The Discreet Hero

XVII

“She hasn’t even cried once,” thought Felícito Yanaqué. And in fact, she hadn’t. But Gertrudis did stop speaking. She hadn’t opened her mouth, at least not with him or Saturnina, the servant. Maybe she spoke to her sister Armida, who, ever since her unannounced arrival in Piura, had been sleeping in the room where Tiburcio and Miguel slept when they were boys, before they left home to live on their own.

Gertrudis and Armida spent long hours there, behind closed doors, and it was impossible that in all that time they hadn’t exchanged a single word. But since the previous afternoon, when Felícito returned from Adelaida’s place and told his wife the police had discovered that the spider extortionist was Miguel, and that their son had already been arrested and confessed to everything, Gertrudis had stopped speaking. She didn’t open her mouth again in front of him (Felícito, of course, hadn’t mentioned Mabel at all). But Gertrudis’s eyes had flared and filled with anguish, and she’d clasped her hands as if praying. Felícito had seen her in that posture all the times they’d been together in the last twenty-four hours. As he summarized the story the police had told him, leaving out Mabel’s name, his wife didn’t ask him anything or comment at all or respond to the few questions he asked her. She continued to sit in the semidarkness of the television room, mute, turned in on herself like a piece of furniture, looking at him with those brilliant, suspicious eyes, her hands crossed, as immobile as a pagan idol. Then, when Felícito warned her that the news would be made public very soon, reporters would swarm around the house like flies, and she shouldn’t open the door or answer a call from any newspaper, radio, or television reporter, she stood, still without a word, and went to her sister’s room. It surprised Felícito that Gertrudis hadn’t attempted to see Miguel immediately at the police station or in prison. Like her silence, was her mute strike only for him? She must have spoken to Armida, because that night at dinner, when Felícito greeted his sister-in-law, she seemed to know what had happened.

“I’m very sorry to be a bother just when the two of you are having such a difficult time,” she said, shaking his hand, an elegant lady whom he resisted calling sister-in-law. “It’s just that I had nowhere else to go. It’ll be for only a few days, I promise. Please forgive my invading your home like this, Felícito.”

He couldn’t believe his eyes. This lady, so attractive, so well dressed, wearing such beautiful jewelry, was Gertrudis’s sister? She looked much younger, and her clothes, shoes, rings, earrings, and watch were those of a rich woman who lived in a big house with gardens and a swimming pool in El Chipe, not someone who’d come out of El Algarrobo, that seedy boardinghouse in a Piuran slum.

That night at dinner, Gertrudis didn’t touch a mouthful and didn’t say a word. Saturnina removed her plates of angel-hair broth and chicken and rice, untasted. All afternoon and well into the night there was endless knocking at the door, and the telephone didn’t stop ringing, even though no one opened the door or picked up the receiver. From time to time Felícito peeked through the curtains: Those crows hungry for carrion were still there with their cameras, crowded together on the sidewalk and in the roadway of Calle Arequipa, waiting for someone to come out so they could attack. Saturnina, who didn’t live in, was the only one who came out, rather late at night, and Felícito saw her defend herself against the assault, raising her arms, shielding her face from the lightning bolts of the flashbulbs, and starting to run.

Alone in the living room, he watched the local news on television and listened to news reports on the radio. Miguel appeared on the screen, looking serious, his hair uncombed, in handcuffs, dressed in a tracksuit and basketball sneakers; and then Mabel, without cuffs, looking in fear at the bursts of light from the cameras. In his heart Felícito was grateful that Gertrudis had taken refuge in her bedroom and wasn’t beside him, watching the news programs that morbidly emphasized that his mistress, named Mabel, whom he’d set up in a house in the Castilla district, had deceived him with his own son and conspired to commit extortion, sending the famous spider letters and setting fire to Narihualá Transport.

He saw and heard it all with a sinking heart and perspiring hands, feeling the warning signs of another attack of vertigo like the one that had made him pass out at Adelaida’s, yet at the same time he had the curious sensation that this was very distant and strange and had nothing to do with him. He didn’t even feel involved when his own image appeared on the screen while the announcer spoke of his dear Mabel (calling her his “paramour”), his son Miguel, and his transport company. It was as if he’d been separated from himself; the Felícito Yanaqué of the television images and radio news was someone else who had usurped his name and face.

