‘Holiday,’ Don Julio said. ‘He’s opened up this shop every day for over twenty years, and he has never shown any signs of wanting a holiday. Why would he suddenly decide to take a holiday now, without telling anyone?’
‘That is my very point,’ said Don Teofelo. ‘A man does exactly the same thing year after year, and tells himself every morning that he is doing what he wants and is happy and content. He tells himself the same thing day after day, until he finally comes to believe it. And then one morning he wakes and the world looks a little different. Some small thing has changed that nobody else would notice, but it makes him unsettled and he knows that he needs to do something new. Perhaps he opens his door at the same time he always does and suddenly in the flowers on the tree, which yesterday looked so fresh and hopeful, he notices the faintest hint of grey. Or he takes his cup of rich sweet coffee that he has brewed every morning for twenty years or more, and for the first time it leaves a bitter aftertaste in his mouth. Or …’ Don Teofelo stopped, mid-thought.
Don Julio was staring at him open-mouthed. ‘What are you talking about, Teofelo?’ he said at last, and then resumed his banging. ‘Open up now, Bosco, I want my coffee.’
‘All I’m saying is that maybe our good friend Bosco has suddenly decided that after twenty years he doesn’t want to open the shop today, or tomorrow come to that. He doesn’t want to brew coffee for us any more or listen to everybody else’s troubles, at least for a while. Maybe he just needs a break.’
‘A break. You mean he’s gone?’
‘It certainly looks that way.’
‘Well, what are we going to do? Where will we go? Who will we talk to?’ Julio shouted, now running round in circles in a blind panic.
‘We’ll manage,’ Don Teofelo said, patting his friend on the shoulder. ‘After all, it may do us good. You can spend some more time on that neglected plot of yours, which is looking very overgrown these days. Perhaps that would be more useful than producing hot air to warm Bosco’s shop.’
‘But what about Bosco? Where can he be? Aren’t you even worried about him?’
‘Julio,’ Teofelo said, ‘Bosco is a sensible man. He has taken care of himself for many years, I am sure he can continue to look after himself now.’
‘Do you know something I don’t?’ Don Julio asked, after a moment’s pause.
‘Julio,’ Teofelo said, placing his arm round his friend’s shoulder, ‘I have always known many things that you don’t, but it has never worried you before.’
Don Teofelo did indeed know something, a good deal more than he was telling his friend, and he was far more worried than he was letting on. Don Bosco had arrived at his house well after midnight in a very agitated state.
‘I’m going on a journey. I have a letter I want you to deliver to Nicanora,’ Don Bosco had announced after waking Teofelo from a deep sleep. Bleary-eyed, Don Teofelo had tried to make sense of the sight in front of him. Don Bosco was standing on his doorstep in his new striped shirt and jeans, with his black Sunday hat on his head.
‘It’s to protect me from the sun, the rain, and unwanted thoughts,’ Don Bosco informed his friend, as he handed him the letter and bent down to pick up a small frayed suitcase that he had placed at his feet.
‘Now? You’re going on a journey now, in the middle of the night, in that shirt and without a jacket?’ Teofelo replied, taking Don Bosco by the hand and leading him into the comfort of his home.
‘If I leave it until the morning I may change my mind, and my mind is made up,’ Don Bosco said firmly as he followed his friend into the house.
‘If you have made up your mind as you say, then that is that,’ Teofelo replied. ‘A good sleep and a change of clothes before starting your journey won’t make any difference to your plans.’
It took Don Teofelo some time to persuade his friend that it did not make sense for him to start out on the first journey of his life by leaving his beloved town in the pitch-dark, when the night spirits wandered the swamp in search of lost souls and dejected barbers. After several comforting cups of sweet warm cocoa, Teofelo managed to convince him that no serious traveller would set out to the sound of hooting owls, and that the first birdsong of the morning was a much sweeter note on which to start his travels.
‘But what has brought this on?’ Teofelo asked.
‘She was right,’ Don Bosco replied. ‘Do you know that? All those years ago, she was right about me.’
‘Who?’
