“Happy, but only to a point,” Ambrosio says. “What wasn’t working out was the money question, son.”
Ambrosio had thought that thanks to the extras he was getting without Don Hilario’s knowing it, they’d get through the month. But no, in the first place, there weren’t many passengers, and in the second place, Don Hilario had come up with the idea that the cost of repairs should be split between the company and the driver. Don Hilario had gone crazy, Amalia, if he accepted that he’d be left without any pay. They’d argued and it was left at Ambrosio’s paying ten percent of the repair bills. But Don Hilario had deducted fifteen the second month and when the spare tire was stolen, he’d wanted Ambrosio to pay for a new one. But that’s awful, Don Hilario, how could he think of such a thing. Don Hilario had looked at him steadily: you better not complain, there was a lot that could be told about him, wasn’t he picking up a few soles behind his back? Ambrosio hadn’t known what to say, but Don Hilario had shaken his hand: friends again. They’d begun to get through the month with loans and advances that Don Hilario himself made grudgingly. Pantaleón, seeing that they were having trouble, had advised them to stop paying rent and come live in the settlement and build a cabin next to mine.
“No, Amalia,” Ambrosio had said. “I don’t want you to be alone when I’m on the road, with all the bums there are in the settlement. Besides, you couldn’t keep an eye on Limbo Coffins from there.”
4
“THE WISDOM OF WOMEN,” Carlitos said. “If Ana had thought about it, it wouldn’t have turned out so well for her. But she didn’t think about it, women never premeditate these things. They let themselves be guided by instinct and it never lets them down, Zavalita.”
Was it that benign, intermittent feeling of uneasiness that reappeared when Ana moved to Ica, Zavalita, that soft restlessness that would surprise you on buses as you figured out how many days left till Sunday? He had to change the luncheon dates at his parents’ to Saturday. On Sunday he would leave very early in a group taxi that came by to pick him up at the boardinghouse. He would sleep the whole trip, he stayed with Ana until nightfall, and he would come back. Those weekly trips were bankrupting him, he thinks, Carlitos always paid for the beers at the Negro-Negro now. Was that love, Zavalita?
“Have it your own way, have it your own way,” Carlitos said. “Have it your own way the both of you, Zavalita.”
He’d finally met Ana’s parents. Her father was a fat, loquacious Huancayan who had spent his life teaching history and Spanish in national high schools, and her mother was an aggressively pleasant mulatto woman. They had a house near the chipped stone courtyards of the Educational Unit and they received him with a noisy and affected hospitality. There were the bountiful lunches they inflicted on you on Sundays, there the anguished looks you exchanged with Ana, wondering when the parade of courses was going to stop. When it was over, he and Ana would go out to stroll through the straight and always sunny streets, go into some movie to neck, have some refreshments on the square, come home to chat and exchange quick kisses in the little parlor filled with Indian pottery. Sometimes Ana would come to spend the weekend with relatives and they could go to bed together for a few hours in some small hotel downtown.
“I know that you’re not asking me for advice,” Carlitos said. “That’s why I won’t give you any.”
It had been during one of those quick trips of Ana’s to Lima, at the end of the afternoon by the entrance to the Cine Roxy. She was biting her lips, he thinks, her nostrils were quivering, there was fright in her eyes, she was babbling: I know that you were careful, love, I was always careful too, love, I don’t know what could have happened, love. Santiago took her arm and, instead of the movies, they went to a café. They had talked quite calmly and Ana had accepted the fact that it couldn’t be born. But there were tears in her eyes and she talked a lot about how afraid she was of her parents and said good-bye with grief and rancor.
“I’m not asking you because I already know what it will be,” Santiago said. “Don’t get married.”
In two days Carlitos had got the name of a woman and Santiago went to see her in a run-down brick house in Barrios Altos. She was heavy-set, dirty and mistrustful and sent him away rudely: you were very much mistaken, young man, she didn’t commit crimes. It had been a week of exasperating running around, with a bad taste in his mouth and a continuous fright, of heated conversations with Carlitos and wakeful dawns at the boardinghouse: she was a nurse, she knew all kinds of midwives, doctors, she didn’t want to, it was a trap she was setting for him. Finally Norwin had found a doctor who didn’t have too many patients and, after devious evasions, he accepted. He wanted fifteen hundred soles and it took Santiago, Carlitos and Norwin three days among them to get it together. He called Ana on the telephone: it’s all set, all arranged, she should come to Lima as soon as possible. Making her see by the tone of your voice that you were putting the blame on her, he thinks, and that you weren’t forgiving her.
