The Discreet Hero

XX

When Don Rigoberto awoke, it was still dark; he heard the murmur of the ocean and thought, “The day has finally come.” He was engulfed by a sensation of relief and excitement. Was this happiness? Lucrecia slept peacefully beside him. She must be extremely tired, the day before she’d stayed up very late packing. He listened to the movement of the ocean for a while — a music never heard in Barranco during the day, only at night and at dawn, when the street noise subsided — and then he got up and went to the study in his pajamas and slippers. He searched the poetry shelves and found the book of works by Fray Luis de León. In the light of the lamp, he read the poem dedicated to the blind musician Francisco de Salinas. He’d been thinking about it the night before as he was dozing off and then had dreamed about it. He’d read it often and now, after reading it one more time, slowly, barely moving his lips, he confirmed it yet again: This was the most beautiful homage to music he knew, a poem that as it explained the inexplicable reality of music, was itself music. Music with ideas and metaphors, an intelligent allegory by a man of faith, which, filling the reader with an ineffable sensation, revealed the secret, transcendent, superior essence that dwells in some corner of the human animal and begins to rise to consciousness only through the perfect harmony of a beautiful symphony, an intense poem, a great opera, an outstanding exposition of art. A sensation that for Fray Luis, a believer, became confused with grace and the mystic trance. What was the music like, the creation of the blind organist to whom Fray Luis de León wrote this superb eulogy? He’d never heard it. So he had a job to do during his stay in Madrid: obtain a CD with the compositions of Francisco de Salinas. One of the groups dedicated to ancient music — Jordi Savall’s, for instance — must have devoted a record to the man who inspired this marvel of a poem.

Closing his eyes, he thought that in a few hours he, Lucrecia, and Fonchito would be crossing the skies, leaving behind the thick clouds of Lima, beginning their postponed trip to Europe. At last! They’d arrive in the middle of autumn. He imagined golden trees and cobblestone streets decorated with leaves loosened by the cold. He couldn’t believe it. Four weeks, one in Madrid, another in Paris, another in London, and the last divided between Florence and Rome. He’d planned the thirty-one days so that their pleasure would not be spoiled by fatigue, avoiding as much as possible those unpleasant surprises that can ruin a trip. Reserved flights, tickets to concerts, operas, and museum exhibitions already purchased, hotels and pensions paid for in advance. It would be the first time Fonchito had set foot on the continent of Rimbaud, the Europe aux anciens parapets. It would be especially satisfying to show his son the Prado, the Louvre, the National Gallery, the Uffizi, St. Peter’s, the Sistine Chapel on this trip. Surrounded by so many beautiful things, would he forget this recent dark period and the spectral appearances of Edilberto Torres, the incubus or succubus (what was the difference?) who had so embittered Lucrecia’s life and his? He hoped so. This month would be a purifying bath: The family would put behind them the worst period of their lives. All three would return to Lima rejuvenated, reborn.

He recalled his last conversation with Fonchito in his study, two days earlier, and his sudden impertinence.

“If you like Europe so much, if you dream about it day and night, why have you spent your whole life in Peru, Papa?”

The question disconcerted him, and for a moment he didn’t know how to respond. He felt guilty about something but didn’t know what.

“Well, I think if I’d gone there to live, I would never have enjoyed the beautiful things on the old continent as much.” He tried to elude the danger. “I would have grown so accustomed to them that eventually I wouldn’t even notice them, which is what happens to millions of Europeans. In short, it never occurred to me to move there, I always thought I had to live here. Accept my fate, if you like.”

“All the books you read are by European writers,” his son insisted. “And I think most of the CDs, drawings, and etchings are by Europeans too. By Italians, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Germans, and a couple of North Americans. Is there anything Peruvian that you like, Papa?”

Don Rigoberto was going to protest, to say there were many things, but he chose to assume a doubtful expression and make an exaggeratedly skeptical gesture.

“Three things, Fonchito,” he said, pretending to speak with the pomposity of a learned pedant. “The paintings of Fernando de Szyszlo. César Moro’s poetry in French. And prawns from Majes, of course.”

“There’s no way to talk to you seriously about anything, Papa,” his son protested. “I think you’ve taken my question as a joke because you don’t dare tell me the truth.”

