The Discreet Hero (5 page)

“Not exactly,” Colorado corrected himself, nudging him with his elbow. “I said she fucks, not that she whores around. Fucking and whoring are two different things, my friend. Mabel is a call girl, or something like that. Only with certain privileged men, and only in her own house. Charging an arm and a leg, I imagine. Do you want me to get you her phone number?”

He did, and, half dead with embarrassment—for, unlike Colorado Vignolo, who had been living high and whoring since he was a kid, Felícito had always led a very austere life, dedicated to his work and his family—he called her, and after beating around the bush, arranged a meeting with the pretty woman from the stadium. She met him for the first time at the Balalaika, a café on Avenida Grau near the benches where the old gossips, founders of CILOP (Center for the Investigation of the Lives of Other People), would gather to enjoy the cool breeze at nightfall. They had lunch and talked for a long time. He felt intimidated by so pretty and young a girl, wondering from time to time what he would do if Gertrudis or Tiburcio and Miguelito suddenly appeared in the café. How would he introduce Mabel to them? She played with him like a cat with a mouse: “You’re pretty old and worn out to fool around with a woman like me. Besides, you’re really a runt, with you I’d always have to wear flats.” She flirted with him all she wanted, bringing her smiling face close to his, her eyes flashing, grasping his hand or arm, a contact that made Felícito shiver from head to toe. He had to go out with Mabel for close to three months—taking her to the movies, inviting her to lunch or dinner, taking a ride to the beach at Yacila and the chicha bars in Catacaos, giving her a good many presents, from lockets and bracelets to shoes and dresses that she picked out herself—before she would allow him to visit her in her little house north of the city, near the old San Teodoro cemetery, on a corner in the labyrinth of alleyways, stray dogs, and sand that was the last remnant of La Mangachería. The day he went to bed with her, Felícito Yanaqué cried for the second time in his life (the first had been the day his father died).

“Why are you crying, old man? Didn’t you like it?”

“I’ve never been so happy in my life,” Felícito confessed, kneeling and kissing her hands. “Until now I didn’t know what it meant to feel pleasure, I swear. You’ve taught me happiness, Mabelita.”

A short while afterward, without further ado, he offered to set her up in what Piurans called a
casa chica
, a permanent love nest, and give her a monthly allowance so she could live without worries or concerns about money, in an area better than this one filled with streetwalkers and Mangache pimps and bums. Surprised, all she could find to say was: “Swear you’ll never ask me about my past or make a single jealous scene for the rest of your life.” “I swear it, Mabel.” She found the little house in Castilla, near the Salesian fathers’ Don Juan Bosco Academy, and furnished it as she pleased. Felícito signed the lease and paid all the bills without once arguing about the price. He paid her monthly allowance punctually, in cash, on the last day of the month, just as he did with the clerks and workers at Narihualá Transport. He always consulted her about the days he’d come to see her. In eight years he’d never shown up unexpectedly at the little house in Castilla. He didn’t want the bad experience of finding a pair of trousers in his lover’s bedroom. He also didn’t check on what she did on the days of the week they didn’t see each other. True, he sensed that she stepped out on him and silently thanked her for doing it discreetly, without humiliating him. How could he have objected? Mabel was young and high-spirited; she had a right to have a good time. She’d already done a great deal by agreeing to be the mistress of an old man as short and ugly as he was. It wasn’t that he didn’t care, not at all. When he occasionally saw Mabel in the distance, coming out of a shop or a movie theater with a man, his stomach twisted with jealousy. Sometimes he had nightmares in which Mabel announced, very seriously, “I’m getting married, this will be the last time we see each other, old man.” If he could, Felícito would have married her. But he couldn’t. Not only because he already was married but because he didn’t want to abandon Gertrudis the way his mother, that cruel woman he’d never known, had abandoned him and his father, in Yapatera, when Felícito was still on the breast. Mabel was the only woman he’d ever really loved. He’d never loved Gertrudis; he married her out of obligation, due to that youthful mistake and, maybe, maybe, because she and the Boss Lady set a good trap for him. (He tried not to think about this because it embittered him, but it was always running through his mind like a broken record.) Even so, he’d been a good husband. He gave his wife and children more than could have been expected from the poor man he’d been when he married. That was why he’d spent his life working like a slave, never taking a vacation. That had been his whole life until he met Mabel: working, working, working, breaking his back day and night to make something of his small capital until he could open the transport company he’d dreamed of. The girl had revealed to him that sleeping with a woman could be something beautiful, intense, moving, something he never imagined the few times he’d gone to bed with the whores in the brothels on the road to Sullana or with a woman he’d meet—once in a blue moon, as it turned out—at a party, but that never lasted more than a night. Making love with Gertrudis had always been something convenient, a physical necessity, a way to calm anxiety. They stopped sleeping together after Tiburcio was born, more than twenty years ago. When he heard Colorado Vignolo tell stories about all the women he’d bedded, Felícito was stupefied. Compared to his compadre, he’d lived like a monk.

