Nicanora stood transfixed with fright as the crowd outside the shop watched her. ‘Why don’t you start?’ Teofelo whispered from the chair. Having sat in anticipation for the past couple of minutes he was now rapidly losing his nerve. The memory of Don Bosco’s recent debacle with the razor was still painfully fresh in his mind and Don Bosco had thirty years of experience behind him.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ Nicanora replied.
‘What do you mean you don’t know what to do? Just start shaving.’
‘I can’t.’
‘You have to. We’ve committed ourselves. Everyone is watching. If you back out now we will both look ridiculous.’
‘I don’t know how to.’
‘It’s simple,’ Teofelo said. ‘Just cover my face with soap and then run the razor over it. Only make sure that you don’t cut my throat.’ Nicanora took a deep breath, dipped the shaving brush into the bowl of warm water and began covering Teofelo’s face in foam. As she lifted the razor, a hush fell over the chattering crowd. She slowly put the implement to Teofelo’s neck and paused. Teofelo drew in a sharp breath, made the sign of the cross, asked the Virgin for forgiveness and then shut his eyes tight. Nicanora started to shave. Five minutes later, Teofelo emerged a renewed man. Nicanora stood back and took the towel from his shoulders as if unveiling a great work of art. Teofelo opened his eyes and ran his hand over his chin. The crowd looked on.
‘That is as smooth a shave as I have ever had at the hands of our dear friend,’ Teofelo whispered in Nicanora’s ear, ‘but don’t ever tell him that, he would be mortified.’ Nicanora felt tears of pride well up in her eyes. ‘Tell me,’ he said to her. ‘Why are you doing this? Why are you putting yourself on the line like this?’
‘I think we both know that I owe it to Don Bosco,’ Nicanora replied. ‘The least I can do is safeguard his business for him until he comes back. You heard what the mayor said: if I don’t, Don Bosco will lose this shop for ever.’
‘Nicanora,’ Teofelo said, gently placing a hand on her shoulder. ‘You, I and the rest of the townsfolk will have to face up to our loss eventually.’
‘Don Teofelo,’ Nicanora replied, ‘I don’t know where Don Bosco is, and I don’t know whether he will ever be coming back. But I can tell you one thing for certain. He is not dead.’
‘And how can you know that?’ Teofelo said, his gaze involuntarily turning to the hat on the pole.
‘The same way I knew all those years ago, without a shadow of a doubt, that you would lose the Champions of the Swamp trophy to those wandering pot sellers.’
‘You really knew that?’ Teofelo said, now laughing at the memory of his foolishness. ‘In that case you owe me fifty pesos. And you know that our good friend Bosco has not been eaten by the swamp?’
‘I do,’ Nicanora said.
‘I am so pleased,’ Teofelo said mildly. ‘We all have our time. I accept that. But he would not have liked to go that way, swallowed by mud. He always hated to get his clothes dirty.’
‘You talk as if he is never coming back,’ Nicanora said.
‘And is he?’
‘That I don’t know. But I will do what I can to make sure he has something to come back to.’ Nicanora desperately wanted to ask Teofelo about the photograph she had found in the drawer and whether that might be a clue to Don Bosco’s whereabouts. She felt certain he had placed it where she would find it. He obviously knew her well enough to suppose that given the key to the shop she would not be able to resist snooping into the dark corners of his life. Could she confess to Teofelo that, having been in the shop for less than a day, she had started going through Don Bosco’s secrets? Teofelo must know something about it, and she suspected that he was hiding something from her. What she really wanted to tell Teofelo was that she had not realised until Don Bosco was no longer there how much he meant to her and how much she missed him. She felt as if she had been playing a game with herself, never prepared to admit that she had looked love in the face and scorned it. She had committed the greatest betrayal of all: she had denied herself the chance of happiness. But the discovery that Don Bosco had been, and possibly still was, in love with another woman had now made her reassess her whole life. It all made sense to her: Don Bosco had gone off in search of his lost love, and if he found her, he might never come back. She had turned him away, cruelly, when she had the chance of happiness with him and had never allowed herself to admit that it was the kindness and warmth of Don Bosco that had drawn her back home and enabled her to live there in peace for all these years. She felt now that she had been extraordinarily arrogant in assuming that she had been the only woman for whom Don Bosco had ever felt affection.
