The Neighborhood

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  “What I don’t understand, Luciano,” said Quique, taking advantage of a pause in his friend’s account, “is why telling such nice things about your childhood makes you so sad.”

  There was a brief silence. Not only Quique but Chabela and Marisa were looking at Luciano, waiting for his answer.

  “What makes me sad is not remembering my grandfather Casimiro but my grandmother Laura,” said Luciano at last, in a changed voice. He had become very serious. Before continuing, he looked at the other three in a strange way, part ironic and part mocking. “Do you know why? Because my maternal grandmother was not really named Laura. And she was Chinese.”

  Marisa and Quique smiled, but Chabela opened her eyes in astonishment.

  “Chinese?” she asked. “A Chinese Chinese? Seriously, Luciano?”

  “Very seriously, my love,” Luciano agreed. “You never knew because it was always taboo, the family’s great secret.”

  “Well, well, the things I discover after ten years of marriage,” Chabela said with a laugh. “So your grandmother was Chinese.”

  “Well, maybe she was American Chinese,” Luciano explained, “but I think she was a Chinese Chinese. Now comes the serious part. Her father was the grocer in the ranch’s little village.”

  “And do you want to tell me, Luciano, how it is that a great landowner from Ica like Don Casimiro, who surely thought himself a blue-blooded aristocrat, married the daughter of the grocer on his ranch?”

  Marisa had leaned her head on her husband’s shoulder, and he embraced her and, from time to time, caressed her hair.

  “The explanation is love,” said Marisa. “What else could it be? The landowner fell in love with the Chinese girl, end of story. Don’t they say that Asian women are wild in bed?”

  “Yes, my grandfather must have fallen head over heels for the Chinese girl,” Luciano agreed. “She must have been good-looking, attractive, for a landowner loaded down with prejudices, no doubt a racist and a despot like all the people of his class, to take that incredible step: to marry in church the daughter of a grocer who, perhaps, was illiterate and had never worn shoes in his life.”

  There was a long pause and the sadness on his face was transformed into a smile.

  “They married according to God’s law in the church on the ranch, no less,” he added. “There are photos of the wedding, which the family tried to destroy, but I’ve managed to rescue a few. Many guests came from Lima, of course, who would have been horrified by the landowner’s madness. It must have been the scandal of the century, not only in Ica but also in the rest of Peru. In the photographs you can’t see my grandmother’s face very well, only that she was small and thin. But I’d bet she was pretty, too. What’s certain is that she had a formidable character. A real matriarch.”

  “He probably got her pregnant, and since he was so pious, he felt the obligation to marry her.” Chabela leaned toward her husband, as if examining him: “Now I understand why your eyes are a little slanted, Luciano.”

  “From now on we’ll call you the Chinaman,” Marisa added, laughing.

  “Be quiet, be quiet, that’s what they call Fujimori,” Luciano interrupted, laughing as well. “I’d prefer half-breed.”

  “If they begin to call you half-breed, I’m getting a divorce,” said Chabela, turning up her nose.

  “Go on, Luciano,” Quique urged him. “The truth is that I find the story of Don Casimiro fascinating.”

  “What follows is even better than the marriage of the landowner and the little Chinese girl,” said Luciano. And he looked at his watch. “I still have time to get to the end of the story before curfew.”

  He resumed the account of his maternal grandparents, explaining that he had never been able to find out the original name of his Chinese grandmother, because before they married, his grandfather rebaptized her with the name Laura, which is what the family called her from then on. As soon as she had married, the Chinese girl began to have children—“my mother and three uncles, two of them died as children”—and gradually she began to take on authority. Not content with running only the house, she began to help her husband manage the ranch.

  “When I was little, the old peons on the ranch still remembered her,” said Luciano. “Wearing trousers, riding boots, a straw hat, carrying a whip and riding through the fields, watching the irrigation, the sowing, the harvests, giving orders, coming out with a curse and even a lash of the whip for peons who were lazy or intractable.”

