Conversation in the Cathedral

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  “We’ve already gassed up, I told Lima we’ll be there around three-thirty,” the Lieutenant said. “Whenever you’re ready, Mr. Bermúdez.”

  Bermúdez had changed his shirt and was wearing a gray suit. He was carrying a small valise, a crumpled hat, sunglasses.

  “Is that all your luggage?” the Lieutenant asked.

  “I’ve got forty bags more,” Bermúdez grunted. “Let’s go, I want to get back to Chincha today.”

  The woman watched the sergeant who was checking the oil in the jeep. She had taken off her apron, the tight dress outlined her bulging stomach, her overflowing hips. You’ll have to excuse me, the Lieutenant gave her his hand, for stealing your husband, but she didn’t laugh. Bermúdez had got into the rear seat of the jeep and she was looking at him as if she hated him, the Lieutenant thought, or wouldn’t ever see him again. He got into the jeep, saw Bermúdez vaguely wave good-bye, and they left. The sun was burning, the streets were deserted, a nauseating vapor arose from the pavement, the windows of the houses sparkled.

  “Has it been long since you were in Lima?” The Lieutenant was trying to be pleasant.

  “I go two or three times a year on business,” he said without warmth, without grace, the slack, mechanical, discontented little voice of the world. “I represent a few agricultural concerns here.”

  “We didn’t get to marry, but I had my woman too,” Ambrosio says.

  “But how come your business isn’t going well?” the Lieutenant asked. “Aren’t the landowners here pretty rich? There’s a lot of cotton, isn’t there?”

  “You had?” Santiago asks. “Did you have a fight with her?”

  “It went well in other days,” Bermúdez said; he isn’t the most unpleasant man in Peru because Colonel Espina is still around, the Lieutenant thought, but after the Colonel who except this one. “With the controls on exchange, the cotton growers have stopped making what they used to, and you have to sweat blood just to sell them a hoe.”

  “She died on me there in Pucallpa, child,” Ambrosio says. “She left me a little girl.”

  “Well, that’s why we started the revolution,” the Lieutenant said good-humoredly. “The chaos is all over now. With the army in charge everybody will toe the mark. You’ll see how things are going to get better under Odría.”

  “Really?” Bermúdez yawned. “People change here, Lieutenant, never things.”

  “Don’t you read the papers? Don’t you listen to the radio?” the Lieutenant insisted with a smile. “The cleanup has already started. Apristas, crooks, Communists, all in the lockup. There won’t be a single one of the vermin loose on the streets.”

  “What did you go to Pucallpa for?” Santiago asks.

  “Others will appear,” Bermúdez said harshly. “In order to clean the vermin up in Peru you’d have to drop a few bombs and wipe us off the map.”

  “To work, son,” Ambrosio says. “I mean, to look for work.”

  “Are you serious or joking?” the Lieutenant asked.

  “Did my old man know you were there?” Santiago asks.

  “I don’t like to joke,” Bermúdez said. “I always speak seriously.”