‘Don Teofelo,’ she said, ‘where do you think he is heading?’
‘I don’t,’ Teofelo replied, ‘I didn’t believe he would actually go. He just told me that he had some unfinished business that he had to attend to.’
But before Nicanora could continue, a voice rose above the murmuring of the crowd, breaking through her thoughts: ‘Three cheers for Nicanora, three cheers for Nicanora.’ Nicanora turned to see Doña Gloria making her way towards the door of the barber’s.
‘I have come to offer you my help. I am an expert in these matters,’ Gloria declared, stepping inside, and with one magnificent flourish of her hand, she pushed Teofelo out of the shop.
The mayor was not sure which way to turn. He simply could not comprehend how life could change direction so dramatically in the course of one day. He had returned home the previous evening an utterly contented man. Everything, for once, was working in his favour, and well, he thought, he deserved it. He had exerted his authority before the townsfolk, he was master of his house again, and this time Lucia would be gone for good. He had regained his place in his bed, next to his wife, who, for all her faults, he knew to be a very forgiving woman. He found it hard to admit quite how much he had missed Gloria on his recent visit to Rosas Pampas. He had missed the comforting familiarity of her body next to him at night, he had missed the playful glint in her eye when she was trying to humour him, and he had missed the inevitability of their bitter arguments and sweet reconciliations. But most of all he had missed the smell of her, the indescribable smell of the person who had lain beside him night after night, year after year, and knew him for exactly who he was.
After thirty years of marriage, he had to confess that he had become accustomed to Gloria in the way that he was accustomed to his legs being attached to his body, or to his eyes allowing him to see which path to take every morning. He felt deeply hurt by her accusation that he had been engaged in anything other than utterly official business during his absence. It was true, in the past he had been guilty of such excesses on more than one occasion. He now deeply regretted that it had caused Gloria pain and regretted even more that she always found out about his misdemeanours thanks to Lucia’s highly proficient network of salacious gossips.
He had never really understood why Gloria was so perturbed by his careless meanderings. He had told her on many occasions that they meant nothing more to him than a simple release of his passions. He felt that she should have been proud of him for having so much masculine drive, but he had never quite been able to put this argument across lucidly enough. Gloria could never see his point of view on this. He consoled himself that she was not an entirely innocent party, and that she was certainly not averse to a public flirtation or two, as her drunken display with Ernesto had made quite apparent to all, only a few months previously. He had never chastised her for these bouts of self-expression, as they were always followed by the deep and painful depressions that it took him months to coax her out of. It was the depressions that in the past had been the reason for his many absences, allowing himself a short respite to glimpse a carefree side of life. He had never understood what prompted Gloria’s melancholy, but he was convinced that her darkest moods often followed an extended stay from Doña Lucia, who, for his own reasons, the mayor strongly tried to discourage from visiting the ho
use.
What had mortified him most about Gloria’s accusations was that on his recent visit to Rosas Pampas he had no longer felt any desire for younger womanly companionship. He had simply longed, every night, for the familiarity of his bed and his wife. It was not just that with the passing of time he had lost confidence that he could perform his part effectively, a shortcoming that happened with alarming frequency these days, and which his wife accepted with stoicism and good grace. It was simply that he derived no pleasure from even the thought of being next to anyone other than Gloria. I have been a good husband, he told himself on reflection. I still am a good husband, no matter what Lucia may say. I have always had my Gloria’s best interests at heart.
