Dona Nicanora's Hat Shop

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

  The young man smiled warmly, shrugged his shoulders and then nudged him with his gun. ‘I’m under orders,’ he said, diffidently. ‘We need everything you have.’ Arturo showed him to the medicine chest in which his meagre supplies were kept. Useless potions, he thought, as he watched Carlos empty the contents. What good are they to the likes of Doña Gloria or Doña Nicanora? How will they bring Don Bosco back from the dead?

  ‘Where did you get the uniform?’ Arturo asked, as he packed his paltry belongings into a small bag, just as Carlos had instructed him to do.

  ‘It isn’t real,’ Carlos said proudly. ‘It’s a good copy though, isn’t it? We made one for each of us, to look like the real thing. So that people would think we are regular army.’

  ‘Are you at the university?’ Arturo asked. Carlos looked unnerved by the familiar manner in which Arturo was addressing him, like an indulgent older brother. He nodded.

  ‘What are you studying?’

  ‘History. I’m at the end of my first year,’ Carlos replied. Then, as if embarrassed by the inexperience in his voice, said, ‘I am through with that now. I am ready to do real work.’

  ‘Real work?’ Arturo said. ‘And what is that? Are you perhaps thinking of training to be a barber?’

  Carlos looked uncertain whether to laugh at the joke or to be angry at the insult, and so he lightly prodded Arturo with his gun again. ‘We must go now,’ he said.

  Arturo picked up his bag and took one last look at the room that had been his home for the past few months and said a silent goodbye. He wondered whether the room would miss him. It already looked as if it had never known he had lived there.

  It did not take long to reach the clearing in which the impromptu camp had been set up. It was only half an hour’s walk from the clinic and close enough to the road that it could easily be seen by anyone who chose to venture along that bit of track, which fortunately they did not. Arturo thought it seemed rather an inept place to hide. Two young men were standing in the clearing, their backs to Carlos and Arturo, guarding a sleeping body that Arturo immediately recognised as Claudia. As he approached, the memory of a love, slightly faded and yellowed at the edges but achingly familiar, caught him at the throat.

  ‘Is she hurt?’ he asked Carlos as he made his way past the young guards, knelt down beside Claudia and started to take her pulse. All three men instinctively put their hands to their guns. Claudia opened her eyes and smiled.

  ‘Did we give you a surprise?’ she said as she tried to sit up, wincing as she did so. ‘It can’t have been that unexpected. You knew we would be coming soon.’

  ‘I wasn’t sure what I was expecting,’ Arturo replied. ‘I certainly didn’t think you would be accompanied. Not in this way.’

  Claudia looked at the three young men, their guns trained nervously on Arturo. ‘They’re harmless,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t understand this. Claudia, what is it that you are involved in?’ Arturo whispered.

  ‘Don’t you know anything about what is going on in the world, Arturo?’ Claudia said. ‘Things are happening out there. The people of this country are no longer willing to accept the old ways. They’re taking control.’

  ‘With your help?’ Arturo asked.

  ‘You can’t stay locked in your safe little haven for ever, Arturo,’ Claudia said, the harsh challenge in her voice bringing back memories of the thrill of the fear that she used to instil in him. But now her words had a different quality from the seductive tones of her youth; they had a harsh, sharp ring that echoed painfully in Arturo’s heart. He slowly opened Claudia’s shirt to reveal the wound, exactly where he knew he would find it.

  ‘Can you fetch me some boiled water?’ he said looking up and addressing Carlos directly. Carlos looked at Claudia, who nodded, and he immediately left.

  ‘Can we be alone for a moment?’ Arturo said to Claudia, as the two other men remained, their guns still trained on him. Claudia signalled with her hand and they too vanished into the forest.

  ‘Are they your students?’ Arturo asked. ‘This is certainly an interesting way of teaching them. Isn’t it against college rules?’

  ‘Don’t be so precious,’ Claudia said. ‘They’re not children, Arturo. They know what they’re doing.’

  ‘Do they? Do you? Do any of us?’ Arturo asked, as he examined the wound, frowning as he did so. ‘You need help,’ he said at last. ‘It isn’t too deep, but I think it’s infected and you’ve lost blood. I need to get you to a hospital. You have a fever.’

