‘I’m sure you do,’ Gloria said. ‘After all, you have one yourself.’
‘I do?’
‘Of course, it’s obvious. You are dislodged.’
‘Am I?’ Arturo asked.
‘You’re not at one with yourself, are you?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You see, the difference between you and me’, Gloria continued, ‘is that you haven’t yet discovered who you are. I expect that is what has driven you here, to find out. Whereas I once knew exactly who I was, or I thought I did, and now I have lost it.’
‘I wish I could help you, Doña Gloria,’ Arturo said, the sadness in his patient’s voice filling him with empathy. ‘I really, really wish I could help, but you see, I’m a fraud. I’m not the doctor you need. I am not the person that this town needs. I only have pills and potions. I have nothing to give you that will be of any help and nothing to teach anyone. What knowledge I have comes from books. I don’t have anything that will give you peace of mind. I don’t know how to bring your soul back.’
‘It’s easier than you think.’ Gloria said. ‘You’re making things far too complicated. You young people always do. You’re coming to it all from the wrong direction. I need my husband to feel what it really means to be without me. Just as the town is feeling what it means to be without their barber. That is the only way I will discover the truth.’
‘I don’t understand. How can I be of help?’
‘I need to stay here, with you, of course.’
‘You can’t do that,’ Arturo said in horror.
‘Why not?’
‘Because your husband will kill me,’ Arturo said.
‘But he won’t find out. It will be our little secret. I can’t go back home,’ she said defiantly.
‘But you can’t stay here,’ Arturo said again. ‘Really, Doña Gloria, think about it. It just wouldn’t be right.’
‘If I can’t stay, I can’t be cured. And if I am not cured, I can’t go home,’ Gloria said stubbornly. ‘So you are stuck with me either way.’
‘No, I have a better idea,’ Arturo replied. ‘Why don’t we see whether you can stay with Doña Nicanora. She is very kind and she likes looking after people. She has that Gringito with her after all. That would be proper and you would be much more comfortable there. I know she would keep it a secret if you asked her to.’
‘Stay with Doña Nicanora and Ernesto,’ Gloria said, mulling the idea over in her mind. ‘That could certainly do the trick. That is not a bad idea, not a bad idea at all.’ And Gloria went back to the little consultation room a consoled woman, leaving Arturo to contemplate how he was going to convince Doña Nicanora to take in another house guest.
Nineteen
Everything had suddenly been put to rights. As the townsfolk awoke and started to make their way across the plaza, the disturbing strangeness of the previous day had passed over. Life was back to normal and all was exactly as it should be. The shutters on Don Bosco’s shop had been lifted once again. Don Julio was the first to see the new dawn break on the barber’s. He knocked several times, calling Don Bosco’s name. ‘Bosco, are you there, are you home?’ He peeped through the window slats: a figure was moving in the shadows at the back of the shop. The door remained firmly locked. In his excitement he rushed to his friend Teofelo to tell him the good news.
‘He’s back,’ Don Julio shouted, banging on Teofelo’s door. ‘He’s back, Teofelo, come and see.’ Teofelo, who was not an early riser, came to the door bleary-eyed, afraid that the noise would awaken his wife.
‘What’s the matter with you, Julio?’ Teofelo said, irritated. ‘You will wake the whole town if you carry on like this. What’s wrong? Who is back?’
‘Bosco of course,’ Julio replied. ‘Bosco is back. The shop is open and everything. Come and see for yourself.’
‘Bosco is back?’ Teofelo said confused. ‘Are you sure? Have you seen him?’
‘Yes, yes. I’ve seen him,’ Julio said. ‘He hasn’t opened the door yet but he has opened the shutters and I saw him moving around inside.’
‘I can’t believe it,’ Teofelo said, ‘I almost thought we had lost him for good.’ And when he stepped forward into the morning light Julio saw that Teofelo’s eyes were swollen and red-rimmed.
‘He must have returned in the middle of the night. I wonder where he was hiding, the old dog. Well let’s at least leave him to settle in for half an hour, we don’t want to overwhelm him,’ Teofelo said, still not quite believing that their friend was back. ‘You know what Bosco is like. We don’t want to intrude on him too early in the day.’ And Julio settled down to a welcome breakfast, ready to pick up his life where it had left off two days earlier.