With Gloria foremost in his mind he had stopped at the little shop in the plaza to buy some of the sublime chocolate bars that she so enjoyed and a bottle of aguardiente with which to toast his good fortune. As he left the square, he raised the bottle in salute to the liberation of the barber’s shop and was immediately overwhelmed by an acute pang of guilt. He was, he had to admit, the only person in the town with a reason to celebrate the shop’s closure. But he certainly did not wish any harm to Don Bosco, quite the opposite. He wished him well on his travels and truly hoped that he would find happiness now that he had finally taken his life into his hands. He poured a splash of aguardiente on the ground and asked the Mother Earth to take care of their absent friend. He had become as accustomed over the years to his unspoken battle of wits with Don Bosco as he had to his marriage to Gloria, and he had a grudging admiration for the little man.
Very soon after his arrival in town, the mayor had identified Don Bosco as the only real rival to his ambitions. He had initially encountered him during a meeting of the townsfolk when the first elections for the newly created town council were being discussed. Don Bosco had argued lucidly for the rights of the peasants to a greater allocation of the estate land under the statutes of the recently passed Land Act, which he had clearly understood, having read it from cover to cover, which was more than the mayor had been able to do, despite his legal training. The mayor had sniffed the intelligence of the man and despised him for it.
Over all these years, Don Bosco had remained an enigma to him. He had never understood why the barber had remained in the shop for so long, especially as he had made the terms so unreasonable. He had done so simply to exert his authority over a man who he knew could thwart his own plans with a wink of his eye. He had sensed the barber’s regret at signing the agreement as soon as he had done it. The change in Don Bosco had happened almost immediately, as if the man were mourning a part of himself that had died overnight. The thought that he had been the cause of the diminishment of another man’s soul had played slowly on his mind over the years. He felt an odd kinship with the barber. In him he saw a man just like himself, a man who had thrown his life away on a whim. In Don Bosco’s frailties he saw his own failings starkly reflected.
What aggravated him most was that all he had ever really wanted was to gain Don Bosco’s respect, which was something he had never achieved. It infuriated him, how Don Bosco would stand in the doorway of his shop and tip his hat whenever he saw the mayor crossing the plaza, in some ridiculous parody of deference. It made him uncomfortable, knowing that behind the closed doors of the shop he was the object of ridicule at the hands of the barber’s quick wit and good-natured humour. After the history between them, he had never felt comfortable taking a seat in the barber’s chair. Doña Gloria looked after his haircutting needs, and so he was excluded from the very centre of male town life, which only added to his sense of isolation. And yet Don Bosco had rescued him on more than one occasion and had offered him help when he had feared that the town and his position within it were under imminent threat.
It had come to Don Bosco’s attention a few years previously that a group of antiquity hunters were roaming the forest in search of the church and the precious Virgin housed within it. Don Bosco had alerted the mayor to the threat and he had without hesitation allowed Don Bosco to send a group of reliable men to drive the treasure hunters into the swamp and to ensure that the rumour was kept quiet so as not to alarm the townsfolk. In return, the mayor had made Don Bosco keeper of the Virgin, to guarantee she was protected under siege. From that day on the church had remained locked, Don Bosco and the mayor being the only people to hold the key. The mayor was able to stop worrying about his most precious charge, secure in the knowledge that she slept safely under the protective gaze of Don Bosco.
In recent years, the quiet influence that Don Bosco exerted over the town had begun to play on his mind. He felt the steady eye of the barber watching him, as if in passing over the charge of the Virgin he had handed Don Bosco a greater power than he could ever have. Don Bosco knew all the important affairs of his clientele, and all the really serious disputes were resolved within a beard’s whisker of his razor. It had become very apparent to the mayor that he held his position in name only; it was Don Bosco to whom the townsfolk turned when they were in trouble, and it was Don Bosco they listened to when they needed advice. Don Bosco quite literally had at his fingertips the ears of all the men.