  ‘Well, you’re not much use, are you?’ Claudia said taunting him. ‘I thought you were supposed to be a doctor. That’s why I came to you.’

  ‘So you didn’t come because I’m a friend?’ Arturo said. ‘There is nothing I can do for you here, Claudia. I need to get you to the nearest hospital. I’ll take you to Puerta de la Coruña.’

  ‘Puerta de la Coruña,’ Claudia said, laughing bitterly. ‘I’m not on holiday, Arturo. I haven’t come to you because I want you to show me where I can buy postcards. Don’t you understand how serious the situation is? You once swore you would always be there for me if I needed help. Well I need your help now.’

  Arturo could feel the irresistible pull of Claudia’s magic working on him. It was true, he had made a commitment to her in his youth, before he knew anything about the realities of the world that lay beyond the confines of his parents’ garden.

  ‘This is a bullet wound. How did you get it?’ he said, gently bathing the wound with the water that Carlos had put in front of him.

  ‘I’ll explain on the way. It’s nothing. We have to go now. Just give me some antibiotics and I’ll be fine. Are you ready?’

  ‘For what?’ Arturo asked.

  ‘To come with us.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘The border. It’s not far from here. We have worked it out. It’s only another couple of days’ walk through the swamp and we’ll be there. We have friends waiting for us,’ Claudia replied, the heat of her fever now chilled by the coldness of her voice.

  ‘Are you mad?’ Arturo said. ‘Claudia, you have no idea what you’re talking about. The forest is impenetrable in that direction. This is too desperate. What are you running away from?’

  ‘I am not the one who is running away, Arturo,’ Claudia said. ‘We can make it with your help. You know the locals by now. The people here trust you. We will take one with us as our guide.’

  ‘Even the locals never go into the swamp, Claudia. They know better than to do so,’ and as he spoke the image of Don Bosco’s half-submerged body reappeared in his mind.

  ‘What about the young man who has been helping you at the clinic?’

  ‘Ernesto?’ Arturo said. ‘He may be local, but he has never been far into the swamp.’

  ‘Arturo,’ Claudia said, her voice now turning icy. ‘Why are you being so difficult? When are you going to stop playing games? When are you ever going to grow up and stop trying to please your father? Wake up to what is real in the world. You have the chance to do something useful with your life, at last. Why do you think I sent you here? Not because I thought your little box of pills would do any good for anybody. It was me who asked my mother to help your father find you this post. Do you know why? So that when the time came we would have a place to hide and a way to get out. We will need a doctor with us, even though you are useless,’ and as she said this there was the slightest hint of familiar teasing in her voice.

  ‘What is all this for, Claudia?’ Arturo said softly. ‘What are you doing this for?’

  ‘Do you really think you can help the people here with your injections, Arturo? Do you really think people like you will make any difference at all to the lives of the majority of people in our country? So you spend a year here and then what? You know you will never belong here. You will never be a part of these people’s lives. They are different from us, Arturo,’ and as she said this Arturo heard the echo of his mother’s words in Claudia’s. ‘You’re just playing at living, Artur
o, with your infatuations and flirtations with the local girls,’ she continued with bitterness. ‘You’re fooling yourself. When your year here is up, what is there for you if you don’t come with me now? You’ll return to the city to live the life of the pampered middle classes like your father, with your private practice and your wealthy patients and your housemaids. And you will be using these people here to justify it all to yourself. You will tell yourself you deserve it because you once spent a few months in some piece of forgotten swampland trying to help the poor. They don’t even want you here.’

  Arturo stood up, reeling from the punch of Claudia’s words.

  ‘And what good do you think you can bring to the people of this town?’ he asked. ‘What do you know of their struggles, Claudia? Tell me, exactly how will your fight help Doña Nicanora save the shop in the plaza? How will it help Doña Gloria stop her soul from tormenting her? How will it help the town find the barber they did not realise they loved so much until it was too late? Will your fight help the people here to sort out these troubles?’

  Claudia looked at Arturo as if he were the one with the fever. ‘It’s no good is it, Arturo?’ she said at last. ‘You just don’t get it, do you? You never have and you never will. You’re lost. But Arturo, if you won’t come with us willingly, I have the power to make you.’ And she clapped her hands and the three young men stepped out of the trees, their guns pointed at Arturo’s head. He took a step backwards. In the far distance he could hear a very familiar sound: the slow rumble of wheels on the dirt track.