  The jeep was going through a valley, the air smelled of shellfish and in the distance bare, sandy hills could be seen. The sergeant was chewing on a cigar as he drove and the Lieutenant had his cap pulled down to his ears: come on, they’d have a couple of beers, black boy. They’d had a friendly conversation, yessir, he needs me, Ambrosio had thought, and, naturally, it had to do with Rosa. He’d got hold of a pickup truck, a farmhouse, and he’d convinced his friend the Uplander. And he wanted Ambrosio to help him too, in case there was trouble. What trouble could there be, tell me? Did the girl have a father and brothers maybe? No, just Túmula, trash. He enchanted to help him, except that. He wasn’t afraid of Túmula, Don Cayo, or of the people in the settlement, but what about your papa, Don Cayo? Because if the Vulture found out Don Cayo would only get his whipping, but what about him? He wasn’t going to find out, boy, he was going to Lima for three days and when he returned Rosa would be back at the settlement. Ambrosio had swallowed the story, yessir, he was tricked into helping him. Because it was one thing to kidnap a girl for one night, do your thing and turn her loose, and something else, yessir, to marry her, right? That devil of a Don Cayo had made fools out of him and the Uplander, yessir. All of them, except Rosa and except Túmula. In Chincha they said that the one who came off best was the milk woman’s daughter, who went from delivering milk on a donkey to being a lady and the Vulture’s daughter-in-law. Everybody else lost: Don Cayo, his parents, even Túmula, because she lost her daughter. Or maybe Rosa was a sharp chippy. Who would have said so, yessir, worth so little, and the little toad won the lottery and more. What did Ambrosio have to do, sir? Go to the square at nine o’clock, and he’d gone and waited and they picked him up, they drove around and when the people went to bed, they parked the truck by the house of Don Mauro Cruz, the deaf man. Don Cayo was to meet the girl there at ten o’clock. Of course she came, why shouldn’t she come. She appeared, Don Cayo went ahead and they stayed behind in the truck. He must have told her something or she must have guessed something, the fact is that all of a sudden Túmula’s daughter started to run and Don Cayo hollered catch her. So Ambrosio ran, caught her and threw her over his shoulder and brought her and sat her in the truck. That’s when he caught Rosa’s tricks, yessir, that’s when you could see her bringing them out. Not a shout, not a moan, just running around, little scratches, little punches. The easiest would have been to start hollering, people would have come out, half the settlement would have been on top of them, yessir, right? Who says she was scared to death, who says she’d lost her voice? She kicked and scratched while he carried her and in the truck she pretended to be crying because her face was covered, but Ambrosio didn’t hear her crying. The Uplander pushed the gas to the floor, the truck flew out of the side street. They got to the farm and Don Cayo got out and Rosa, with no need to carry her, she went right into the house, yessir, you see? Ambrosio went to sleep thinking about what Rosa would look like the next day, and whether she’d tell Túmula and Túmula would tell his black mama and his black mama would give it to him. Nobody had any notion of what was going to happen, nosiree. Because Rosa didn’t come back the next day, Don Cayo either, or the day after, or the one after that. In the settlement Túmula was all tears, and in Chincha Doña Catalina was all tears, and Ambrosio didn’t know which way to turn. On the third day the Vulture came back and notified the police and Túmula had notified them too. You can imagine the gossip, yessir. If the Uplander and Ambrosio ran into each other on the street they didn’t say anything, he must have been jumpy too. They only showed up the following week, yessir. He didn’t have to do it, nobody had stuck a pistol in his chest saying the church or the grave. He’d looked up the priest of his own free will. They say they were seen getting off a bus on the Plaza de Armas, that he was holding Rosa by the arm, that they were seen going into the Vulture’s house as if they were coming back from a walk. They must have appeared there all of a sudden, together, just imagine, Don Cayo must have taken out the certificate and said we got married, can you imagine the face the Vulture must have put on, yessir, what the devil is this all about?

  “Are they hunting down vermin over there, Lieutenant?” Bermúdez pointed to the university campus with an insipid smile. “What’s going on at San Marcos?”

  Military barriers closed off the four corners of the square and there were patrols of helmeted soldiers, assault guards and mounted police. Down with Dictatorship, said some placards stuck to the walls of San Marcos, Only Aprismo Will Save Peru. The main door of the university was closed and mourning drapes fluttered on the balconies, and on the rooftops small heads watched the movements of the soldiers and police. The walls of the university courtyard breathed with a sound that grew and shrank between bursts of applause.

  “A few Apristas have been holed up inside there since October twenty-seventh.” The Lieu
tenant waved to the officer in charge of the roadblock on the Avenida Abancay. “The ‘buffalo squad’ hoodlums won’t learn their lesson.”

  “Why don’t they shoot them?” Bermúdez asked. “Is this how the army has started its cleanup?”

  A police lieutenant came over to the jeep, saluted, examined the pass the Lieutenant handed him.

  “How are those subversives getting along?” the Lieutenant asked, pointing to San Marcos.

  “Over there raising hob,” the police lieutenant said. “Sometimes they throw their little stones. Go ahead, Lieutenant.”

  The policemen moved the sawhorses out of the way and the jeep went through the University Square. On the waving drapes there were white pieces of cardboard, In Mourning for Freedom, and skulls and cross-bones drawn in black paint.

  “I’d shoot them, but Colonel Espina wants to starve them out,” the Lieutenant said.