“The little snot-nose is sharper than a tack and loves to give his father a hard time,” he thought. “Was I the same way when I was a kid?” He couldn’t remember.

He was going over papers, taking a last look in his carry-on bag to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. A short while later dawn broke, and he heard activity in the kitchen. Preparing breakfast already? When he went back to the bedroom, he saw the three suitcases in the hall, packed and tagged by Lucrecia. He went to the bathroom, shaved and showered, and when he returned to his bedroom, Lucrecia had gotten up and was waking Fonchito. Justiniana announced that breakfast was waiting for them in the dining room.

“I can’t believe the day is here,” he said to Lucrecia while he enjoyed his orange juice, café con leche, and toast with butter and marmalade. “During the past few months I’d begun to think we’d be trapped for years and years in the legal tangle the hyenas got me into, and would never set foot in Europe again.”

“If I tell you what I’m most curious about on this trip, you’re going to laugh,” replied Lucrecia, who took only a cup of plain tea for breakfast. “Do you know what it is? Armida’s invitation. What will that dinner be like? Whom did she invite? I still can’t believe that Ismael’s old servant is going to give us a banquet in her house in Rome. I’m dying of curiosity, Rigoberto. About how she lives, how she entertains, who her friends are. Has she learned Italian? She has an elegant house, I imagine.”

“Well, yes, certainly,” said Rigoberto, somewhat disappointed. “She has enough money to live like a queen, of course. I hope she also has the taste and sensitivity to use that kind of fortune in the best way. After all, why shouldn’t she? She’s shown herself to be smarter than all of us put together. She got what she wanted and now there she is, living in Italy with Ismael’s entire inheritance in her pocket. And the twins defeated up and down the line. I’m happy for her, really.”

“Don’t speak badly of Armida, don’t make jokes about her,” said Lucrecia, putting a hand to her mouth. “She isn’t and never was what people believe.”

“Yes, yes, I know the conversation you had with her in Piura left you convinced,” Rigoberto said with a smile. “What if she told you a fairy tale, Lucrecia?”

“She told me the truth,” Lucrecia declared categorically. “I have complete confidence that she told me what happened, without adding or taking away anything. I have an infallible instinct for these things.”

“I don’t believe you. Was it really like that?”

“Really.” Armida lowered her eyes, a little intimidated. “He never looked at me or paid me a compliment. Not even one of those nice things employers sometimes say to their maids just to make conversation. I swear by everything holy, Señora Lucrecia.”

“How many times do I have to tell you to use the familiar tú with me, Armida?” Lucrecia reproached her. “It’s hard for me to believe what you’re saying is true. You really never noticed before that Ismael liked you, not even a little?”

“I swear by everything holy,” said Armida, kissing her fingers in the shape of a cross. “Never, not ever, and may God punish me forever if I’m lying. Never. Never. That’s why I was so shocked I almost fainted. ‘But what are you saying! Have you gone crazy, Don Ismael? Am I losing my mind? What’s going on here?’”

“Neither one of us is crazy, Armida,” Señor Carrera said, smiling, speaking to her with a kindness she’d never heard from him, but he didn’t go near her. “Of course you’ve heard what I said perfectly well. I’ll ask you again. Do you want to marry me? I’m very serious. I’m too old now to court you, to make you fall in love the old-fashioned way. I offer you my affection and respect. I’m sure love will come too, later. Mine for you and yours for me.”

“He told me he felt lonely, that he thought I was a good person, that I knew his habits, what he liked, what he disliked, and besides, he was sure I’d know how to take care of him. He made my head spin, Señora Lucrecia. I couldn’t believe he was saying what I was hearing. But that’s what happened, just like I’m telling it to you. Suddenly and without beating around the bush, just like that. That and only that is the truth. I swear.”

“You amaze me, Armida.” Lucrecia scrutinized her, a look of astonishment on her face. “But yes, after all why not. He simply told you the truth. He felt alone, he needed company, and you knew him better than anybody else. And did you accept right then and there?”

“You don’t need to answer me now, Armida,” he added, not taking a step toward her, not making the slightest move to touch her, take her hand, her arm. “Think about it. My proposal is very serious. We’ll get married and go to Europe for our honeymoon. I’ll try to make you happy. Think about it, please.”