“Yes, that has to be it, but out of pure selfishness,” Carlitos said. “Not so much for your sake as for mine. I won’t have anyone to tell me his troubles anymore, anyone to watch the sun rise with in a dive. Have it your own way, Zavalita.”
On Thursday someone who was coming from Ica left Ana’s letter at the boardinghouse in Barranco: you can sleep peacefully, love. The heavy, asphyxiating sadness of bourgeois words, he thinks, she’d convinced a doctor and it was all over, the Mexican movies, all very painful and sad and now she was in bed and had had to invent a thousand lies so that mama and papa won’t know what’s going on, but even the misspellings had moved you so much, Zavalita. He thinks: what made her happy in the midst of her sorrow was the fact that she’d taken such a great worry off your back, love. She’d discovered that you didn’t love her, that she was just a toy for you, she couldn’t bear the idea because she did love you, she wasn’t going to see any more of you, time would help her forget you. That Friday and Saturday you’d felt relieved but not happy, Zavalita, and at night the upset would come along with peaceful feelings of remorse. Not the little worm, he thinks, not the knives. On Sunday, in the group taxi to Ica, he hadn’t shut his eyes.
“You made up your mind when you got the letter, you masochist,” Carlitos said.
He walked so fast from the square that he was out of breath when he got there. Her mother opened the door and her eyes were blinking and sensitive: Anita was ill, a terrible attack of colic, she’d given them a scare. She had him come into the living room and he had to wait some time until her mother returned and told him go up. That dizzy tender feeling when he saw her in her yellow pajamas, he thinks, pale and combing her hair hurriedly as he came in. She let go of the comb, the mirror; she began to cry.
“Not when the letter arrived, but right then,” Santiago said. “We called her mother, we announced it to her, and the three of us celebrated the engagement with coffee and tarts.”
They would be married in Ica, with no guests or ceremony, they would return to Lima and, until they found an inexpensive apartment, they would live at the boardinghouse. Maybe Ana could get a job in a hospital, both their salaries would be enough if they tightened their belts: there, Zavalita?
“We’re going to give you a bachelor party that will go down in the annals of Lima journalism,” Norwin said.
*
She went to fix her makeup in Malvina’s little room, she came back down, and when she passed the little parlor she ran into Martha, furious: now they were letting anybody in here, this place has turned into a dung heap. Anyone who could pay could come here, Flora was saying, ask old Ivonne and she’d see, Martha. Queta saw him through the door to the bar, from the back, like the first time, up on a stool, wrapped in a dark suit, his curly hair gleaming, his elbows on the bar. Robertito was serving him a beer. He was the first to arrive in spite of its being after nine o’clock, and there were four women chatting around the phonograph, pretending not to notice him. She went over to the bar, still not knowing whether or not
it bothered her to see him there.
“The gentleman was asking for you,” Robertito said with a sarcastic smile. “I told him it would be a miracle if he found you, Quetita.”
Robertito slipped catlike to the other end of the bar and Queta turned to look at him. Not like coals, not frightened, not like a dog: impatient, rather. His mouth was closed and it was moving as if chewing on a bit: his expression was not servile or respectful or even cordial, just vehement.
“So you came back to life,” Queta said. “I didn’t think we’d ever see you around here again.”
“I’ve got them in my wallet,” he muttered quickly. “Shall we go up?”
“In your wallet?” Queta began to smile, but he was still very serious, his tight jaws throbbing. “What’s eating you?”
“Has the price gone up over the last few months?” he asked, not sarcastically but with an impersonal tone, still in a hurry. “How much has it gone up?”
“You’re in a bad mood,” Queta said, startled by him and by the fact that she wasn’t annoyed at the changes she saw in him. He was wearing a red necktie, a white shirt, a cardigan sweater; his cheeks and chin were lighter than the quiet hands on the bar. “What kind of a way to act is this? What’s come over you during all this time?”
