The Discreet Hero

XIX

When Felícito Yanaqué opened his eyes, dawn was breaking, and the birds hadn’t begun to sing yet. “Today’s the day,” he thought. The appointment was at ten; he had some five hours ahead of him. He didn’t feel nervous; he’d know how to maintain his self-control, he wouldn’t let himself be overwhelmed by anger, he’d speak calmly. The matter that had tormented him his whole life would be laid to rest forever; its memory would gradually fade until it disappeared from his recollection.

He got up, opened the curtains, and barefoot, wearing his child’s pajamas, spent half an hour doing qigong exercises with the slowness and concentration taught to him by Lau, the Chinese. He allowed the effort to achieve perfection in each of his movements to take possession of his consciousness. “I almost lost the center and still haven’t managed to get it back,” he thought. He struggled to keep demoralization from invading again. But of course he’d lost the center, considering the stress he’d been under since receiving the first spider letter. Of all the explanations the storekeeper Lau had given him about qigong, the art, gymnastics, religion, or whatever it was he’d taught him, and which Felícito had since incorporated into his life, the only one he’d fully understood had to do with “finding the center.” Lau repeated it each time he moved his hands to his head or stomach. At last Felícito understood: “the center” it was absolutely essential to find, the center he had to warm with a circular motion of his palms on his belly until he felt an invisible force that gave him the sensation of floating. It was the center not only of his body but of something more complex, a symbol of order and serenity, a navel of the spirit which, if he located and controlled it, marked his life with clear meaning and harmonious organization. Recently he’d had the feeling — the certainty — that his center had become unsettled and that his life was beginning to sink into chaos.

Poor Lau. They hadn’t exactly been friends, because to establish a friendship you had to understand each other, and Lau never learned to speak Spanish, though he understood almost everything. Instead he spoke a simulated language that made it necessary to guess three-fourths of what he said. Not to mention the Chinese woman who lived with him and helped him in the grocery. She seemed to understand the customers but rarely dared to say a word to them, aware that what she spoke was gibberish, which they understood even less than they understood Lau. For a long time Felícito thought they were husband and wife, but one day, when because of qigong they’d established the relationship that resembled friendship, Lau told him that in fact she was his sister.

Lau’s general store was on the edge of Piura back then, where the city and the sand tracts touched on the El Chipe side. It couldn’t have been poorer: a hut with poles made of carob wood and a corrugated metal roof held down by rocks, divided into two spaces, one for the shop, with a counter and some rough cupboards, and another where brother and sister lived, ate, and slept. They had a few chickens and goats, and at one time they also had a pig, but it was stolen. They survived because of the truck drivers who passed by on their way to Sullana or Paita and stopped to buy cigarettes, sodas, and crackers, or to drink a beer. Felícito had lived nearby, in a boardinghouse run by a widow, years before he moved to El Algarrobo. The first time he went to Lau’s store — it was very early in the morning — he’d seen him standing in the middle of the sand wearing only his trousers, his skeletal torso bare, doing strange exercises in slow motion. His curiosity aroused, he asked him questions, and Lau, in his cartoon Spanish, attempted to explain what he was doing as he moved his arms slowly and at times stayed as still as a statue, eyes closed, and, one might say, holding his breath. From then on, in his free time, the truck driver would stop in the grocery to talk with Lau, if you could call what they did a conversation, communicating with gestures and grimaces that attempted to complement the words and sometimes, when there was a misunderstanding, made them burst into laughter.

Why didn’t Lau and his sister associate with the other Chinese in Piura? There were a good number, owners of restaurants, groceries, and other businesses, some very prosperous. Perhaps because all of them were in much better circumstances than Lau and they didn’t want to lose prestige by mixing with a pauper who lived like a primitive savage, never changing his greasy, ragged trousers; he had only two shirts that he generally wore open, displaying the bones of his chest. His sister was also a silent skeleton, though very active, for she was the one who fed the animals and went out to buy water and provisions from distributors in the vicinity. Felícito never could find out anything about their lives, about how and why they’d come to Piura from their distant country or why, unlike the other Chinese in the city, they hadn’t been able to get ahead, had remained, instead, in absolute poverty.

