Conversation in the Cathedral

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  “What basis shall we use for the split?” Indian Martínez asked. “It has to be done right now, we can’t waste time.”

  “He’s in a hurry because he’s got his concept of unpaid work all sharpened up like a razor.” Washington laughed.

  “We could draw lots,” Héctor said.

  “Luck is a bit irrational,” Jacobo said. “I propose that we split up alphabetically.”

  “Of course, that’s more rational and much easier,” said The Bird. “The first four in one group, the rest in the other.”

  There hadn’t been any catch in his heart, the little worm hadn’t popped out. Only surprise and confusion, he thinks, only that sudden ill feeling. And that set idea: a mistake. And that set idea, he thinks: a mistake?

  “Those who agree with Jacobo’s proposal raise your hands,” Washington said.

  A growing ill feeling, his brain dulled, a dizzy timidity silencing his tongue, raising his hand a few seconds after the others.

  “All set, then, agreed,” Washington said. “Jacobo, Aída, Héctor and Martínez one group and the other four of us the second.”

  He hadn’t turned his head to look at Aída or Jacobo, he’d taken a long time to light a cigarette, thumbed through Engels, exchanged a smile with Solórzano.

  “Now, Martínez, now you can show off,” Washington said. “What’s the story on the unpaid work?”

  Not just the revolution, he thinks. Lukewarm, hidden, a heart too, and a small brain, alert, quick, calculating. Had he planned it, he thinks, had he made a sudden decision? The revolution, friendship, jealousy, envy, all together, all mixed in, he too, Zavalita, made from the same dirty clay, Jacobo too, Zavalita.

  “There weren’t any pure people in the world,” Santiago says. “Yes, that was when it was.”

  “Wouldn’t you see the girl anymore?” Ambrosio asks.

  “I was going to see her less, he was going to see her alone twice a week,” Santiago says. “And besides, I was hurt by the low blow. Not for moral reasons, because of envy. I was timid and I never would have dared.”

  “He was sharper.” Ambrosio laughs. “And you still haven’t forgiven him for that piece of bitchery.”

  Martínez the Indian had the gestures and the voice of a schoolteacher, in brief, it was unpaid work, and was repetitious and monotonous, a proportion of the product tricked away from the worker which would increase the capital, and Santiago stared eternally at his round copper-colored face and listened endlessly to his didactic teacher’s voice, and looked around at the glow of cigarettes every time hands went up to lips and in spite of so many bodies crowded into such a miserly space there was that feeling of loneliness, that emptiness. The little worm was there now, making soft monotonous turns in his guts.

  “Because I’m like those little animals that curl up in the face of danger and remain still, waiting to be stepped on or to have their heads cut off,” Santiago says. “Being without faith and timid besides is like having syphilis and leprosy at the same time.”

  “All you do is say bad things about yourself,” Ambrosio says. “If someone else said the things you’re saying about yourself, you wouldn’t stand for it.”

  Had something that seemed eternal been broken, he thinks, did it hurt me so much because of her, because of me, because of him? But you’d pretended as always, Zavalita, more than always, and you’d left the meeting with Jacobo and Aída, and you’d talked too much while you walked down, Engels and unpaid work, without giving them a chance to answer, Politzer and The Bird and Marx, incessant and loquacious, interrupting them if they opened their mouths, killing topics and bringing them back to life, stumbling, profuse, confused, so that the monologue would never end, fabricating, exaggerating, lying, suffering, so that Jacobo’s proposal wouldn’t be mentioned, so that it wouldn’t be said that starting Saturday they would be on Petit Thouars and he on Rímac, feeling too now and for the first time that they were together and were not, that the respiratory communication of past times was missing, the corporal intelligence of past times, while they crossed the Plaza de Armas, which horribly here and now was also something artificial and lying and isolated them, like the conversations with my old man, he thinks, and made them be wrong and began to turn them against one another. They had gone down the Jirón de la Unión without looking at one another, he talking and they listening. Was Aída sorry about it, had Aída worked it out in advance with him? and when they got to the Plaza San Martín it was quite late, Santiago had looked at his watch, had hurried to catch the express bus, had put out his hand to them and left on the run, without setting up where and what time we’d meet tomorrow, he thinks. He thinks: for the first time.

