The Discreet Hero (41 page)

“He heard you talking in the San Felipe Clinic, saying stupid, immoral things beside his deathbed,” Rigoberto concluded. “You precipitated the marriage of Ismael and Armida because you’re insensitive and cruel. Or rather, because you’re fools. You should have hidden your feelings at least for those few moments and let your father die in peace, believing his sons were sorry about what was happening to him, and had not begun to celebrate his death when he was still alive and listening to you. Ismael told me that hearing the two of you say those awful things gave him the strength to survive, to fight. You were the ones who revived him, not the doctors. Well, you know that already. It’s the reason your father married Armida. And so that you’d never inherit his fortune.”

“We never said what you say he said we said,” was Escobita’s confusing reply, and his words turned into a tongue twister. “My papa must have dreamed that on account of the strong medications they gave him to get him out of the coma. If you’re really telling us the truth and haven’t invented that whole story to fuck us over even more than we’re fucked already.”

He looked as if he were going to say something else but thought better of it. Miki said nothing and continued to bite his nails tenaciously. His expression had soured and he seemed dejected. His face had turned even redder.

“We probably said it and he heard us,” Miki corrected his brother abruptly. “We said it often, that’s true, uncle. We didn’t love him because he never loved us. To the best of my memory, I never heard him say an affectionate word. He never played with us or took us to the movies or the circus the way our friends’ fathers did. I don’t think he ever sat down to talk to us. He barely spoke to us. He didn’t love anybody except his company and his work. Do you know something? I’m not sorry at all that he found out we hated him. Because it was absolutely true.”

“Shut up, Miki, anger is making you say damn fool things,” Escobita protested. “I don’t know why you told us that, uncle.”

“For a very simple reason, nephew. So that once and for all you’ll get rid of the ridiculous idea that your papa married Armida because he was doddering and had senile dementia, or because he was given potions or was the victim of black magic. He married because he found out that the two of you wanted him to die as soon as possible so you could have his fortune and squander it. That’s the absolute, sad truth.”

“We’d better leave, Miki,” said Escobita, getting up from his chair. “Now do you see why I didn’t want to pay this visit? I told you that instead of helping us he’d end up insulting us, like last time. We’d better go before I get angry again and punch this dirty slanderer in the face.”

“I don’t know about you two, but I loved the movie,” said Señora Lucrecia. “It was a little silly, but I had a good time.”

“More than an adventure movie, it’s a fantasy,” Fonchito agreed. “I thought the best things were the monsters, the skulls. And don’t say you didn’t like it, Papa. I watched you and you were totally absorbed by the screen.”

“Well, it’s true I wasn’t bored at all,” Don Rigoberto admitted. “Let’s take a taxi back to the hotel. It’s getting dark and the big moment’s approaching.”

They returned to Hotel Los Portales, and Don Rigoberto took a long shower. Now that it was almost time for their meeting with Armida, it seemed to him that everything he was experiencing was, in effect, as Lucrecia had said, a fantasy as amusing and silly as the movie they’d just seen, with no bearing on lived reality. But suddenly a shudder chilled his spine. Perhaps at this very moment, a gang of killers, international criminals, aware of the huge fortune left by Ismael Carrera, were torturing Armida, pulling out her nails, cutting off a finger or an ear, gouging out an eye, to force her to give them the millions they demanded. Or perhaps they’d gone too far and she was already dead and buried. Lucrecia showered too, dressed, and they went down to the bar to have a drink. Fonchito stayed in his room watching television. He said he didn’t want to eat; he’d order up a sandwich and go to bed.

The bar was fairly crowded, but no one seemed to pay them any attention. They sat at the most isolated table and ordered two whiskeys with soda and ice.

“I still can’t believe we’re going to see Armida,” said Doña Lucrecia. “Can it be true?”

“It’s a strange feeling,” replied Don Rigoberto. “As if we were living a fantasy, a dream that may turn into a nightmare.”

“Josefita, what a common name, and what about her appearance,” she remarked. “To tell you the truth, my nerves are on edge. Suppose all of this is a trick by some crooks to get money out of you, Rigoberto?”

“They’ll be very disappointed,” he said with a laugh. “Because my wallet’s empty. But this Josefita hardly looked like a gangster, don’t you agree? And by the same token, on the phone Señor Yanaqué seemed the most inoffensive creature in the world.”

They finished their whiskeys, ordered two more, and finally walked into the restaurant. But neither of them felt like eating, so instead of sitting at a table, they went into the lounge near the entrance. They were there for close to an hour, consumed by impatience, never taking their eyes off the people entering and leaving the hotel.

At last Josefita arrived, with her bulging eyes, big earrings, and ample hips. She was dressed as she had been that morning. Her expression was very serious and her gestures conspiratorial. She came up to them only after checking behind her with darting eyes, and didn’t even open her mouth to say good evening, indicating with a gesture that they should go with her. They followed her to the Plaza de Armas. Don Rigoberto, who almost never drank, was slightly dizzy after the two whiskeys, and the light breeze on the street made him a little dizzier. Josefita had them walk around the square, pass close to the cathedral, and then turn onto Calle Arequipa. The stores were already closed, the display windows lit and gated, and there weren’t many pedestrians on the sidewalks. When they reached the second block, Josefita pointed at the entrance to an old house, its windows covered by curtains, and, still not saying a word, waved goodbye. They watched her walk away quickly, swinging her hips, not looking back. Don Rigoberto and Doña Lucrecia approached the large studded door, but before they could knock it opened, and a quiet, very respectful man’s voice murmured, “Come in, come in please.”

They went in. In a dimly lit vestibule, its one light moving in the breeze from the street, they were received by a small, sickly-looking man wearing a fitted jacket and vest. He bowed deeply as he extended a childlike hand.

“I’m happy to meet you, welcome to this house. Felícito Yanaqué, at your service. Come in, come in.”

He closed the street door and led them through the shadowy vestibule into a living room, also dimly lit, with a television and a small bookcase that held CDs. Don Rigoberto saw a feminine silhouette emerging from one of the armchairs and recognized Armida. Before he could greet her, Doña Lucrecia stepped forward and he saw his wife enfold Ismael Carrera’s widow in a close embrace. Both women began to cry, like two close friends meeting again after many years of being apart. When it was his turn to greet her, Armida offered Don Rigoberto her cheek for him to kiss. He did, murmuring, “How glad I am to see you safe and sound, Armida.” She thanked them for coming, God would reward them, and Ismael also thanked them from wherever he was.

“What an adventure, Armida,” said Rigoberto. “I suppose you know you’re the most searched-for woman in Peru. The most famous too. You’re on television morning, noon, and night, and everybody thinks you’ve been kidnapped.”

“I don’t have the words to thank you for taking the trouble to come to Piura.” She wiped away her tears. “I need you to help me. I couldn’t stay in Lima any longer. Appointments with lawyers and notaries and meetings with Ismael’s sons were driving me crazy. I needed a little calm to think. I don’t know what I would have done without Gertrudis and Felícito. This is my sister, and Felícito is my brother-in-law.”

A slightly misshapen figure emerged from the shadows in the room. The woman, wearing a tunic, extended a thick, sweaty hand and greeted them silently, with a slight nod. Beside her, the small man, who apparently was her husband, seemed even tinier, almost a gnome. She held a tray with glasses and bottles of soft drinks.

“I’ve prepared some refreshments for you. Help yourselves.”

“We have so much to talk about, Armida,” said Don Rigoberto, “I don’t know where to begin.”

“The best place would be the beginning,” said Armida. “But sit down, sit down. You must be hungry. Gertrudis and I have also prepared something for you to eat.”

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.