Their truest form of communication was qigong. At first Felícito began to imitate the movements as if he were playing, but Lau didn’t take it as a joke, encouraged him to persevere, and became his teacher — a patient, amiable, understanding teacher, who accompanied each of his movements and postures with explanations in rudimentary Spanish that Felícito could barely understand. But gradually he let himself be infected by Lau’s example and began to do sessions of qigong not only when he visited the grocery but also in the widow’s boardinghouse and during the stops he made on his trips. He liked it. It did him good. It calmed him when he was nervous and gave him the energy and control to undertake the challenges of the day. It helped him find his center.

One night, the widow woke Felícito saying that the half-crazy Chinese woman from Lau’s general store was shouting at the door and nobody understood what she was saying. Felícito went out in his underwear. Lau’s sister, her hair uncombed, was gesticulating, pointing toward the store and shrieking hysterically. He ran after her and found the grocer naked, writhing in pain on a mat, his fever soaring. It required tremendous effort to get a vehicle to take Lau to the closest Public Assistance. The nurse on duty there said they ought to move him to the hospital, at Assistance they handled only minor cases and this looked serious. It took close to half an hour to find a taxi to take Lau to the emergency room at the Hospital Obrero, where they left him lying on a bench until the next morning because there were no free beds. The next day, when a doctor finally saw him, Lau was moribund and died a few hours later. Nobody had money to pay for a funeral — Felícito earned just enough to eat — and they buried him in a common grave after receiving a certificate explaining that the cause of death was an intestinal infection.

The curious thing about the case is that Lau’s sister disappeared on the same night the storekeeper died. Felícito never saw her again or heard anything about her. The store was looted that same morning, and a short while later the sheets of corrugated metal and the poles were stolen, so that within a few weeks there was no trace left of the brother and sister. When time and the desert had swallowed up the last remnants of the hut, a cockpit was set up there, without much success. Now that part of El Chipe has been developed, and there are streets, electricity, water, sewers, and the houses of families entering the middle class.

The memory of the storekeeper Lau remained vivid for Felícito. After thirty years it was made real every morning, each time he did qigong exercises. After so much time he still wondered about the story of Lau and his sister, why they’d left China, what vicissitudes they’d suffered before they washed up in Piura, condemned to their sad, solitary existence. Lau repeated frequently that one always had to find the center, something he, apparently, had never achieved. Felícito told himself that perhaps today, when he did what he was going to do, he’d recover his lost center.

He felt somewhat tired when he finished, his heart beating a little faster. He showered calmly, polished his shoes, put on a clean shirt, and went to the kitchen to prepare his usual breakfast of goat’s milk, coffee, and a slice of black bread that he toasted and spread with butter and dark honey. It was six thirty in the morning when he went out to Calle Arequipa. Lucindo was already on his corner, as if waiting for him. He dropped a sol in his tin can, and the blind man immediately acknowledged him.

“Good morning, Don Felícito. You’re leaving earlier today.”

“It’s an important day for me and I have a lot to do. Wish me luck, Lucindo.”

There weren’t many people on the street. It was pleasant to walk along the sidewalk and not be pursued by reporters. And even more pleasant to know that in principle he’d inflicted a necessary defeat on those journalists, poor devils, who never found out that Armida, the supposed kidnapping victim, the person most sought after by the Peruvian press, had spent an entire week — seven days and nights! — hidden in his house, right under their noses, without their suspecting. What a shame they’d never know they’d missed the scoop of the century. Because Armida, at the packed press conference she gave in Lima, flanked by the minister of the interior and the chief of police, didn’t reveal to the press that she’d taken refuge in Piura with her sister, Gertrudis. She only indicated vaguely that she’d stayed with friends to escape the siege by the press that had brought her close to a nervous breakdown. Felícito and his wife watched the conference — crowded with reporters, flashbulbs, and cameras — on television. He was impressed by the confidence his sister-in-law showed responding to questions, never revealing confusion, never whimpering, speaking calmly, engagingly. Her humility and simplicity, everyone said afterward, had found favor with the public, which from then on was less likely to believe the image of a greedy, gold-digging opportunist that had been circulated by the sons of Don Ismael Carrera.