  “How are things going in the provinces?” Bermúdez asked. “I imagine there’s trouble in the North. The Apristas are strong there.”

  “All peaceful, that business about the APRA controlling Peru is a myth,” the Lieutenant said. “You saw how their leaders ran for asylum in foreign embassies. You’ve never seen a more peaceful revolution, Mr. Bermúdez. And the San Marcos affair could be settled in one minute if the higher-ups wanted to.”

  There was no military movement on the downtown streets. Only on the Plaza Italia did helmeted soldiers appear again. Bermúdez got out of the jeep, stretched, waited for the Lieutenant, looking at everything with ennui.

  “Have you ever been in the Ministry?” the Lieutenant tried to cheer him up. “It’s an old building, but the offices are quite elegant. The Colonel’s has paintings and everything.”

  They went in and two minutes hadn’t passed when the door opened as if there had been an earthquake inside and Don Cayo and Rosa came tumbling out with the Vulture behind, cursing a stream and charging like a bull, a sight to see, they say, yessir. He wasn’t mad at Túmula’s daughter, he didn’t seem to have hit her, just his son. He knocked him down with a punch, lifted him up with a kick, and just like that all the way to the Plaza de Armas. There they held him back because otherwise he would have killed him. He wouldn’t accept his getting married that way, snotnose that he was, and especially to the one he did. He never did accept it, of course, and he never saw Don Cayo again or gave him a penny. Don Cayo had to earn his own keep for himself and for Rosa. The one the Vulture said was going to be a future big brain didn’t even finish high school. If instead of a priest they’d only been married by a justice of the peace, the Vulture would have fixed it up overnight, but how can you make a deal with God, sir? Doña Catalina being the church biddy she was too. They probably had a consultation, the priest must have told them there’s nothing you can do, religion is religion and till death do them part. So there was nothing left for the Vulture except despair. They say he gave a beating to the priest who married them, that afterward he was refused absolution and as a penance they made him pay for one of the steeples of the new church in Chincha. So even religion got its slice of meat from the whole business, yessir. The Vulture never saw the couple again. It seems that when he sensed he was dying he asked have I got any grandchildren? Maybe if he’d had any he would have forgiven Don Cayo, but Rosa hadn’t only turned into a horror, yessir, to top it off she never grew full. They say that just so his son wouldn’t inherit anything, the Vulture began to get rid of what he had in drinking bouts and charity and that if death hadn’t caught him all of a sudden he would have given away the house he had behind the church too. He didn’t have time, nosiree. Why did he stay with the Indian for so many years? That was what everyone said to the Vulture: the love will wear off and he’ll send her back to Túmula and you’ll have your son again. But he didn’t do it, I wonder why. Not because of religion, I don’t think so, Don Cayo never went to church. To make his father mad? Because he hated the Vulture, you say? To cheat him so that he could see all the hopes he’d put in him go up in smoke? Fucking himself up to kill his father with disappointment? You think that’s why? Making him suffer no matter what it cost, even becoming trash himself? Well, I don’t know, no sir, if you think so it must be because of that. Don’t look that way, we were having a good talk. Don’t you feel good? You’re not talking about the Vulture and Don Cayo but about yourself and young Santiago, yessir, right? All right, I’ll keep quiet, yes, I can see that you’re not talking to me. I didn’t say anything, no sir, don’t act like that, no sir.

  “What’s Pucallpa like?” Santiago asks.

  “A small town that’s not worth anything,” Ambrosio says. “Haven’t you ever been there, son?”

  “I’ve spent my whole life dreaming about traveling and I only got fifty miles away, just once,” Santiago says. “At least you’ve traveled a little.”

  “It brought me bad luck, son,” Ambrosio says. “Pucallpa only brought me trouble.”

  “It means things have gone bad for you,” Colonel Espina said. “Worse than for the rest of our class. You haven’t got a penny and you’re still a country boy.”

  “I didn’t have time to follow in the footsteps of the rest of the class,” Bermúdez said calmly, looking at Espina without arrogance, without modesty. “But you, of course, you’ve done better than all the rest of us put together.”

  “The best student, the most intelligent, the one who studied the hardest,” Espina said. “Bermúdez will be President and Espina his Minister, old Dapple Gray used to say. Remember?”

