Conversation in the Cathedral (72 page)

*

He woke up ravenous; his head no longer ached, but he felt jabs in his back and cramps. The room was small, cold and bare, with windows opening on a passageway with columns along which nuns and nurses passed. They brought him his breakfast and he ate voraciously.

“Please don’t eat the dish,” the nurse said. “I’ll bring you another roll, if you want.”

“And more coffee too, if you can,” Santiago said. “I haven’t eaten a bite since yesterday noon.”

The nurse brought him another full breakfast and stayed in the room, watching him eat. There she was, Zavalita, so dark, so neat, so young in her white unwrinkled uniform, her white stockings, her short boy’s bob and her starched cap, standing by the bed with her trim legs and her filiform model’s body, smiling with her hungry teeth.

“So you’re a newspaperman?” Her eyes were lively and impertinent and she had a thin mocking voice. “How did you happen to turn over?”

“Ana,” Santiago says. “Yes, very young. Five years younger than I.”

“The bumps you got, even though nothing is broken, sometimes leave a person a little foolish.” The nurse laughed. “That’s why they’ve kept you under observation.”

“Don’t lower my morale like that,” Santiago said. “Give me some encouragement instead.”

“Why does the idea of being a father bother you?” Ambrosio asks. “If everybody in Peru had that idea, there wouldn’t be any people left in the country, son.”

“So you work for
La
Crónica?
”
she repeated; she had one hand on the door as if she were going to leave, but she’d been standing there for five minutes. “Journalism must be very interesting, isn’t it?”

“Although I have to confess that when I found out I was going to be a father I got terrified too,” Ambrosio says. “It takes you a while to get used to it, son.”

“It is, but it’s got its bad points, a person can crack his skull from one moment to the next,” Santiago said. “You can do me a great favor. Could you send someone out to buy some cigarettes?”

“Patients aren’t allowed to smoke,” she said. “You’ll have to bear with it while you’re here. It’s better that way, you’ll get rid of all the poison.”

“I’m dying for a smoke,” Santiago said. “Don’t be mean. Get me some. Even if it’s just one.”

“What does your wife think?” Ambrosio says. “Because she must certainly want to have children. Women like being mothers.”

“What will you do for me in return?” she asked. “Will you print my picture in your newspaper?”

“I suppose so,” Santiago says. “But Ana’s a good person and does what I like.”

“If the doctor finds out, he’ll kill me,” the nurse said with the look of an accomplice. “Smoke it on the sly and put the butt in the bedpan.”

“Ugh, it’s a Country,” Santiago said, coughing. “Do you smoke this crap?”

“My, how choosy,” she said, laughing. “I don’t smoke. I went out and stole it for you so you could keep up your habit.”

“The next time steal a Nacional Presidente and I give you my promise I’ll print your picture on the society page,” Santiago said.

“I stole it off Dr. Franco,” she said, making a face. “God protect you from falling into his hands. He’s the nastiest one here, and stupid besides. All he ever prescribes are suppositories.”

“What did this poor Dr. Franco ever do to you?” Santiago asked. “Does he flirt with you?”

“What a thing to think, the old man hasn’t got any wind left.” Two dimples appeared on her cheeks and her laugh was quick and sharp, uncomplicated. “He must be over a hundred.”

All morning they had him back and forth between one room and another, taking x-rays and giving tests; the hazy doctor from the night before put him through a questioning that was almost a police grilling. There was nothing broken, apparently, but he didn’t like those shooting pains, young man, they’d see what the x-rays said. At noon Arispe came by and joked with him: he’d covered his ears and made a sign against the evil eye, Zavalita, he could imagine the curses he’d gotten. The editor sends his greetings, that you should stay in the hospital all the time you need, the newspaper would also pay for any extras just as long as you didn’t order any banquets from the Hotel Bolívar. You really don’t want your family notified, Zavalita? No, the old man would get a scare and it wasn’t worth it, there was nothing wrong with him. In the afternoon Periquito and Darío came; they only had a few bruises and they were happy. They’d got two days off and that night they were going to a party together. A while later Solórzano, Milton and Norwin arrived, and when they’d all left, there appeared as if just rescued from a shipwreck,
cadaverous
and lovey-dovey, China and Carlitos.

“Look at your faces,” Santiago said. “You must have kept that wild time of the other night going right up till now.”