Armida’s secret departure from the city of Piura at midnight, in a Narihualá Transport car with his son Tiburcio at the wheel, was a perfectly planned and executed operation that no one, beginning with the police and ending with the reporters, found out about. At first Armida wanted to bring in from Lima someone named Narciso, her late husband’s driver, in whom she had a great deal of confidence, but Felícito and Gertrudis convinced her that Tiburcio, in whom they had blind faith, should drive the car. He was a magnificent driver, a discreet person, and after all, her nephew. Señor Rigoberto, who encouraged Armida to return to Lima immediately and appear in public, eventually convinced her.

Everything worked out as planned. Don Rigoberto, his wife, and his son returned to Lima by plane. A couple of days later, after midnight, Tiburcio, who was happy to collaborate, appeared at the house on Calle Arequipa at the agreed-upon hour. Armida took her leave with kisses, tears, and thanks. After twelve hours of uneventful driving she arrived at her house in San Isidro, in Lima, where her lawyer, bodyguards, and the authorities were waiting for her, happy to announce that the widow of Don Ismael Carrera had reappeared safe and sound after her weeklong mysterious disappearance.

When Felícito reached his office on Avenida Sánchez Cerro, the first buses, vans, and jitneys of the day were preparing to leave for all the provinces of Piura and the neighboring departments of Tumbes and Lambayeque. Narihualá Transport was gradually recovering its old customers. People who had avoided the company because of the spider episode, afraid they would fall victim to some kind of violence by the supposed kidnappers, were now forgetting about the matter and trusting once again in the good service offered by its drivers. He finally had settled with the insurance company, which had agreed to pay half the cost of reconstruction following the damage caused by the fire. Repair work would begin soon. Though it would be with an eyedropper, the banks would give him credit again. Day by day normalcy was being restored. He breathed with relief: Today he’d bring to an end that unfortunate matter.

He worked all morning on ordinary problems, spoke to mechanics and drivers, paid some bills, made a deposit, dictated letters to Josefita, had two cups of coffee, and at nine thirty, taking the portfolio prepared by Dr. Hildebrando Castro Pozo, went to the police station to pick up Sergeant Lituma, who was waiting for him at the entrance. A taxi took them to the men’s prison in Río Seco, outside the city.

“Are you nervous about this meeting, Don Felícito?” the sergeant asking during the trip.

“I don’t think I am,” he replied, hesitating. “We’ll see when I have him in front of me. You never know.”

In the prison, they had to go to the checkpoint, where guards searched Felícito’s clothes to verify that he wasn’t carrying weapons. The warden himself, a stooped, lugubrious man in shirtsleeves who dragged both his voice and his feet, led them to a small room that was protected by metal grating as well as a heavy wooden door. The walls were covered by scrawls, obscene drawings, vulgarities. As soon as he crossed the threshold, Felícito recognized Miguel standing in the center of the room.

Only a few weeks had passed since he’d last seen him, but the boy had undergone a remarkable transformation. He not only seemed thinner and older, perhaps because his blond hair was long and uncombed and a beard now dirtied his face, but his expression had changed too; previously juvenile and smiling, it was now taciturn, exhausted, the expression of someone who’s lost the drive and even the desire to live because he knows he’s defeated. But perhaps the greatest change was in his clothing. He used to be well-dressed and smart with the flashy coquetry of a neighborhood Don Juan, unlike Tiburcio who always wore the jeans and guayabera of the drivers and mechanics, but now his shirt, open over his chest, had no buttons, his trousers were wrinkled and stained, and his shoes were muddy and had no laces. He wasn’t wearing socks.

Felícito stared into his eyes and Miguel held his glance for only a few seconds; then he began to blink, lowered his eyes, and kept them focused on the floor. Felícito thought that only now had he realized he barely reached Miguel’s shoulder, that his son was more than a head taller than him. Sergeant Lituma remained leaning against the wall, very still, tense, as if he wished he could become invisible. There were two metal chairs in the room, but all three men remained standing. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling among the “shit”s written on the walls and coarse drawings of cunts and pricks. The room smelled of urine. The prisoner wasn’t handcuffed.

“I haven’t come to ask if you’re sorry for what you’ve done,” Felícito said at last, looking at the tangle of dirty blond hair a meter away, satisfied that he was speaking firmly, not revealing the rage that overwhelmed him. “You can take care of that up there, when you die.”

He paused and took a deep breath. He’d spoken very quietly, and when he continued, he raised his voice.

