‘You never married because nobody ever asked you,’ Gloria retorted, her vicious streak always stimulated by her sister’s smugness.
‘Don’t you believe it,’ said Lucia enigmatically. ‘I always said: it is better to be mistress of your own house than play servant in the house of a man who has a mistress in another.’
‘Well I tell you, the man is not born yet who can humiliate Gloria De Souza Lozada,’ Gloria announced loudly and resolutely. She then unlocked the bedroom door, ready to face her husband.
The mayor was somewhat shocked at the sight of the animated and defiant Gloria who greeted him on his return, and heeded the servants’ warning to treat her with caution. On his first morning back home he took her a tray of fruit, freshly baked rolls, a selection of cold meats and cheeses and a pot of coffee to enjoy in the luxury of her bed.
‘How are you this morning, my sweet?’ he enquired in a simpering tone, which caused the tray to fly across the bedroom with the declaration:
‘I am not your sweet, you whore-loving bastard. You think you can go off humiliating me with your screwing and your mistresses. Well I tell you, Rodriguez Ramirez. The man is not born yet who can humiliate Gloria De Souza Lozada.’
The mayor’s threatened visit to the clinic did not happen for a few days after his return. Preoccupied with his sudden discovery of a foreigner in the plaza, and dealing with the problem of an increasingly difficult Gloria at home, his attentions were diverted elsewhere. When his visit did occur, it was unannounced and happened at a most inopportune moment.
Arturo, having decided to use Ernesto’s time usefully, had embarked upon a programme of teaching him to carry out basic medical procedures in case his assistance should be called upon in an emergency. The plan included training Ernesto to give injections, in the event that a mass vaccination campaign needed to be mobilised against one of the many infectious diseases that plagued the country. Arturo had brought back from the market a large bag of oranges for the purpose, which he laid out in front of the clinic. Ernesto was enthusiastically making his way up and down the line of fruit, jabbing furiously with a huge syringe full of water, while Arturo observed the procedure with increasing horror.
Arturo had grown tired of discussing the finer points of how to give an injection without causing permanent damage to the patient, and so the conversation had inevitably wandered to the kung fu films that Ernesto had seen during his stay in Puerta de la Coruña. In an effort to widen Ernesto’s knowledge of the cinema, Arturo was trying to explain the film that had just reached the city before he left.
‘But if everybody knows that the ship is going to sink, I don’t see where the suspense comes in,’ Ernesto said, impaling another orange with vigour.
‘Well, it’s about more than just the ship sinking.’
‘What else is it about, then?’
‘Well, it’s a love story really.’
‘A love story? About a ship that sinks?’
‘Yes, but it’s more than that, it’s also a comment on society. It’s about how love transcends social class and social taboos. I suppose it’s about the strength of love, especially forbidden love,’ Arturo said, and his thoughts drifted momentarily to Claudia. ‘You see there is a woman on the ship and she falls in love with a young man. The point is that she shouldn’t really fall in love with him because she’s richer than him and she’s married, but she does anyway.’
‘Does what?’
‘She falls in love with him.’
‘Then what?’
‘They go dancing together.’
‘Is that it?’
‘Well, then the ship sinks and he dies.’
‘Oh,’ replied Ernesto, clearly unimpressed. ‘I prefer a bit more action, like in Fists of Glory where the hero takes on a whole army and kills them using his bare hands. Did you see it?’
‘No, I didn’t,’ Arturo replied. ‘There’s more to the cinema than the cheap kung fu movies they show in Puerta de la Coruña, Ernesto.’
‘I know. I didn’t just watch kung fu movies there,’ Ernesto replied defensively.
‘So what else did you see, then?’
‘Well,’ Ernesto said confidentially, ‘I did see a film called the Dance of the Lost Virgins. I thought it was going to be about a town like ours, but it wasn’t. They did a very interesting dance in it, though. Shall I show you?’
‘No,’ Arturo said firmly, ‘we’re supposed to be working,’ but with no effect. Ernesto picked up two of the oranges and, holding them under his T-shirt, started prancing up and down the path, wiggling his hips in a bizarre attempt to imitate a belly dance.