  But what impressed Luciano most was that his grandmother Laura, at the traditional celebration of the National Holiday, July 28, in the middle of the party that his grandparents held for all the employees and peons, with bands and ballerinas and tap dancers brought in from Chincha and El Carmen, took off her shoes and, barefoot like the mestizas on the ranch, danced a marinera with one of the peons, generally a mixed-breed Indian and black, or a full black, who were always the best marinera dancers. Something extraordinary, in any case, for the mistress of the house, the wife of the big owner, to dance a marinera with a peon, applauded and urged on by dozens of peons—peasants, tenant farmers, chauffeurs, tractor drivers, and domestic workers. It was something that made them all frenetic, apparently. They applauded her wildly because, it seems, Grandmother Laura was a great marinera dancer. That annual dance, that marinera on the bare earth, as it’s danced in the most mestizo towns, was something that the entire ranch waited for, the event of the year.

  “I would like to have known your grandmother,” said Quique, looking at his watch. “Yes, there’s still time before curfew, at this time of night the traffic moves quickly and we’ll reach my house in fifteen minutes at the most. Doña Laura must have been an unusual woman.”

  “She died very young, giving birth to the last of my uncles,” said Luciano. “I’ll show you some photos of her, it’s enough to see her to know she had an awe-inspiring personality. It’s just that…”

  Luciano stopped smiling and became serious.

  “It’s just what?” Chabela encouraged him to continue with the story. “Don’t leave it like that, stammering.”

  “The fact is that the romantic story of the landowner who falls in love with the grocer’s daughter,” Luciano added, with a shrug, “has a part that’s pretty cruel.”

  “What is it?” Marisa asked, extending her head. “It must be the most interesting.”

  “Once a year, Grandmother Laura took a mysterious trip. She would go alone, and be away for several days,” Luciano recounted, slowly, with pauses, keeping his audience of three in suspense.

  “And where did she go?” Chabela asked. “Ay, Luciano, we have to dig things out of you with a serving spoon.”

  “That’s the question that’s impossible to answer,” said Luciano. “The official version is that she went to see her family. Because, when my grandmother married, her entire family, beginning with her father the grocer and, I imagine, her mother and brothers and sisters, if she had any, disappeared from the ranch. Yes, yes, from this point on everything I’m telling you is supposition. I imagine that my grandfather’s family, or he himself, drove them off. He didn’t care about marrying the Chinese girl. But the grocer and his family staying on and rubbing elbows with their in-laws must have been too much for Don Casimiro. They were sent into exile so there would be no trace of them. Perhaps they negotiated it. My grandfather might have given them money so they would settle as far as possible from Ica. That annual trip by Grandmother Laura was to visit her exiled family. Where? I’ve never known. I imagine they would have been sent to the other end of the country. To the mountains, or the jungle, who knows? In other words, perhaps I have cousins in some godforsaken little town in Loreto or Chachapoyas.”

  “If we’re going to imagine things,” Quique joked, “perhaps your grandfather or his family had them all killed. Something fast so there’d be no trace left of that familial shame. Your grandmother Laura, on her annual trip, probably went to place flowers on the graves of all her relatives.”

&
nbsp; Marisa and Chabela laughed, but not Luciano.

  “You say it as a joke, but I’ve thought that something like that wasn’t impossible back then. Half a century ago, what value could the lives of some wretched Chinese have had? Perhaps they did have them killed, yes. Those people were quite capable of it.”

  “I suppose you’re joking, Luciano,” Chabela protested. “I suppose you’re not seriously saying something so monstrously stupid.”

  “It’s a harsh ending to a story that’s so romantic,” Marisa said with a sigh. “I think we ought to go, Quique. I don’t want us to be late and have some patrol stop us. We’ve had enough problems, haven’t we?”

  “Yes, yes, leave now,” said Chabela. “One of those patrols stopped a friend of mine after curfew and the police were so brash they got a pile of money from her.”

  “The damn curfew,” said Quique, standing up, still holding his wife’s hand. “The truth is, I’d stay all night listening to you tell the story of the Chinese girl.”

  “It did me good to tell you about it,” said Luciano, accompanying them across the huge garden to the exit. “The great shame of my maternal family burned inside. I feel as if I’ve made amends to my grandmother Laura, and all her kin.”