“I’ve come about a matter that’s much more important to me. More than the spider letters, more than your attempt to extort money from me, more than the fake kidnapping you planned with Mabel, more than the fire at my office.” Miguel remained motionless, his head down, and Sergeant Lituma didn’t move either. “I’ve come to tell you that I’m glad about what happened, glad you did what you did. Because thanks to that, I’ve been able to clear up a doubt I’ve had my whole life. You know what it is, don’t you? You must have thought about it every time you saw your face in the mirror and wondered why you had a white mug when your mother and I are cholos. I spent my life asking myself that question too. Until now I swallowed it and didn’t try to find out, for fear of hurting your feelings or Gertrudis’s. But now there’s no reason for me to worry about you. I solved the mystery. That’s why I came. To tell you something that will make you as happy as it makes me. You’re not my son, Miguel. You never were. Your mother and the Boss Lady — your mother’s mother, your grandmother — when they found out Gertrudis was pregnant, made me believe I was the father to force me to marry her. They tricked me. I wasn’t the father. I married Gertrudis out of the goodness of my heart. My doubts are cleared up now. Your mother came clean and confessed everything to me. A great joy, Miguel. I would have died of sadness if a son of mine, with my blood in his veins, had done what you did to me. Now I’m calm and even happy. It wasn’t a son of mine, it was some bastard. What a relief to know it isn’t my blood, my father’s clean blood, in your veins. Another thing, Miguel. Not even your mother knows who got her pregnant with you. She says it was probably one of the Yugoslavs who came for the Chira irrigation. Though she isn’t sure. Or maybe it was another of the hungry white men who’d fall into El Algarrobo boardinghouse and pass through her bed too. Make a note of that, Miguel. I’m not your father and not even your own mother knows whose jizzum made you. So you’re one of the many bastards in Piura, one of those kids born to washerwomen or sheepherders after gangs of drunken soldiers shoot their loads. A bastard with lots of fathers, Miguel, that’s what you are. I’m not surprised you did what you did with such a mix of blood in your veins.”

He stopped speaking because the head with unkempt blond hair came up, violently. He saw the blue eyes bloodshot and filled with hatred. “He’s going to attack me, he’ll try to strangle me,” he thought. Sergeant Lituma must have thought the same thing because he took a step forward, and with his hand on his holster, stood next to the trucker to protect him. But Miguel seemed crushed, incapable of reacting or moving. Tears ran down his cheeks and his hands and mouth trembled. He was ashen. He wanted to say something, but the words wouldn’t come out, and at times his body made an abdominal noise, like a belch or retching.

Felícito Yanaqué started to speak again with the same contained coldness he’d used in his long statement.

“I haven’t finished. A little patience. This is the last time we’ll see each other, happily for you and for me. I’m going to leave you this portfolio. Read each of the papers carefully that my lawyer has prepared for you. Dr. Hildebrando Castro Pozo, you know him very well. If you agree, sign each of the pages where there’s an X. He’ll have the papers picked up tomorrow and will take care of procedures before the judge. It’s something very simple. It’s called a change of identity. You’re going to give up the name Yanaqué, which doesn’t belong to you anyway. You can keep your mother’s surname or invent anything you like. In exchange, I won’t press charges against the author of the spider letters, the man responsible for the fire at Narihualá Transport, and for the false abduction of Mabel. It’s possible that because of this, you’ll escape the years in prison you’d have faced otherwise and walk out of here. But, as soon as you’re free, you’re going to leave Piura. You won’t set foot again in this place, where everybody knows you’re a criminal. Besides, nobody would give you a decent job here. I don’t want to run into you again. You have until tomorrow to think it over. If you don’t want to sign those papers, so be it. The trial will follow and I’ll move heaven and earth to make sure your sentence is a long one. It’s your decision. One last thing. Your mother hasn’t come to visit you because she doesn’t want to see you again either. I didn’t ask her, it was her own decision. That’s it. We can leave, Sergeant. May God forgive you, Miguel. I never will.”

He tossed the portfolio of papers at Miguel’s feet and turned toward the door, followed by Sergeant Lituma. Miguel remained motionless, the green portfolio on the floor in front of him, his eyes filled with hatred and tears, silently moving his mouth, as if he’d been hit by a lightning bolt that had deprived him of movement, speech, and reason. “This will be the last image of him that I’ll remember,” thought Felícito. They walked silently to the prison exit. The taxi was waiting for them. As the rattling jalopy jounced its way through the outskirts of Piura on the way to the police station on Avenida Sánchez Cerro to drop off Lituma, he and the trucker were silent. When they were already in the city, the sergeant was the first to speak.