“We did,” China said, yawning ostentatiously; she flopped onto the foot of the bed and took off her shoes. “I don’t know what day it is or even what time it is.”

“I haven’t been to
La
Crónica
for two days,” Carlitos said, yellow, his nose red, his eyes jellylike and happy. “I called Arispe and invented an attack of ulcers and he told me about the accident. I didn’t come earlier so I wouldn’t run into anyone from the paper.”

“Regards from Ada Rosa.” China gave a loud laugh. “Hasn’t she been to see you?”

“Don’t talk to me about Ada Rosa,” Santiago said. “The other night she turned into a panther.”

But China interrupted him with her torrential, fluvial laugh: they already knew, she’d told them what happened herself. Ada Rosa was like that, she’d get someone all worked up and back down at the last minute, a tease, crazy. China laughed with contortions, clapping her hands like a seal. Her lips were painted in the shape of a heart, a very high baroque hairdo that gave her face a haughty aggressiveness, and everything about her seemed more excessive than ever that night: her gestures, her curves, her beauty spots. And Carlitos was suffering because of that, he thinks, his anguish, his serenity all depended on that.

“She made me sleep on the rug,” Santiago said. “My body doesn’t ache from the accident but from that hard floor you’ve got at your place.”

Carlitos and China stayed and chatted for about an hour, and as soon as they left the nurse came in. She had a malicious smile hovering on her lips, and a devilish look.

“Well, well, such girl friends as you’ve got,” she said as she arranged the pillows. “Isn’t that María Antonieta Pons who was just here one of the Bim-Bam-Booms?”

“Don’t tell me that you’ve seen the Bim-Bam-Booms too?” Santiago said.

“I’ve seen pictures of them,” she said; and let out a little serpentine laugh. “Is that Ada Rosa another one of the Bim-Bam-Booms?”

“Ah, you were spying on us.” Santiago laughed. “Did we use a lot of dirty words?”

“A whole lot, especially that María Antonieta Pons. I had to cover my ears,” the nurse said. “And your little friend, the one who made you sleep on the floor, does she have the same kind of garbage-can mouth?”

“Even worse than this one,” Santiago said. “She’s nothing to me, she didn’t give me a tumble.”

“With that saintly little face, no one would have ever thought you were a wild one,” she said, breaking up with laughter.

“Are they going to discharge me tomorrow?” Santiago asked. “I don’t feel like spending Saturday and Sunday here.”

“Don’t you like my company?” she asked. “I’ll stay with you, what more could you want. I’m on duty this weekend. But now that I see you hang out with chorus girls, I don’t trust you anymore.”

“And what have you got against chorus girls?” Santiago asked. “Aren’t they women just like any others?”

“Are they?” she said, her eyes sparkling. “What are chorus girls like, what do they do? Tell me, you know them so well.”

It had started like that, gone on like that, Zavalita: jokes, games. You thought what a flirt she is, lucky to have her there, she helped kill time, you thought too bad she isn’t prettier. Why her, Zavalita? She kept coming into the room, bringing meals, and she would stay and chat until the head nurse or nun came and then she would start adjusting the sheets or would stick the thermometer into your mouth and put on a comical professional expression. She would laugh, she loved to tease you, Zavalita. It was impossible to know if her terrible, universal curiosity—how did a person get to be a newspaperman, what was it like being a newspaperman, how were stories written—was sincere or strategic, if her flirting was disinterested and sporting or if she really had zeroed in on you or whether you, the way she was with you, were only helping her kill time. She’d been born in Ica, she lived near the Plaza Bolognesi, she’d finished nursing school a few months before, she was serving her
internship
at La Maison de Santé. She was talkative and obliging, she sneaked him cigarettes and loaned him newspapers. On Friday the doctor said that the tests were not satisfactory and that the specialist was going to have a look at him. The name of the specialist was Mascaró, and after glancing apathetically at the x-ray pictures, he said they’re no good, take some new ones. Carlitos appeared at dusk on Saturday with a package under his arm, sober and very sad: yes, they’d had a fight, this time it’s over for good. He’d brought some Chinese food, Zavalita, they wouldn’t throw him out, would they? The nurse got them some plates and silverware, chatted with them and even tried a little of the fried rice. When visiting hours were over, she let Carlitos stay a while longer and offered to sneak him out. Carlitos had also brought some liquor in a small bottle without a label, and with the second drink he began to curse
La
Crónica,
China, Lima and the world and Ana was looking at him scandalized. At ten o’clock she made him leave. But she came back to take the plates away and, as she left, she winked at him from the door: I hope you dream about me. She left and Santiago could hear her laughing in the hall. On Monday the specialist examined the new x-rays and said disappointedly you’re healthier than I am. Ana was off that day. You’d left her a note at the desk, Zavalita. Thanks so much for everything, he thinks, I’ll give you a call one of these days.