  Had it been during those last weeks of the second year, Zavalita, those last hollow days before final exams? He had set himself to reading furiously, working furiously in the study group, believing furiously in Marxism, growing thin. Boiled eggs were useless, Señora Zoila said, orangeade useless and corn flakes useless, you’d turned into a skeleton and one of those days you were going to fly away. Is it also against your ideas to eat, Superbrain? Sparky said, and you you didn’t eat because your face takes my appetite away and Sparky was going to whack you, Superbrain, he was going to hand you one. They still saw each other and the little head inevitably appeared when Santiago went into class and sat down with them, it opened its way through tangles of tissues and tendons and appeared, or when they went to have some coffee together at El Palermo, amidst bloody veins and white bones it appeared, or a glass of dark chicha at the Huérfanos pastry shop, or a hero sandwich at the café-poolroom, and behind the little head the small acidy body appeared. They talked about classes and the upcoming exams, about the preparations for the election of Federated Centers, and about the discussions in their respective study groups and prisoners and Odría’s dictatorship and Bolivia and Guatemala. But they only saw each other because San Marcos and politics sometimes brought them together, he thinks, sometimes only by chance, sometimes only through obligation. Did they see each other alone after the meetings of their group? did they take walks, did they go to museums and bookstores or movies the way they did with him before? did they miss him, think about him, talk about him?

  “A girl wants you on the phone,” Teté told him. “My, how secret you keep it all. Who is she?”

  “If you listen in on the extension I’ll give you a rap, Teté,” Santiago said.

  “Can you come to my house for a minute?” Aída asked. “You’re not doing anything, are you, I’m not interrupting anything?”

  “What a thing to think, I’m on my way,” Santiago said. “It’ll take me a half hour, maybe a little more.”

  “My, I’m on my way, my, what a thing to think,” Teté said. “Can you come to my house for a minute? My, what a nice little voice.”

  It had appeared while he was waiting for a taxi on the corner of Larco and José Gonzales, grew as the car went up the Avenida Arequipa, and there it was, enormous and sticky, as he rode along huddled in the corner of the automobile, his back getting soaked in an icy substance, while he felt colder and colder, fear and hope, on that afternoon which was turning into night. Had something happened, was something going to happen? He thought that it had been a month now that we only saw each other at San Marcos, he thinks, she’d never called me on the phone, he thought probably, he thinks, he thought maybe. He’d seen her from the corner of Petit Thouars, a small figure that was fading into the dying light, waiting for him at the door of her house, she’d said hello with her hand and he’d seen her pale face, that blue dress, her serious eyes, that blue jumper, her serious mouth, those horrible black schoolgirl shoes, and he’d felt her hand trembling.

  “Excuse me for calling you, I had to talk to you about something,” that crisp voice seemed impossible, he thinks, that intimidated voice incredible. “Let’s walk a little, shall we?”

  “Aren’t you with Jacobo?” Santiago asked. “Has something happened?”

  “Are you going to have enough money to
pay for so many beers?” Ambrosio asks.

  “What had to happen had happened,” Santiago says. “I thought that it had already happened and it had only just happened that morning.”

  They’d been together all morning, a little worm like a cobra, they hadn’t gone to class because Jacobo had told her I want to talk to you alone, a cobra as sharp as a knife, they’d walked along the Paseo de la República, a knife like ten knives, they’d sat down on a bench by the pool in the Parque de la Exposición. Along the parallel lanes of Arequipa cars passed and one knife entered softly and another one came out and went back in slowly, and they went along between the trees where it was dark and empty, and another one, as into a loaf of bread with a thin crust and lots of body, into his heart, and suddenly the little voice became silent.

  “And what did he want to talk to you about all alone?” without looking at her, he thinks, without separating his teeth. “Something about me, something against me?”

  “No, nothing about you, something about me,” a voice like the whimper of a kitten, he thinks. “He took me by surprise, he left me not knowing what to say.”

  “But what was it he told you?” Santiago murmured.

