Dona Nicanora's Hat Shop

by Dona Nicanora's Hat Shop (retail) (epub)

  Don Bosco stared at the mayor and then at his feet. ‘I think you should leave,’ he said at last.

  ‘Just think about it,’ the mayor said, and he placed the envelope on the stand next to the sink on which Don Bosco kept his brushes and razors. ‘This should help you make your decision. The money is yours, if you shut up shop.’

  The mayor had not expected that Don Bosco would make a decision so quickly and certainly had not anticipated that he would leave town, without a word to anyone. He raised a toast to the barber to wish him well, and returned home to find Lucia reclining on the chaise longue eating a box of chocolates, his wife was nowhere to be seen.

  Twenty-one

  The mayor was so distracted by the loss of Gloria that, at first, he did not pay too much attention to what Ramon was telling him. He simply could not understand where Gloria could have gone, or why she would have left like that. He had methodically searched the house from top to bottom, looking for her in all the cupboards, under the beds, in the servants’ rooms. The only place in which he had not been able to look was Lucia’s room, the door having remained firmly locked since their altercation of the previous evening.

  ‘Don’t worry, I will stay and keep you company until she is back. I could not dream of leaving you alone,’ Lucia had reassured him as he entered the house. He was not sure what had horrified him most, the sudden departure of Gloria or the apparent permanence of Lucia in his home.

  ‘I don’t understand. We were getting on so well again,’ he said. ‘We only just made up. Why would she have gone off like that?’

  ‘I can’t think,’ Lucia said, stuffing another chocolate into her mouth. ‘She is very up and down these days, just like dear Mother.’

  ‘You don’t think she might have done something foolish, do you?’ the mayor asked, and in voicing his deepest fear he was overcome by a terrifying anxiety. Over the past couple of years his wife’s black moods had increased in frequency and intensity, and they seemed to overtake her with no apparent warning. ‘Have you been saying things to her again, Lucia?’ he asked, seeing the look on Lucia’s face. ‘I swear to God, if I find out that you have anything to do with this I will not be responsible for my actions.’

  He reassured himself that Gloria would not have gone too far. She was not an adventurous woman and he was certain she would not have strayed much beyond the confines of the house. He had just begun his search of the garden that morning when Ramon found him on his hands and knees under the bushes. He had listened to Ramon’s ramblings with only half his mind on what he was being told and the other half occupied with how he was going to throw Lucia out of the house and ensure that she never stepped foot in it again. He decided he would not leave for work that morning until he had at least accomplished that task.

  He must have got the wrong end of the stick, the mayor told himself as Ramon beat a hasty retreat after imparting his news. I will wait for Lucia to come back and then see what is going on. I expect it is just that wretched Nicanora woman creating a stir about something or other again. She gets herself into everything these days. I must keep my eye on her – she is a troublemaker, that is for sure. He was, he had to remind himself, grateful to her for having brought the Gringito to town, just when he needed something to show the visitors. Whatever she is up to, he told himself, that shop is now rightfully mine and I have the authority to take it. Bosco has given me that, and I will do so as soon as I am good and ready.

  As for the visitors, he was certain that Ramon was getting himself in a state over nothing as usual. The district officer had assured him during their meeting that he would be given at least a month to make the preparations for the visit. After all, there was a good deal at stake for the authorities, the district officer had made that quite clear. ‘You had better not screw up,’ had been the exact words he had used. ‘You show them that our money has been well spent, and before you know it, you will have your own private helicopter in which to leave town.’ The district officer had suggested that there may even be foreign dignitaries among the party, and they were to be received with a full official welcome. The mayor had not felt it politic to ask what a full official welcome might entail.