“I had a fiancé, Señora Lucrecia. Panchito. A good person. He worked for the City of Lince, in the registry office. I had to break it off with him. The truth is, I didn’t have to think about it too long. It seemed like the story of Cinderella. Up to the last moment I wondered if Señor Carrera had been serious. But yes, yes, he was very serious, and now you see everything that’s happened since.”

“It makes me feel strange to ask you this, Armida,” said Lucrecia, lowering her voice a great deal. “But I can’t help myself, curiosity is killing me. Do you mean that before you got married there was nothing going on between you?”

Armida burst into laughter, raising her hands to her face.

“After I said yes, there was,” she said, blushing and laughing. “Of course there was. Señor Ismael was still a real man in spite of his age.”

Lucrecia started to laugh too.

“I don’t need you to tell me anything else, Armida,” she said hugging her. “Oh, how funny it is that things happened like this. What a shame he died.”

“I still don’t buy that the hyenas have lost their fangs,” said Rigoberto. “That they’ve become so tame.”

“I don’t believe that either. They’re not fighting because they’re probably plotting something awful,” replied Lucrecia. “Did Dr. Arnillas tell you what Armida’s arrangement with them is?”

Rigoberto shook his head.

“I didn’t ask him,” he answered, shrugging. “But there’s no doubt they surrendered. If not, they wouldn’t have withdrawn all their demands. She must have given them a good amount to subdue them like this. Or maybe not. Maybe that pair of idiots finally were convinced that if they continued fighting, they’d die old men without seeing a cent of the inheritance. The truth is, I don’t give a damn. I don’t want us to talk about those two villains for the next month, Lucrecia. During these four weeks let everything be clean, beautiful, pleasing, stimulating. The hyenas have no place in any of that.”

“I promise I won’t mention them again,” Lucrecia said with a laugh. “Just one last question. Do you know what happened to them?”

“They must have gone to Miami to spend the money they got out of Armida on one long binge, where else,” said Rigoberto. “Ah, but that’s right, they can’t go there because Miki was involved in that hit-and-run. Though maybe the statute of limitations is up on that. And now yes, the twins have vanished, disappeared, never existed. Let’s not talk about them again. Hello, Fonchito!”

The boy was already dressed for the trip, he even had his suit jacket on.

“How elegant, my God,” Doña Lucrecia welcomed him, giving him a kiss. “Your breakfast is all ready. I’ll leave you two, it’s getting late, I’d better hurry if you want to leave at nine sharp.”

“Are you looking forward to our trip?” Don Rigoberto asked his son when they were alone.

“Yes, a lot, Papa. I’ve heard you talk so much about Europe for as long as I can remember that I’ve dreamed about going there for years.”

“It’ll be a nice experience, you’ll see,” said Don Rigoberto. “I’ve planned everything very carefully so you’ll see the best things in old Europe and avoid everything ugly. In a sense, this trip will be my masterpiece. The one I didn’t paint, or compose, or write, Fonchito, but that you’ll live.”

“It’s never too late for that,” the boy replied. “You have plenty of time, you can do what you really like. You’re retired now and have all the freedom in the world.”

Another uncomfortable observation he didn’t know how to elude. He stood up, saying he was going to give his carry-on one final check.

Narciso appeared at nine on the dot, just as Don Rigoberto had asked. The station wagon he was driving, a late-model Toyota, was navy blue, and Ismael Carrera’s old driver had hung a colored picture of the Blessed Melchorita from the rearview mirror. Of course, they had to wait some time for Doña Lucrecia to come out. When she said goodbye to Justiniana it was with unending embraces and kisses, and Don Rigoberto saw with a start that their lips were brushing. But Fonchito and Narciso didn’t notice. When the station wagon drove down Quebrada de Armendáriz and took Costa Verde in the direction of the airport, Don Rigoberto asked Narciso how things were going in his new job at the insurance company.

