Without his being aware of it, his steps had been leading him to his friend Adelaida’s shop filled with herbs, sewing articles, saints, Christs, and Virgins. There was the holy woman, short, thickset, barefoot, wearing the tunic of unbleached linen that hung down to her ankles, watching him from the door of her house with her enormous, piercing eyes.
“Hello, Felícito, long time no see,” she said in greeting, waving. “I was beginning to think you’d forgotten me.”
“Adelaida, you know very well you’re my best friend and I’ll never forget you.” He gave her his hand and patted her back affectionately. “I’ve had a lot of problems recently, you must know all about it. But here I am. Will you bring me a glass of that distilled water you have, it’s so clean and cool. I’m dying of thirst.”
“Come in, come in and sit down, Felícito. I’ll bring you a glass right this minute, sure I will.”
Compared to how hot it was outside, it was cool inside Adelaida’s shop, submerged in its customary half-light and stillness. Sitting in the rocker of woven straw, he contemplated the cobwebs, the shelves, the tables with boxes of nails, buttons, screws, seeds, stalks of herbs, needles, religious cards, rosaries, Virgins and Christs of plaster and wood in every size, large and small candles, while he waited for the holy woman’s return. Did Adelaida have any customers? As far as he could remember, all the times he’d come here, and he’d been here plenty of times, he’d never seen anyone buying anything. More than a shop, this place resembled a chapel. All that was missing was the altar. Every time he came here he had a feeling of peace that once, long ago, he used to have in churches when, during the early years of their marriage, Gertrudis would drag him to Mass on Sundays.
Adelaida handed him water from the distilling stone and he drank it with great pleasure.
“That’s some mess you got yourself into, Felícito,” said the holy woman, commiserating with a kind look. “Your girlfriend and your son hooked up to fleece you. My God, the ugly things you can see in this world. Just as well they put those two in jail.”
“All that’s over now, and do you know something, Adelaida? I don’t care anymore.” He shrugged and made a disdainful face. “That’s all behind me, and now I’ll start to forget about it. I don’t want it to poison my life. Now I’m going to put my heart and soul into moving Narihualá Transport ahead. On account of these scandals, I haven’t been paying attention to the company that puts food on my table. And if I don’t take care of it, it’ll be ruined.”
“That’s what I like, Felícito, the past dead and gone,” the holy woman said approvingly. “And now to work! You’ve always been a man who doesn’t give up, who keeps fighting till the end—”
“Do you know something, Adelaida?” Felícito interrupted her. “That inspiration you had the last time I came to see you, it came true. An extraordinary thing happened just like you said. I can’t tell you more about it right now, but as soon as I can, I will.”
“I don’t want you to tell me anything.” The fortune-teller became very serious and a shadow veiled her large eyes for an instant. “I’m not interested, Felícito. You know I don’t like it when those inspirations come to me. Sad to say, it always happens with you. It’s like you provoke them, hey waddya think.”
“I hope I don’t inspire any more, Adelaida,” Felícito said with a smile. “I don’t want any more surprises. From now on I want a peaceful, quiet life dedicated to my work.”
They were silent for a long time, listening to the noise from the street. The horns and motors of cars and trucks, the shouts of the peddlers, the voices and bustling of the passersby reached them, somehow softened by the tranquility of the place. Felícito thought that in spite of knowing Adelaida for so many years, she was still a great mystery to him. Did she have a family? Had she ever had a husband? Probably she’d come from an orphanage, one of those abandoned babies taken in and brought up on public charity, and then had always lived alone, like a mushroom, without parents, brothers and sisters, husband or children. He’d never heard Adelaida talk about any relatives, or even any friends. Maybe Felícito was the only person in Piura the fortune-teller could call a friend.
“Tell me something, Adelaida,” he asked. “Did you ever live in Huancabamba? Did you happen to grow up there?”
Instead of answering, the mulatta gave a loud laugh, her thick-lipped mouth opening wide, revealing her large, even teeth.