  He had drawn up his plans as soon as he had arrived back in town; he knew exactly what he needed to do. He had decided that even though he had not yet received word from the authorities, the time was right to start to prepare the townsfolk for the changes that were afoot, and that meant removing Don Bosco from the shop on the prime site in the plaza. He had certainly not envisaged that it would be quite so easy to convince Don Bosco to leave. He is an intelligent man after all, the mayor said to himself. He simply realised that he could not stand in the way of progress. It was, nonetheless, unfortunate with the visitors coming that he was having such trouble with Gloria again. He was certain that a full official welcome would at the very least entail a reception hosted by the mayor and his wife and it would not look seemly to say he had lost her. I am sure I will have time to sort it out before they arrive, he told himself, and with Gloria in mind he went back into the house.

  As he entered, he noticed that the door to Lucia’s room was slightly ajar. He had seen her leaving for her morning stroll just before Ramon arrived. He knocked gently on the door to make sure she had not returned unnoticed, and then opened it and peered inside. Lucia’s possessions were neatly laid out, as if she had been resident in the house for years. Photographs of her mother and father were placed on the little dressing table, and numerous pink cuddly toys were displayed on the bed. ‘Gloria,’ the mayor called softly, ‘are you in here, my sweet, my little peach?’ There was no reply. He stepped inside and rapidly started to search the room. He looked in the wardrobes, now stuffed full of Lucia’s clothes, in the cupboards, in the drawers, and finally in the bed. And there it was, the thing he knew he had been looking for all along: the evidence of Lucia’s treachery. Hidden under the sheets was a ridiculous set of women’s underwear the like of which he had never seen in his life and a sheet of paper torn into pieces. Carefully placing the fragments together he read the note, apparently signed by him and written to a young lover. The evidence of Lucia’s untamed jealousy was shocking enough, but what really disturbed him was that Lucia would go to these lengths to risk her sister’s health and delicate frame of mind just to get her revenge on him. After all these years, Lucia had never forgiven him for refusing her advances. He had not been able to disclose to his wife the reason for his distaste for Lucia, convinced that it would threaten Gloria’s stability if she knew that her sister had tried, on several occasions, to betray her with her husband. Besides, he was concerned that if he were to accuse Lucia, Gloria would be more prone to believe her sister’s lies over his honesty in this matter, his integrity having been rightfully called into question so frequently.

  The ludicrous picture now conjured up in his mind, of being cornered in his own house by his overbearing sister-in-law, would have made him laugh out loud had it not also been so pitiful. He had never really understood what possessed Lucia to make her lascivious propositions to him. Perhaps it was loneliness that inspired her, although Lucia had a confidence and zest for life that made this hard to believe. Perhaps it was an untamed sibling rivalry that continued to play itself out in increasingly adult games. Or perhaps it was simply that Lucia still wanted her younger sister as her own, her possession, her shadow that she could control with nobody coming between them, just as it had been in their desolate and unloved childhood. For the sake of his marriage, and his sanity, he knew he could no longer risk having Lucia in the house. He packed her possessions into the cases piled in the corner of the room and placed them outside the door with a note asking Lucia kindly never to return, and then gave instructions to the servants to change the locks and under no circumstances to allow Lucia to step foot in the house again. With the underwear still in his pocket he made his way to the town hall to see what trouble was brewing there.

  Everything looked calm as he approached the plaza. There was no
commotion, no crowd waiting to bombard him with questions about the whereabouts of the barber. Everything seemed perfectly under control. The Gringito was asleep as usual beneath the eucalyptus tree.

  ‘Bloody hipi,’ he said under his breath. ‘The first foreigner to make it here in years and we get one who can’t stay awake for longer than ten minutes.’ And he made a mental note to put an official notice on the tree banning people from sleeping under it. ‘I will have him behaving like a bloody tourist before the day is out, whether he likes it or not,’ he muttered. From the direction of his approach, the front part of Don Bosco’s shop was obscured from view by the corner of the town hall. As far as he could discern there were no signs of activity coming from it. He decided to go straight to the town hall to find Ramon and gather the equipment he needed for the next stage of his plans. He had plenty of time to get everything under way. Even if the letter had been a little delayed getting to him, the district officer had promised he would telephone him to give him ample warning of the visitors’ arrival. Then he stopped in his tracks with a gut-churning realisation: the telephone lines had been down for weeks.