“Terrific,” said Narciso, showing white teeth as he smiled from ear to ear. “I thought Señora Armida’s recommendation wouldn’t mean much to the new owners, but I was wrong. They’ve been treating me very well. The manager met me in person, can you imagine. A very perfumed Italian gentleman. But I can’t tell you how I felt when I saw him in the office that had been yours, Don Rigoberto.”

“Better him than Escobita or Miki, don’t you think?” Don Rigoberto guffawed.

“That’s right, no doubt about it. You bet!”

“And what’s your job, Narciso? The manager’s driver?”

“Mainly. When he doesn’t need me, I drive people from all over the company, I mean, the bosses.” He looked happy, sure of himself. “Sometimes he also sends me to customs, to the post office, to banks. Hard work, but I can’t complain, they pay me good money. And thanks to Señora Armida, now I have my own car. The truth is, that’s something I never thought I’d have.”

“She gave you a nice present, Narciso,” remarked Doña Lucrecia. “Your station wagon is beautiful.”

“Armida always had a heart of gold,” the driver agreed. “I mean, Señora Armida.”

“It was the least she could do for you,” declared Don Rigoberto. “You behaved very well with her and Ismael. You agreed to be a witness to their marriage, knowing what you were exposing yourself to, and above all, you didn’t let yourself be bought or intimidated by the hyenas. It’s only right that she gave you this gift.”

“This station wagon isn’t a gift, it’s a gift and a half, señor.”

The Jorge Chávez Airport was crowded and the line at Iberia very long. But Rigoberto didn’t become impatient. He’d gone through so much anguish these last few months, what with police and judicial appointments, the blocking of his retirement, the headaches Fonchito had given them with Edilberto Torres, how could he care about waiting in a line for a quarter of an hour, half an hour, or however long it took, if it was all behind him and tomorrow afternoon he’d be in Madrid with his wife and son. Impulsively he put his arms over the shoulders of Lucrecia and Fonchito and announced, brimming over with enthusiasm, “Tomorrow night we’ll eat at the best and nicest restaurant in Madrid. Casa Lucio! Their ham and eggs with fried potatoes is an incomparable delicacy.”

“Eggs and fried potatoes, a delicacy, Papa?” Fonchito said mockingly.

“Go ahead and laugh, but I assure you that no matter how simple it may seem, at Casa Lucio they’ve turned the dish into a work of art, something exquisite that makes your mouth water.”

And at that very moment he saw, a few meters away, a curious couple he thought he knew. They couldn’t have been more mismatched or anomalous. She, a stout, tall woman, with very plump cheeks, submerged in a kind of unbleached tunic that hung down to her ankles, and wrapped in a bulky green sweater. But the strangest thing was the absurd, flat little hat and veil that gave her a cartoonish air. The man, on the other hand, slim, small, feeble-looking, seemed packed into a very tight pearl-gray suit and gaudy, bright blue vest. He too wore a hat, pulled down to the middle of his forehead. They had a provincial air, appeared lost and disconcerted in the midst of the crowd at the airport, and looked at everything with apprehension and suspicion. They seemed to have escaped from an expressionist work painted by Otto Dix or George Grosz of bizarre, mismatched people in 1920s Berlin.

“Ah, you’ve seen them too,” he heard Lucrecia say, indicating the couple. “It seems they’re also traveling to Spain. And in first class, imagine that!”

“I think I know them, though I don’t know from where,” said Rigoberto. “Who are they?”

“But my boy,” replied Lucrecia, “they’re the couple from Piura, how could you not recognize them.”

“Armida’s sister and brother-in-law, of course,” Rigoberto said, identifying them. “You’re right, they’re traveling to Spain too. What a coincidence.”

He felt a strange, incomprehensible uneasiness, a disquiet, as if running into this Piuran couple on the Iberia flight to Madrid might constitute a threat to the program of activities he’d planned so carefully for their European month. “How silly,” he thought. “What a persecution complex.” How could this odd-looking couple spoil their trip? He observed them for some time as they went through procedures at the Iberia counter and weighed the very large suitcase with thick straps around it that they declared as their luggage. They looked lost and frightened, as if this were the first time they’d ever taken a plane. When they finally understood the instructions of the Iberia attendant, they linked arms as if to defend themselves against anything unforeseen and walked toward customs. What were Felícito Yanaqué and his wife, Gertrudis, going to do in Spain? Ah, of course, they were going to forget the scandal they’d lived through in Piura, complete with abductions, adulteries, and whores. They were probably taking a tour, spending their life savings. It didn’t matter. These past few months he’d become too susceptible, too sensitive, almost paranoid. That couple couldn’t possibly harm their marvelous vacation in any way.

