The Discreet Hero

XIII

“Even though we’re in uniform, this isn’t an official visit,” said Captain Silva, making a courtly bow that swelled his belly and wrinkled the khaki shirt of his uniform. “It’s a friendly visit, señora.”

“Sure, all right,” said Mabel, opening the door. She looked at the police in surprise and fear, blinking. “Come in, come in, please.”

The captain and sergeant had arrived unexpectedly, just as she was thinking to herself once again that she had been moved by the old man’s demonstrations of affection. She’d always been fond of Felícito Yanaqué or, at least, even though she’d been his mistress for eight years, she’d never felt an aversion toward him, the physical and moral dislike that in the past had led her to break off abruptly with transitory lovers and benefactors who gave her headaches because of their jealousies, demands, and whims, their resentment and spite. Some breakups had meant a serious economic loss for her. But the feeling was stronger than she was. When she became sick of a man, she couldn’t keep sleeping with him. She’d get allergies, headaches, chills, she’d start thinking about her stepfather; she could barely control the urge to vomit each time she had to undress for him and cater to his desires in bed. That’s why, she told herself, though she’d gone to bed with a lot of men since she was a kid — she ran away from home at the age of thirteen and went to live with an aunt and uncle after that thing happened with her stepfather — she wasn’t and never would be what’s called a whore. Because whores knew how to pretend when it was time to go to bed with their clients and she didn’t. Mabel, in order to make love, had to feel at least some affection for the man, and also had to get the goods, as the vulgar Piuran saying went; he had to follow the particular forms — invitations, dates, little gifts, gestures, manners — that made their going to bed decent and gave it the appearance of a sentimental relationship.

“Thank you, señora,” said Captain Silva, raising his hand to his visor in imitation of a military salute. “We’ll do our best not to take up too much of your time.”

“Thank you, señora,” Sergeant Lituma echoed.

Mabel had them sit in the living room and brought in two cold bottles of Inca Kola. To hide her nervousness, she tried not to speak; she only smiled at them and waited. The police removed their kepis, settled into the armchairs, and Mabel noticed that their foreheads and hair were soaked in perspiration. She thought she ought to turn on the fan but didn’t; she was afraid that if she got up from her seat, the captain and sergeant would notice the trembling that had begun in her legs and hands. What explanation would she give if her teeth began to chatter too? “I don’t feel very well and have a little fever because, well because of that thing we women have, you know what I mean.” Would they believe her?

“What we’d like, señora”—Captain Silva sweetened his voice a little—“is not to question you but to have a friendly conversation. They’re very different things, you understand. I said friendly, and I’ll repeat it.”

In these eight years she’d never felt disgusted by Felícito. No doubt because the old man was so decent. If, on the day he visited, she didn’t feel well because she had her period or simply because she didn’t want to spread her legs for him, the owner of Narihualá Transport didn’t insist. Just the opposite; he was concerned, wanted to take her to the doctor, go to the pharmacy to buy her medicine, hand her the thermometer. Was he really in love with her? Mabel had thought a thousand times that he was. In any case, the old man made the monthly payments on the house and gave her a few thousand soles a month just to go to bed with her once or twice a week. And in addition to all that, he always gave her presents, on her birthday and at Christmas, and also on the holidays when nobody gave anybody anything, like the national holidays or in October during Piura Week. Even in the way he went to bed with her, he always showed it wasn’t only sex that mattered to him. He whispered a lover’s words in her ear, kissed her tenderly, looked at her in ecstasy, as if he were a boy wet behind the ears. Wasn’t that love? Mabel often thought that if she insisted, she could get Felícito to leave his wife, that shapeless chola who looked more like a bogeyman than a human being, and marry her. It would be very easy. All she had to do was get pregnant, for example, turn on the tears, and drive him to distraction: “You wouldn’t want your child to be a bastard, right, old man?” But she’d never tried it, and wouldn’t try it, because Mabel valued her freedom, her independence, too much. She wasn’t going to sacrifice them in exchange for relative security; besides, she didn’t particularly like the idea of becoming, in just a few years, a nurse and caretaker for a very old man whose dribble she’d have to wipe away and whose sheets she’d have to wash because he peed in his sleep.