By the time Teofelo and Julio reached the plaza, a small group of men had gathered outside Don Bosco’s, just as they would have on any normal working day. The pole had been placed in front of the door to indicate that the shop was now open, and the table and chairs were exactly where they should be.
‘Do you know when he got back?’ Teofelo asked Don Alfredo, who was sitting tapping his fingers impatiently on the table.
‘I’ve been waiting for over an hour now and he still hasn’t appeared,’ Alfredo replied. ‘You would think having left us in the lurch for so long that he would at least open on time.’
‘Come now,’ Teofelo said, anxious to prevent a quarrel the moment Don Bosco opened the door. He knew his old friend well, and he was sure to be feeling shamefaced about his uncharacteristically impetuous behaviour. ‘It has only been one day after all, and Bosco has been going through a hard time lately.’
‘He’s been going through a hard time,’ Alfredo replied. ‘I’ve had to put up with this stubble on my chin since Sunday. I really don’t think that he’s running a very good business these days.’
‘I agree,’ said Don Arsenio, who had joined Alfredo at the table. ‘It was very irresponsible of Bosco to shut up shop without even telling any of us. It is a barber’s after all. It’s an essential service. He doesn’t have the right to just go off like that. It’s downright irresponsible of him and I have a good mind to tell him so myself. Once he finally opens up.’
Ramon, who was sleepily crossing the plaza, late for his administrative duties yet again, saw the barber’s pole out of the corner of his eye and made a mental note to go later in the day and get his hair cut. He then stopped in his tracks, realising what it meant, and gave a yelp. He went running towards the crowd of men who had gathered on Don Bosco’s doorstep to find out what was going on.
‘Don Bosco has returned,’ Julio replied triumphantly. ‘No thanks to you,’ he added.
‘Oh no,’ Ramon said, remembering the notice that the mayor had asked him to place on the shop the previous afternoon. ‘The mayor will not be pleased. He will not be pleased at all.’ Ramon knew he was now in for a very difficult day at the town hall. ‘Where did you find him?’ he asked, somewhat in awe of the search party. ‘Did you have to go far into the swamp? Did you see the kachi kachi?’
‘We went as far as we needed to go,’ Teofelo said quickly.
‘Some of us’, Julio replied, ‘are not afraid of the kachi kachi. At least we would not let it stop us from going where we need to, to find a friend. And as it happens we did see it –’ and Julio was about to start a long description of how the kachi kachi had followed them, first in the guise of a large water rat and later as an owl, when he was stopped mid-speech, by the door of the shop slowly opening. At first it opened only a crack, wide enough for Don Bosco to peep through and see who was waiting for him on the doorstep.
‘Come on, Bosco,’ Alfredo said, ‘we aren’t really going to give you a hard time for deserting us. Let’s get the day started, there are plenty of beards here waiting to be trimmed.’
‘Yes, come on, Bosco,’ Julio joined in. ‘We are just glad to see you back, you know that. Hurry up and open, and I hope you have the coffee brewed.’ There was a hesitation behind the door, suddenly it opened wide, and someone who
certainly was not Don Bosco stepped out and put a sign next to the barber’s pole.
Under temporary management, it read, until the return of Don Bosco. There on the doorstep, with a razor in one hand and a shaving brush in the other, stood Doña Nicanora. ‘So which of you is first?’ she asked, welcoming her clientele. The men stood open-mouthed, every one of them lost for words. Never in the history of the town had such an audacious event occurred. Nicanora left them to their silence and disappeared back inside to return a minute later with Don Bosco’s hat, which she placed on the barber’s pole.
‘Don Bosco’, Nicanora began, with as much authority as she could muster, ‘is temporarily unavailable for business. Due to personal reasons,’ she added, ‘as I am sure you are all aware.’ Word had spread fast across town that Don Bosco had returned, and more and more men were now gathering outside the barber’s as Nicanora spoke.
‘What is she doing here?’ one of the newcomers to the crowd shouted, astonished at the sight of Nicanora standing on the doorstep wearing Don Bosco’s apron. ‘Has she gone mad?’