*

“But what was that Don Hilario like?” Santiago asks. “Besides being a thief, I mean.”

Ambrosio had come back a little tight from his first talk with Don Hilario Morales. The guy had acted stuck-up at first, he’d told Amalia, he saw my color and thought I didn’t have a cent to my name. It hadn’t occurred to him that Ambrosio was going to propose a business deal between equals, but that he’d come to beg for some little job. But maybe the man had come back tired from Tingo María, Ambrosio, maybe that’s why he didn’t give you a good reception. Maybe, Amalia: the first thing he’d done when he saw Ambrosio was to tell him, panting like a toad and pouring out curses, that the truck he brought back from Tingo María had been stopped eight times by washouts after the storm, and that the trip, God damn it, had taken thirty-five hours. Anyone else would have taken the initiative and said come on, I’ll buy you a beer, but not Don Hilario, Amalia; although in that, Ambrosio had screwed him. Maybe the man didn’t like to drink, Amalia had consoled him.

“A man of about fifty, son,” Ambrosio says. “He was always picking his teeth.”

Don Hilario had received him in his ancient spotted office on the Plaza de Armas without even telling him to have a seat. He’d left him waiting on his feet while he read the letter from Ludovico that Ambrosio had handed him, and only after he had finished reading it had he pointed to a chair, without friendliness, with resignation. He had looked him up and down and finally had deigned to open his mouth: how was that rascal of a Ludovico?

“Doing fine now, sir,” Ambrosio had said. “After dreaming for so many years about getting on the regular list, he’s finally made it. He’s been going up the ladder and now he’s subchief of the Homicide
Division
.”

But Don Hilario didn’t seem the least bit enthusiastic about the news, Amalia. He’d shrugged his shoulders, he’d scratched a black tooth with the nail of his little finger, which he kept very long, spat, and murmured who can figure him out. Because even though he was his nephew, Ludovico had been born dumb and a failure.

“And a stud horse, son,” Ambrosio says. “Three homes in Pucallpa, each with its own woman and a mob of kids in all three of them.”

“Well, tell me what I can do for you,” Don Hilario had finally
muttered
. “What brings you to Pucallpa?”

“Looking for work, like Ludovico says in the letter,” Ambrosio had said.

Don Hilario laughed with the croak of a parrot, shaking all over.

“Are you out of your mind?” he had said, scratching his tooth
furiously
. “This is the last place on earth to come to looking for work. Haven’t you seen all those guys walking up and down the street with their hands in their pockets? Eighty percent of the people here are unemployed, there’s no work to be had. Unless you want to go work with a hoe on some farm or work as a day laborer for the army men who are building the highway. But it’s not easy and they’re jobs that don’t give you enough to eat. There’s no future here. Get back to Lima as fast as you can go.”

Ambrosio had felt like telling him to go to hell, Amalia, but he’d held back, smiled amiably, and that was where he’d screwed him: would he like to go somewhere and have a beer, sir? It was hot, why couldn’t they have a little talk while they were drinking something cool, sir. He’d left him surprised with that invitation, Amalia, he’d realized that Ambrosio wasn’t what he thought he was. They’d gone to the Calle Comercio, taken a small table at El Gallo de Oro, ordered two ice-cold beers.

“I didn’t come to ask you for a job, sir,” Ambrosio had said after the first sip, “But to make you a business proposition.”

Don Hilario had drunk slowly, looking at him attentively. He’d put his glass down on the table, scratched the back of his neck with its greasy creases, spat into the street, watched the thirsty ground swallow his saliva.

“Aha,” he had said slowly, nodding, and as if speaking to the halo of buzzing flies. “But in order to do business you need capital, my friend.”