After he was already in bed, unable to sleep, he heard Gertrudis’s footsteps in the adjoining bedroom. He looked at the clock: almost one. As far as he could recall, his wife never stayed up so late. He couldn’t sleep, he was awake all night, sometimes thinking, but most of the time his mind was a blank, attentive to his heartbeat. At breakfast, Gertrudis continued her silence; all she had was a cup of tea. Not long afterward, Josefita, called by Felícito, came to report what was happening at the office, to receive instructions, and to take down the letters he dictated. She brought a message from Tiburcio, who was in Tumbes. When he heard the news, he’d called the house several times but no one answered. He drove the bus on that route, and as soon as he reached Piura he would come straight to see his parents. Felícito’s secretary seemed so disturbed by the news that he almost didn’t recognize her; she avoided looking him in the eye, and the only comment she made was how annoying the reporters were, they’d driven her crazy the night before at the office, and now they’d surrounded her when she came to the house and wouldn’t let her near the door for a long time, though she shouted at them that she had nothing to say, didn’t know anything, was only Señor Yanaqué’s secretary. They asked the most impertinent questions, but of course she hadn’t said a word. When Josefita left, Felícito saw through the window how she was assaulted again by the men and women with tape recorders and cameras crowded on the sidewalks of Calle Arequipa.

At lunch, Gertrudis sat at the table with him and Armida, but again she didn’t taste a mouthful or say a word. Her eyes were like glowing embers, and she kept her hands clasped. What was going on in her stupefied mind? It occurred to him that she was asleep, that the news about Miguel had turned her into a sleepwalker.

“How awful, Felícito, what’s happening to you both,” a crestfallen Armida apologized once again. “If I’d known about this, I never would have dropped in on you so unexpectedly. But as I told you yesterday, I had nowhere else to go. I’m in a very difficult situation and need to hide. I’ll explain it all whenever you like. I know you have other, more important things on your mind now. At least believe me when I say I won’t stay much longer.”

“Yes, you can tell me all about it, but not now,” he agreed. “When this storm dies down a little. What bad luck, Armida, to come to hide here, where all the reporters in Piura have congregated on account of this scandal. Those cameras and tape recorders make me feel like a prisoner in my own house.”

Gertrudis’s sister nodded with an understanding half smile.

“I’ve already gone through that and know what it means,” he heard her say. He didn’t understand what she was referring to but didn’t ask her to explain.

Finally, at dusk, after a good amount of brooding, Felícito decided the moment had come. He asked Gertrudis to come into the television room. “You and I have to talk alone,” he said. Armida withdrew immediately to her bedroom. Gertrudis docilely followed her husband into the next room. Now she was in an armchair facing him in the semidarkness, unmoving, shapeless, silent. She looked at him but didn’t seem to see him.

“I didn’t think the time would ever come when we’d talk about what we’re going to talk about now,” Felícito began, very quietly. He noticed in surprise that his voice was trembling.

Gertrudis didn’t move. She wore the colorless dress that resembled a cross between a robe and a tunic, and looked at him as if he weren’t there, her eyes flashing with a tranquil fire in her plump-cheeked face with its large but inexpressive mouth. Her hands were on her lap, tightly clasped, as if she were suffering from a terrible stomachache.

“I suspected something from the beginning,” the trucker continued, making an effort to control the nervousness that had taken possession of him, “but I didn’t say anything so as not to embarrass you. I would’ve carried it to the grave if this thing that happened hadn’t happened.”

He took a breath, sighing deeply. His wife hadn’t moved a millimeter and hadn’t blinked even once. She seemed petrified. An invisible fly began to buzz somewhere in the room, flying into the ceiling and walls. Saturnina was watering the garden and he could hear the spatter of water on the plants from the watering can.

“I mean,” he continued, stressing each syllable, “that you and your mother deceived me. That time, in El Algarrobo. Now, it doesn’t matter anymore. A lot of years have gone by, and I promise you that today it doesn’t matter if I discover that you and the Boss Lady told me a fairy tale. The only thing I need to die easy is for you to confirm it, Gertrudis.”

He stopped speaking and waited. She remained in the same posture, unyielding, but Felícito noticed that one of the bedroom slippers his wife was wearing had moved slightly to the side. There was some life there, at least. After a while, Gertrudis parted her lips and uttered a phrase that resembled a growl: “To confirm what, Felícito?”

“That Miguel isn’t and never was my son,” he said, raising his voice a little. “That you were pregnant by some other man when you and the Boss Lady came to talk to me one morning in El Algarrobo and made me believe I was the father. After denouncing me to the police to force me to marry you.”

When he finished he felt troubled and upset, as if he’d eaten something indigestible or drunk a glass of overly fermented chicha.

