When he left Narihualá Transport, it was late at night. No reporters were on the avenue; the watchman told him they’d grown tired of waiting and left a while back. Tiburcio had gone too, at Felícito’s insistence, more than an hour ago. He walked up Calle Arequipa; there were few people now, and he couldn’t look at anyone, keeping to the shadows so he wouldn’t be recognized. Fortunately, no one stopped him or started a conversation with him on the way. In the house, Armida and Gertrudis were already asleep, or at least he didn’t hear them. He went to the television room and put on some CDs, keeping the volume very low. And he stayed there for a couple of hours, sitting in the dark, distracted and moved; his worries didn’t leave him, but certainly they were somewhat alleviated by the songs intimately interpreted for him by Cecilia Barraza. Her voice was a balm, cool, limpid water into which he sank, body and soul, became clean and calm, felt joy; something sound, sweet, and optimistic rose from the deepest part of him. He tried not to think about Mabel, not to remember the intense, happy moments he’d spent with her over the past eight years, tried to recall only that she’d betrayed him, gone to bed with Miguel and conspired with him, sending the spider letters, faking a kidnapping, setting fire to his office. That was what he had to remember so the idea of never seeing her again wouldn’t be so bitter.
He got up very early next day, did qigong exercises, thinking of Lau the storekeeper as he usually did during this obligatory morning routine, ate breakfast, and left for the office before the late-rising reporters had arrived at the door of his house to continue the hunt. Josefita was already there and very happy to see him.
“It’s so good that you’ve come back to the office, Don Felícito,” she said, flattering him. “We were missing you around here.”
“I couldn’t keep taking a vacation,” he replied, removing his hat and jacket and sitting down at the board. “I’ve had enough scandals and foolishness, Josefita. Starting today, it’s back to work. That’s what I like, it’s what I’ve done all my life, and it’s what I’ll do from now on.”
He guessed that his secretary wanted to tell him something but hadn’t quite decided to yet. What had happened to Josefita? She looked different. More fixed up and made-up than usual, wearing eye-catching, flirtatious clothes. Little smiles and suspicious blushes passed over her face from time to time, and he thought she moved her hips a little more now when she walked.
“If you want to tell me a secret, I promise you I’m like the tomb, Josefita. And if it’s a romantic problem, you know you can cry on my shoulder.”
“It’s just that I don’t know what to do, Don Felícito.” She lowered her voice and blushed from head to toe. She brought her face close to her employer’s and whispered, her eyes as wide as an innocent girl’s, “You know, that police captain keeps calling me. Can you guess why? To ask me out, of course!”
“Captain Silva?” The trucker pretended to be surprised. “I suspected he was one of your conquests. Hey waddya think, Josefita!”
“So it seems, Don Felícito,” his secretary continued, affecting extreme modesty. “He pays me all kinds of compliments whenever he calls, you can’t imagine the things he says. That man is so fresh! You don’t know how embarrassed it makes me. Yes, yes, he wants to take me out. I don’t know what to do. What advice would you give me?”
“Well, I don’t know what to say, Josefita. Of course, I’m not surprised that you’ve made this conquest. You’re a very attractive woman.”
“But a little fat, Don Felícito,” she complained, pretending to pout. “Though according to what he said, that isn’t a problem for Captain Silva. He claimed he doesn’t like the starving girls in ads but does like well-padded women, like me.”
Felícito Yanaqué burst into laughter and she joined in. It was the first time the trucker had laughed like this since he’d heard the bad news.
“Have you found out at least if the captain’s married, Josefita?”
“He promised me he’s single and has no commitments. But who knows, men spend their whole lives telling women that story.”
“I’ll try to find out, leave it to me,” offered Felícito. “Meanwhile have a good time and enjoy life, you deserve it. Be happy, Josefita.”
He inspected the departure of the jitneys, buses, and vans, and the delivery of packages, and midmorning he left for the appointment he had with Dr. Hildebrando Castro Pozo in his tiny, crowded office on Calle Lima. He was the lawyer for his transport business and had taken care of all Felícito Yanaqué’s legal affairs for several years. He explained in detail what he had in mind, and Dr. Castro Pozo took notes on everything he said in his usual diminutive notebook, writing with a pencil as little as it was. He was a small, elegant man in his sixties, wearing a vest and tie, lively, energetic, amiable, concise, a modest but effective professional, not at all high-priced. His father had been a well-known fighter for social causes, a defender of peasants, who suffered through prison and exile and was the author of a book about indigenous communities that had made him famous. He’d been a deputy in Congress. When Felícito finished explaining what he wanted, Dr. Castro Pozo regarded him with satisfaction.
“Of course it’s feasible, Don Felícito,” he exclaimed, toying with his tiny pencil. “But let me study the matter calmly and give you all the legal twists and turns so we can move forward without taking any risks. I’ll need a couple of days at most. Do you know something? What you want to do fully confirms what I’ve always thought about you.”
“And what have you thought about me, Dr. Castro Pozo?”
“That you’re an ethical man, Don Felícito. Ethical down to the soles of your feet. One of the few I’ve known, in fact.”
What could that mean, “an ethical man”? Intrigued, Felícito told himself he’d have to buy a dictionary one of these days. He was always hearing words whose meaning he didn’t know. And it embarrassed him to go around asking people what they meant. He went to his house for lunch. Even though he found the reporters stationed there, he didn’t even stop to tell them he wouldn’t give any interviews. He walked around them, greeting them with a nod, not answering the questions they asked him, moving quickly.
After lunch, Armida asked to talk to him alone for a moment. But to Felícito’s surprise, when he and his sister-in-law withdrew to the television room, Gertrudis, once again cloistered in stubborn silence, followed them. She sat down in one of the armchairs and remained there for the duration of the long conversation Armida and the trucker had, listening, not interrupting them even once.
“It must seem strange to you that since I arrived, I’ve been wearing the same dress,” his sister-in-law began in the most trivial way.
“If you want me to be frank, Armida, everything about this seems strange to me, let alone that you haven’t changed your dress. To begin with, your showing up this way, out of the blue. Gertrudis and I have been married for I don’t know how many years, and until a few days ago I don’t think she ever told me you even existed. Can you think of anything stranger than that?”