“Do you know, Rigoberto, I don’t know why but it makes me suspicious running into those two Piurans,” he heard Lucrecia say, and he shuddered. There was a certain anguish in his wife’s voice.

“Suspicious?” He dissembled. “What nonsense, Lucrecia, there’s no reason for that. The trip will be even better than our honeymoon, I promise you.”

When they finished checking in at the counter, they went up to the second level of the airport, where there was another long line, so the police could stamp their passports. And yet, when they finally got to the boarding lounge, they still had a long time to wait. Doña Lucrecia decided to take a look at the duty-free shops and Fonchito went with her. Since he detested shopping, Rigoberto said he’d wait for them in the café. He bought The Economist on the way and discovered that all the tables in the small restaurant were taken. He was about to sit at the entrance to the boarding lounge when he saw Señor Yanaqué and his wife at one of the tables. Very serious and very still, they had soft drinks and a plate of biscuits in front of them. Following a sudden impulse, Rigoberto approached them.

“I don’t know if you remember me,” he greeted them, extending his hand. “I was in your house in Piura a few months ago. What a surprise to find you here. So you’re going on a trip.”

The two Piurans had stood, at first surprised, then smiling. They shook hands effusively.

“What a surprise, Don Rigoberto, seeing you here. How could we not remember our secret plotting.”

“Have a seat, señor,” said Señora Gertrudis. “It would be our pleasure.”

“Well, all right, delighted,” Don Rigoberto thanked her. “My wife and son are looking at the shops. We’re traveling to Madrid.”

“To Madrid?” Felícito Yanaqué’s eyes opened wide. “So are we, what a coincidence.”

“What would you like to have, señor?” a very solicitous Señora Gertrudis asked.

She seemed changed, she’d become more talkative and pleasant and was smiling now. He remembered her, during his days in Piura, as always severe and incapable of uttering a word.

“An espresso cut with milk,” he told the waiter. “So you’re going to Madrid. We’ll be traveling companions.”

They sat, smiled, exchanged impressions about the flight — would the plane leave on time or would it be late — and Señora Gertrudis, whose voice Rigoberto was sure he’d never heard during their meetings in Piura, talked now without stopping. She hoped this plane wouldn’t pitch as much as the LAN plane that brought them from Piura the night before. It had bounced so much that tears came to her eyes because she thought they would crash. And she hoped Iberia wouldn’t lose their suitcase, because if it was lost, what would they wear there in Madrid, where they’d be for three days and three nights and where it seemed the weather was very cold.

“Fall is the best season of the year all over Europe,” Rigoberto reassured her. “And the prettiest, I promise you. It isn’t cold, it’s pleasantly cool. Are you just passing through Madrid?”

“In fact we’re going to Rome,” said Felícito Yanaqué. “But Armida insisted that we spend a few days in Madrid simply to see it.”

“My sister wanted us to go to Andalucía too,” said Gertrudis. “But that would mean being away a long time and Felícito has a lot of work in Piura with the company’s buses and jitneys. He’s reorganizing it from top to bottom.”

“Narihualá Transport is moving forward, though it always gives me some headaches,” Señor Yanaqué said, smiling. “My son Tiburcio has been taking over for me. He knows the business very well, he’s worked there since he was a boy. He’ll do a good job, I’m certain. But, you know, you have to be on top of everything yourself, because otherwise, things start to go wrong.”

“Armida invited us on this trip,” said Señora Gertrudis, a touch of pride in her voice. “She’s paying for everything, it’s so generous. Fares, hotels, everything. And in Rome she’ll put us up in her house.”

“She’s been so nice we couldn’t turn her down over a thing like this,” explained Señor Yanaqué. “Imagine what this invitation must be costing her. A fortune! Armida says she’s very grateful for our putting her up. As if it was any trouble at all for us. More like a great honor.”