‘Nicanora. I’m dull, Teofelo. I know you’ve been too kind to tell me. But I’ve done nothing with my life except cut hair and shave beards. And now I find I am dull.’
‘Well, Bosco,’ Don Teofelo replied, having listen with deep seriousness to his friend’s plight. ‘If you are dull, what does that make me? I’ve spent a good many years of my life drinking beer and coffee with you, and have never found myself wanting anything more exciting than to pass my day in your company. I expect that must make me even duller than you. Should I pack my bags and leave as well?’
Don Bosco considered his friend’s suggestion for a moment. ‘I mean no offence to you when I call myself dull,’ he replied. ‘You have been too good a friend to notice that for years I have bored you senseless. You can’t persuade me otherwise. I am going to make a journey so that I will have something interesting to say if I come back. Then, if I do return, at least I’ll know why I’m here, and it won’t be simply because I couldn’t leave.’
‘But isn’t it good enough that this is your home?’ Teofelo asked. ‘We all need a home. This is where your friends are, where your work is, and this is where you will be missed if you go away.’
‘You’re very kind,’ Don Bosco said meekly. ‘Make sure you give the letter to Nicanora. Please don’t let anyone else see it. I don’t want to cause you or her any trouble. And if she asks for your help, will you give it to her?’
‘Well, that would be a first,’ Teofelo said. ‘I’ve never known Doña Nicanora ask for help from anyone, although I know that you have helped her out more than once in your life. It was you who calmed everyone down after her ridiculous predictions, and you who welcomed her back after she married that good-for-nothing –’ The look of sadness in Don Bosco’s eyes made him stop and catch his words.
‘Where will you be heading?’ Teofelo asked, now realising the seriousness of his friend’s intentions.
‘I don’t know,’ Don Bosco replied. ‘But I haven’t seen my brother Aurelio since we were young men. He was the only one of us who had the courage to leave here. He is all the family I have left in the world. Perhaps it’s time we saw each other again before we die.’
‘Couldn’t you invite him here? Surely he would come if he knew how you were feeling. Wouldn’t he want to see the old town again, just once?’
‘But that is hardly the point,’ Don Bosco replied. ‘I think you’re trying to trick me. If he were to come here what would I have to say to him? I could say, here is the shop that I’ve worked in for a good part of my life, here is the plaza, there is the church and over there is the market. As you see, I’ve brought you all this way to show you that nothing has changed. And he would thank me politely and leave again in the knowledge that all is exactly as he left it. And besides,’ Don Bosco added, ‘I’m five years younger than he is. He’s much too old to travel.’
True to his word, Teofelo woke his friend just as the first light was breaking. He made sure that Don Bosco ate a good breakfast of bread, eggs and coffee, and handed him a small parcel of cooked chicken, baked potatoes and fried plantain for the journey.
‘So which way are you heading?’ Don Teofelo asked again as he gave his friend a parting hug.
‘I don’t know yet, I will see which way the wind is blowing. I suppose it would be best just to follow the road,’ Don Bosco replied. Don Teofelo stood in the doorway and watched his friend leave the house, his smart hat on his head and his battered old case in his hand. He watched Don Bosco walk across the plaza as he had done every day of his
life, and then walk past the locked barber’s shop and disappear out of sight as he had never done before. Don Teofelo poured himself another coffee, sat down and brushed the tears from his cheeks.
Teofelo wasn’t sure what to say to Nicanora. He had never trusted her. She had broken his best friend’s heart, that was certain, and now she had driven him out of town. Don Bosco had not told him what had passed between them the previous day, but clearly Don Julio’s supposition that they had been making wedding preparations was incorrect. Teofelo now decided that Don Bosco had returned and offered his proposal to Nicanora, his hopes having been revived by the lunch date, and had once again been refused.