“I know why you asked me that, Felícito,” she exclaimed through her laughter. “Because of the witches of Las Huaringas, isn’t that right?”
“Don’t think that I believe you’re a witch or anything like it,” he assured her. “It’s just that you have, well, I don’t know what to call it, this faculty, this gift, whatever it is, for seeing the things that are going to happen, and it’s always amazed me. It’s incredible, hey waddya think. Every time you get an inspiration, things happen just the way you say. We’ve known each other for a lot of years, haven’t we? And whenever you’ve predicted something, it’s happened exactly the way you say. You’re not like everybody else, like simple mortals, you have something that nobody else has but you, Adelaida. If you wanted to, you could’ve been rich if you’d become a professional fortune-teller.”
While he spoke, she had become very serious.
“More than a gift, it’s a great burden that God put on my shoulders, Felícito,” she said with a sigh. “I’ve said it so many times. I don’t like it when those inspirations come to me all of a sudden. I don’t know where they come from, or why it happens only with certain people, like you. It’s a mystery to me too. For example, I never have inspirations about myself. I’ve never known what’s going to happen to me tomorrow or the next day. Well, to answer your question: Yes, I was in Huancabamba, just one time. Let me tell you something. It makes me very sad that people go all the way up there, spending what they have and what they don’t have, going into debt to get a cure from the masters, that’s what they’re called. They’re liars, most of them at least. The ones who use a guinea pig, the ones who bathe sick people in the icy lake water. Instead of curing them, sometimes they kill them with pneumonia—”
Smiling, Felícito interrupted her, gesturing with both hands. “It’s not always like that, Adelaida. A friend of mine, a driver for Narihualá Transport, his name was Andrés Novoa, had undulant fever and the doctors at the Hospital Obrero didn’t know how to cure him. They said it was hopeless. He went to Huancabamba half dead, and one of the witches took him to Las Huaringas, made him bathe in the lake, and gave him I don’t know what to drink. And he came back cured. I saw it with my own eyes, I swear, Adelaida.”
“Maybe there are some exceptions,” she admitted. “But for each real healer, there are ten crooks, Felícito.”
They talked for a long time. The conversation moved from the witches, masters, healers, and shamans of Huancabamba, so famous that people from all over Peru came to consult them about their illnesses, to the praying women and holy women of Piura, generally humble old women dressed as nuns who went from house to house to pray beside the beds of the sick. They were satisfied with a tip of a few pennies or even just a plate of food for their prayers, which, many believed, completed the work of the doctors by helping to cure patients. To Felícito’s surprise, Adelaida didn’t believe in any of that either. She thought the praying women and healers were liars too. It was curious that someone with her gifts, who could anticipate the future of certain men and women, believed so little in the healing powers of others. Maybe she was right and there were lots of frauds, male and female, among those who claimed to have the power to heal the sick. Felícito was surprised to hear Adelaida say that not so long ago in Piura there had even been certain dark women, the consolers, called on by some families to help the dying pass, something they did in the midst of prayers, cutting the jugular with an extremely long nail they let grow on their index finger for just that purpose.
On the other hand, Felícito was amazed to learn that Adelaida was a steadfast beli
ever in the legend that the image of the Captive Lord in the Church of Ayabaca had been sculpted by Ecuadoran carvers who really were angels.
“You believe in that superstition, Adelaida?”
“I believe it because I’ve heard the story told by the people who live there. It’s been passed from parents to children ever since it happened, and if it’s lasted this long, it must be true.”
Felícito had often heard about that miracle but never took it seriously. It was said that many years ago now, a committee of important people from Ayabaca had taken up a collection to commission a sculpture of Christ. They crossed into Ecuador and found three men dressed in white who turned out to be carvers. They hired them immediately to come to Ayabaca and sculpt the image. They did but disappeared before they were paid their fee. The same committee went back to Ecuador to look for them, but nobody there knew them or anything about them. In other words, they were angels. It was something Gertrudis believed in, but it surprised him that Adelaida would swallow that miracle too.
