The Discreet Hero (7 page)

Some loud knocks at the street door interrupted his qigong. He went to open it, thinking that this morning Saturnina was early, because she never came before seven. But when he opened the door, the person he found on the threshold was Lucindo.

“Run, run, Don Felícito.” The blind man from the corner was very agitated. “A gentleman told me your office on Avenida Sánchez Cerro is on fire and you should call the fire department and get over there fast.”

IV

The wedding of Ismael and Armida was the shortest, most sparsely attended that Rigoberto and Lucrecia could remember, even though it provided them with quite a few surprises. It took place very early in the morning, in the town hall of Chorrillos, when the streets were still filled with pupils in uniform heading for school and office workers from Barranco, Miraflores, and Chorrillos hurrying to work in jitneys, cars, and buses. Ismael, who’d taken the expected precautions to keep his sons from finding out ahead of time, let Rigoberto know only the night before that at nine sharp he should appear at the office of the mayor of Chorrillos, accompanied by his wife if he so desired, and be sure to bring his identity documents. When they reached the town hall, the bride and groom were there with Narciso, who had on a dark suit, white shirt, and blue tie with little gold stars for the occasion.

Ismael was dressed in gray, with his usual elegance, and Armida wore a tailored suit, new shoes, and was visibly constrained and confused. She called Doña Lucrecia “señora” even after Lucrecia had embraced the bride and asked her to use informal address. “Now you and I are going to be good friends, Armida.” But for the ex-maid it was difficult, if not impossible, to comply.

The ceremony was very quick; the mayor stumbled through the obligations and duties of the contracting parties, and as soon as he finished reading, the witnesses signed the register. There were the obligatory embraces and handshakes. But it all seemed cold, thought Rigoberto, false and artificial. The surprise came when Ismael turned to Rigoberto and Lucrecia with a sly little smile as they were leaving the office: “And now, my friends, if you’re free, I’ll invite you to the religious ceremony.” They were going to be married in a church as well! “This is more serious than it seems,” Lucrecia remarked as they went to the old Church of Nuestra Señora del Carmen de la Legua on the outskirts of Callao, where the Catholic wedding took place.

“The only explanation is that your friend Ismael is moonstruck and has really fallen in love,” Lucrecia added. “Do you think he’s senile? He really doesn’t look it. My God, who can make heads or tails of all this? I certainly can’t.”

Everything was prepared in the church where, in colonial times, they say travelers from Callao to Lima always stopped to pray to the Blessed Virgin del Carmen for protection from the gangs of thieves who swarmed over the open countryside, which in those days separated the port from the capital of the viceroyalty. The priest took no more than twenty minutes to marry the couple and give his blessing to the newlyweds. There was no celebration at all, not even a toast, except, once more, congratulations and hugs from Narciso, Rigoberto, and Lucrecia. Only at that moment did Ismael reveal that he and Armida were leaving for the airport to begin their honeymoon. Their luggage was already in the trunk of the car. “But don’t ask me where we’re going, because I won’t tell you. Ah, and before I forget. Be sure to read the society page in tomorrow’s
El Comercio
. You’ll see the notice informing Limeñan society of our wedding.” He guffawed and gave a mischievous wink. He and Armida left immediately, driven by Narciso, who’d gone from being a witness to resuming his position as Don Ismael Carrera’s driver.

“I still don’t believe all this is happening,” Lucrecia repeated, as she and Rigoberto were returning home to Barranco along the Costanera. “Doesn’t it seem like a game, a play, a masquerade? Well, I don’t know what, but not something that actually happens in real life.”

“Yes, yes, you’re right,” her husband agreed. “This morning’s show seemed unreal to me. Well, now Ismael and Armida are leaving to have a good time. And be free of what’s coming, what’s going to happen to those of us who stay here, I mean. The best thing would be if we left soon for Europe. Why not move up our trip, Lucrecia?”

“No, we can’t, not while we have this problem with Fonchito,” said Lucrecia. “Wouldn’t you feel bad about going away now, leaving him alone, when his mind’s so confused?”

“Of course I would,” Don Rigoberto corrected himself. “If it weren’t for those damn appearances, I’d have bought our tickets by now. You don’t know how I’m looking forward to this trip, Lucrecia. I’ve studied the itinerary with a magnifying glass down to the smallest detail. You’re going to love it, you’ll see.”