“May I say something, Don Felícito?”

“Go on, Sergeant.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Have you done that yet?”

Mabel shook her head.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She shifted in her seat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“All that’s over now, and do you know something, Adelaida? I don’t care anymore.” He shrugged and made a disdainful face. “That’s all behind me, and now I’ll start to forget about it. I don’t want it to poison my life. Now I’m going to put my heart and soul into moving Narihualá Transport ahead. On account of these scandals, I haven’t been paying attention to the company that puts food on my table. And if I don’t take care of it, it’ll be ruined.”

“That’s what I like, Felícito, the past dead and gone,” the holy woman said approvingly. “And now to work! You’ve always been a man who doesn’t give up, who keeps fighting till the end—”

“Do you know something, Adelaida?” Felícito interrupted her. “That inspiration you had the last time I came to see you, it came true. An extraordinary thing happened just like you said. I can’t tell you more about it right now, but as soon as I can, I will.”

“I don’t want you to tell me anything.” The fortune-teller became very serious and a shadow veiled her large eyes for an instant. “I’m not interested, Felícito. You know I don’t like it when those inspirations come to me. Sad to say, it always happens with you. It’s like you provoke them, hey waddya think.”

“I hope I don’t inspire any more, Adelaida,” Felícito said with a smile. “I don’t want any more surprises. From now on I want a peaceful, quiet life dedicated to my work.”

They were silent for a long time, listening to the noise from the street. The horns and motors of cars and trucks, the shouts of the peddlers, the voices and bustling of the passersby reached them, somehow softened by the tranquility of the place. Felícito thought that in spite of knowing Adelaida for so many years, she was still a great mystery to him. Did she have a family? Had she ever had a husband? Probably she’d come from an orphanage, one of those abandoned babies taken in and brought up on public charity, and then had always lived alone, like a mushroom, without parents, brothers and sisters, husband or children. He’d never heard Adelaida talk about any relatives, or even any friends. Maybe Felícito was the only person in Piura the fortune-teller could call a friend.

“Tell me something, Adelaida,” he asked. “Did you ever live in Huancabamba? Did you happen to grow up there?”

Instead of answering, the mulatta gave a loud laugh, her thick-lipped mouth opening wide, revealing her large, even teeth.

“I know why you asked me that, Felícito,” she exclaimed through her laughter. “Because of the witches of Las Huaringas, isn’t that right?”

“Don’t think that I believe you’re a witch or anything like it,” he assured her. “It’s just that you have, well, I don’t know what to call it, this faculty, this gift, whatever it is, for seeing the things that are going to happen, and it’s always amazed me. It’s incredible, hey waddya think. Every time you get an inspiration, things happen just the way you say. We’ve known each other for a lot of years, haven’t we? And whenever you’ve predicted something, it’s happened exactly the way you say. You’re not like everybody else, like simple mortals, you have something that nobody else has but you, Adelaida. If you wanted to, you could’ve been rich if you’d become a professional fortune-teller.”

While he spoke, she had become very serious.

“More than a gift, it’s a great burden that God put on my shoulders, Felícito,” she said with a sigh. “I’ve said it so many times. I don’t like it when those inspirations come to me all of a sudden. I don’t know where they come from, or why it happens only with certain people, like you. It’s a mystery to me too. For example, I never have inspirations about myself. I’ve never known what’s going to happen to me tomorrow or the next day. Well, to answer your question: Yes, I was in Huancabamba, just one time. Let me tell you something. It makes me very sad that people go all the way up there, spending what they have and what they don’t have, going into debt to get a cure from the masters, that’s what they’re called. They’re liars, most of them at least. The ones who use a guinea pig, the ones who bathe sick people in the icy lake water. Instead of curing them, sometimes they kill them with pneumonia—”

Smiling, Felícito interrupted her, gesturing with both hands. “It’s not always like that, Adelaida. A friend of mine, a driver for Narihualá Transport, his name was Andrés Novoa, had undulant fever and the doctors at the Hospital Obrero didn’t know how to cure him. They said it was hopeless. He went to Huancabamba half dead, and one of the witches took him to Las Huaringas, made him bathe in the lake, and gave him I don’t know what to drink. And he came back cured. I saw it with my own eyes, I swear, Adelaida.”