They chatted for a long time, and Felícito felt much better than when he’d arrived. He hadn’t forgotten his conversations with Miguel and Mabel—maybe he’d never forget them—but the hour he’d spent with Adelaida had helped to cool the memory of the encounters so they no longer weighed on him like a cross.
He thanked Adelaida for the distilled water and the conversation, and though she resisted, he obliged her to accept the fifty soles he put in her hand when he said goodbye.
When he went out, the sun seemed even stronger. He walked slowly toward his house, and on the way only two strangers approached to greet him. He thought, with some relief, that gradually he’d stop being famous and well known. People would forget about the spider, and soon they’d stop pointing him out and coming up to him. Perhaps the day wasn’t distant when he’d be able to walk down the streets of the city again like an anonymous pedestrian.
When he reached his house on Calle Arequipa, lunch was ready. Saturnina had prepared a vegetable broth, the typical tuber-and-dried-beef dish of olluquitos con charqui, and rice. Gertrudis had a pitcher of lemonade with lots of ice ready. They sat down to eat in silence, and only when he’d finished his last spoonful of broth did Felícito tell his wife that he’d seen Miguel that morning and had proposed withdrawing the charges if Miguel agreed to drop his last name. She listened to him in silence, and when he stopped speaking she said nothing.
“I’m sure he’ll accept and then go free,” he added. “And he’ll leave Piura, as I demanded. He’d never find work here with his record.”
She nodded, not saying a word.
“Aren’t you going to visit him?” Felícito asked.
Gertrudis shook her head. “I don’t ever want to see him again either,” she declared, eating the broth in slow spoonfuls. “After what he did to you, I couldn’t.”
They continued eating in silence, and only much later, when Saturnina had cleared the dishes, Felícito murmured, “I was in Castilla too, I’m sure you can guess why. I went to put an end to that matter. It’s done. Finished forever. I wanted you to know that.”
There was another long silence, interrupted at times by the croaking of a frog in the garden. Finally, Felícito heard Gertrudis ask, “Do you want coffee or chamomile tea?”
XX
When Don Rigoberto awoke, it was still dark; he heard the murmur of the ocean and thought, “The day has finally come.” He was engulfed by a sensation of relief and excitement. Was this happiness? Lucrecia slept peacefully beside him. She must be extremely tired, the day before she’d stayed up very late packing. He listened to the movement of the ocean for a while—a music never heard in Barranco during the day, only at night and at dawn, when the street noise subsided—and then he got up and went to the study in his pajamas and slippers. He searched the poetry shelves and found the book of works by Fray Luis de León. In the light of the lamp, he read the poem dedicated to the blind musician Francisco de Salinas. He’d been thinking about it the night before as he was dozing off and then had dreamed about it. He’d read it often and now, after reading it one more time, slowly, barely moving his lips, he confirmed it yet again: This was the most beautiful homage to music he knew, a poem that as it explained the inexplicable reality of music, was itself music. Music with ideas and metaphors, an intelligent allegory by a man of faith, which, filling the reader with an ineffable sensation, revealed the secret, transcendent, superior essence that dwells in some corner of the human animal and begins to rise to consciousness only through the perfect harmony of a beautiful symphony, an intense poem, a great opera, an outstanding exposition of art. A sensation that for Fray Luis, a believer, became confused with grace and the mystic trance. What was the music like, the creation of the blind organist to whom Fray Luis de León wrote this superb eulogy? He’d never heard it. So he had a job to do during his stay in Madrid: obtain a CD with the compositions of Francisco de Salinas. One of the groups dedicated to ancient music—Jordi Savall’s, for instance—must have devoted a record to the man who inspired this marvel of a poem.