‘As you all know,’ Nicanora said again, ‘Don Bosco is temporarily unavailable for work and has requested in his absence that I should take care of his business. I am sure you are all very anxious to have your beards shaved. So let’s get on with it. Who is first?’ There was a silence in the plaza, the depths of which had never been heard before. Nicanora looked at the faces before her, and realised that this time she had gone too far.
‘Where is our barber? What have you done with him? How come you have his hat? Witch,’ Don Dionisio shouted, pointing at the battered black trilby. Nicanora felt a panic rise inside her.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said. ‘I have done nothing with Don Bosco. He has simply asked me as a friend and neighbour to take care of his business while he is away. What is so surprising about that? Now, who is first? There are a lot of you to get through and you all look as if you need a good shave, so let’s begin.’
‘How dare she,’ another man shouted. ‘Teofelo, what are you going to do about it? She has stolen the key to Don Bosco’s shop. We should take her to the mayor. She needs to be stopped. Witch, witch …’ And the chanting man from the previous day started to try to agitate the crowd.
‘Take me to the mayor if you like,’ Nicanora challenged, her indignation at the suggestion fuelling her courage. ‘Take me to the mayor and see what good that does you. For one thing you will lose your precious barber’s shop for ever. You heard him yesterday. If the shop is not opened by the keyholder today then by the terms of the lease he will claim it back and you will never be able to have your beards cut again. Within a few months you will be tripping over them. Don Bosco has faithfully run this service for years and now I am taking over for a while.’ And Nicanora passed to the crowd the note in Ramon’s scrawled handwriting that had been pinned to the door the previous evening.
‘But you aren’t the keyholder. Bosco is,’ someone said.
‘I am for the time being, until Don Bosco returns. I ask you once again, who is first? Don Julio, you look as if your beard needs a trim.’
‘Witch! Liar!’ Don Dionisio shouted, trying to whip the crowd into a fury. Teofelo, who had said nothing up to this point, stepped forward.
‘She is speaking the truth,’ he said. ‘I was witness to it. Don Bosco did indeed leave the key with Doña Nicanora for her to look after his shop until he returns.’
‘You know where Bosco is?’ Don Alfredo asked, astonished.
‘No,’ Teofelo replied. ‘All I know is that he has gone on a journey because he needs a break from all of you. But he thought of you enough to ask Doña Nicanora here to kindly look after his shop while he is away.’ Teofelo, who was as stunned by the scene being played out in front of him as anyone, was also beginning to enjoy the proceedings and, despite himself, was filled with admiration for Nicanora’s courage.
‘He’s gone on a journey because he wants to find something interesting to say,’ a small voice piped up from the back of the crowd. Nicanora shot a look to silence Nena, who had stopped on her way to school to see what was happening.
‘Well,’ Don Teofelo said to Nicanora sternly, the crowd parting to let him through.
‘That’s right, Teofelo,’ Don Dionisio egged him on. ‘You sort her out.’
‘If this is to remain a barber’s shop,’ he continued, loud enough for all to hear, ‘then you had better behave like a barber and start shaving.’ There was silence again from the watching men.
‘No woman is going to shave my beard,’ Don Dionisio said at last.
‘Well,’ Teofelo said, turning to address him, ‘you had better get used to growing it then.’ The crowd looked on aghast as Teofelo stepped inside and sat himself in the barber’s chair, ready for Nicanora to begin her work.
Ramon raced straight to the town hall to alert his boss to the events unfolding in the plaza. When he got there, the mayor was nowhere to be found. In his anxiety, Ramon, decided to busy himself with tidying the paperwork that had now abandoned the desk and was lying in mounds on the floor, making entry to the mayor’s office a complicated procedure. Devising a fail-safe plan for cutting through the piles of letters and forms, he decided to throw away anything that was more than one month old, and he was making excellent progress, managing within the space of an hour to clear almost the entire pile.