“You have my word we won’t take very long, señora,” the captain repeated, procrastinating, unwilling to explain clearly the reason for this unexpected visit. He looked at her in a way that gave the lie to his good manners, Mabel thought. “Besides, as soon as you grow tired of us, just say the word and we’ll clear out.”

Why was the captain exaggerating his courtesy to such a ridiculous extent? What was he up to? He wanted to reassure her, of course, but his affectations and syrupy manners and false smiles increased Mabel’s mistrust. What did this pair want? Unlike the captain, the sergeant, his assistant, couldn’t hide the fact that he was jumpy. He was watching her in a strange way, uneasy and cautious, as if he were a little frightened of what might happen, and he couldn’t stop kneading his double chin with fingers that seemed almost frantic.

“As you can see with your own eyes, we didn’t bring a tape recorder,” Captain Silva added, opening his hands and patting his pockets in a theatrical way. “Not even paper and pencil. So rest assured, there won’t be any record at all of what we say here. It will be confidential. Between you and us. And nobody else.”

After the week of her abduction, Felícito had been so incredibly affectionate and solicitous that Mabel felt overwhelmed. She’d received a large bouquet of red roses wrapped in cellophane with a card in his own hand that said: “With all my love and sorrow for the hard trial I’ve put you through, my dear Mabelita, the man who adores you sends you these flowers: your Felícito.” It was the biggest bouquet she’d ever seen. When she read the card her eyes filled with tears that fell on her hands and wet them, something that happened only when she had nightmares. Would she accept the old man’s offer that she leave Piura until all this was over? She wasn’t sure. More than an offer, it was a demand. Felícito was frightened, he thought they could hurt her, and he pleaded with her to go to Trujillo, Chiclayo, Lima, even Cusco if she preferred, wherever she liked, as long as she got far away from the damn spider extortionists. He promised her the moon: She’d lack for nothing and enjoy every comfort for as long as her trip lasted. But she hadn’t made up her mind. It’s not that she wasn’t afraid, nothing like that. Unlike the many fearful people she knew, Mabel had felt fear only once before, when she was a kid and her stepfather, taking advantage of the fact that her mother was at the market, came into her room, pushed her onto the bed, and tried to undress her. She had defended herself, scratched him, and ran out into the street, half undressed and screaming. That was when she learned what fear really was. She never experienced anything like it again. Until now. Because over the past days, fear, a great, deep, constant fear, was back in her life. Twenty-four hours a day. Night and day, afternoon and morning, asleep and awake. Mabel thought she’d never be rid of it until she died. When she went out, she had the unpleasant sensation of being watched; even in the house, with the doors and windows locked, she’d have sudden frights that chilled her body and took her breath away. Then she’d imagine that her blood had stopped circulating in her veins. In spite of knowing she was protected, and perhaps for that very reason. Was she protected? Felícito had assured her she was after he’d talked to Captain Silva. True, there was a guard in front of her house, and when she went out two plainclothes police, a man and a woman, followed her at a certain distance, discreetly. But it was precisely this twenty-four-hour-a-day vigilance that increased her nervousness, as did Captain Silva’s assurance that the kidnappers wouldn’t be imprudent or stupid enough to attempt another attack on her, knowing the police were guarding her day and night. In spite of that, the old man didn’t think she was out of danger. According to him, when the kidnappers realized he’d lied to them, that he’d placed the notice in El Tiempo thanking the Captive Lord of Ayabaca for the miracle only so they’d free her, and that he didn’t intend to pay protection, they’d be furious and would try to take their revenge on someone he loved. And since they knew so much about him, they’d also know that the person Felícito loved most in the world was Mabel. She had to leave Piura, disappear for a while, he’d never forgive himself if those bastards hurt her again.