‘You shouldn’t be watching films like that,’ Arturo chastised in a serious tone, determined not to be drawn into Ernesto’s foolishness; then collapsed into helpless giggles as Ernesto wiggled his way backwards and forwards in front of the clinic.
‘I hope that’s not my wife you’re making fun of, you little bastard,’ a voice cut through the hysteria. Ernesto leapt into the air. The oranges fell from his T-shirt, rolled down the path and landed at the visitor’s feet. Ramon, who was running several steps behind the mayor, picked one of them up and started to peel it, offering the other to his patron.
‘What the hell is going on here?’ the mayor bellowed, dismissively knocking the orange from Ramon’s hand.
Arturo, in a state of shock at the appearance of the uninvited guest, failed to immediately grasp the seriousness of the situation. In an effort to tidy up the entrance to the clinic, he started to pick up the other oranges. By the time the mayor reached the clinic door, he was standing with the bundle of fruit gripped firmly in his arms.
‘So, you’re the doctor who’s been causing me so much trouble,’ the mayor said, by way of an introduction. Arturo extended a hand to greet him, and the fruit cascaded like an offering at his feet.
‘I have a serious bone to pick with you. I thought you were gone for good,’ he said, addressing Ernesto. Then turning to Arturo added, ‘Is this what I’m paying you for? To mess around with this bloody fool?’ Arturo sensed that this was not the moment to point out that he had not yet received a single payment from the town and was still living off the small allowance that his mother had insisted his father give him before he left home.
‘I’m very pleased to meet you,’ Arturo said, attempting to regain some dignity. ‘As you can see we have everything organised and ready to start work. Ramon has brought me all the necessary supplies, which I understand you kindly arranged to be sent by the provincial authority.’
‘Never mind that,’ the mayor replied brusquely, pushing past Arturo into the clinic, with Ramon close at his heels.
‘How long have you been here exactly?’
‘Exactly, I’m not sure,’ Arturo said, looking at Ernesto for help. ‘Over a month now, I think.’
‘So where are they?’ the mayor demanded, gazing around the empty and immaculate clinic.
‘Who?’ Arturo asked.
‘The bloody sick and dying. The women and screaming children. I don’t see anyone here.’
Ernesto cast a glance under the small examination bed, as if to hunt out any stray patient that might be hiding there. ‘There aren’t any,’ he replied.
‘What do you mean there aren’t any?’ the mayor said slowly.
‘Well, nobody has been here yet,’ Ernesto continued, ‘except me.’
‘What did you come for?’ the mayor asked. Ernesto turned red and said nothing.
‘So where are they?’ he demanded of Arturo again, now standing so close to him that Arturo could smell the rancid tang on the mayor’s breath.
‘I don’t know,’ he replied quietly. ‘I’m not sure they understand why I’m here. I was hoping perhaps that you could help, once you returned, with an announcement or something to the town, or maybe an official opening of the clinic, so that people can get to know me. Many people don’t even know where the clinic is. Perhaps they’re afraid to come here.’
‘Afraid! Ignorant peasa
nts, that’s the trouble. I have to live in a town full of bloody ignorant peasants, like this one,’ and the mayor waved his arm in the direction of Ernesto, who was now hovering in the doorway waiting for an opportunity to escape.
Arturo glanced at Ernesto, who looked down at his feet, and Arturo caught the fleeting glimpse of shame in his eyes. Arturo felt the same feeling of indignation rising in him that he had felt on behalf of Doña Julia all those years ago.
Quickly recovering himself, Ernesto replied in his usual playful tone as if no offence had been given or taken: ‘I’m sure people will like the clinic eventually, Don Ramirez. You know how it is. People take time to get used to new things. The doctor here is making some good friends though, aren’t you, doctor? He’s been spending time at Don Bosco’s.’
‘And what has our good friend Don Bosco been telling you?’ the mayor asked.