  “Even then you wanted to be a minister, really,” Bermúdez said with a sour little smile. “There you are, now you are one. You must be happy, right?”

  “I didn’t ask for it and I didn’t look for it.” Colonel Espina opened his arms in resignation. “They laid it on me and I accepted it as a duty.”

  “In Chincha they said you were an Aprista officer, that you’d gone to a cocktail party given by Haya de la Torre,” Bermúdez went on, smiling without conviction. “And now, just think, hunting down Apristas like vermin. That’s what the little lieutenant you sent to get me said. And, by the way, it’s time you told me why so much honor for me.”

  The office door opened, a man with a circumspect face came in bowing, with some papers in his hand, could he come in, Mr. Secretary? but then the Colonel Dr. Alcibíades stopped him with a gesture, no one was to disturb them. The man bowed again, very well, Mr. Secretary, and he left.

  “Mr. Secretary.” Bermúdez cleared his throat, without nostalgia, looking around lethargically. “I can’t believe it. Like sitting here. Like the fact that we’re already in our forties.”

  Colonel Espina smiled at him affectionately, he’d lost a lot of hair but the tufts he still had showed no gray and his copper-colored face was still vigorous; he ran his eyes slowly over the tanned and indolent face of Bermúdez, the old-before-its-time, ascetic body sunken in the broad red velvet chair.

  “You fucked yourself up with that crazy marriage,” he said with a sweetish and paternal voice. “It was the great mistake of your life, Cayo. I warned you, remember.”

  “Did you send for me to talk about my marriage?” he asked without anger, without drive, the same mediocre little voice as always. “One more word and I’m leaving.”

  “You’re still the same. Still grumpy.” Espina laughed. “How’s Rosa? I know you haven’t had any children.”

  “If you don’t mind, let’s get to the point,” Bermúdez said; a shadow of fatigue clouded his eyes, his mouth was tight with impatience. Roofs, cornices, aerial trash piles were outlined against fat clouds through the windows behind Espina.

  “Even though we haven’t seen much of each other, you’ve always been my best friend.” The Colonel was almost sad. “When we were kids I thought a lot of you, Cayo. More than you did of me. I admired you, I was even jealous of you.”

  Bermúdez was imperturbably scrutinizing the Colonel. The cigarette he had in his hand had burned down, the ash fell on the rug, the curls of smoke b
roke against his face like waves against brown rocks.

  “When I was a minister under Bustamante, the whole class looked me up, all except you,” Espina said. “Why? You were in bad shape, we’d been like brothers. I could have helped you.”

  “Did they come like dogs to lick your hands, to ask you for recommendations, to propose business deals to you?” Bermúdez asked. “Since I didn’t come, you must have said that fellow must be rich or maybe he’s dead.”

  “I knew that you were alive but half dead from hunger,” Espina said. “Don’t interrupt, let me speak.”

  “It’s just that you’re still so slow,” Bermúdez said. “A person has to use a corkscrew to get the words out of you, just the way you were at José Pardo.”

  “I want to help you,” Espina murmured. “Tell me what I can do for you.”

  “Just give me transportation back to Chincha,” Bermúdez whispered. “The jeep, a bus ticket, anything. Because of this trip to Lima I may have lost out on an interesting piece of business.”

  “You’re happy with your lot, you don’t mind growing old as a penniless country boy,” Espina said. “You’re not ambitious anymore, Cayo.”

  “But I’m still proud,” Bermúdez said dryly. “I don’t like to take favors. Is that all you wanted to tell me?”

  The Colonel was watching him, as if measuring him or guessing what he was thinking, and the cordial little smile that had been floating on his lips vanished. He clasped his hands with their polished nails and leaned forward.

  “Do you want to get down to cases, Cayo?” he asked with sudden energy.

  “It’s about time.” Bermúdez put out his cigarette in the ashtray. “You were getting me tired with that great show of affection.”

  “Odría needs people he can trust.” The Colonel spaced his syllables, as if his safety and confidence were suddenly threatened. “Everybody here is with us and nobody is with us. La Prensa and the Agrarian Society only want us to abolish controls on exchange and to protect free enterprise.”