The mayor had known what he had to do ever since his return from Rosas Pampas. Above all, he needed to convince Don Bosco to give him the shop back so that he could start his plans to develop the town. He had taken his time to think through how to deal with the situation and had finally approached Don Bosco just as he was closing on Sunday morning, Don Bosco having in recent years taken to opening for a few hours even on his day of rest, due to popular demand. Don Bosco had clearly been in a strange state of mind and was very distracted when the mayor had knocked on the door. It was true, in all their years living side by side the mayor had only stepped over the threshold of the shop on a handful of occasions, once to seek advice regarding the protection of the Virgin, and on the others for some counselling on how best to deal with Gloria’s fits of depression. Indeed, Don Bosco knew more about the ups and downs of living with Doña Gloria than he probably cared to.
The mayor had never encountered Don Bosco in such a state of agitation before. He was pacing up and down the barber’s shop as if he had no idea where he was, dressed in the most outrageous set of clothes. As the mayor entered, Don Bosco turned to greet the visitor and, on seeing who it was, froze on the spot.
‘Not a bad time to catch you is it?’ the mayor asked. ‘I see you have been splashing out on new clothes.’ Don Bosco visibly winced at the reference to his appearance.
‘Yes,’ Don Bosco replied. ‘I have an engagement.’
‘Oh,’ the mayor said, still trying to make sense of the sight in front of him. ‘Your shirt is very, very …’
‘Modern,’ Don Bosco replied, providing him with the word for which he was most certainly not searching.
‘Modern, indeed,’ the mayor agreed. ‘You are looking very modern today.’
‘To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?’ Don Bosco asked. ‘It is some time since we have had one of our chats, but I am afraid today we will have to be brief. I am expected elsewhere very soon. Everything is how it should be at home, I trust? I heard that Doña Gloria has not been herself of late.’ He said this with such sincerity in his voice that the mayor was momentarily taken off his guard.
‘All is as it should be, thank you for asking,’ the mayor replied. ‘But I haven’t come here today to discuss my wife’s health, although I appreciate your concern.’
‘And so to what do I owe this honour?’ Don Bosco asked again, looking anxiously at his watch, awaiting the doctor’s arrival.
‘I realise you are busy,’ the mayor replied, ‘so I will get to the point. I have come to make you an offer. An offer to which I hope you will give due consideration. Don Bosco,’ the mayor continued, ‘for all these years, you and I have been bound by an agreement, an agreement that on reflection I feel has brought neither of us much joy. You have been true to your side of the bargain and have diligently provided this town with your ser
vices for six days of the week.’
‘Seven,’ Don Bosco corrected him.
‘Indeed,’ the mayor said, ‘seven days a week. And the townsfolk are most grateful to you for doing so.’
‘I know they are,’ Don Bosco replied.
‘And now I want you to be a free man.’
‘A free man?’ Don Bosco replied. ‘I am as free as I choose to be.’
‘You have been bound to this wretched shop for over twenty years because of the lease I asked you to sign,’ the mayor replied. ‘I want you to be free from it before it is too late,’ and he reached inside his shirt and handed Don Bosco an envelope.
‘Who are you to give me my freedom?’ Don Bosco asked. ‘Do you think I could not have walked away from here any time I wanted?’ and he took the package, looked inside and then handed it back.
‘It is a very reasonable sum,’ the mayor continued.
‘And what are you asking in return?’ Don Bosco said.
‘Nothing,’ the mayor replied. ‘Only that I have the shop back and that you enjoy your retirement. Every man deserves to find happiness in his life.’
‘And why would I go in search of happiness now, after all these years? It can come and find me should it so wish.’
‘Don’t be a fool, man,’ the mayor replied. ‘I am making you a very good offer.’
‘Why?’ Don Bosco asked. ‘You still haven’t answered my question. Why do you want my shop?’
‘Because’, the mayor said, ‘times are changing whether you like it or not. Haven’t you seen? We have tourists here now, the old ways are going, Bosco, and people like you need to move aside to let that happen. Even you, after all, are now going for the modern look.’
Dona Nicanora's Hat Shop Page 21