Feeling her heart pound, Mabel remained silent. Above the heads of the two police and at the foot of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, she saw her face reflected in the mirror and was surprised at how pale she looked. She was as white as one of those phantoms in horror movies.

“I’m going to ask you to listen to me without getting nervous or scared,” Captain Silva said after a long silence. He spoke softly, lowering his voice, as if he were going to tell her a secret. “Because even though it may not seem like it, this private arrangement we’re going to make, I repeat, it’s for your own good.”

“Tell me once and for all what’s going on. What is it that you want?” Mabel managed to say, choking. The captain’s evasiveness and hypocritical circumspection were irritating her. “Say what you’ve come to say. I’m not a fool. Let’s not waste any more time, señor.”

“We’ll get to the point then, Mabel,” said the chief, transformed. Suddenly his good manners and respectful behavior disappeared. He raised his voice and looked at her now very seriously, with an impertinent, superior air. To make matters worse, he began to address her with the familiar tú. “I’m very sorry for you, but we know everything. Just what I said, Mabelita. Everything, every little thing, every last little thing. For example, we know that for a good long time you’ve not only had Don Felícito Yanaqué as a lover but someone else too. Better looking and younger than the old man in the hat and vest who pays for this house.”

“How dare you!” Mabel protested, turning a violent red. “I won’t permit it! What slander!”

“You’d better let me finish before you get so mouthy.” Captain Silva’s emphatic voice and threatening manner stopped her dead. “Afterward you can say whatever you want and cry as much as you like and even stamp your feet, if the spirit moves you. Right now, just keep quiet. I have the floor and you button your lip. Understood, Mabelita?”

Maybe she’d have to leave Piura. But the idea of living alone in a strange city — she’d only left this city to go to Sullana, Lobitos, Paita, and Yacila, she’d never crossed the boundaries of the department either to the north or to the south, she’d never gone up to the sierra — demoralized her. What would she do all alone in a place without family or friends? She’d have less protection than she did here. Would she spend her time waiting for Felícito to come to visit her? She’d live in a hotel, be bored morning and night, watching television for hours on end, if there even was television, and waiting, waiting. And she didn’t like feeling that a police officer, a man or a woman, was always watching her steps, taking notes on whom she talked to, whom she said hello to, who approached her. More than protected, she felt spied on, and the feeling, instead of reassuring her, made her tense and insecure.

Captain Silva stopped talking for a moment to calmly light a cigarette. Unhurriedly, he exhaled a large mouthful of smoke that hung in the air and saturated the room with the biting odor of tobacco.

“You’ll probably say, Mabel, that the police aren’t interested in your private life, and you’d be right,” the chief continued, dropping his ash on the floor and adopting an air that was part philosophical, part bullying. “But what concerns us is not whether you have two or ten lovers, but that you’ve been crazy enough to conspire with one of them to extort Don Felícito Yanaqué, the poor old man who, besides everything else, really loves you. What an ungrateful girl you’ve turned out to be, Mabelita!”

“What a thing to say!” She was on her feet and now, quivering, indignant, she too raised her voice, as well as a fist. “I won’t say another word without a lawyer. Let me tell you, I know my rights. I…”

How stubborn Felícito was! Mabel never would have imagined that the old man was prepared to die rather than give money to the extortionists. He seemed so meek, so understanding, and then suddenly he displayed an iron will to all of Piura. The day after she was freed, she and Felícito had a long conversation. At one point Mabel unexpectedly asked him, point-blank, “If the kidnappers had said they’d kill me if you didn’t give them the money, would you have let them kill me?”

“Now you see it didn’t happen that way, love,” the trucker stammered, very uncomfortable.

“Answer me honestly, Felícito,” she insisted. “Would you have let them kill me?”