“Well, you were very good to her during those difficult days,” remarked Don Rigoberto. “You gave her affection, moral support; she needed to feel close to her family. Now she’s in a magnificent situation, so she’s done very well to invite you. You’ll love Rome, you’ll see.”

Señora Gertrudis got up to go to the ladies’ room. Felícito Yanaqué pointed at his wife and, lowering his voice, confessed to Don Rigoberto, “My wife is dying to see the pope. It’s the dream of her life, because Gertrudis is very caught up in religion. Armida promised to take her to St. Peter’s Square when the pope comes out on the balcony. And maybe she can manage to find her a place among the pilgrims the Holy Father gives an audience to on certain days. Seeing the pope and visiting the Vatican will be the greatest happiness of her life. She became very Catholic after we got married, you know. Before that she really wasn’t. That’s why I decided to accept this invitation. For her sake. She’s always been a very good woman. Very self-sacrificing at difficult times. If it hadn’t been for Gertrudis, I wouldn’t have made this trip. Do you know something? I’ve never taken a vacation before in my life. I don’t feel good if I’m not doing something. Because what I like is working.”

And suddenly, with no transition, Felícito Yanaqué began telling Don Rigoberto about his father. A sharecropper in Yapatera, a humble Chulucano with no education, no shoes, whose wife left him and who, breaking his back, brought up Felícito, making him study, learn a trade, so he could move up in the world. A man who was always rectitude personified.

“Well, how lucky to have had a father like that, Don Felícito,” said Don Rigoberto, getting to his feet. “You won’t regret this trip, I assure you. Madrid and Rome are cities full of interesting things, you’ll see.”

“Yes, I wish you the best,” the other man said, standing up as well. “My regards to your wife.”

But it seemed to Rigoberto that he wasn’t at all convinced, that he wasn’t at all hopeful about the trip, that he was sacrificing himself for his wife. He asked Felícito if his problems had been resolved and then immediately regretted it when he saw a strand of worry or sadness cross the face of the small man in front of him.

“Luckily everything’s resolved,” he murmured. “I hope this trip at least makes the Piurans forget about me. You don’t know how horrible it is to become well known, to appear in the papers and on television, to have people point you out on the street.”

“I believe it, I believe it,” said Don Rigoberto, patting him on the shoulder. He called over the waiter and insisted on paying the entire bill. “All right, we’ll see each other on the plane. My wife and son are over there looking for me. So long.”

They went to the departure gate but boarding hadn’t begun yet. Rigoberto told Lucrecia and Fonchito that the Yanaqués were traveling to Europe as Armida’s guests. His wife was moved by the generosity of Ismael Carrera’s widow.

“You don’t see things like that these days,” she said. “I’ll say hello to them on the plane. They put her up for a few days in their house and didn’t suspect they’d win the lottery because of that good deed.”

In the duty-free shop she’d bought several chains of Peruvian silver to give as mementos to nice people they met on the trip, and Fonchito had bought a DVD of Justin Bieber, a Canadian singer who was driving young people wild all over the world. He’d watch it on the plane on his computer. Rigoberto began to leaf through The Economist but then remembered that he’d better carry in his hand the book he’d chosen to read on the trip. He opened his carry-on and took out his old copy, bought at a bouquiniste on the banks of the Seine, of André Malraux’s essay on Goya: Saturn. For many years he’d selected carefully what he read on the plane. Experience had shown him that during a flight, he couldn’t read just anything. It had to be exciting, something that would concentrate his attention enough to cancel out completely the subliminal preoccupation that arose in him whenever he flew, remembering he was ten thousand meters high — ten kilometers — moving at a speed of nine hundred or a thousand kilometers an hour, and outside the temperature was fifty or sixty degrees below zero. It wasn’t exactly fear he felt when he flew but something even more intense, the certainty that any moment might be the end, the disintegration of his body in a fraction of a second and, perhaps, the revelation of the great mystery: knowing what, if anything, lay beyond death, a possibility that from the point of view of his old agnosticism, scarcely attenuated by the years, he tended to reject. But a certain kind of reading managed to put a stop to that ominous sensation, reading that could absorb him so much he forgot everything else. It had happened to him with a novel by Dashiell Hammett, Italo Calvino’s Six Memos for the Next Millennium, Claudio Magris’s Danube, and while rereading Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw. This time he’d chosen Malraux’s essay because he remembered the emotion he felt the first time he read it, the longing it awoke in him to see in real life, not in reproductions in books, the frescoes at the Quinta del Sordo and the etchings The Disasters of War and Los Caprichos. Every time he’d been in the Prado he spent time in the rooms with the Goyas. Rereading Malraux’s essay would be a nice anticipation of that pleasure.