He’s a fool, a silly old fool, he has only himself to blame. But a fool with a huge heart, Don Teofelo told himself, and the thought that Nicanora could refuse that heart made him more sad than angry. The truth was that although he knew he could not blame Nicanora for refusing Don Bosco’s offer of marriage, he had never forgiven her for his own foolishness in betting his money away on Don José’s Jaguars and allowing the group of travelling vagabonds to win the Champions of the Swamp football trophy. And yet his best friend had sat there the previous night and trusted him, and him alone, with a letter for her, and had asked him to help her should she need it. Don Teofelo knew where his deepest loyalties lay. He waited for Nicanora in the plaza, and when he saw her approaching the shop he quietly took her to one side and put the letter into her pocket.
‘Our good friend Don Bosco has gone on a little journey,’ he said to her. ‘He asked me to give you this, and to reassure you that should you need any help in his absence, you should not hesitate to ask me.’
‘Where?’ Nicanora asked. ‘On a journey? What do you mean? How? On his own? He won’t be able to get further than the edge of the swamp.’
‘You and I know that,’ said Don Teofelo, ‘but I expect he just needs to discover it for himself.’
‘But why? Why would he do such a thing?’
‘Because, Nicanora,’ Teofelo replied, ‘he has decided that at the age of fifty he would like to have something interesting to say.’
‘To whom?’ Nicanora asked.
‘To you, I expect,’ Teofelo said. At this, there was just the right look of concern in Nicanora’s eyes.
Nicanora was still staring at the letter when Nena burst into the house later that morning, breathless with excitement, saying that there was a meeting in the plaza because Don Bosco had disappeared. Nicanora had still not been able to bring herself to read the note, and instead she handed it to Nena. If the words it contained came from her young daughter’s mouth, she felt they might somehow be easier to swallow.
‘Please read it to me,’ she said, not able to meet Nena’s eyes.
‘Who’s it from?’ Nena asked.
‘Never you mind,’ Nicanora snapped and then, realising that Nena was about to find out anyway, said, ‘Don Bosco.’
Nena drew in a deep breath.
‘And he hasn’t disappeared,’ Nicanora added. ‘He’s just gone away for a few days. So don’t you start spreading silly rumours.’
‘It’s not me,’ Nena said, ‘it’s what everyone is saying. That’s why they’re having a meeting.’
‘You’d better read it to me, then,’ Nicanora said.
‘“My dearest Nicanora,”’ Nena began. ‘Why does he call you “dearest”?’
‘Nena.’
‘“I would like to thank you, from the depths of my heart,”’ Nena continued, ‘“for lifting the blanket under which I have buried my head for so many years. That I am a silly old fool, will, I am sure, come as news to nobody but myself.”’
‘I don’t think he’s silly,’ Nena said. ‘I think he’s nice.’ The look on her mother’s face made her continue.
‘“There are many things that I would like to have done with my life, for most it is now too late. I realise that you were right. Barbers are not very interesting people. So I have decided it is time that I took a journey to see something of the world before I die. I think your suggestion to turn my little establishment into a hat shop is an excellent one.”’
‘Hat shop? You’re going to turn the barber’s into a hat shop?’
‘Nena,’ Nicanora said sternly, ‘will you please just get to the end. Where has he gone?’
‘He doesn’t say.’
‘“I have been needing a new hat myself for some years now,”’ Nena continued, unconsciously mimicking Don Bosco’s voice, ‘“but have never had the time to make my way to Puerta de la Coruña to buy one. I have noticed that few people wear hats here, and when they do they are generally a battered and sorry sight. A hat shop will be of far more use than a barber’s. I have left the key for you under the orange brick by the back door. I have always admired the way you have followed your heart (even when I have thought it has led you in the wrong direction). I am now following mine for the first time in my life. I hope you enjoy the little shop. It has made me contented for some years, and now I find it does not. Please take care of yourself. Your loving friend, as ever, Pepito.”’
‘“Loving friend,”’ Nena said, her eyes wide with amazement at what she had just read. ‘Why does he say that? Why has he gone away? Why has he given you his shop? Where are you going to get hats from?’
‘Nena, that’s enough,’ Nicanora said. ‘I can’t listen to all your silly questions and think straight at the same time. You mustn’t breathe a word of this to anyone. Do you promise me?’
‘But why has he given you the key to his shop?’ Then, suddenly piecing the possibilities together, she said, ‘Oh no, is he in love with you? Has he kissed you?’