  ‘Claudia,’ Arturo said, ‘you’re too sick to make it to the border. And even if you weren’t, I wouldn’t come with you. This is not my fight. This is your battle with yourself and your mother. I will help you as I promised, but not in the way that you want. I will take you to Puerta de la Coruña, to the hospital, if you choose to come with me. But you have no power to make me do anything against my will, guns or no guns. Maybe you’re right. Maybe this is the way. But it isn’t for me. If you want to instruct your students to shoot me in the back as I walk away, then so be it. It’s your choice. I’m going now, to find a friend who can help you.’ As Arturo turned to make his way out of the clearing he heard the click of three rifles preparing to shoot, and then he walked down the track to meet Ernesto.

  Ernesto was uncertain whether the figure walking towards him was the doctor or a form borrowed by the kachi kachi in the night to trick him. It had appeared as if from nowhere, and was approaching, waving, with a small bag slung over its shoulder. It looked like the doctor, but it had an alien quality to it, a confidence and assuredness in its step that he had never seen in the doctor before. It was certainly the doctor’s voice calling him.

  ‘Ernesto, Ernesto, am I pleased to see you,’ Arturo said as Ernesto slowed the vehicle down. When he stopped, Ernesto thought he could detect a film of tears in the doctor’s sad eyes.

  ‘Where are you going so early in the morning?’ Arturo asked as the vehicle came to a halt beside him.

  ‘Puerta de la Coruña,’ Ernesto replied. ‘I was looking for you to see whether you would come with me. I am taking the Gringito there, except I can’t find him. And I need to buy beer and fireworks for the fiesta of the Virgin, to bring Don Bosco back.’

  ‘I think it will take more than beer and fireworks to bring Don Bosco back,’ Arturo said, and then he checked himself. ‘I’m sorry, Ernesto, if you feel that will help, then that is what you must do. But I need you Ernesto. I have a sick patient.’

  It took Arturo some time to persuade Ernesto to walk back into the forest clearing with him. ‘It’s an old friend of mine, from my childhood. She came to me in the middle of the night. She’s in trouble. She’s very sick,’ Arturo said by way of an explanation. When he looked at Ernesto he saw a look of concerned incomprehension on his face. It was the same look that Arturo had so often shown to Ernesto in their first weeks together. Arturo led the way down the little grass track from where he had just come. When they reached the clearing there was no sign that any human form had been lying there only an hour ago. Arturo stood at the spot where Claudia had lain.

  ‘Do you think I could have dreamt it, Ernesto?’ he asked at last. ‘Do you think I could have been drawn here by some apparition from my mind?’

  ‘The forest can play tricks on all of us, doctor,’ was all that Ernesto would say.

  ‘She was here, Ernesto,’ Arturo said at last. ‘It was no dream. She came to offer me a choice, a way forward. And I couldn’t take it.’

  ‘I’m sure she did,’ Ernesto said and he laid his hand on Arturo’s shoulder. ‘What do you want to do now?’ he asked.

  ‘Come with you,’ Arturo replied. He did not tell Ernesto that he had all his worldly possessions packed in his little bag. One thing was certain. Whether he had been lured into the forest by a wayward ghost or not, Claudia had been right. He was a weak man and he had nothing to offer the town or the young woman who now owned his heart.

  Twenty-five

  The road started its journey as a gentle track. As it climbed upwards, the tangle of forest gave way to small orderly clearings of banana groves. Young children scrambled down hidden paths to greet the little pickup as it edged its way slowly up the hill. The plan was to follow the road to the top of the valley, where it then divided. The most dangerous stretch, Ernesto assured Arturo, was the upward fork that wound its way to the city. The gentler route, which they would take, carved a path along the other side of the valley into the steamy depths of the lowlands where Puerta de la Coruña lay. Arturo closed his eyes and allowed the freshness of the morning air to fill his lungs. He felt a deep pang of guilt as he thought about Isabela, and wondered what Ernesto would think of him if he knew what he was running away from. This is for the best, he told himself; Claudia is right, I can never belong there. What happiness could I possibly bring to her? It is best for everyone that I end it now. As they continued upwards the whirring noise of a helicopter grew louder, ebbing and flowing across the forest.