‘Oh, nothing,’ Arturo replied vaguely. ‘He says that people don’t really know why I am here, or what they are supposed to come and talk to me about. That is why I’ve been waiting for you to come back, Don Ramirez. As you invited me I thought you could help explain it. I’m eager to start work.’
‘Well you’d better start soon. I’m expecting some important visitors, and you, sonny,’ he said, pointing his finger at Arturo, ‘had better not fuck up when they arrive.’
The mayor eased his sweating body into the small chair beside Arturo’s desk, pulled a damp, grey piece of cloth from his pocket and began to wipe his face with it.
Arturo stared at his employer in silence, a shudder of repulsion running through him. He had felt the same sensation once before. It was on his first day at the senior academy when, full of the naivety and hope of a new student, he had enthusiastically offered the wrong answer to a maths question and had been called up in front of the class to receive a caning for his efforts. He had taken the caning stoically, intent on the teacher not seeing his fear and pain. As he was leaving the classroom at the end of the lesson, the teacher had crept up behind him and whispered in his ear: ‘I have my eye on you, son,’ and then, winking at him seductively, clipped him around the head for no good reason. The incident ignited a dormant spark of revolt in Arturo. Always an obedient and diffident student, Arturo now entered into a subtle and strategic battle with the teacher, a battle he won by quietly convincing all the other students in his class to join him in his silent protest and refuse to respond to anything the teacher said to them. The silence of the maths class finally drove the teacher to take extreme measures such as singing and dancing in the middle of the classroom to stimulate a response. He was eventually led away on the arm of the principal in the middle of a lesson, following a particularly bad rendition of ‘Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina’, never to appear before a class again.
‘What visitors?’ Arturo asked.
‘The authorities,’ the mayor replied. ‘And you had better impress them. If you play your cards right there might be money to build yourself a hospital here before you know it.’ An icy shiver ran through Arturo at the thought.
‘You had better make sure,’ the mayor continued, ‘that when our visitors arrive this place is swarming with sick people. And I mean swarming.’
‘How are we going to do that?’
‘I don’t bloody know,’ the mayor bellowed. ‘That’s what I am paying you for, isn’t it? I don’t care how you do it. You can drag them here in handcuffs for all I care. This could be the most important visit our town has had for decades. The provincial authorities will be coming for the first time ever. We’ll show them once and for all that this town is worth something, especially as we have a tourist here now.’
‘Do we?’ Ernesto said, with genuine surprise. The mayor looked at him as if he could eat him.
‘The one making all that bloody noise in the plaza. I thought he was staying at your mother’s house.’
‘Oh, yes, he is,’ said Ernesto, ‘but I didn’t know he was a tourist.’
‘Well what the hell did you think he was then?’
‘I don’t know,’ Ernesto replied.
‘Well, what do you think, doctor?’ the mayor said turning to Arturo.
‘About what?’ Arturo asked, distracted from the conversation by the vision of dragging the townsfolk to his clinic in chains.
‘This Gringito. Who is he? Where does he come from? What is he doing here?’
‘I don’t know anything about him,’ Arturo replied.
‘Well, you had better find out and quick,’ the mayor snapped. ‘Check him out – make sure he’s not a madman or something.’ Then, pointing his finger at Ernesto, he added, ‘And whatever the bloody hell he is, you had better have him walking around town behaving like a tourist by the time our visitors arrive. Otherwise your house guest will be out on his ear, do you get my meaning?’
The mayor stood up, shook Arturo’s hand and made as if to leave. Then, thinking better of it, he took a step towards Arturo and whispered in his ear: ‘One word of advice while you’re here, son. Don’t fuck with me. And you,’ he said, now turning to Ernesto, ‘never fuck with my wife again.’ With that, he pushed past Ernesto and made his exit from the clinic as abruptly as he had arrived.
Arturo was silent for some time.
‘He’s right about one thing,’ he said eventually. ‘I have been too complacent. I’m a coward, Ernesto. I’ve been sitting here waiting for people to come to me. I justify it by saying that I need to take things slowly, build up their trust, when really I’m just scared to do anything.’
‘Scared? What are you scared of?’
‘People,’ said Arturo, ‘people and their problems. What can I do to help anyone?’