Mabel greeted him in her robe, affectionate and chatty as usual. She’d just watched an episode of the Friday soap opera and talked about it as she led him by the hand to the bedroom. The blinds were already closed and the fan turned on. She’d put the red cloth over the lamp because Felícito liked looking at her naked body in the reddish light. She helped him undress and fall back on the bed. But unlike other times—all the other times—this time Felícito Yanaqué’s sex did not give the slightest indication of getting hard. It lay there, small and chagrined, encased in its folds, indifferent to the affectionate caresses lavished on it by Mabel’s warm fingers.

“So what’s wrong with him today, old man?” she asked in surprise, giving her lover’s flaccid sex a squeeze.

“It must be because I don’t feel very well,” an uncomfortable Felícito apologized. “Maybe I’m getting a cold. I’ve had a headache all day and I keep getting the shivers.”

“I’ll fix you a nice hot cup of tea with lemon and then I’ll give you some loving and see if we can wake up this sleepyhead.” Mabel jumped out of bed and put on her robe again. “Don’t you fall asleep on me too, old man.”

But when she came back from the kitchen holding a steaming cup of tea and a Panadol, Felícito had dressed. He was waiting for her in the living room with its crimson flowered furniture, withdrawn and serious beneath the illuminated image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

“You have something more than a cold,” said Mabel, curling up beside him and scrutinizing him in an exaggerated way. “Maybe you don’t like me anymore. Maybe you’ve fallen in love with some cute little Piuran out there.”

Felícito shook his head, took her hand, and kissed it.

“I love you more than anybody in the world, Mabelita,” he said tenderly. “I’ll never fall in love with anyone else, I know I’d never find another woman like you anywhere.”

He sighed and took the letter with the spider out of his pocket.

“I received this letter and I’m very worried,” he said, handing it to her. “I trust you, Mabel. Read it and see what you think.”

Mabel read it and reread it, very slowly. The little smile that always fluttered around her lips was fading. Her eyes filled with uneasiness.

“You’ll have to go to the police, right?” she said at last, hesitatingly. She seemed disconcerted. “This is a shakedown and I guess you have to file a complaint.”

“I already went to the police station. But they didn’t take it very seriously. The truth is, sweetheart, I don’t know what to do. The police sergeant I talked to said something that’s true all of a sudden. Since there’s so much progress now in Piura, crime is increasing too. Gangs are demanding money from merchants and businesses. I’d heard about it but never thought it could touch me. I confess I’m a little nervous, Mabelita. I don’t know what to do.”

“You’re not going to give them the money they’re asking for, are you, old man?”

“Not a cent, absolutely not. I don’t let anybody walk all over me, you can be sure about that.”

He told her that Adelaida had advised him to give in to the extortionists.

“I think this is the first time in my life I’m not going to follow the inspiration of my friend the holy woman.”

“You’re so naïve, Felícito,” was Mabel’s irritated response. “Talking about something so important with that witch. I don’t know how you can swallow all the fairy tales that hustler feeds you.”

“With me she’s never been wrong.” Felícito regretted having mentioned Adelaida; he knew Mabel detested her. “Don’t worry, this time I won’t follow her advice. I can’t. I won’t do it. That must be what’s making me upset. It feels like something awful is bearing down on me.”

Mabel had become very serious. Felícito saw those pretty red lips pursing nervously. She raised a hand and slowly smoothed his hair.

“I wish I could help you, old man, but I don’t know how.”

Felícito smiled at her, nodding. He stood, indicating that he’d decided to leave.

“Don’t you want me to get dressed so we can go to the movies? It’ll take your mind off this for a while, come on.”