“I thought you were the father,” said Gertrudis, with absolute serenity. She spoke without getting angry, reluctantly, as she always spoke about everything except religious matters. And after a long pause, she added in the same neutral, disinterested manner: “My mama and I had no intention to deceive you. I was sure then that you were the father of the baby I had in my belly.”

“And when did you realize he wasn’t mine?” Felícito asked with an energy that was becoming rage.

“Only when Miguelito was born,” Gertrudis acknowledged, without her voice changing in the least. “When I saw how white he was, with those light eyes and that dark blond hair. He couldn’t be the son of a Chulucanas cholo like you.”

She fell silent and continued looking into her husband’s eyes with the same impassivity. Gertrudis seemed to be talking to him from under water, Felícito thought, or from inside an urn of thick glass. He felt as if something insurmountable and invisible divided them, even though she was only a meter away.

“A real son of a whore, it isn’t surprising you did what you did to me,” he muttered. “And did you find out then who Miguel’s real father was?”

His wife sighed and shrugged with a gesture that might have been lack of interest or weariness. She shook her head two or three times as she raised her shoulders.

“So how many men at El Algarrobo did you go to bed with, hey waddya think?” Felícito felt a lump in his throat and wanted this to be over immediately.

“All the ones my mama brought to my bed,” Gertrudis growled, slowly and concisely. And sighing again with an air of infinite fatigue, she clarified: “A lot. Not all of them from the boardinghouse. Sometimes guys from the street too.”

“The Boss Lady brought them all to you?” It was hard for him to speak, and his head was buzzing.

Gertrudis remained motionless, indistinct, a silhouette with no edges, her hands clasped. She looked at him with an absent, luminous, tranquil fixity that troubled Felícito more and more.

“She picked them and charged them, I didn’t,” his wife added with a slight change in the color of her voice. Now she seemed not only to inform but to defy him too. “Who was Miguel’s father? I don’t know. Some white guy, one of those gringos who came through El Algarrobo. Maybe one of the Yugoslavs who came to work on the Chira River irrigation. They came to Piura on weekends to get drunk and stayed at the boardinghouse.”

Felícito regretted their conversation. Had he made a mistake by bringing up the subject that had followed him like a shadow all his life? Now it was there, between them, and he didn’t know how to get rid of it. He felt it as a tremendous obstacle, an intruder who’d never leave this house again.

“How many did the Boss Lady bring to your bed?” he bellowed. He was sure at any moment he’d faint again or vomit. “All of Piura?”

“I didn’t count them,” said Gertrudis, calmly, making a deprecatory face. “But, since you’re interested in knowing, I’ll say it again: a lot. I took care of myself the best I could. I didn’t know much about it, back then. The douches I had every day helped, I thought, that’s what my mama told me. Something happened with Miguel. Maybe I got careless. I wanted to have an abortion with a midwife in the neighborhood who was part witch. They called her Mariposa, maybe you knew her. But the Boss Lady wouldn’t let me. She came up with the idea of getting married. I didn’t want to marry you either, Felícito. I always knew I’d never be happy with you. It was my mama who forced me to.”

The trucker didn’t know what to say. He sat motionless across from his wife, thinking. What a ridiculous situation, sitting there facing each other, paralyzed, silenced by a past so ugly it suddenly revived dishonor, shame, pain, and sorrow, bitter truths that added to the misfortune they were already suffering because of his false son and Mabel.

“I’ve been paying for my faults all these years, Felícito,” he heard Gertrudis say, almost without moving her full lips or taking her eyes off him for a second, though she didn’t appear to see him and spoke as if he weren’t there. “Bearing my cross in silence. Knowing very well that the sins one commits have to be paid for. Not only in the next life, in this one too. I’ve accepted it. I’ve repented for myself and for the Boss Lady. I’ve paid for myself and my mama. I don’t feel the rancor toward her that I did when I was young. I keep paying and hope that with so much suffering, Our Lord Jesus Christ will forgive so many sins.”

Felícito wanted her to be quiet right now and leave. But he didn’t have the strength to stand and walk out of the room. His legs were trembling. “I wish I were that buzzing fly and not me,” he thought.

“You helped me pay for them, Felícito,” his wife continued, lowering her voice a little. “And I’m grateful. That’s why I never said anything. That’s why I never made a jealous scene or asked questions that might have bothered you. That’s why I never let on that I knew you’d fallen in love with another woman, that you had a mistress who wasn’t old and ugly like me, but young and pretty. That’s why I never complained about Mabel and never blamed you. Because Mabel also helped me pay for my sins.”

