“What do we do if Señora Mabel doesn’t show up, Captain? I’m telling you, this mess keeps me awake every night.”
“We kill ourselves, Lituma,” said the chief, trying to joke. “We’ll play Russian roulette and leave this world with our balls intact, like Seminario in your bet. But she’ll show up, don’t be so pessimistic. They know from the notice in El Tiempo, or they think they know, that they’ve finally broken Yanaqué. Now they’re making him suffer a little more just to clinch the deal. That isn’t what really worries me, Lituma. Do you know what does? That Don Felícito will lose his head and suddenly decide to publish another notice, do an about-face and ruin our plan.”
It hadn’t been easy to convince him. It had taken the captain several hours to make him give in, presenting every possible argument for his taking the notice to El Tiempo that same day. He spoke to him first in the police station and then in El Pie Ajeno, a bar he and Lituma had to all but drag him to. They watched him drink half a dozen carob-bean cocktails, one after the other, even though, as he repeated several times, he never drank. Alcohol wasn’t good for him, it upset his stomach and gave him diarrhea. But now it was different. He’d suffered a terrible blow, the most painful of his life, and alcohol would control his longing to have another crying fit.
“I beg you to believe me, Don Felícito,” said the chief, making a show of his patience. “Understand, I’m not asking you to surrender to the gang. I’d never think of advising you to pay the extortion they’re demanding.”
“That’s something I’d never do,” the trucker repeated, shaking and adamant. “Even if they kill Mabel and I had to kill myself so I wouldn’t have to live with that remorse on my conscience.”
“I’m only asking you to pretend, that’s all. Make them think you accept their conditions,” the captain insisted. “You won’t have to cough up a penny for them, I swear on my mother. And on Josefita, that gorgeous woman. We need them to release the girl, that will put us right on their trail. I know what I’m talking about, believe me. This is my profession and I know for a fact how these shits act. Don’t be stubborn, Don Felícito.”
“I’m not doing this out of stubbornness, Captain.” The trucker had calmed down and now his expression was tragicomic because a lock of hair had fallen over his forehead and covered part of his right eye; he didn’t seem to notice. “I’m really fond of Mabel, I love her. It breaks my heart that someone like her, who has nothing to do with this, is the victim of those greedy, vicious criminals. But I can’t give them the satisfaction. Understand, Captain, it’s not for my own sake. I can’t insult my father’s memory.”
He was silent for a while, staring into his empty cocktail glass, and Lituma thought he’d begin to whimper again. But he didn’t. Instead, with his head down, not looking at them, as if speaking not to them but to himself, the small man in his close-fitting, ash-colored jacket and vest began to recall his father. Blue flies buzzed in circles around their heads, and in the distance they could hear a heated argument between two men over a traffic accident. Felícito spoke in a hesitant way, searching for the words that would give the story he was telling proper weight and allowing himself at times to be overcome by emotion. Lituma and Captain Silva soon realized that the tenant farmer Aliño Yanaqué, from the Hacienda Yapatera, in Chulucanas, was the person Felícito had loved most in his life. And not only because the same blood ran in their veins but because thanks to his father, he’d been able to lift himself out of poverty, or rather, out of the wretchedness in which he was born and spent his childhood — a wretchedness they couldn’t even imagine — to become a businessman, the owner of a large fleet of cars, trucks, and buses, an accredited transport company that made his humble family name shine. He’d earned people’s respect; those who knew him also knew he was trustworthy and honorable. He’d been able to give his children a good education, a decent life, a profession, and would leave them Narihualá Transport, a business both customers and competitors thought well of. All this was due more to the sacrifices of Aliño Yanaqué than to his own efforts. He’d been not only his father but also his mother and his family, because Felícito had never known the woman who brought him into the world or any other relative. He didn’t even know why he’d been born in Yapatera, a village of blacks and mulattoes where the Yanaqués, being Europeans, that is cholos, seemed like foreigners. They led an isolated life, because the dark-skinned people of Yapatera didn’t make friends with Aliño and his son. Either because they had no family or because his father didn’t want Felícito to know who his aunts and uncles and cousins were or where they could be found, they’d always lived alone. He didn’t remember it, he was very young when it happened, but he knew that soon after he was born his mother ran off, who knows where or with whom. She never came back. For as long as he could remember his father had worked like a mule, on the tiny farm the boss gave him and on the boss’s hacienda, with no Sundays or holidays off, every day of the week and every month of the year. Aliño Yanaqué spent everything he earned, which wasn’t much, so that Felícito could eat, go to school, have shoes and clothes, notebooks and pencils. Sometimes he gave him a toy for Christmas or a coin so he could buy a lollipop or taffy. He wasn’t one of those fathers always kissing and spoiling their children. He was frugal, austere, and never gave him a kiss or a hug or told him jokes to make him laugh. But he deprived himself of everything so his son wouldn’t be an illiterate tenant farmer when he grew up. Back then Yapatera didn’t even have a school. Felícito had to go from his house to the public school in Chulucanas, five kilometers each way, and he didn’t always find a kindly driver who’d let him climb into his truck and save him the walk. He didn’t recall ever missing a single day of school. He always got good grades. Since his father couldn’t read, he had to read his report card to him, and it made Felícito happy to see Aliño proud as a peacock when he heard the teachers praise his son. Since there was no room in the only secondary school in Chulucanas, they had to move to Piura so that Felícito could continue his education. To Aliño’s great joy, Felícito was accepted to School Unit San Miguel of Piura, the most prestigious national secondary school in the city. Following his father’s instructions, Felícito hid from his classmates and teachers the fact that Aliño earned his living loading and unloading merchandise in the Central Market, near the slaughterhouse, and at night picked up garbage in municipal trucks. All that effort so his son could study and grow up to be something more than a tenant farmer or a porter or a garbage collector. The advice Aliño gave before he died, “Never let anybody walk all over you, my son,” had been the motto of his life. And Felícito wasn’t going to let those goddamn son of a bitch thieves, arsonists, and kidnappers walk all over him now.