‘Nena, that’s enough,’ Nicanora said, trying not to let tears well in her eyes. Then, taking Nena by the hand she left the house to see what trouble was brewing in the plaza.
Fourteen
The mayor had left home that morning in an unusually ebullient mood. The source of his good humour was a sound night’s sleep in his own bed, with his wife, for the first time in weeks. What was more, he was convinced that when he returned that evening there would be no trace of his sister-in-law, Doña Lucia, anywhere in the house.
‘She’s like an overfed rat, infecting my wife with her rancid gossip,’ the mayor confided to Ramon, ‘lying there in my guest room like a great big cow that can’t find its way home. Eating my food and getting fatter by the day.’
Ramon, not being a married man, was not used to being consulted on such affairs. He squirmed at this intimacy from his patron, before asking, ‘Is there anything that you would like me to do about it, señor?’
‘You can see if that bloody doctor has any poison,’ the mayor replied. Ramon duly noted it on his ‘To do’ list.
Ever since the mayor’s return from his disastrous meeting with the district officer and his stay in Rosas Pampas, his wife had refused him entry to the ‘marital suite’, as she now liked to call the bedroom, putting an emphasis on the word marital. Doña Lucia, who had supposedly only been staying for a few weeks during the mayor’s absence, had taken up permanent residence in the guest quarters. The mayor had been reduced to sleeping in the sitting room, on an old chaise longue, a wedding present from his great-aunt, Doña Teresa.
‘It’s the only remaining trace of our family’s European pedigree,’ she had told him as she forced him to take away the hideous piece of furniture, ‘since your father married that filthy mestizo whore.’
Doña Lucia was clearly relishing her status as her sister’s confidante and marriage adviser, almost as much as she was enjoying the obvious discomfort it brought her brother-in-law. She prided herself on her skills as a solver of all problems marital, making a modest income from her activities as the town’s matchmaker. On Lucia’s advice, Gloria was now refusing to speak a word to her husband and was directing all communication through her sister.
‘Her heart is in pieces,’ Lucia confided to the mayor one evening, over dinner.
‘I still don’t know what I’m supposed to have done,�
�� he replied.
‘Rodriguez, we women are complicated creatures,’ Lucia said confidentially. ‘I’m afraid she has lost her faith. She is grieving for what you once were. You’ll have to win back her trust.’
‘Well, if she won’t let me into the bedroom, how am I supposed to do that?’ he asked, genuinely confused.
‘Oh, Rodriguez,’ Lucia replied with a hint of the coquette in her voice, ‘you’ll have to try harder than that.’
On Lucia’s advice, Gloria had been boycotting the dining room for a week and was living off sandwiches and titbits brought to her room by her sister. Seeing that the strategy did not seem to have brought about contrition from her husband, Gloria was desperately searching for a way out of the corner into which she had locked herself. In her self-imposed isolation, doubts about her sister’s motives were starting to take hold. Gloria was beginning to feel that Lucia had manipulated her into this situation, and that Lucia now had free rein over the house. Gloria could not help feeling that she was the one being punished, banished to the bedroom while Lucia dined with her husband, at her table, in her house. In her darkest moments, Gloria was beginning to face a deep, painful and unspoken suspicion about Lucia’s fidelity with her husband, which she was struggling to deny to herself. The subtle hints that Lucia had dropped recently tormented and tantalised Gloria, fuelling her dark moods. Yet, until now, she had never allowed herself to confront the possibility of this greatest betrayal of all, and she could not quite bring herself to believe it. She was desperate for her husband to do something to prove to her that her suspicions could not be true. Above all, she wanted him to make Lucia leave the house, as soon as possible.
‘You’ve been so kind to me,’ Gloria said to her sister. ‘But I have started to wonder whether he has suffered long enough.’
‘Never forget what he has done to you,’ Lucia replied. ‘Remember, he was seen with those two young women at that guest house in Rosas Pampas. And he hasn’t even said sorry about it yet. Your dignity is at stake.’ And with these words from Lucia the terrible stab of doubt pierced Gloria’s heart again.
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