She fell silent, waiting for the trucker to say something, but since he didn’t open his mouth, she added: “I never thought we’d have this conversation either, Felícito. You wanted it, not me.”

Again she paused for a long time and murmured, making the sign of the cross in the air with her gnarled fingers. “Now this thing Miguel did to you is the penance you have to pay for yourself. And for me too.”

After her last words, Gertrudis stood with an agility Felícito didn’t remember her possessing and shuffled out of the room. He remained seated in the television room, not hearing the noises, the voices, the horns, the bustle of Calle Arequipa, or the mototaxi engines, sunk in a dense lethargy, a despair and sadness that didn’t let him think and deprived him of even the energy needed to get to his feet. He wanted to, he wanted to leave this house even though as soon as he walked outside the reporters would be all over him with their relentless questions, each one stupider than the last, he wanted to go to the Eguiguren Seawalk and sit down to watch the brown-and-gray river water, watch the clouds in the sky, breathe in the warm afternoon, listen to the birds calling. But he didn’t try to move because his legs weren’t going to obey him, or vertigo would knock him to the carpet. It horrified him to think that his father, from the next life, might have heard the conversation he’d just had with his wife.

He didn’t know how long he was in that state of viscous somnolence, feeling time pass, ashamed and sorry for himself, Gertrudis, Mabel, Miguel, everybody. From time to time, like a ray of clear light, his father’s face would appear in his mind, and that fleeting image would relieve him for an instant. “If you’d been alive and found out about all this, you’d have died again,” he thought.

Suddenly he realized that Tiburcio had come into the room without his having noticed. He was kneeling beside him, holding his arms, looking at him in fright.

“I’m fine, don’t worry,” he reassured his son. “I just dozed off for a minute.”

“Do you want me to call a doctor?” He was in the blue coveralls and cap that were the company’s drivers’ uniform; on the visor was written “Narihualá Transport.” In one hand he held the untanned leather gloves he wore to drive the buses. “You look very pale, Father.”

“Did you just get back from Tumbes?” he replied. “A good trip?”

“Almost full and a lot of cargo,” Tiburcio said. His face still looked frightened, and he was studying Felícito, as if trying to pull out a secret. He clearly would have liked to ask endless questions but didn’t dare. Felícito pitied him too.

“I heard the news about Miguel on the radio in Tumbes,” said Tiburcio, clearly confused. “I couldn’t believe it. I called the house a thousand times but nobody answered the phone. I don’t know how I managed to drive here. Do you think what the police say about my brother is true?”

Felícito was about to interrupt to say, “He isn’t your brother,” but stopped himself. Weren’t Miguel and Tiburcio brothers? Half brothers, maybe, but brothers.

“It might be a lie, I think they’re lies,” Tiburcio was saying now, upset, still on the floor, still holding his father’s arms. “The police might have forced a false confession out of him, beat him, tortured him. Everybody knows they do those things.”

“No, Tiburcio. It’s true,” said Felícito. “He was the spider. He planned all of it. He confessed because that woman, his accomplice, accused him. Now I’m going to ask you for a big favor, son. Let’s not talk about it anymore. Not ever again. Not about Miguel or the spider. For me, it’s as if your brother has ceased to exist. I mean, as if he’d never existed. I don’t want him mentioned in this house. Never again. You can do whatever you like. Go to see him, if you want. Bring him food, find him a lawyer, whatever. I don’t care. I don’t know what your mother will want to do. Just don’t tell me anything. I don’t want to know. He’ll never be mentioned in my presence. I curse his name and that’s it. Now, help me up, Tiburcio. I don’t know why, but it’s as if my legs were suddenly rebelling.”

Tiburcio stood, and holding him by both arms, lifted him effortlessly.

“I’m going to ask you to come with me to the office,” said Felícito. “Life must go on. We have to get back to work and straighten out the company: It’s been through a rough time. The family’s not the only one suffering over this, son. Narihualá Transport is too. We have to get it moving again.”

“The street’s full of reporters,” Tiburcio cautioned him. “They were all over me when I arrived and wouldn’t let me pass. I almost got into a fight with one of them.”

“You’ll help keep those savages away from me, Tiburcio.” He looked into his son’s eyes and, giving his face a clumsy caress, sweetened his voice: “I’m grateful to you for not mentioning Mabel, son, or asking about that woman. You’re a good son, you know.”