“And afterward I would’ve killed myself,” he conceded, his voice breaking and his expression so pathetic she took pity on him. “Forgive me, Mabel. But I’ll never pay an extortionist. Not even if they kill me or the thing I love most in this world, which is you.”

“But you told me yourself that all your colleagues in Piura do it,” Mabel replied.

“And lots of businessmen and entrepreneurs too, it seems,” Felícito acknowledged. “The truth is I learned that only now, through Vignolo. It’s their business. I’m not criticizing them. Each man knows what he’s doing and how to defend his interests. But I’m not like them, Mabel. I can’t do it. I can’t betray my father’s memory.”

And then the trucker, with tears in his eyes, began to talk about his father to a surprised Mabel. Never, in all the years they’d been together, had she heard him refer to his parent so emotionally. With feeling, with tenderness, just like when they were intimate in bed and he said sweet things to her as he caressed her. He’d been a very humble man, a sharecropper, a Chulucano from the countryside, and then, here in Piura, a porter, a municipal garbage collector. He never learned to read or write, he went barefoot most of his life, something you noticed when they left Chulucanas and came to the city so that Felícito could go to school. Then he had to wear shoes and you could see how strange it felt to him when he walked and how his feet hurt when he had them on. He wasn’t a man who showed his love by hugging and kissing his son, or saying those affectionate things parents say to their kids. He was severe, hard, even ready with his fists when he got angry. But he’d shown him he loved him by making him study, by dressing him and feeding him, even when he had nothing to put on his own back or in his own mouth, by sending him to a school for drivers so that Felícito could learn to drive and get his license. Thanks to that illiterate sharecropper, Narihualá Transport existed. His father might have been poor but he was a great man because of his upstanding spirit, because he never harmed anyone, or broke the law, or felt rancor toward the woman who abandoned him, leaving him with a newborn to bring up. If all of that about sin and evil and the next life was true, he had to be in heaven now. He didn’t even have time to do any evil, he spent his life working like a dog in the worst-paying jobs. Felícito remembered seeing him drop with fatigue at night. But even so, he never let anyone walk all over him. According to him, that was the difference between a man who was worth something and a man who was worth only a rag. That had been the advice he gave him before he died in a bed with no mattress in the Hospital Obrero: “Never let anybody walk all over you, son.” Felícito had followed the advice of the father who, because they had no money, he couldn’t even bury in a niche; he couldn’t stop them from tossing him into a common grave.

“Do you see, Mabel? It’s not the five hundred dollars the crooks are asking for. That’s not the point. If I give it to them, they’d be walking all over me, turning me into a rag. Tell me you understand, honey.”

Mabel hadn’t really understood, but hearing him say those things made an impression on her. Only now, after being with him for so long, did she realize that behind his insignificant appearance — a little man, so thin, so small — Felícito had a cast-iron character and a bulletproof will. It was true, he’d let himself be killed before he gave in.

“Sit down and shut up,” the officer ordered and Mabel shut up and dropped back into her seat, defeated. “You don’t need a lawyer yet. You’re not arrested yet. We’re not questioning you yet. This is a friendly, confidential conversation, I already told you that. And it would be better for you to get that into your head once and for all. So let me talk, Mabelita, and listen to what I’m going to say very carefully.”

But before he continued, he took another long drag of his cigarette and expelled the smoke slowly, making rings. “He wants to make me suffer, that’s why he came,” thought Mabel. She felt weak and exhausted, as if at any moment she might fall asleep. In the armchair, leaning forward slightly, as if he didn’t want to miss a syllable of what his boss was saying, Sergeant Lituma didn’t speak or move. And he didn’t take his eyes off him for a second.

“There are various charges and they’re serious,” the captain went on, looking into her eyes as if he wanted to hypnotize her. “You tried to make us believe you’d been kidnapped but it was all a farce, cooked up by you and your pal to coerce Don Felícito, the gentleman who’s dying of love for you. It didn’t work out because you weren’t counting on this man’s determination to refuse to be extorted. To soften him up, you even set fire to Narihualá Transport on Avenida Sánchez Cerro. But that didn’t work out either.”