It was wonderful that the unpleasant story had finally been settled. He was firmly resolved not to allow anything to ruin these weeks. Everything had to be pleasant, beautiful, pleasing. He wouldn’t see anyone or anything that might turn out to be depressing, irritating, or ugly; he would organize all their moves so that for an entire month he’d have the permanent feeling that happiness was possible, and everything he did, heard, saw, and even smelled (this last not so easy, obviously) would contribute to it.

He was deep in this lucid daydream when he felt Lucrecia’s elbow indicating that boarding had begun. In the distance they saw that Don Felícito and Doña Gertrudis were boarding in business class. The line for economy passengers was very long, of course, which meant that the plane was full. In any event, Rigoberto felt calm; he’d asked the travel agency to reserve the three seats in the tenth row, next to the emergency door, which had more leg room and made the discomforts of the flight easier to bear.

When she walked onto the plane, Lucrecia shook hands with the Piurans, and the couple greeted her with a great deal of affection. Rigoberto and his family were in fact placed in the row next to the emergency door, with ample room for their legs. He sat beside the window, Lucrecia on the aisle, and Fonchito in the middle.

Don Rigoberto sighed. He heard without listening the instructions someone from the crew was giving about the flight. When the plane began to taxi along the runway toward the point of takeoff, he’d managed to become interested in an editorial in The Economist about whether the euro, the common currency, would survive the crisis shaking Europe, and whether the European Union would survive the disappearance of the euro. When, with the four engines roaring, the plane pulled away at a speed that increased by the second, he suddenly felt Fonchito’s hand pressing his right arm. He looked away from the magazine and turned to his son: The boy was looking at him in astonishment, with an indescribable expression on his face.

“Don’t be afraid, son,” he said in surprise, but then he stopped talking because Fonchito was shaking his head, as if to say, “It’s not that, it’s not that.”

The plane had just left the ground and the boy’s hand clutched at his arm as if he wanted to hurt him.

“What is it, Fonchito?” he asked, glancing at Lucrecia in alarm, but she didn’t hear them over the noise of the engines. His wife had her eyes closed and seemed to be dozing or praying.

Fonchito was trying to tell him something but though his mouth moved, no words passed his lips. He was very pale.

An awful premonition made Don Rigoberto lean toward his son and murmur in his ear, “We’re not going to allow Edilberto Torres to fuck up this trip, are we, Fonchito?”

Now the boy did manage to speak, and what Don Rigoberto heard froze his blood.

“He’s here, Papa, here on the plane, sitting right behind you. Yes, yes, Señor Edilberto Torres.”

Rigoberto felt a tug at his neck and it seemed to be bruised and injured. He couldn’t move his head, turn around to look at the seat behind him. His neck hurt horribly and his head had begun to boil. He had the stupid idea that his hair was smoking like a bonfire. Could it be possible that the son of a bitch was here, on this plane, traveling with them to Madrid? Fury rose in his body like irresistible lava, a savage desire to stand and attack Edilberto Torres, hit and insult him without pity until he was exhausted. In spite of the sharp pain in his neck, he finally managed to turn his upper body. But in the row behind him there was no man at all, only two older women and a little girl with a lollipop. Disconcerted, he turned to look at Fonchito, and he was greeted by a surprise: His son’s eyes were sending out sparks of mockery and joy. And at that instant he burst into laughter.

“You fell for it, Papa,” he said, choking on his healthy, mischievous, clean, childish laughter. “Isn’t it true you fell for it? If you could have seen your face, Papa!”

Now Rigoberto, relieved, moving his head, smiled, and then he laughed too, reconciled with his son, with life. They had risen above the cloud cover and a radiant sun lit the interior of the plane.