He grasped the boy’s arm and walked with him toward the door. A clamor broke out as soon as he opened it, and the flashbulbs made him blink. “I have nothing to say, gentlemen, thank you very much,” he repeated two, three, ten times while, clutching Tiburcio’s arm, he struggled to make his way along Calle Arequipa, pursued, shoved, jostled by the swarm of reporters who kept interrupting one another and pushing microphones, cameras, notebooks, and pencils in his face. They asked questions he couldn’t understand. He kept repeating periodically, as if it were a refrain: “I have nothing to say, ladies, gentlemen, thank you very much.” They followed him to Narihualá Transport but couldn’t go in because the watchman slammed the heavy door in their faces. When he sat down at the board placed over two barrels that still served as his desk, Tiburcio handed him a glass of water.

“And that elegant lady named Armida, did you know her, Father?” his son asked. “Did you know my mama had a sister in Lima? She never told us about her.”

He shook his head and lifted a finger to his mouth. “A big mystery, Tiburcio. She came to hide here because it seems they’re hounding her in Lima and even want to kill her. You’d better forget about her and not tell anybody you saw her. We have enough problems without inheriting my sister-in-law’s too.”

It required a huge effort, but he began to work. To look over accounts, drafts, due dates, current expenditures, income, bills, payments to providers, collections. At the same time, at the back of his mind, he was formulating a plan of action for the days that followed. And after a while he began to feel better, to suspect that it was possible to win this extremely difficult battle. Suddenly he felt a powerful desire to listen to the warm, tender voice of Cecilia Barraza. Too bad he didn’t have any of her CDs at the office — songs like “Thistle or Ash,” “Innocent Love,” “Sweet Affection,” or “The Bull Kills”—or a machine to play them on. As soon as things improved, he’d buy one. After the fire damage had been repaired, on afternoons or nights when he stayed to work in the office, he’d put on a series of CDs by his favorite singer. He’d forget about everything and feel happy, or sad, always moved by the voice that could bring out in waltzes, handkerchief dances, polkas, vendors’ cries, all Peruvian music, the most delicate feelings hidden deep inside him.

When he left Narihualá Transport, it was late at night. No reporters were on the avenue; the watchman told him they’d grown tired of waiting and left a while back. Tiburcio had gone too, at Felícito’s insistence, more than an hour ago. He walked up Calle Arequipa; there were few people now, and he couldn’t look at anyone, keeping to the shadows so he wouldn’t be recognized. Fortunately, no one stopped him or started a conversation with him on the way. In the house, Armida and Gertrudis were already asleep, or at least he didn’t hear them. He went to the television room and put on some CDs, keeping the volume very low. And he stayed there for a couple of hours, sitting in the dark, distracted and moved; his worries didn’t leave him, but certainly they were somewhat alleviated by the songs intimately interpreted for him by Cecilia Barraza. Her voice was a balm, cool, limpid water into which he sank, body and soul, became clean and calm, felt joy; something sound, sweet, and optimistic rose from the deepest part of him. He tried not to think about Mabel, not to remember the intense, happy moments he’d spent with her over the past eight years, tried to recall only that she’d betrayed him, gone to bed with Miguel and conspired with him, sending the spider letters, faking a kidnapping, setting fire to his office. That was what he had to remember so the idea of never seeing her again wouldn’t be so bitter.

He got up very early next day, did qigong exercises, thinking of Lau the storekeeper as he usually did during this obligatory morning routine, ate breakfast, and left for the office before the late-rising reporters had arrived at the door of his house to continue the hunt. Josefita was already there and very happy to see him.

“It’s so good that you’ve come back to the office, Don Felícito,” she said, flattering him. “We were missing you around here.”

“I couldn’t keep taking a vacation,” he replied, removing his hat and jacket and sitting down at the board. “I’ve had enough scandals and foolishness, Josefita. Starting today, it’s back to work. That’s what I like, it’s what I’ve done all my life, and it’s what I’ll do from now on.”

He guessed that his secretary wanted to tell him something but hadn’t quite decided to yet. What had happened to Josefita? She looked different. More fixed up and made-up than usual, wearing eye-catching, flirtatious clothes. Little smiles and suspicious blushes passed over her face from time to time, and he thought she moved her hips a little more now when she walked.

“If you want to tell me a secret, I promise you I’m like the tomb, Josefita. And if it’s a romantic problem, you know you can cry on my shoulder.”

“It’s just that I don’t know what to do, Don Felícito.” She lowered her voice and blushed from head to toe. She brought her face close to her employer’s and whispered, her eyes as wide as an innocent girl’s, “You know, that police captain keeps calling me. Can you guess why? To ask me out, of course!”