  ‘What is it?’ Arturo asked.

  ‘The army I think,’ Ernesto replied.

  ‘What are they doing flying over here?’ Arturo said.

  ‘Looking for coca crops,’ Ernesto said, pointing to the green terraces they were now approaching. The men working the fields stood alert as the pickup passed them by. The truck continued to climb, holding tenaciously to the side of the mountain. Occasionally it halted and slid a few yards backwards before gathering control again and forging another small path onwards. The steeper the incline, the narrower its path became, until the pickup was finally edging its way along a precipice so narrow that when Arturo glanced out of the window he was unable to see any road beneath them. Instead, he looked over a mist-filled ravine so deep that it was impossible to see the bottom. ‘It gets much steeper soon,’ Ernesto said. ‘That’s why we have to reach the brow of the hill before night fall.’

  Arturo shut his eyes and crossed himself. The tiny figure of a plastic Virgin with a posy of flowers in her hands bobbed on the windscreen. The radio that Arturo had brought with him picked up a stray signal and crackled into life. ‘We have intelligence of a terrorist camp close to the border,’ a man said. ‘We believe they are a group of peasant communists who are receiving training from outside sources. We understand there is a connection to the recent riots and the People’s Liberation Front. We cannot reveal our sources, but suffice it to say that we have the situation under surveillance.’

  Arturo felt a cold chill wash over him as he strained his ears to listen. The commentators were arguing about whether insurgents were supporting the terrorist group and if so what the government should do about it. So that was where Claudia was heading. One thing at least was reassuring about the news: Arturo was now certain that Claudia’s visit had not been a creation of his imagination. The problems that the country was facing all seemed insignificant to him in the light of the troubles of the little town that he was leaving behind. He wondered why the newsreaders were not discussi
ng how a barber could become lost in a swamp in which he had lived all his life. But of course they did not know that Don Bosco was lost, and nor, he suspected, would they ever find out.

  The band in the plaza played the national anthem for the tenth and final time. The clock on the town hall struck five, which meant it was six o’clock, and exactly on cue the light began to fade. Within half an hour the town would be lost in darkness again. The computer sat on the podium drenched in a pool of water. The slow drizzle of the afternoon had ensured that the flag was entirely covered with an even coat of red paint.

  ‘I don’t think they’re coming,’ someone from the crowd said at last, breaking the tension that had been building for the past few hours.

  ‘Just give it ten more minutes,’ the mayor pleaded to the wet and agitated crowd. ‘They must have been delayed. The letter from the district officer clearly states that they will be here by noon.’

  ‘Well, they clearly weren’t here by noon, were they?’ the man shouted back.

  ‘Show us the letter,’ another demanded. ‘How do we even know that you are telling the truth?’

  Ramon and the mayor both put their hands in their pockets and looked at each other, each convinced that the other was the last to have seen the document.

  ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ someone said. ‘You’ve completely wasted our time.’

  ‘And our money. Why would the visitors want to come all this way to see an old television anyway?’

  ‘It isn’t a television. It’s a computer,’ the mayor said, for the twentieth time.

  ‘What are we going to do with a computer?’ someone asked.

  ‘Travel the superhighway,’ Ramon said, but the crowd was not listening any more. No longer were the townsfolk standing as one united group drawn together by the anticipation of the honour of receiving foreign guests. People had broken off into small clusters, murmuring and arguing amongst themselves as to why the mayor would play such a trick on them and make them stand in the rain for six hours looking ridiculous. Scuffles began to break out as neighbour accused neighbour of spreading false rumours and wasting each other’s time. As the townsfolk stood there in the plaza, wounds that had healed over years ago slowly began to reopen. Friends turned on friends, neighbours on neighbours, each blaming the other for the disappointment of the afternoon, the previous week, month and year, and finally for all the mistakes they had made in their lives. The mayor, having lost control of the situation, took refuge with Ramon under the eucalyptus tree, ready to make a break from the plaza should a riot erupt. Nicanora stood watching the scene from the barber’s shop. The time has come, she said to herself, and with her last remaining drop of courage, she made her way through the crowd and mounted the podium, taking her place beside the drowned computer.