“I set fire to it? Is that what you’re accusing me of? Being an arsonist too?” Mabel protested, trying in vain to stand again, but weakness or the captain’s belligerent gaze and aggressive expression stopped her. She dropped back into the chair, shrinking into herself and crossing her arms. Now she was not only sleepy, she felt warm as well and began to perspire. She felt her hands begin to drip with sweat and fear. “So I was the one who set fire to Narihualá Transport?”

“We have some other details, but these are the most serious charges as far as you’re concerned,” said the captain, calmly turning to his subordinate. “Let’s see, Sergeant, inform the señora of the crimes she could be tried for and the sentences she might receive.”

Lituma became animated, shifted in his seat, wet his lips with his tongue, took a paper out of his shirt pocket, unfolded it, cleared his throat, and read like a pupil reciting a lesson for his teacher.

“Unlawful association for the purpose of committing a criminal act in a kidnapping scheme and sending anonymous letters and extortion threats. Unlawful association for the purpose of destroying a commercial site with explosives, with the aggravating circumstance of putting at risk the houses, businesses, and persons in the area. Active participation in a false kidnapping for the purpose of frightening and coercing a businessman into paying protection. Dissimulation, duplicity, and deception before the authorities during their investigation into the false kidnapping.” He put the paper back in his pocket and added: “These would be the principal charges against the señora, Captain. The prosecutor might add other, less serious ones, like the clandestine practice of prostitution.”

“And how high could the penalty go if the señora is convicted, Lituma?” the captain asked, his mocking eyes fixed on Mabel.

“Eight to ten years in prison,” the sergeant replied. “It would depend on the aggravating and extenuating circumstances, naturally.”

“You’re trying to scare me, but you’ve made a mistake,” murmured Mabel, making an enormous effort to get her tongue, as dry and harsh as an iguana’s, to form words. “I won’t answer any of those lies without a lawyer present.”

“Nobody’s asking you questions yet,” Captain Silva said ironically. “For now, the only thing you’re being asked to do is listen. Understood, Mabelita?”

He kept looking at her with a leer that forced her to lower her eyes. Disheartened, defeated, she nodded.

As a result of nerves, fear, and the idea that with every step she took she’d have an invisible pair of cops on her tail, she didn’t leave the house for five days. She went out only to run to the Chinese store on the corner to buy a few things, to the laundry, and to the bank. She hurried back to close herself in with her worries and tortured thoughts. On the sixth day she couldn’t stand any more. Living this way was like being in prison, and Mabel wasn’t made for confinement. She needed to be out, see the sky, smell, hear, walk in the city, listen to the bustle of men and women, hear the donkeys braying and the dogs barking. She wasn’t and would never be a cloistered nun. She called her friend Zoila and suggested they go to the movies, the late-afternoon show.

“And see what, honey?” asked Zoila.

“Anything, whatever they’re showing,” Mabel answered. “I need to see people, talk a little bit. I’m suffocating here.”

They met in front of Los Portales, on the Plaza de Armas. They had lunch at El Chalán, and went into the multiplex at the Centro Comercial Open Plaza, next to the Universidad de Piura. They saw a fairly graphic movie with nudity. Zoila, who pretended to be very proper, crossed herself when there were sex scenes. She was shameless; in her personal life she was a real libertine, changed partners every other day, and even bragged about it: “As long as your body holds out, you have to use it, baby.” She wasn’t especially pretty, but she had a good body and nice taste in clothes. Because of that and her uninhibited ways, she was successful with men. When they left the theater, she suggested they have something to eat at her house, but Mabel said no, she didn’t want to go back to Castilla alone when it was late.