“Captain Silva?” The trucker pretended to be surprised. “I suspected he was one of your conquests. Hey waddya think, Josefita!”

“So it seems, Don Felícito,” his secretary continued, affecting extreme modesty. “He pays me all kinds of compliments whenever he calls, you can’t imagine the things he says. That man is so fresh! You don’t know how embarrassed it makes me. Yes, yes, he wants to take me out. I don’t know what to do. What advice would you give me?”

“Well, I don’t know what to say, Josefita. Of course, I’m not surprised that you’ve made this conquest. You’re a very attractive woman.”

“But a little fat, Don Felícito,” she complained, pretending to pout. “Though according to what he said, that isn’t a problem for Captain Silva. He claimed he doesn’t like the starving girls in ads but does like well-padded women, like me.”

Felícito Yanaqué burst into laughter and she joined in. It was the first time the trucker had laughed like this since he’d heard the bad news.

“Have you found out at least if the captain’s married, Josefita?”

“He promised me he’s single and has no commitments. But who knows, men spend their whole lives telling women that story.”

“I’ll try to find out, leave it to me,” offered Felícito. “Meanwhile have a good time and enjoy life, you deserve it. Be happy, Josefita.”

He inspected the departure of the jitneys, buses, and vans, and the delivery of packages, and midmorning he left for the appointment he had with Dr. Hildebrando Castro Pozo in his tiny, crowded office on Calle Lima. He was the lawyer for his transport business and had taken care of all Felícito Yanaqué’s legal affairs for several years. He explained in detail what he had in mind, and Dr. Castro Pozo took notes on everything he said in his usual diminutive notebook, writing with a pencil as little as it was. He was a small, elegant man in his sixties, wearing a vest and tie, lively, energetic, amiable, concise, a modest but effective professional, not at all high-priced. His father had been a well-known fighter for social causes, a defender of peasants, who suffered through prison and exile and was the author of a book about indigenous communities that had made him famous. He’d been a deputy in Congress. When Felícito finished explaining what he wanted, Dr. Castro Pozo regarded him with satisfaction.

“Of course it’s feasible, Don Felícito,” he exclaimed, toying with his tiny pencil. “But let me study the matter calmly and give you all the legal twists and turns so we can move forward without taking any risks. I’ll need a couple of days at most. Do you know something? What you want to do fully confirms what I’ve always thought about you.”

“And what have you thought about me, Dr. Castro Pozo?”

“That you’re an ethical man, Don Felícito. Ethical down to the soles of your feet. One of the few I’ve known, in fact.”

What could that mean, “an ethical man”? Intrigued, Felícito told himself he’d have to buy a dictionary one of these days. He was always hearing words whose meaning he didn’t know. And it embarrassed him to go around asking people what they meant. He went to his house for lunch. Even though he found the reporters stationed there, he didn’t even stop to tell them he wouldn’t give any interviews. He walked around them, greeting them with a nod, not answering the questions they asked him, moving quickly.

After lunch, Armida asked to talk to him alone for a moment. But to Felícito’s surprise, when he and his sister-in-law withdrew to the television room, Gertrudis, once again cloistered in stubborn silence, followed them. She sat down in one of the armchairs and remained there for the duration of the long conversation Armida and the trucker had, listening, not interrupting them even once.

“It must seem strange to you that since I arrived, I’ve been wearing the same dress,” his sister-in-law began in the most trivial way.

“If you want me to be frank, Armida, everything about this seems strange to me, let alone that you haven’t changed your dress. To begin with, your showing up this way, out of the blue. Gertrudis and I have been married for I don’t know how many years, and until a few days ago I don’t think she ever told me you even existed. Can you think of anything stranger than that?”

“I haven’t changed my clothes because I don’t have anything else to wear,” his sister-in-law continued as if she hadn’t heard him. “I left Lima with what I had on my back. I tried one of Gertrudis’s dresses, but I was swimming in it. Well, I ought to begin this story at the beginning.”

“Explain at least one thing to me,” Felícito asked her. “Because Gertrudis, as you must have seen, has become mute and will never explain it to me. Are you full sisters?”

Armida shifted in her seat, disconcerted, not knowing how to answer. She looked for help to Gertrudis, who remained silent, folded in on herself, like one of those mollusks with odd names sold in the Central Market by fishwives. Her expression was one of total apathy, as if nothing she heard had anything to do with her, but she didn’t take her eyes off either one of them.

“We don’t know,” Armida said finally, gesturing toward her sister with her chin. “We’ve talked a lot about it these past three days.”