  At the street door there was a booth with an armed guard, who said good night to them. Quique and Marisa said goodbye to Luciano and Chabela, got into their car, and left.

  “Listen, listen,” said Quique in a suggestive way. “When you and Chabela said goodbye you almost kissed each other on the mouth.”

  “Did it make you jealous?” Marisa asked with a laugh. But when she saw that Quique had slammed on the brakes, she became alarmed. “Why are you stopping?”

  “It didn’t make me jealous, it made me envious, Blondie,” he said. “I stopped to kiss you. Give me your mouth, darling.”

  He kissed her hard, putting his tongue in her mouth, swallowing her saliva.

  “That’s enough, Quique,” she said, pushing him away. “It’s dangerous, we can be mugged. It’s very dark here, keep driving.”

  “I’m more in love with you every day,” he said, starting to drive again. “This damn scandal was good for this, at least. To know that I’m crazy about you. That I’m lucky enough to have married the most beautiful woman in the world. And the most delicious in bed, too.”

  “Don’t look at me, look at the road, Quique, we’ll have an accident. And please don’t drive so fast.”

  “I want to get home fast so I can undress you myself,” he said. “And kiss you from your hair down to your feet, millimeter by millimeter, yes, yes, from your head to your feet. And tonight, no turning out the light. I’ll turn them all on, not just the one on the night table.”

  “Go on, I don’t recognize you. You’re not like this, Quique. What’s happened to you, if you don’t mind my asking.”

  “I’ve discovered that you’re the most sensual and exciting woman in the world, my love.”

  “Coming from an expert in the subject, it’s a great compliment, Your Majesty.”

  “Be careful about those jokes, or I’ll stop again right now and make love to you in the car, Blondie.”

  “Ooh, how frightening,” Marisa said with a laugh. “Don’t go so fast, Quique, we’ll have an accident.”

  He slowed down a little and they spent the rest of the drive home joking and laughing. When they reached San Isidro, across from the Golf Club, they still had ten minutes before curfew began.

  “Why are there so many police?” Marisa asked in surprise.

  There were two patrol cars blocking the ramp that led to the building’s garages, and both had their lights on. When they saw that Enrique’s car had stopped in front of them, the doors of the patrol cars opened and several men in uniform and civilian clothes got out, approached, and surrounded the car. Quique lowered the window and an officer bent over and brought his head very close to speak to him. He carried a lit flashlight.

  “Engineer Enrique Cárdenas?” he asked, raising his hand to his kepi.

  “Yes, that’s me,” Quique agreed. “What is it, officer?”

  “Good evening, Señor Cárdenas. You need to come with us. But you can park your car first. We’ll wait for you, that’s no problem.”

  “Come with you where?” Quique asked. “Why?”

  “Dr. Morante, the prosecutor, will explain it to you,” said the police officer, moving aside to make room for a man in civilian clothes, short, gray-haired, with a small brush mustache, who nodded to the couple.

  “I’m sorry, Señor Cárdenas,” he greeted him with forced amiability. “I have an order from the judge that explains our presence here. You’re under arrest.”

  “Under arrest?” said Quique, astounded. “May I ask why?”

  “For the murder of the journalist Rolando Garro,” said Dr. Morante. “There is a formal charge against you, and the judge has issued an arrest warrant. Here it is, you can read it. I hope it’s a misunderstanding and that everything is cleared up. I don’t advise you to resist, Engineer. That could work against you.”

  17

  Strange Operations Regarding Juan Peineta

  Juan Peineta left the Hotel Mogollón very early, asking himself again where Serafín had gotten to, since he hadn’t shown up for three days. Or was it four? Or more than a week? That’s enough forgetting, damn it. He headed for Abancay Avenue. Just as well that Willy Rodrigo, the Ruletero, lived in Barrios Altos now. Before, when he was in Callao, going to see him was a real adventure. He had to walk to Plaza San Martín, where he took the microbus to Callao. It was the only vehicle he got into, every month or month and a half, to visit his compadre and friend, king of the timba. Nobody knew where his nickname, the Ruletero, came from until one day Willy told him it was from one of the mambos of Pérez Prado, the inventor of that rhythm, a kind of music that, in his youth, he would sing and dance all day. But neither he nor anyone else in Lima knew what the strange Cuban word ruletero meant: pimp? cabdriver? lottery ticket seller?