Closing his eyes, he thought that in a few hours he, Lucrecia, and Fonchito would be crossing the skies, leaving behind the thick clouds of Lima, beginning their postponed trip to Europe. At last! They’d arrive in the middle of autumn. He imagined golden trees and cobblestone streets decorated with leaves loosened by the cold. He couldn’t believe it. Four weeks, one in Madrid, another in Paris, another in London, and the last divided between Florence and Rome. He’d planned the thirty-one days so that their pleasure would not be spoiled by fatigue, avoiding as much as possible those unpleasant surprises that can ruin a trip. Reserved flights, tickets to concerts, operas, and museum exhibitions already purchased, hotels and pensions paid for in advance. It would be the first time Fonchito had set foot on the continent of Rimbaud, the Europe aux anciens parapets. It would be especially satisfying to show his son the Prado, the Louvre, the National Gallery, the Uffizi, St. Peter’s, the Sistine Chapel on this trip. Surrounded by so many beautiful things, would he forget this recent dark period and the spectral appearances of Edilberto Torres, the incubus or succubus (what was the difference?) who had so embittered Lucrecia’s life and his? He hoped so. This month would be a purifying bath: The family would put behind them the worst period of their lives. All three would return to Lima rejuvenated, reborn.
He recalled his last conversation with Fonchito in his study, two days earlier, and his sudden impertinence.
“If you like Europe so much, if you dream about it day and night, why have you spent your whole life in Peru, Papa?”
The question disconcerted him, and for a moment he didn’t know how to respond. He felt guilty about something but didn’t know what.
“Well, I think if I’d gone there to live, I would never have enjoyed the beautiful things on the old continent as much.” He tried to elude the danger. “I would have grown so accustomed to them that eventually I wouldn’t even notice them, which is what happens to millions of Europeans. In short, it never occurred to me to move there, I always thought I had to live here. Accept my fate, if you like.”
“All the books you read are by European writers,” his son insisted. “And I think most of the CDs, drawings, and etchings are by Europeans too. By Italians, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Germans, and a couple of North Americans. Is there anything Peruvian that you like, Papa?”
Don Rigoberto was going to protest, to say there were many things, but he chose to assume a doubtful expression and make an exaggeratedly skeptical gesture.
“Three things, Fonchito,” he said, pretending to speak with the pomposity of a learned pedant. “The paintings of Fernando de Szyszlo. César Moro’s poetry in French. And prawns from Majes, of course.”
“There’s no way to talk to you seriously about anything, Papa,” his son protested. “I think you’ve taken my question as a joke because you don’t dare tell me the truth.”
“The little snot-nose is sharper than a tack and loves to giv
e his father a hard time,” he thought. “Was I the same way when I was a kid?” He couldn’t remember.
He was going over papers, taking a last look in his carry-on bag to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. A short while later dawn broke, and he heard activity in the kitchen. Preparing breakfast already? When he went back to the bedroom, he saw the three suitcases in the hall, packed and tagged by Lucrecia. He went to the bathroom, shaved and showered, and when he returned to his bedroom, Lucrecia had gotten up and was waking Fonchito. Justiniana announced that breakfast was waiting for them in the dining room.
“I can’t believe the day is here,” he said to Lucrecia while he enjoyed his orange juice, café con leche, and toast with butter and marmalade. “During the past few months I’d begun to think we’d be trapped for years and years in the legal tangle the hyenas got me into, and would never set foot in Europe again.”
“If I tell you what I’m most curious about on this trip, you’re going to laugh,” replied Lucrecia, who took only a cup of plain tea for breakfast. “Do you know what it is? Armida’s invitation. What will that dinner be like? Whom did she invite? I still can’t believe that Ismael’s old servant is going to give us a banquet in her house in Rome. I’m dying of curiosity, Rigoberto. About how she lives, how she entertains, who her friends are. Has she learned Italian? She has an elegant house, I imagine.”
“Well, yes, certainly,” said Rigoberto, somewhat disappointed. “She has enough money to live like a queen, of course. I hope she also has the taste and sensitivity to use that kind of fortune in the best way. After all, why shouldn’t she? She’s shown herself to be smarter than all of us put together. She got what she wanted and now there she is, living in Italy with Ismael’s entire inheritance in her pocket. And the twins defeated up and down the line. I’m happy for her, really.”