“Ah, in other words, Gertrudis talks to you. You’re luckier than I am.”

“We have the same mother, that’s the only thing we know for sure,” Armida declared, slowly regaining her self-control. “She’s a few years older than me. But neither one of us remembers our father. Maybe he was the same man. Maybe not. There’s nobody left to ask, Felícito. As far back as we can remember, the Boss Lady — that’s what they called my mama, do you remember? — didn’t have a husband.”

“Did you live in El Algarrobo too?”

“Until I was fifteen,” Armida said. “It wasn’t a boardinghouse yet, just a wayside inn for mule drivers in the middle of the sandy tract. When I was fifteen I went to Lima to find a job. It wasn’t easy. I went through some hard times, worse than you can imagine. But Gertrudis and I never lost touch. I wrote to her sometimes, though she answered only once in a blue moon. She never liked writing letters. The fact is, Gertrudis only spent two or three years in school. I was luckier and finished elementary school. The Boss Lady made sure I went to school, but she put Gertrudis to work in the boardinghouse very early.”

Felícito turned to his wife.

“I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me you had a sister,” he said.

But she kept looking at him as if she were looking through water and didn’t respond.

“I’ll tell you why, Felícito,” Armida intervened. “Gertrudis was ashamed, she didn’t want you to find out her sister was working in Lima as a maid. Especially after she married you and became respectable.”

“You were a domestic servant?” the trucker said in surprise, looking at his sister-in-law’s dress.

“All my life, Felícito. Except for a time when I worked in a textile factory in Vitarte.” She smiled. “I can see you think it’s strange for me to have a fine dress and shoes, and a watch like this. They’re Italian, just imagine.”

“That’s right, Armida, I think it’s very strange,” Felícito concurred. “You look like anything but a servant.”

“It’s just that I married the man who owned the house where I worked,” Armida explained, blushing. “An important man, and prosperous.”

“Ah, caramba, I get it, a marriage that changed your life,” said Felícito. “In other words, you won the lottery.”

“In a certain sense I did, but in another way, no,” Armida corrected him. “Because Señor Carrera, I mean Ismael, my husband, was a widower. He had two sons from his first marriage. They’ve hated me since I married their father. They tried to annul the marriage, they filed a complaint against me with the police, they went before a judge and accused their father of being a demented old man. They said I’d tricked him, given him cocaine, and used all other kinds of witchcraft.”

Felícito saw that Armida’s face had changed. It wasn’t serene anymore. Now there was sadness and anger in her expression.

“Ismael took me to Italy for our honeymoon,” she added, sweetening her voice and smiling. “They were very nice weeks. I never imagined I’d see such pretty things, such different things. We even saw the pope on his balcony, from St. Peter’s Square. That trip was like a fairy tale. My husband always had business meetings, and I spent a lot of time alone, being a tourist.”

“That’s how she got the dress, those jewels, that watch, those shoes,” thought Felícito. “A honeymoon in Italy! She married a rich man! A gold digger!”

“Over there in Italy, my husband sold an insurance company he had in Lima,” Armida continued. “So it wouldn’t fall into the hands of his sons, who couldn’t wait to inherit it, even though he’d already given them an advance on their inheritance. They’re big spenders and the worst kind of bums. Ismael suffered a lot because of them and that’s why he sold the company. I tried to understand the whole complicated situation but couldn’t follow his legal explanations. Well, we went back to Lima, and as soon as we got there, my husband had a heart attack that killed him.”

“I’m very sorry,” Felícito stammered. Armida had fallen silent, and her eyes were lowered. Gertrudis was motionless, implacable.

“Or they killed him,” added Armida. “I don’t know. He used to say his sons wanted him to die so much so they could get his money that they would even hire somebody to kill him. He died so suddenly, I can’t help thinking that the twins — his sons are twins — somehow caused the heart attack that killed him. If it was a heart attack and not poison. I don’t know.”

“Now I’m beginning to understand your escaping to Piura and hiding here, not even going outside,” said Felícito. “Do you really think your husband’s sons might—”

“I don’t know if it’s even occurred to them or not, but Ismael used to say they were capable of anything, even having him killed.” Armida was agitated now and talking quickly. “I began to feel unsafe and very scared, Felícito. There was a meeting with them at the lawyers’ offices. They talked to me and looked at me in a way that made me think they might have me killed too. My husband used to say that nowadays in Lima you can hire a killer to murder anybody for a few soles. Why wouldn’t they do that if it meant keeping all of Señor Carrera’s inheritance?”