“I want to know if you’re coming up with me,” he said with a deadly calm in his voice now. But there was still that savage haste in his eyes. “Yes and well go on up, no and I’ll leave.”
What had changed so much in so little time? Not that he was any fatter or thinner, not that he’d become insolent. He’s like furious, Queta thought, but not with me or anyone, with himself.
“Or are you scared?” she said, making fun. “You’re not Cayo Shithead’s servant anymore, now you can come here whenever you feel like it. Or has Gold Ball forbidden you to go out at night?”
He didn’t get enraged, he didn’t get upset. He blinked just once and didn’t answer anything for a few minutes, slowly, pondering, searching for words.
“If I’ve wasted a trip, I’d better leave,” he finally said, looking into her eyes without fear. “Tell me right out.”
“Buy me a drink.” Queta got up on one of the stools and leaned against the wall, irritated now. “I can order a whiskey, I imagine.”
“You can order anything you want, but upstairs,” he said softly, very serious. “Shall we go up, or do you want me to leave?”
“You’ve learned bad manners with Gold Ball,” Queta said dryly.
“You mean the answer is no,” he muttered, getting off the stool. “Good night, then.”
But Queta’s hand held him back when he had already turned half around. She saw him stop, turn and look at her silently with his urgent eyes. Why? she thought, startled and furious, was it out of curiosity, was it because …? He was waiting like a statue. Five hundred, plus sixty for the room and for one time, and she heard and barely recognized her own voice, was it because …? did he understand? And he, nodding his head slightly: he understood. She asked him for the room money, ordered him to go up and wait for her in number twelve and when he disappeared up the stairs there was Robertito, a malefic, bittersweet smile on his smooth face, clinking the little key against the bar. Queta threw the money into his hands.
“Well, well, Quetita, I can’t believe my eyes,” he said slowly, with exquisite pleasure, squinting his eyes. “So you’re going to take care, of the darky.”
“Give me the key,” Queta said. “And don’t talk to me, fag, you know I can’t hear you.”
“How pushy you’ve become since you’ve joined the Bermúdez family,” Robertito said, laughing. “You don’t come around much and when you do, you treat us like dogs, Quetita.”
She snatched the key. Halfway up the stairs she ran into Malvina, who was coming down dying with laughter: the black sambo from last year was there, Queta. She pointed upstairs and all of a sudden her eyes lighted up, ah, he’d come for you, and she clapped her hands. But what was the matter, Quetita.
“That piece of shit of a Robertito,” Queta said. “I can’t stand his insolence anymore.”
“He must be jealous, don’t pay any attention to him.” Malvina laughed. “Everybody’s jealous of you now, Quetita. So much the better for you, silly.”
He was there waiting by the door to number twelve. Queta opened it and he went in and sat down on the corner of the bed. She locked the door, went to the washstand, drew the curtains, turned on the lights and then put her head into the room. She saw him, quiet, serious under the light bulb with its bulging shade, dark on the pink bedcover.
“Are you waiting for me to undress you?” she asked in a nasty way. “Come here and let me wash you.”
She saw him get up and come over without taking his eyes off her, his look had lost the aplomb and haste and had taken on the docility of the first time. When he was in front of her, he put his hand into his pocket with a quick and almost reckless motion, as if he remembered something essential. He handed her the bills, reaching out a hand that was slow and somewhat shameful, you paid in advance, didn’t you? as if he were handing her a letter with bad news in it: there it was, she could count it.
“You see, this whim is costing you a lot of money,” Queta said, shrugging her shoulders. “Well, you know what you’re doing. Take off your pants, let me get you washed up.”
He seemed undecided for a few seconds. He went toward a chair with a prudence that betrayed his embarrassment, and Queta, from the washstand, saw him sit down, take off his shoes, his jacket, his sweater, his pants, and fold them with extreme slowness. He took off his tie. He came toward her, walking with the same cautious step as before, his long tense legs moving rhythmically below the white shirt. When he was beside her he dropped his shorts and, after holding them in his hands for an instant, threw them at the chair, missing it. While she grasped his sex tightly and soaped and washed it, he didn’t try to touch her. She felt him stiff beside her, his hip rubbing against her, breathing deeply and regularly. She handed him the toilet paper to dry himself and he did it in a meticulous way, as if he wanted to take time.