She took a taxi, and as the old jalopy plunged into the half-darkened neighborhood, Mabel told herself that, after all, it was lucky the police had kept the kidnapping from the press. They thought this would confuse the extortionists and make it easier to catch them. But she was convinced that at any moment the news would reach the papers, radio, and television. What would her life turn into if that scandal broke? Maybe the best thing would be to listen to Felícito and leave Piura for a while. Why not go to Trujillo? They said it was big, modern, lively, with a nice beach and colonial houses and parks. And that the Marinera Dance Competition held there every summer was worth seeing. Were those two cops in plain clothes following her in a car or on a motorcycle? She looked through the rear and side windows and didn’t see any vehicles. Probably her protection was a lie. You had to be a half-wit to believe the cops’ promises.

She got out of the taxi, paid, and walked the twenty-some paces from the corner to her house down the center of an empty street, even though at almost all the neighboring doors and windows the dim lights of the neighborhood flickered. She could make out the silhouettes of people inside. She had her door key ready. She opened the door, went in, and when she reached out her hand to the light switch, she felt another hand in the way, blocking her and covering her mouth, stifling her scream as a man’s body pressed against hers and a well-known voice whispered in her ear, “It’s me, don’t be scared.”

“What are you doing here?” Mabel protested, trembling. She thought she’d collapse onto the floor if he weren’t holding her up. “Have you gone crazy, you asshole? Have you gone crazy?”

“I needed to fuck you,” said Miguel, and Mabel felt his feverish lips on her ear, her neck, eager, avid, his strong arms squeezing her and his hands touching her everywhere.

“Stupid pig, imbecile, vulgar filthy moron,” she protested, defending herself, furious. She was dizzy with indignation and fear. “Don’t you know the police are watching the house? Don’t you know what can happen to us on account of you, you dirty idiot?”

“Nobody saw me come in, the cop is in the dive on the corner drinking coffee, nobody was on the street.” Miguel kept embracing her, kissing her, pressing her body against his, rubbing against her. “Come on, let’s go to bed, I’ll fuck you and leave. Come on, baby.”

“You dumb, miserable dog, how do you have the nerve to come here, you’re out of your mind.” They were in the dark and, furious and frightened, she was trying to resist and push him away, at the same time feeling that in spite of her rage, her body was beginning to give in. “Don’t you realize that you’re ruining my life, damn you? And ruining your own too, you bastard.”

“I swear nobody saw me come in, I was very careful,” he repeated, pulling at her clothes to try to undress her. “Come on, come on. I want you, I’m hungry for you, I want to make you cry out, I love you.”

Finally she stopped defending herself. Still in the dark, fed up, exhausted, she allowed him to undress her and throw her down on the bed, and for a few minutes she abandoned herself to pleasure. Could that be called pleasure? It was, in any case, something very different from what she’d felt at other times. Tense, on edge, sad. Not even at the height of her excitement, when she was about to come, could she get the images of Felícito, the police who questioned her at the station house, the scandal that would explode if the news reached the press, out of her head.

“Now go, and don’t set foot in this house again until all of this is over,” she ordered when she felt Miguel release her and fall back onto the bed. “If your father finds out because of this crazy thing you did tonight, I’ll get back at you. I swear it’ll be bad. I swear you’ll regret it the rest of your life, Miguel.”

“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?

She didn’t leave the house again that day or night, devoured by doubts, her head a madhouse. The only thing that was clear was that she was fucked and would keep being fucked because of the mistake she’d made when she got involved with Miguel and agreed to this charade.

She ate nothing that night; she fixed a ham and cheese sandwich but she couldn’t even taste it. She went to bed thinking that in the morning the two cops would be back to ask what her answer was. She spent the whole night worrying, making plans and then changing them. Sometimes she was overcome by sleep, but as soon as she dozed off she would wake in a fright. When the first light of the new day came into the house in Castilla, she felt herself growing calmer. She began to see things clearly. A short time later, she’d made her decision.