She paused and looked into Felícito’s eyes.

“That’s why I decided to escape. It occurred to me that nobody would come to look for me here, in Piura. That’s pretty much the story I wanted to tell you, Felícito.”

“Well, well,” he said. “I understand, I do. The thing is, what bad luck. Fate delivered you straight into the lion’s den. The thing is, it’s called jumping from the frying pan into the fire, Armida.”

“I told you I’d stay only two or three days, and I promise you I’ll keep my word,” said Armida. “I need to talk to a person who lives in Lima. The only one my husband trusted completely. He was a witness at our wedding. Would you help me contact him? I have his phone number. Would you do me that huge favor?”

“But call him yourself, from here,” said the trucker.

“It wouldn’t be smart.” Armida hesitated, pointing at the telephone. “What if the line’s bugged? My husband thought the twins had tapped all our phones. Better to call outside, from your office, and use your cell phone, it seems cell phones are harder to bug. I can’t leave this house. That’s why I’ve turned to you.”

“Give me the number and the message I should give him,” said Felícito. “I’ll do it from the office this afternoon. Very happy to, Armida.”

That afternoon, when he’d shoved his way past the roadblock of reporters and was walking to his office along Calle Arequipa, Felícito Yanaqué told himself that Armida’s story seemed straight out of one of the adventure films he liked to see on the rare occasions he went to the movies. And he’d thought that kind of brutal action had nothing to do with real life. But Armida’s story and his own, ever since he received the first spider letter, were nothing more or less than action movies.

At Narihualá Transport he went to a quiet corner to make the call without Josefita hearing. A man’s voice answered immediately and seemed disconcerted when Felícito asked for Señor Don Rigoberto.

“Who’s calling?” the man asked, after a silence.

“I’m calling for a woman friend,” replied Felícito.

“Yes, yes, that’s me. What friend are you talking about?”

“A friend of yours who prefers not to say her name, for reasons you understand,” said Felícito. “I imagine you know who I mean.”

“Yes, I think so,” said Señor Rigoberto in a hoarse voice. “Is she all right?”

“Yes, she’s fine, and sends you her regards. She’d like to talk to you, in person, if that’s possible.”

“Yes, of course, naturally,” the man said right away, without hesitating. “Very happy to. How should we do this?”

“Can you travel to the place she comes from?” asked Felícito.

There was a long silence, and another forced clearing of the throat.

“I could, if necessary,” he said finally. “When?”

“Whenever you like,” replied Felícito. “The sooner the better, of course.”

“I understand,” said Señor Rigoberto. “I’ll get tickets immediately. This afternoon.”

“I’ll reserve a hotel room for you,” said Felícito. “Could you call me on this cell when you’ve decided on the date you’ll be traveling? I’m the only one who uses it.”

“Very good, we’re agreed, then.” Señor Rigoberto said goodbye. “Happy to meet you and see you soon, sir.”

Felícito Yanaqué worked all afternoon at Narihualá Transport. From time to time he thought about Armida’s story, and wondered how much of it was true and how much was exaggerated. Was it possible that a rich man, owner of a large company, would marry his maid? He could barely wrap his mind around it. But was it much more unbelievable than a son stealing his father’s mistress and then the two of them trying to extort him? Greed drove men crazy, it was a known fact. As night was falling, Dr. Hildebrando Castro Pozo appeared in his office with a large sheaf of papers in a lime-green folder.

“As you can see it didn’t take much time, Don Felícito,” he said, handing him the folder. “These are the documents that have to be signed, there where I’ve written an X. Unless he’s an imbecile, he’ll be delighted to do it.”

Felícito reviewed them carefully, asked some questions that the attorney answered, and was satisfied. He thought he’d made a good decision, and even if this didn’t resolve all the problems plaguing him, at least it would lift a great weight from his shoulders. And the uncertainty that had followed him for so many years would evaporate forever.

When he left the office, instead of going straight to his house he made a detour and stopped at the police station on Avenida Sánchez Cerro. Captain Silva wasn’t there, but Sergeant Lituma received him. He was a little surprised at the sergeant’s solicitude.

“I want to talk to Miguel right away,” Felícito Yanaqué repeated. “I don’t care if you or Captain Silva are present at the interview.”

“That’s fine, Don Felícito, I imagine there won’t be any problem,” said the sergeant. “I’ll talk to the captain first thing tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” said Felícito as he took his leave. “Give my best to Captain Silva and tell him that my secretary, Señora Josefita, sends her regards.”