“No, sweetheart, I don’t feel like the movies. Another day. Forgive me. I’m going to bed instead, because what I said about a cold is true.”

Mabel walked with him to the door and opened it so he could go out. And then, with a start, Felícito saw the envelope attached beside the doorbell. It was white, not blue like the first one, and smaller. He guessed instantly what it was. A few steps away some boys were spinning tops on the sidewalk. Before opening the envelope, Felícito went to ask them if they’d seen who put it there. The kids looked at one another in surprise and shrugged. Naturally nobody had seen anything. When he went back to the house, Mabel was very pale, and a gleam of distress flickered deep in her eyes.

“Do you think that…?” she murmured, biting her lips. She looked at the unopened white envelope in his hand as if she could make it disappear.

Felícito went inside, turned on the light in the small hallway, and with Mabel hanging from his arm and craning her neck to read what he was reading, he recognized the capital letters in the same blue ink.

Señor Yanaqué:

You made a mistake going to the police station in spite of the recommendation made by the organization. We want this matter to be resolved privately, through dialogue. But you’re declaring war on us. You’ll have it, if that’s what you prefer. And if that’s the case, we can promise you’ll lose. And you’ll be sorry. You’ll have proof very soon that we’re capable of responding to your provocations. Don’t be obstinate, we’re telling you this for your own good. Don’t risk what you’ve achieved after so many years of hard work, Señor Yanaqué. And above all, don’t bring your complaints to the police again, because you’ll regret it. Think of the consequences.

May God keep you.

The drawing of the spider that substituted for a signature was identical to the one in the first letter.

“But why did they put it here, on my house?” Mabel stammered, clutching tightly at his arm. He felt her trembling from head to toe. She’d turned pale.

“To let me know they know about my private life, what else could it be?” Felícito put his arm around her shoulder and hugged her. She shuddered, and it made him sad. He kissed her hair. “You don’t know how sorry I am that you’ve become mixed up in this because of me, Mabelita. Be very careful, sweetheart. Don’t open the door without checking the peephole first. Better yet, don’t go out alone at night until this is straightened out. Who knows what these guys are capable of?”

He kissed her hair again and whispered in her ear before he left: “I swear on the memory of my father, the holiest thing I have, that nobody will ever hurt you, love.”

In the few minutes that had passed since he’d gone out to talk to the boys spinning tops, it had grown dark. The old-fashioned lights in the area barely lit the sidewalks that were filled with large cracks and potholes. He heard barking and obsessive music, the same note over and over again, as if someone were tuning a guitar. Even though he kept tripping, he walked quickly. He almost ran across the narrow Puente Colgante, now a pedestrian walkway, and recalled that when he was a boy, the nocturnal lights reflected in the Piura River frightened him, made him think of a whole world of devils and ghosts in the depths of the water. He didn’t respond to the greeting of a couple coming toward him. It took him almost half an hour to reach the police station on Avenida Sánchez Cerro. He was sweating and so agitated he could barely speak.

“We don’t usually see the public this late,” said the very young police officer at the entrance, “unless it’s a very urgent matter, señor.”

“It’s urgent, extremely urgent,” Felícito said in a rush. “Can I speak to Sergeant Lituma?”

“What name shall I give him?”

“Felícito Yanaqué, Narihualá Transport. I was here a few days ago to file a complaint. Tell him something very serious has happened.”

He had to wait a long time out on the street, listening to the sound of male voices speaking obscenities inside the station. He saw a waning moon rise over the surrounding roofs. His entire body was burning, as if he were being consumed by fever. He recalled his father’s fits of shaking when he suffered attacks of tertian fever back in Chulucanas, and the cure was to sweat it out, wrapped in a heap of burlap. But it was fury, not fever, that made him tremble. At last the very young, beardless policeman returned and had him go in. The light inside the station was as dim and sad as on the streets of Castilla. This time the officer didn’t show him to Sergeant Lituma’s tiny cubicle but to a larger office. The sergeant was there with a higher-ranking officer—a captain, judging by the three stripes on the epaulets of his shirt—short, fat, and with a mustache. He looked at Felícito without joy. His open mouth revealed yellow teeth. Apparently Felícito had interrupted a game of checkers. He was about to speak, but the captain cut him short with a gesture.