  Why did Willy want to see him so urgently? It was a strange call he’d made the night before to the Hotel Mogollón: “I need to see you very urgently, Juanito. I can’t say anything else on the phone. Shall we have lunch tomorrow? Great. Until tomorrow, then.” What was it about? Why hadn’t Willy given him at least a clue? Juan Peineta began to walk up Abancay Avenue; at the Congress he would turn toward the long, winding Junín Alleyway, and at the end of that he’d be in Five Corners, where Willy lived: at least he remembered the way clearly. At times he had the feeling that more things evaporated from his memory each day, that soon he would be a phantom without a past.

  He and Willy had been friends since the days when Juan Peineta practiced the noble art of declamation and the Ruletero owned a large theater in the Cantagallo district, in Rímac; he would hire Juan to recite his poems between the dance numbers and Andean songs. Willy’s theater also offered evenings of wrestling, but he didn’t invite Juan Peineta to these shows (he had once, and the whistling and shouts of “Queer!” and “Faggot!” from the galleries dissuaded him from serving that dish a second time). The Ruletero had sold the theater some time ago; now he managed a gambling house in Five Corners, not far from the monument to Felipe Pinglo, the great composer of old-style waltzes. Earlier, when he lived in Callao, Willy had another monument close to his house: the one to Sarita Colonia, the patron saint of thieves. Nobody was as different from Juan Peineta as Willy, the night owl in his dive where unfortunate gamblers with bad reputations came to find their luck, many of them holdup men, ex-convicts who rubbed elbows at night with drunkards, pimps, and vagrants who sometimes settled their differences with knives or kicks. Also swarming among Willy’s clients were the informers and undercover cops who went there to cadge a beer and pick up information.

  And yet they were joined by a friendship greater than the vast differences in their lives. For a long while, four or five times a year, Juan made the long trip from the center of Lima to that rough district around the port of Cal
lao to spend the day with his old friend. Now, since Willy had moved to the center of colonial Lima, it was easier, he no longer had to make that endless, uncomfortable trip to the port, just this tedious walk. Willy invited him to have lunch at some noisy bar where they had fresh mussels and cold beer. As they concentrated on the feast, they recalled the old days when Juan earned his living by practicing his vocation as an artist-reciter and was happily married to Atanasia, and Willy managed his folkloric theater, which allowed him to take to bed some of the artists who filed through his tent, though Juan believed he hadn’t made love to as many as he boasted about. Because Willy was also a braggart. Juan knew he exaggerated and lied but enjoyed listening to him anyway. Why had Willy called him so urgently? Why hadn’t he wanted to tell him anything on the phone?

  It took him almost an hour to reach the labyrinthine crossroads of Five Corners, in the heart of Barrios Altos. When Juan was young, the neighborhood was full of Peruvian-music clubs and many bohemians lived there: artists, musicians, even the white kids from Miraflores and San Isidro who were fans of Peruvian music came to hear the best singers, guitar players, and cajón players and to dance with mixed-race cholos and blacks. There were still traces of the golden age of Barrios Altos, the age of La Palizada, Felipe Pinglos, and all the great composers and promoters of Peruvian music.

  Now the neighborhood had decayed and its streets were dangerous. But Willy was in his element here, presiding over the gambling house. He seemed to make a lot of money, though Juan Peineta was afraid Willy would be knifed one of these days. He walked slowly, enduring the pain of his swollen varicose veins, along the lengthy, serpentine, and always crowded Junín Alleyway. The city became poorer and older as he walked past the stands where they sold flowers, food, fruit, all kinds of fried food, all kinds of trinkets, past old colonial houses that seemed on the point of collapsing, past the children in rags, beggars or vagrants who slept in doorways or beneath lampposts. In addition to colonial churches, there were many associations and crosses around which a group of the devout sometimes lit candles to Holy Christ or the saints, praying on their knees and touching the image. There, after passing the Convent of Las Descalzadas and the Heeren Manor, in an unpaved alley, was Willy the Ruletero’s gambling den.