He was so pleased with his efficiency that he had already forgotten the extraordinary events of the morning and was starting to sing with the satisfaction he was deriving from his work when his gaze was drawn to an envelope with large red lettering on it: For the Urgent Attention of Mayor Ramirez. Ramon froze and his stomach lurched. He looked at the date. It had been sent just under four weeks ago and was stubbornly defying his sorting system by demanding that it still be attended to. Ramon suddenly recalled having received the letter in the donkey delivery from Rosas Pampas a few days after the mayor’s arrival back in town. Life had become so busy recently, what with the doctor and the Gringito, that it had quite escaped him to make sure the mayor had seen the letter. He was also reminded of the phone call he had received a few days previously in which an officious voice on the other end had informed him that he had an urgent message for the mayor – and was then cut off before the message could be given. There was nothing to be done. Ramon opened the letter and then let out another yelp.
The mayor’s house was empty. Ramon knocked on the open door and called out. There was no answer. He went round to the back and found his patron walking about the garden looking confused.
‘Señor, are you all right?’ Ramon asked, and then, not waiting for a reply, added, ‘Señor, you must come quickly, there is trouble in the plaza.’
‘Not again,’ the mayor replied. He sounded distracted and was not really paying attention to what Ramon was saying. He turned away, and got down on his hands and knees and started looking under a bush.
‘What’s wrong, señor?’ said Ramon, slightly disturbed by his patron’s strange behaviour. ‘Have you lost something?’ And he also got down on his knees and began to search for the lost object.
‘I can’t find Gloria,’ the mayor said at last, sitting back on his haunches.
‘Gloria?’
‘My wife.’
‘Do you think she is hiding under the bush?’ Ramon asked.
‘I don’t know,’ the mayor replied. ‘I’ve looked everywhere. I haven’t seen her since yesterday morning. You don’t know where she is, do you?’
‘I don’t think she’s in here, señor,’ Ramon replied. ‘What is wrong with everyone? Nobody leaves town for years and then suddenly they all start disappearing.’
‘So what’s going on?’ the mayor asked. ‘What’s the problem now?’
‘Well, it’s not a problem as such,’ Ramon said, trying to break the news gently.
‘If it’s not a problem why have you come here to disturb me? Can’t I leave you to carry on with things for one morning while I sort out my business at home
?’
‘It’s just that I thought you would want to know,’ Ramon said.
‘Know what?’
‘That it’s open again,’ Ramon answered, getting to his feet.
‘What is?’
‘The barber’s.’
‘The barber’s? Bosco is back? Bloody annoying little man. He can’t even disappear properly,’ the mayor said, stumbling to his feet.
‘Well, no, not exactly,’ Ramon continued.
‘What do you mean “not exactly”? Is the barber’s open or not?’
‘Sort of,’ Ramon said.
‘How can it sort of be open? Either it is open or it isn’t. Ramon, is Bosco back?’
‘No,’ Ramon answered.
‘Ramon,’ the mayor said, stepping towards him so that there was only a hair’s width between his face and Ramon’s. ‘Let’s get this clear. I am not in the mood. So let us start again. Have you come here to tell me the barber’s shop is open?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you telling me that Don Bosco is back?’
‘No.’
‘So what are you telling me?’
‘That Doña Nicanora has become a barber,’ Ramon said.
The mayor gazed at him, mouth open.
‘Apparently Don Bosco gave her the key to his shop, and so she has become a barber,’ Ramon said.
‘She can’t do that,’ the mayor replied. ‘It isn’t proper.’
‘Well, apparently it is,’ Ramon said. ‘She is shaving Don Teofelo as we speak.’ And then, taking advantage of the mayor’s apoplexy, he said, ‘And the visitors are arriving tomorrow.’
Twenty
Nicanora caught sight of herself in the mirror. She was covered from head to toe in Don Bosco’s apron, she held his razor in one hand, his barber’s brush in the other, and his best friend was sitting in the chair in front of her. In the space of a day she had quite simply taken over his life. It had certainly not been her intention to do so when she had gone to the shop the previous evening. But she refused to believe that he would not be coming back. After everything Don Bosco had given up, she could not bear to think that she had tried to take what little he had from him, and she was determined to protect it for him now. What was more, without the barber the town seemed to be losing its cohesion and its whole structure was about to fall apart.
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