  ‘Where is it?’ the mayor shouted as he stormed into the building. There was no sign of life in the deserted offices, apart from the scurrying of a family of rats who, recently dislodged from their home, were making their way down the corridor. He looked into the little room in which Ramon was supposed to perform his administrative duties; as usual it was empty. He then went straight to his office, took one look inside and bellowed, ‘Ramon, I’ve been burgled.’

  Ramon, certain that the mayor would be waylaid at the barber’s shop, had not expected his patron to arrive at the town hall quite so quickly and was under the desk at the time sorting through the remaining paperwork. He leapt up, banging his head as he did so. ‘I’ve had a little tidy-up, señor,’ he announced, rubbing his head.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Ramon. How many times have I told you not to do that?’ the mayor said, clutching his heart. ‘Where is everything? Where have all my things gone?’

  Ramon looked round the room at the empty desk and chair. ‘What things are those, señor?’ he asked.

  ‘My things. My files. My paperwork. My official business. Where has it all gone?’

  ‘Well, señor,’ Ramon replied, ‘I decided that there was no space in here to file everything, as a lot of the paperwork was quite old. I thought it was becoming a health hazard, gathering all that dust. Some rats had even made a nest in the corner of one of the piles of folders. So I decided that perhaps it was wise to reorganise.’

  ‘So where is it?’ the mayor said, glaring at Ramon.

  ‘It was all getting a little out of hand,’ Ramon continued.

  ‘Where is it? And where is the letter?’ the mayor asked, walking towards Ramon, who took a step backwards. He pointed at the empty desk on which now lay a single sheet of paper. The mayor picked it up.

  ‘This was sent nearly a month ago,’ he said, looking at the date on the letter. ‘Why didn’t you tell me it had arrived?’

  ‘I did, señor,’ Ramon replied. ‘At least, I remember putting it there on your desk in the “To-be-urgently-attended-to pile”. But with things being so busy I think it must have got overlooked.’ The mayor had stopped listening. He was reading the official notification of the planned arrival of the visitors. He stared at the letter, then at the calendar on the wall, and then at Ramon.

  ‘It’s tomorrow,’ he said.

  ‘Is it? Already? How can that be?’

  ‘The visitors, Ramon. The date in this letter. Their estimated arrival time. It is lunchtime tomorrow. “We are giving you due advance notification,”’ the mayor now read out loud, ‘“as we will expect you as leader of your esteemed town council to host the official welcome according to the protocol that has been sent to you ahead of this notice.”’ Enclosed was a brief itinerary of what was to follow the official welcome, which included a tour of the town to take in the antiquities, the tourist attractions and all the recent developments in which the provincial authorities had invested their money.

  ‘Protocol documents? Ramon, where are the protocol documents?’

  Ramon scanned the empty room. ‘I can’t be certain,’ he said, ‘but I think I may have filed them with all the old paperwork.’

  ‘And where is that?’

  ‘I burnt it.’

  By the time the mayor reached the backyard of the town hall there was little remaining to show for years of unattended-to official business but a pile of smouldering ashes.

  ‘What is it?’ Ramon said, staring at the black box on the mayor’s desk.

  ‘It’s the future, Ramon,’ the mayor said.

  ‘Really?’ Ramon said, taking in a breath, and he reached out to touch it. ‘It looks like a television. Like the one in Don Bosco’s shop. Can we watch football on it?’

  ‘I expect so,’ the mayor said. ‘That and much, much more besides.’

  ‘What does it do?’

  ‘It will connect us to the world,’ the mayor said, borrowing the phrase he had learned from Consuela and her bright young assistant.

  ‘How?’ Ramon asked.

  ‘What do you mean “how”?’

  ‘Well, how will it connect us to the world?’ Ramon asked, pressing a button on the lifeless black box.

  ‘Through the superhighway,’ the mayor replied.