“The twins won’t find out until tomorrow, when they see the notice,” Lucrecia calculated. “When they learn the lovebirds have flown, the first person they’ll ask for an explanation is you, I’m positive.”

“Of course they’ll ask me,” Rigoberto agreed. “But since that won’t happen until tomorrow, let’s have a day of total peace and tranquility today. Let’s not talk about the hyenas again, please.”

They tried. They didn’t mention Ismael Carrera’s sons at all at lunch, or that afternoon, or at dinner. When Fonchito came home from school, they told him about the wedding. The boy, who since his encounters with Edilberto Torres always seemed distracted, absorbed in his own thoughts, didn’t seem to think the news was so important. He listened to them, smiled to be polite, and went to his room because, he said, he had a lot of homework to do. But even though Rigoberto and Lucrecia didn’t mention the twins for the rest of the day, they both knew that no matter what they did, or what they talked about, that uneasiness at the back of their minds remained: How would the twins react when they found out about their father’s wedding? It wouldn’t be a civilized, rational reaction, of course, because the brothers weren’t civilized or rational; there was a reason they were called hyenas, a perfect nickname given to them in their neighborhood when they were still in short pants.

After dinner, Rigoberto went to his study and prepared, once again, to make one of the comparisons he loved so much because they absorbed his attention and made him forget everything else. This time he listened to two recordings of one of his favorite pieces of music, the Brahms Concerto No. 2 for Piano and Orchestra, op. 83, played by the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted in the first instance by Claudio Abbado, with Maurizio Pollini as soloist, and in the second with Sir Simon Rattle as conductor and Yefim Bronfman at the piano. Both versions were superb. He’d never been able to decide unequivocally for one or the other; each time he’d find that both, being different, were equally excellent. But tonight something happened to him with Bronfman’s interpretation at the beginning of the second movement—Allegro appassionato—that settled it: He felt his eyes fill with tears. He’d rarely wept listening to a concerto: Was it Brahms, or the pianist, or the emotion caused in him by the day’s events?

When it was time for bed, he felt as he’d wished to: very tired and totally serene. Ismael, Armida, the hyenas, Edilberto Torres seemed distant, far behind him, banished. Would he fall asleep, then, right away? What a hope. After spending some time tossing and turning in bed, in the room that was almost dark except for the lamp on Lucrecia’s night table, he was still wide awake, and then, seized by a sudden inspiration, he asked his wife in a very quiet voice, “Sweetheart, haven’t you wondered about Ismael and Armida’s affair? When and how it began? Who took the initiative? What little games, coincidences, touches in passing, or jokes precipitated it?”

“Exactly,” she murmured, turning over as if remembering something. She came very close to her husband’s face and body and whispered in his ear: “I’ve been thinking about that constantly, darling. From the first moment you told me about it.”

“Oh, yes? What were you thinking? What ideas came to you, I mean?” Rigoberto turned toward her and encircled her waist with his hands. “Why don’t you tell me?”

Outside the room, on the streets of Barranco, the great silence of night had fallen, interrupted from time to time by the distant murmur of the ocean. Were the stars out? No, they never appeared in the Lima sky at this time of year. But in Europe they’d see them shining and twinkling every night. Lucrecia, in the dense, unhurried voice of their best times, the voice that was music to Rigoberto, said very slowly, as if reciting a poem, “This may sound incredible, but I can reconstruct for you in full detail Ismael and Armida’s romance. I know it’s robbed you of sleep and filled you with unpleasant thoughts ever since your friend told you in La Rosa Náutica that they were getting married. And how do I know? You’ll be flabbergasted: Justiniana. She and Armida have been close friends for a long time. I mean, since Clotilde’s attacks began and we sent her over to help Armida in the house for a couple of days. Those were such sad days: The world fell down around poor Ismael whenever he thought that his lifetime companion and the mother of his children might die. Don’t you remember?”

“Of course I remember,” Rigoberto lied, speaking syllable by syllable into his wife’s ear as if it were a shameful secret. “How could I not remember, Lucrecia. And then what happened?”

“Well, the two of them became friends and began to go out together. Armida, it seems, already had the plan in mind that turned out so well for her. From a maid who made beds and mopped floors to nothing less than the legal wife of Don Ismael Carrera, a respected, well-heeled big shot from Lima. And in his seventies to boot, maybe even his eighties.”

“Forget about commentary and what we already know,” Rigoberto rebuked her, playing now at being distressed. “Let’s get to what really matters, my love. You know very well what that is. The facts, the facts.”