‘Well, you helped me.’
‘Yes, I did. But that was easy. What if people start coming to me with really sick children, with diseases I have never seen before that I don’t know how to cure, or worse still with all their worries and fears? I can only let them down, Ernesto. I have nothing to offer them, nothing. What can I do for them? I don’t understand anything about their lives.’
‘You won’t know though, until you try,’ Ernesto said.
‘Well, that’s true,’ Arturo said, impressed by Ernesto’s sudden insight.
‘But don’t worry, doctor,’ Ernesto said, ‘we’ll come up with a plan. My mother may have some ideas. Why don’t you come and join us for lunch on Sunday. You’ll be able to observe the Gringito like the mayor said. See what you think, you know, see whether he’s behaving normally for a gringo or not. You have seen more of them than I have. I find it hard to tell. You can also meet my sister, Isabela, she’s been asking me a lot about you.’
‘Well that would be nice, thank you, Ernesto,’ Arturo said, genuinely touched at having received his first invitation to eat at someone’s house. ‘But will your mother mind?’
‘No,’ Ernesto replied. ‘I’m sure she’ll be delighted.’
Nine
Don Bosco had only one suit and he had worn that to Francisco’s funeral. And besides, he said to himself, it’s far too formal for Sunday lunch. He pulled his neatly folded collection of shirts from the drawer and stared at them. The blue one he had never worn and it was far too small; the two white ones were too frayed at the collar to be smart. That’s because I wear them every day of the week. I must have something new, he concluded. ‘But what is this all about? Could it be, could it be?’ he asked out loud, and then stopped himself. ‘Don’t be a fool, Pepito, you were a fool once and see where that got you.’
Nobody now used his familiar name, ‘Pepito’. His mother and brothers had always called him by it, but in recent years, since his family had one by one tired of life and left him to face the world alone, the name had been kept alive only in his solitary ramblings. He tried on the blue shirt just in case, and looked at himself in the dusty little mirror. A small, fat, balding man stared back at him in a shirt that was far too tight for any self-respecting barber to wear. He sank down on the bed and gazed at his feet. ‘Fat old fool. Fat old fool,’ he sa
id softly, and threw one of the fraying shirts over the mirror in an effort to block out the truth. ‘And why would she? After all these years why on earth would she?’
Don Teofelo had never seen his friend in quite such a state of confusion. The mood in the shop had been rather subdued all day. Don Julio had tried with limited success to draw Don Bosco into conversation and discover the cause of his dejection. The usual arguments and banter had been replaced by the drone of other people’s sad stories being indiscreetly shared with the world in Tia Sophia’s Problem Hour, through the voice of the small crackling radio in the corner.
‘Our next caller, Maria Louisa,’ simpered the sugary tones of Tia Sophia. ‘Tell us what is troubling you.’
‘Hello, Maria Louisa?’ Tia Sophia said again, a harsher tone creeping into her voice. ‘You are through, please do tell us your troubles.’
‘Yes,’ a voice whispered in reply. ‘I have many troubles, many troubles. I ask every day: “What have I done to deserve so many troubles?” I have seven children to feed and another one on the way, God help me.’
‘God help you, indeed,’ agreed Tia Sophia.
‘But my husband is not a good man. He walked out of the house last week. He said he was going to buy some milk for the baby. He still hasn’t come back. I pray to God every day that he may walk back in with the milk, but he hasn’t.’
‘Do you live a long way from the shop?’ asked Tia Sophia.
‘No, this is the problem, it’s just down the road,’ said the voice of Maria Louisa breaking down into deep uncontrollable sobs. ‘He’s left us with all his debts and now some men have come round and they say they are going to take all our furniture away. They’re sitting here now drinking tea while I’m phoning you. I pray to God every day, please help us.’
‘Well, your husband does sound like a bad man. Praise God, perhaps you are better off without him,’ Tia Sophia suggested.
‘But I have no money,’ sobbed Maria Louisa. ‘What am I to do about these men drinking my tea? What am I going to do about feeding the baby? Please, please can you help me?’
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