  ‘The superhighway? So they are going to build a road after all?’ Ramon said.

  ‘They will when I am done with them,’ the mayor replied. ‘At least I’m prepared. Good thing you didn’t have the key to my cupboard otherwise you might have destroyed this as well.’ Ramon looked shamefaced and stared at the ground.

  ‘We will just have to make it up as we go along,’ the mayor said. ‘But I tell you, this will impress the visitors, official protocol or not.’

  ‘So where is the superhighway?’

  ‘It’s in the computer, Ramon. It is the pathway to the rest of the world. Through this, we can get any information we need.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About things, Ramon.’

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘Many things. Anything. About the places where the foreigners come from, for a start.’

  ‘Where did you get it?’ Ramon asked.

  ‘Doña Consuela sold it to me. Have you any idea how difficult it is carrying a computer by donkey through the swamp? The days will soon be gone when I will have to make a trip like that again. This is what I have invested the remainder of the money in. Ramon, can you believe it? Consuela’s business is doing so well that she was getting rid of these old computers and having new ones sent to her by boat from Manola.’

  ‘Where does she get all that money?’

  The mayor took Ramon by the arm and led him to the window. ‘What do you see out there?’ he asked.

  ‘The plaza of course,’ Ramon answered, wondering why the conversation had suddenly changed direction.

  ‘And what else?’

  ‘The eucalyptus tree. Oh yes, and Doña Nicanora having an argument with Don Pedro.’

  ‘Wretched woman,’ the mayor said, gazing out of the window. ‘I’ll sort her out in a minute. Look again. What is the most valuable thing that this town possesses?’

  ‘Oh, the church and the Virgin,’ Ramon said, suddenly feeling ashamed, and he crossed himself.

  ‘No, Ramon, I didn’t mean the church. I meant the bloody hipi.’

  ‘The hipi?’

  ‘Yes, Ramon. Don’t you see? He is our future. What do you think he is doing here?’

  ‘Sleeping,’ Ramon said.

  ‘Well, yes, I think we got a bit of a faulty one there to be honest,’ the mayor said. ‘The ones I have seen do things.’

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘They wander around buying things. And they sit and eat food, drink coffee and use bloody computers. Ramon, we need more of them here, lots of them. But better than the one we’ve got at the moment. I want this t
own to be rich, like it was in the days of our ancestors. I want it to be the centre of the province again. I think that is the least we deserve.’

  ‘Señor,’ Ramon said, now really confused and trying not to undermine his boss’s enthusiasm. ‘What has the computer got to do with it?’

  ‘That is what they will come here for.’

  ‘Why? I’m sure they have them in their own country, señor.’

  ‘I know they do, Ramon. That is the point.’

  Ramon, who had been trying to hold his own in the conversation, now floundered. ‘Señor, there is something I really don’t understand. Why would they want to come here to use a computer to find out information about the places they have just come from? I know,’ he said with a sudden flash of inspiration. ‘Nicanora said she thought the Gringito was lost. Is that why they need computers? To find out how to get home?’

  ‘They talk to people, Ramon. That’s what they use them for. They talk to other gringos, in other countries. They talk to other people like themselves, when they are travelling.’

  ‘Don’t the telephones in their country work either?’

  ‘No, they like to talk to people they don’t know. People they have never met and never will meet, anywhere in the world, in other parts of the world.’

  ‘So let me get this right,’ Ramon said. ‘They will travel all the way here to talk to someone they don’t know, who is somewhere else altogether?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know, Ramon,’ the mayor said, sitting down. ‘Probably to stop them feeling so alone. All I know is that there is money to be had from it.’

  ‘So how does it work?’ Ramon asked, pressing a button again and waiting expectantly for the screen to burst into life.

  ‘I have no idea,’ the mayor said. ‘But you had better find out by tomorrow.’ And he handed Ramon a small book, a bag of cables and a set of round discs that looked like little saucers, given to him by Consuela’s assistant.