“I’m getting to that. Armida planned everything very shrewdly. Obviously, if this little girl from Piura didn’t have certain physical charms, her intelligence and shrewdness would have done her no good. Justiniana saw her nude, of course. If you ask how and why, I don’t know. Certainly they bathed together at some point. Or slept in the same bed one night, who knows. She says we’d be surprised to learn how well-shaped Armida is when you see her naked, something one doesn’t notice because of how badly she dresses, always in those baggy outfits for fat women. Justiniana says she isn’t fat, her breasts and buttocks are high and solid, her nipples firm, her legs well shaped, and believe it or not, her belly’s as taut as a drum. With an almost hairless pubis, like a Japanese girl—”

“Is it possible that Armida and Justiniana got excited when they saw each other naked?” an overheated Rigoberto interrupted. “Is it possible they started to play, touching each other, fondling each other, and ended up making love?”

“Everything’s possible in this life, dear boy,” Doña Lucrecia suggested with her usual wisdom. Now husband and wife were welded together. “What I can tell you is that Justiniana even felt a tickle you know where when she saw Armida naked. She confessed as much to me, blushing and laughing. She jokes a great deal about those things, you know, but I think it’s true that seeing Armida naked excited her. So who knows, anything might have happened between those two. In any case, nobody could have imagined what Armida’s body was really like, hidden under the aprons and coarse skirts she wore. Even though you and I didn’t notice, Justiniana thinks that when poor Clotilde entered the final stage of her illness and her death seemed inevitable, Armida began to pay more attention to her appearance than she had before—”

“What did she do, for example?” Rigoberto interrupted her again. His voice was slow and thick and his heart was pounding. “Was she provocative with Ismael? Doing what? How?”

“Each morning she’d show up looking much more attractive than before. Her hair arranged, with small flirtatious touches that nobody would notice. And some new movements of her arms, her breasts, her bottom. But old man Ismael noticed. In spite of how he was when Clotilde died—in shock, like a sleepwalker, shattered by grief. He’d lost his compass, he didn’t know who or where he was. But he knew something was going on around him. Of course he noticed.”

“Again you’re moving away from the point, Lucrecia,” Rigoberto complained, holding her tight. “This isn’t the time to be talking about death, my love.”

“Then, oh what a miracle, Armida turned into the most devoted, attentive, and accommodating creature. There she was, always near her employer to prepare a chamomile maté or a cup of tea for him, pour him a whiskey, iron his shirt, sew on a button, put the finishing touches to his suit, give his shoes to the butler to polish, tell Narciso to hurry and get the car right away because Don Ismael was ready to go out and didn’t like waiting.”

“What does all that matter,” Rigoberto said in vexation, nibbling his wife’s ear. “I want to know more intimate things, my love.”

“At the same time, with an intelligence only we women have, an intelligence that comes to us from Eve herself and is in our souls, our blood, and, I suppose, in our hearts and ovaries too, Armida began to set the trap into which the widower, devastated by his wife’s death, would fall like an innocent babe.”

“What did she do to him,” Rigoberto pleaded urgently. “Tell me everything in lavish detail, my love.”

“On winter nights Ismael would shut himself in his study and suddenly start to cry. And as if by magic, Armida would be at his side, devoted, respectful, sympathetic, calling him tender nicknames in that northern singsong that sounds so musical. And shedding a few tears too, standing very close to the master of the house. He could feel and smell her because their bodies were touching. While Armida wiped her employer’s forehead and dried his eyes, without realizing it, you would say, in her efforts to console him, calm him, and be loving toward him, her neckline shifted and Ismael’s eyes couldn’t help but be aware of those plump, dark, young breasts brushing against his chest and face, which, from the perspective of his years, must have seemed like those not of a young woman but of a little girl. Then it must have occurred to him that Armida was not only a pair of tireless hands for making and stripping beds, dusting walls, waxing floors, washing clothes, but also an abundant, tender, palpitating, warm body, a fragrant, moist, exciting closeness. That was when poor Ismael, during his employee’s fond displays of loyalty and affection, probably began to feel that the hidden, shrunken thing between his legs, beyond all help from lack of use, was starting to show signs of life, to revive. Of course, Justiniana doesn’t know this but can only guess. I don’t know either, but I’m sure that’s how it all began. Don’t you think so too, my love?”