“Maybe there are some exceptions,” she admitted. “But for each real healer, there are ten crooks, Felícito.”

They talked for a long time. The conversation moved from the witches, masters, healers, and shamans of Huancabamba, so famous that people from all over Peru came to consult them about their illnesses, to the praying women and holy women of Piura, generally humble old women dressed as nuns who went from house to house to pray beside the beds of the sick. They were satisfied with a tip of a few pennies or even just a plate of food for their prayers, which, many believed, completed the work of the doctors by helping to cure patients. To Felícito’s surprise, Adelaida didn’t believe in any of that either. She thought the praying women and healers were liars too. It was curious that someone with her gifts, who could anticipate the future of certain men and women, believed so little in the healing powers of others. Maybe she was right and there were lots of frauds, male and female, among those who claimed to have the power to heal the sick. Felícito was surprised to hear Adelaida say that not so long ago in Piura there had even been certain dark women, the consolers, called on by some families to help the dying pass, something they did in the midst of prayers, cutting the jugular with an extremely long nail they let grow on their index finger for just that purpose.

On the other hand, Felícito was amazed to learn that Adelaida was a steadfast believer in the legend that the image of the Captive Lord in the Church of Ayabaca had been sculpted by Ecuadoran carvers who really were angels.

“You believe in that superstition, Adelaida?”

“I believe it because I’ve heard the story told by the people who live there. It’s been passed from parents to children ever since it happened, and if it’s lasted this long, it must be true.”

Felícito had often heard about that miracle but never took it seriously. It was said that many years ago now, a committee of important people from Ayabaca had taken up a collection to commission a sculpture of Christ. They crossed into Ecuador and found three men dressed in white who turned out to be carvers. They hired them immediately to come to Ayabaca and sculpt the image. They did but disappeared before they were paid their fee. The same committee went back to Ecuador to look for them, but nobody there knew them or anything about them. In other words, they were angels. It was something Gertrudis believed in, but it surprised him that Adelaida would swallow that miracle too.

They chatted for a long time, and Felícito felt much better than when he’d arrived. He hadn’t forgotten his conversations with Miguel and Mabel — maybe he’d never forget them — but the hour he’d spent with Adelaida had helped to cool the memory of the encounters so they no longer weighed on him like a cross.

He thanked Adelaida for the distilled water and the conversation, and though she resisted, he obliged her to accept the fifty soles he put in her hand when he said goodbye.

When he went out, the sun seemed even stronger. He walked slowly toward his house, and on the way only two strangers approached to greet him. He thought, with some relief, that gradually he’d stop being famous and well known. People would forget about the spider, and soon they’d stop pointing him out and coming up to him. Perhaps the day wasn’t distant when he’d be able to walk down the streets of the city again like an anonymous pedestrian.

When he reached his house on Calle Arequipa, lunch was ready. Saturnina had prepared a vegetable broth, the typical tuber-and-dried-beef dish of olluquitos con charqui, and rice. Gertrudis had a pitcher of lemonade with lots of ice ready. They sat down to eat in silence, and only when he’d finished his last spoonful of broth did Felícito tell his wife that he’d seen Miguel that morning and had proposed withdrawing the charges if Miguel agreed to drop his last name. She listened to him in silence, and when he stopped speaking she said nothing.

“I’m sure he’ll accept and then go free,” he added. “And he’ll leave Piura, as I demanded. He’d never find work here with his record.”

She nodded, not saying a word.

“Aren’t you going to visit him?” Felícito asked.

Gertrudis shook her head. “I don’t ever want to see him again either,” she declared, eating the broth in slow spoonfuls. “After what he did to you, I couldn’t.”

They continued eating in silence, and only much later, when Saturnina had cleared the dishes, Felícito murmured, “I was in Castilla too, I’m sure you can guess why. I went to put an end to that matter. It’s done. Finished forever. I wanted you to know that.”

There was another long silence, interrupted at times by the croaking of a frog in the garden. Finally, Felícito heard Gertrudis ask, “Do you want coffee or chamomile tea?”