  “That he’s in love with me,” like Rowdy’s whines when he was a puppy, he thinks.

  “Block ten on Arequipa, December, seven o’clock at night,” Santiago says. “Now I know, Ambrosio, it was there.”

  He’d taken his hands out of his pockets, had put them to his mouth and whistled and tried to smile. He’d seen Aída uncross her arms, stop, hesitate, look for the nearest bench, he’d seen her sit down.

  “Hadn’t you realized until now?” Santiago asked. “Why do you think he proposed that the group be divided up that way?”

  “Because we were setting a bad example, because we were almost a faction and the others might have resented it and I believed him,” an insecure little voice, he thinks. “And that it wouldn’t change anything and that even though we were in different groups it would all go on the same with the three of us. And I believed him.”

  “He wanted to be alone with you,” Santiago said. “Anybody would have done the same thing in his place.”

  “But you got angry and didn’t look us up,” alarmed and above all sorrowful, he thinks. “And we didn’t get together again, and nothing’s been the way it was before.”

  “I didn’t get angry, everything’s still the way it was before,” Santiago said. “Except that I realized that Jacobo wanted to be alone with you and that I was in the way. But we’re still the same friends we were before.”

  It was someone else talking, he thinks, not you. The voice a little stronger now, more natural, Zavalita: it wasn’t he, it couldn’t be. He understood, he explained, he advised from neutral heights and thought it’s not me. He was something small and mistreated, something that huddled under that voice, something that slipped away and ran and fled. It wasn’t pride, or spite, or humiliation, he thinks, it wasn’t even jealousy. He thinks: it was timidity. She listened to him motionless, she was watching him with an expression that he couldn’t decipher and didn’t want to, and suddenly she’d got up and they’d walked half a block in silence, while, tenacious, silent, the knives went on with their butchery.

  “I don’t know what to do, I feel confused, I have doubts,” Aída finally said. “That’s why I called you, I thought all of a sudden that you could help me.”

  “And I began to talk about politics,” Santiago says. “See what I mean?”

  “Of course,” Don Fermín said. “Getting away from the house and Lima, disappearing. I’m not thinking about myself, you poor devil, I’m thinking about you.”

  “But what do you mean when you say that,” as if startled, he thinks, scared.

  “In the sense that love can make a person very much an individualist,” Santiago said. “And then he gives it more importance than anything, the revolution included.”

  “But you were the one who said that the two things weren’t incompatible,” hissing, he thinks, whispering. “Do you think they are now? How can you be sure that you’re never going to fall in love?”

  “I didn’t believe anything, I didn’t know anything,” Santiago says. “Just wanting to leave, escape, disappear.”

  “But where, sir?” Ambrosio said. “You don’t believe me, you’re kicking me out, sir.”

  “Then it’s not true that you have doubts, you’re in love with him too,” Santiago said. “Maybe in your case and Jacobo’s they’re not incompatible. And besides, he’s a good boy.”

  “I know that he’s a good boy,” Aída said. “But I don’t know whether or not I’m in love with him.”

  “Of course you are, I’ve noticed it too,” Santiago said. “And not just me, everybody in the group. You should accept him, Aída.”

  You insisted Zavalita, he was a great boy, you were dogged Zavalita, Aída was in love with him, you demanded, they’d get along very well and you repeated and you went back to it and she listening silently at the door of her house, her arms folded, calculating Santiago’s stupidity? her head down, taking measure of Santiago’s cowardice? her feet together. Did she really want that advice, he thinks, did she know that you were in love with her and wanted to find out if you dared say so? What would she have said if I, he thinks, what would I have said if she. He thinks: oh, Zavalita.