“Now it’s my turn,” Queta said. “Go wait for me.”
He nodded, and she saw a reticent serenity in his eyes, a fleeting shame. She drew the curtain and, while she was filling the basin with hot water, she heard his long, even steps on the wooden floor and the creaking of the bed as it received him. The shitass has affected me with his sadness, she thought. She washed herself, dried, went into the room and, as she passed by the bed and saw him lying on his back, his arms crossed over his eyes, his shirt still on, half his body naked under the cone of light, she thought of an operating room, a body waiting for the scalpel. She took off her skirt and blouse and went over to the bed with her shoes on; he was still motionless. She looked at his stomach: beneath the tangle of hair was the blackness which just barely stood out against the skin, shiny with the recent water, and there his sex, which lay small and limp between his legs. She went over to turn out the lights. She came back and lay down beside him.
“Such a hurry to come upstairs, to pay me what you don’t have,” she said when she saw him making no move. “All for this?”
“You’re not treating me right,” his voice said, thick and cowardly. “You don’t even pretend. I’m not an animal, I’ve got my pride.”
“Take your shirt off and stop your nonsense,” Queta said. “Do you think you disgust me? With you or with the King of Rome, it’s all the same to me, black boy.”
She felt him sit up, sensed his obedient movements in the dark, saw in the air the white splotch of the shirt that he threw at the chair, visible in the threads of light coming through the window. The naked body fell down beside her again. She heard his more agitated breathing, smelled his desire, felt him touching her. She lay on her back, opened her arms, and an instant later received his crushing, sweaty flesh on her body. He was breathing anxiously beside her ear, his damp hands ran over her skin, and she felt his sex enter her softly. He was tryi
ng to take off her bra and she helped him by rolling to one side. She felt his wet mouth on her neck and shoulders and heard him panting and moving; she wrapped her legs around him and kneaded his back, his perspiring buttocks. She let him kiss her on the mouth but kept her teeth together. She heard him come with short, panting moans. She pushed him aside and felt him roll over like a dead man. She put her shoes on in the dark, went to the washbasin, and when she came back into the room and turned on the light, she saw him on his back again, his arms crossed over his face.
“I’ve been dreaming about this for a long time,” she heard him say as she was putting on her bra.
“Now you’re sorry about your five hundred soles,” Queta said.
“What do you mean, sorry?” She heard him laugh, still hiding his eyes. “No money was ever better spent.”
While she was putting on her skirt, she heard him laugh again, and the sincerity of his laugh surprised her.
“Did I really treat you bad?” Queta asked. “It wasn’t because of you, it was because of Robertito. He gets me on edge all the time.”
“Can I smoke a cigarette like this?” he asked. “Or do I have to leave now?”
“You can smoke three, if you want to,” Queta said. “But go wash up first.”
*
A send-off that would go down in history: it would start at noon in the Rinconcito Cajamarquino with a native lunch attended only by Carlitos, Norwin, Solórzano, Periquito, Milton and Darío; they would drag him around to a lot of bars in the afternoon, and at seven o’clock there’d be a cocktail party with nighttime butterflies and reporters from other papers at China’s apartment (she and Carlitos were back together again, for a while); Carlitos, Norwin and Santiago, just they, would top off the day at a whorehouse. But on the eve of the day set for the send-off, at nightfall, when Carlitos and Santiago were getting back to the city room after eating in La Crónica’s canteen, they saw Becerrita collapse on his desk, letting out a desperate God damn it to hell. There was his square, chubby little body falling apart, there the writers running over. They picked him up: his face was wrinkled in a grimace of infinite displeasure and his skin was purple. They rubbed him with alcohol, loosened his tie, fanned him. He was lying with his lungs congested, inanimate and exhaling an intermittent grunt. Arispe and two writers from the police page took him to the hospital in the van; a couple of hours later they called to tell them that he’d died of a stroke. Arispe wrote the obituary, which appeared edged in black: With his boots on, he thinks. The police reporters had written biographical sketches and apologies: his restless spirit, his contribution to the development of Peruvian journalism, a pioneer in police reporting and chronicles, a quarter of a century in the journalistic trenches.