, the shelves, the tables with boxes of nails, buttons, screws, seeds, stalks of herbs, needles, religious cards, rosaries, Virgins and Christs of plaster and wood in every size, large and small candles, while he waited for the holy woman’s return. Did Adelaida have any customers? As far as he could remember, all the times he’d come here, and he’d been here plenty of times, he’d never seen anyone buying anything. More than a shop, this place resembled a chapel. All that was missing was the altar. Every time he came here he had a feeling of peace that once, long ago, he used to have in churches when, during the early years of their marriage, Gertrudis would drag him to Mass on Sundays.

Adelaida handed him water from the distilling stone and he drank it with great pleasure.

“That’s some mess you got yourself into, Felícito,” said the holy woman, commiserating with a kind look. “Your girlfriend and your son hooked up to fleece you. My God, the ugly things you can see in this world. Just as well they put those two in jail.”