  Or had it been when one day or week or month after seeing Aída and Jacobo walking hand in hand on Colmena, they discovered that Washington was, in fact, the contact they’d been yearning for? There’d hardly been any comments in the group, only a joke by Washington, two of them had feathered their little love nest in the other group, such a quiet little love, only a passing comment from The Bird: and what a perfect little couple. There wasn’t time for anything else: the university elections were on top of them and they met every day, they discussed the candidates they would present for the Federated Centers, and the alliances they would accept and the slates they would support and the fliers and wall posters they would make, and one day Washington summoned the two groups to meet at The Bird’s place and he went into the small living room on Rímac: he had something that was pure dynamite. Cahuide, he thinks. He thinks: Organization of the Communist Party of Peru. They were crowded in together, the smoke from the cigarettes fogged the mimeographed sheets that passed from hand to hand, irritated their eyes, Cahuide, which they avidly read, Organization, now and then, of the Communist Party of Peru, and they looked at the strong face of the Indian with wool cap, poncho, sandals and his belligerent fist raised, and once more the hammer and sickle crossed under the title. They’d read it aloud, commented, discussed, had riddled Washington with questions, had taken it home. He’d forgotten his resentment, his lack of faith, his frustration, his timidity, his jealousy. He wasn’t a legend, he hadn’t disappeared with the dictatorship: he existed. In spite of Odría, here too men and women, in spite of Cayo Bermúdez, secretly gathered and formed cells, informers and banishment, they printed Cahuide, jail and torture, and they were preparing the revolution. Washington knew who they were, how they operated, where they were, and he’ll sign me up he thought, he thinks, he’ll sign me up, that night, while he turned out the light on the night table and something risky, yet generous, anxious, burned in the darkness and kept on burning in his dreams, had it been there?

  7

  “HE WAS ARRESTED FOR STEALING or for killing somebody or because they grabbed him for something someone else did,” Ambrosio said. “I hope he dies in jail, the black woman said. But they let him out and then I met him. I only saw him once in my life, sir.”

  “Were they interrogated?” Cayo Bermúdez asked. “All Apristas? How many have records?”

  “Heads up, here he comes,” Trifulcio said. “Heads up, he’s coming down now.”

  It was noontime, the sun fell straight down onto the sand, and a buzzard with bloody eyes and black plumage was flying over the motionless dunes, descending in tight circles, his wings folded back, his beak ready, a slight gli
mmering tremor on the desert.

  “Fifteen were on file,” the Prefect said. “Nine Apristas, three Communists, three doubtful. The other eleven had no record. No, Don Cayo, they haven’t been interrogated yet.”

  An iguana? Two maddened little feet, a tiny, straight-lined dust storm, a thread of gunpowder lighting up, a rampant invisible arrow. Softly the bird of prey flapped his wings at ground level, caught it with his beak, picked it up, executed it as he climbed back up into the air, methodically devouring it while still ascending through the clean, warm summer sky, his eyes closed by the yellow darts the sun was sending out to meet him.

  “Have them interrogated right away,” Cayo Bermúdez said. “Are the ones who were injured any better?”

  “We talked like two strangers who don’t trust each other,” Ambrosio says. “One night in Chincha, years ago. Since then I never heard anything about him, son.”

  “Two students had to be sent to the Police Hospital, Don Cayo,” the Prefect said. “The police came out all right, just a few bruises.”

  It kept on climbing, digesting, obstinate and in the shadows, and when it was about to dissolve in the light it extended its wings, drew a large, majestic curve, a shadow without shape, a small splotch moving across motionless white and wavy sands, motionless yellow sands: a circumference of stone, walls, barred windows, half-naked creatures who were barely moving or lay in the shade of a pulsating zinc overhang, a jeep, stakes, palm trees, a strip of water, a broad avenue of water, shacks, houses, automobiles, squares with trees in them.

  “We left a company at San Marcos and we’re repairing the door that the tank knocked down,” the Prefect said. “We also left a detachment at the Medical School. But there hasn’t been any attempt at a demonstration or anything, Don Cayo.”

  “Leave me those files to show to the Minister,” Cayo Bermúdez said.

  He unfolded his jet black, harmonious wings, tilted his body, turned solemnly and flew over the trees again, the avenue of water, the motionless sand, he circled slowly over the gleaming zinc, still watching it, he came down a little lower, indifferent to the murmuring, the greedy talk, the strategic silence that followed in that order in the rectangle enclosed by walls and bars, intent only on the corrugated overhang as the reflections from it reached him, and he continued his descent—fascinated with that orgy of lights, intoxicated by the brilliance?