“Of course, Papa,” said Fonchito, encouraging him. “Don’t worry. If you have to you can suspend my allowance until this is over.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Don Rigoberto said with a smile. “There’s more than enough for your allowance. At school, the teachers and students, what do they say about all this?”
“Most are siding with the twins, naturally.”
“The hyenas? It’s obvious they don’t know them.”
“The thing is they’re racists,” Fonchito declared. “They can’t forgive Señor Ismael for marrying a chola. They believe nobody in his right mind would do that, and that the only thing Armida wants is to keep his money. You don’t know how many boys I’ve fought with defending your friend’s marriage, Papa. Only Pezzuolo backs me up, but more out of friendship than because he thinks I’m right.”
“You’re defending a good cause, son.” Don Rigoberto patted his knee. “Because even if nobody believes it, Ismael’s marriage was for love.”
“Can I ask you a question, Papa?” the boy said suddenly, just as it seemed he was about to leave the study.
“Of course, son. Whatever you like.”
“It’s just that there’s something I don’t understand,” Fonchito ventured uncomfortably. “About you, Papa. You always liked art, painting, music, books. It’s the only thing you seem passionate about. So, then, why did you become a lawyer? Why did you spend your whole life working in an insurance company? You should have been a painter, a musician, well, I don’t know. Why didn’t you follow your calling?”
Don Rigoberto nodded and reflected a moment before answering.
“Because I was a coward, son,” he finally murmured. “Because I lacked faith in myself. I never believed I had the talent to be a real artist. But maybe that was an excuse for not trying. I decided not to be a creator but only a consumer of art, a dilettante of culture. Because I was a coward is the sad truth. So now you know. Don’t follow my example. Whatever your calling is, follow it as far as you can and don’t do what I did, don’t betray it.”
“I hope you’re not annoyed, Papa. It was a question I’d been wanting to ask you for a long time.”
“It’s a question I’ve been asking myself for many years, Fonchito. You’ve forced me to answer and I thank you for that. Go on, that’s enough, good night.”
He went to bed in wonderful spirits after his conversation with Fonchito. He told Doña Lucrecia how much good it had done him to hear his son being so judicious after an entire afternoon sunk in bad humor and unpleasantness. But he didn’t tell her about the last part of their conversation.
“It made me happy to see him so calm, so mature, Lucrecia. Involved in a Bible-study group, imagine. How many kids his age would do something like that? Very few. Have you read the Bible? I confess I’ve read only parts, and that was a long time ago. Wouldn’t you like it if, as a kind of game, we started to read it too and talk about it? It’s a very beautiful book.”
“I’d be delighted. Perhaps this way you’ll reconvert and come back to the Church,” said Lucrecia, adding, after a few seconds’ thought: “I hope reading the Bible won’t be incompatible with making love, Ears.”
She heard her husband’s mischievous laugh, and almost at the same time, she felt his avid hands running up and down her body.
“The Bible is the most erotic book in the world,” she heard him say eagerly. “You’ll see, when we read the Song of Songs and the outrageous things Samson does with Delilah and Delilah does with Samson, you’ll see.”
XIII
“Even though we’re in uniform, this isn’t an official visit,” said Captain Silva, making a courtly bow that swelled his belly and wrinkled the khaki shirt of his uniform. “It’s a friendly visit, señora.”
“Sure, all right,” said Mabel, opening the door. She looked at the police in surprise and fear, blinking. “Come in, come in, please.”
The captain and sergeant had arrived unexpectedly, just as she was thinking to herself once again that she had been moved by the old man’s demonstrations of affection. She’d always been fond of Felícito Yanaqué or, at least, even though she’d been his mistress for eight years, she’d never felt an aversion toward him, the physical and moral dislike that in the past had led her to break off abruptly with transitory lovers and benefactors who gave her headaches because of their jealousies, demands, and whims, their resentment and spite. Some breakups had meant a serious economic loss for her. But the feeling was stronger than she was. When she became sick of a man, she couldn’t keep sleeping with him. She’d get allergies, headaches, chills, she’d start thinking about her stepfather; she could barely control the urge to vomit each time she had to undress for him and cater to his desires in bed. That’s why, she told herself, though she’d gone to bed with a lot of men since she was a kid — she ran away from home at the age of thirteen and went to live with an aunt and uncle after that thing happened with her stepfather — she wasn’t and never would be what’s called a whore. Because whores knew how to pretend when it was time to go to bed with their clients and she didn’t. Mabel, in order to make love, had to feel at least some affection for the man, and also had to get the goods, as the vulgar Piuran saying went; he had to follow the particular forms — invitations, dates, little gifts, gestures, manners — that made their going to bed decent and gave it the appearance of a sentimental relationship.
“Thank you, señora,” said Captain Silva, raising his hand to his visor in imitation of a military salute. “We’ll do our best not to take up too much of your time.”
“Thank you, señora,” Sergeant Lituma echoed.
Mabel had them sit in the living room and brought in two cold bottles of Inca Kola. To hide her nervousness, she tried not to speak; she only smiled at them and waited. The police removed their kepis, settled into the armchairs, and Mabel noticed that their foreheads and hair were soaked in perspiration. She thought she ought to turn on the fan but didn’t; she was afraid that if she got up from her seat, the captain and sergeant would notice the trembling that had begun in her legs and hands. What explanation would she give if her teeth began to chatter too? “I don’t feel very well and have a little fever because, well because of that thing we women have, you know what I mean.” Would they believe her?
“What we’d like, señora”—Captain Silva sweetened his voice a little—“is not to question you but to have a friendly conversation. They’re very different things, you understand. I said friendly, and I’ll repeat it.”
In these eight years she’d never felt disgusted by Felícito. No doubt because the old man was so decent. If, on the day he visited, she didn’t feel well because she had her period or simply because she didn’t want to spread her legs for him, the owner of Narihualá Transport didn’t insist. Just the opposite; he was concerned, wanted to take her to the doctor, go to the pharmacy to buy her medicine, hand her the thermometer. Was he really in love with her? Mabel had thought a thousand times that he was. In any case, the old man made the monthly payments on the house and gave her a few thousand soles a month just to go to bed with her once or twice a week. And in addition to all that, he always gave her presents, on her birthday and at Christmas, and also on the holidays when nobody gave anybody anything, like the national holidays or in October during Piura Week. Even in the way he went to bed with her, he always showed it wasn’t only sex that mattered to him. He whispered a lover’s words in her ear, kissed her tenderly, looked at her in ecstasy, as if he were a boy wet behind the ears. Wasn’t that love? Mabel often thought that if she insisted, she could get Felícito to leave his wife, that shapeless chola who looked more like a bogeyman than a human being, and marry her. It would be very easy. All she had to do was get pregnant, for example, turn on the tears, and drive him to distraction: “You wouldn’t want your child to be a bastard, right, old man?” But she’d never tried it, and wouldn’t try it, because Mabel valued her freedom, her independence, too much. She wasn’t going to sacrifice them in exchange for relative security; besides, she didn’t particularly like the idea of becoming, in just a few years, a nurse and caretaker for a very old man whose dribble she’d have to wipe away and whose sheets she’d have to wash because he peed in his sleep.