Conversation in the Cathedral

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  “I hope not,” Héctor said. “I don’t feel like being raped by hoodlums. Look how the comrade’s sleeping. He’s got the right idea, let’s get comfortable and see if we can get a little rest.”

  They leaned their heads against the wall, closed their eyes. A moment later Santiago heard steps and looked at the door; Héctor had also sat up. The little noise, the face from the last time.

  “Come with me, Zavala. Yes, just you.”

  The short man led him out and as he left the room he saw Solórzano’s eyes, which were opening, reddened. A corridor full of doors, steps, a hallway with tiles that went up and down, a guard with a rifle in front of a window. The fellow was walking beside him with his hands in his pockets; metal signs that he was unable to read. In here, he heard, and he was alone. A large room, almost in darkness: a desk with a small lamp without a shade, bare walls, a photograph of Odría wrapped in the presidential sash like a baby in a diaper. He drew back, looked at his watch, twelve-thirty, he went forward and, his legs weak, an urge to urinate. A moment later the door opened, Santiago Zavala? a faceless voice asked. Yes: here’s the one, sir. Steps, voices, the profile of Don Fermín crossing the cone of light from the lamp, his arms opening up, his face against my face, he thinks.

  “Are you all right, Skinny? Have they done anything to you, Skinny?”

  “Nothing, papa. I don’t know why they brought me here, I haven’t done anything, papa.”

  Don Fermín looked into his eyes, embraced him again, let him go once more, half smiled and turned toward the desk where the other person had already sat down.

  “There you are, Don Fermín.” You could only see his face, Carlitos, a listless, servile voice. “There’s your son and heir, safe and sound.”

  “This young man never gets tired of giving me headaches.” The poor man was trying to be natural and he was theatrical, even comical, Carlitos. “I envy you, not having any children, Don Cayo.”

  “When a person starts getting old,” yes, Carlitos, Cayo Bermúdez in person, “he’d like to have someone to represent him in the world when he’s no longer here.”

  Don Fermín let out an uncomfortable laugh, sat down on a corner of the desk, and Cayo Bermúdez stood up: that’s who it was, there he was. A dry, parchmentlike, insipid face. Didn’t Don Fermín want to sit down? No, Don Cayo, he was fine.

  “Look at the mess you’ve got yourself in, young fellow.” In a friendly way, Carlitos, as if he was sorry. “Wasting your time on politics instead of using it to study.”

  “I’m not in politics,” Santiago said. “I was with some friends, we weren’t doing anything.”

  But Bermúdez had leaned over to offer a cigarette to Don Fermín, who immediately, with an artificial smile, took an Inca, the one who could smoke only Chesterfields and hated dark tobacco, Carlitos, and put it in his mouth. He puffed on it avidly and coughed, happy to be doing something that covered up his confusion, Carlitos, the terrible inconvenience. Bermúdez was looking at the swirls of smoke, bored, and suddenly his eyes found Santiago:

  “It’s all right for a young man to be a rebel, impulsive.” As if he was mouthing nonsense at a social gathering, Carlitos, as if he gave a damn about what he was saying. “But conspiring with Communists is a different matter. Don’t you know that Communism is outlawed? Imagine what would happen if the Internal Security Law was applied to you.”

  “The Internal Security Law doesn’t apply to snotnoses who don’t know what they’re doing, Don Cayo.” With restrained fury, Carlitos, without raising his voice, holding back his urge to call him a swine, a servant.

  “Please, Don Fermín.” As if scandalized, Carlitos, as if his jokes weren’t understood. “Not to snotnoses and least of all the son of a friend of the government like yourself.”

  “Santiago’s a difficult boy, I know that full well.” Smiling and turning serious, Carlitos, changing his tone with every word. “But don’t exaggerate, Don Cayo. My son doesn’t conspire, least of all with Communists.”

  “Let him tell us about it himself, Don Fermín.” Friendly, obsequious, Carlitos. “What he was doing in that little hotel in Rímac, what the section is, what Cahuide is. Let him explain all those little names.”

  He blew out a puff of smoke, mournfully contemplated the swirls.

  “In this country Communists don’t even exist, Don Cayo.” Finding it hard to speak with his coughing and his anger, Carlitos, stepping on his cigarette with rage.

  “There aren’t many, but they’re a nuisance.” As if I’d left, Carlitos, or hadn’t even been there. “They put out a little mimeographed newspaper, Cahuide. Terrible things about the United States, the President, me. I have a complete collection and I’ll show it to you sometime.”

  “I don’t have anything to do with that,” Santiago said. “I don’t know a single Communist at San Marcos.”

  “We let them play at revolution, at whatever they want, just so long as they don’t go too far.” As if everything he was saying bored him, Carlitos. “But a political strike, supporting the streetcar workers, whatever San Marcos has to do with streetcar workers, that’s too much.”

  “The strike isn’t political,” Santiago said. “The Federation called it. All the students …”

  “This young man is a delegate from his class, a delegate to the Federation, a delegate on the Strike Committee.” Not listening to me or looking at me, Carlitos, smiling at my old man as if he was telling him a joke. “And a member of Cahuide, that’s the name of the Communist organization, for two years. Two of those arrested with him have thick files, they’re known terrorists. There wasn’t anything else we could do, Don Fermín.”

  “My son can’t be kept under arrest, he’s no criminal.” Unable to hold back any longer, Carlitos, pounding on the desk, raising his voice. “I’m a friend of the government, and not just since yesterday, since the very beginning, and they owe me a lot of favors. I’m going to talk to the President right now.”

  “Don Fermín, please.” As if wounded, Carlitos, as if betrayed by his best friend. “I called you so we could settle this thing between ourselves, I know better than anyone that you’re a good friend of the government. I wanted to let you know what this young man was up to, that’s all. Of course he’s not under arrest. You can take him home right now, Don Fermín.”

  “Thank you very much, Don Cayo.” Confused again, Carlitos, wiping his mouth with his handkerchief, trying to smile. “Don’t worry about Santiago, I’ll take charge of setting him on the right path. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to leave. You can imagine the state his mother is in.”

  “Of course, go and reassure the lady.” Distressed, Carlitos, trying to vindicate himself, ingratiate himself. “Oh, and naturally, the young man’s name won’t appear anywhere. There’s no file on him. I assure you that there won’t be any trace of this incident.”

  “Yes, that would have hurt the boy later on.” Smiling, nodding, Carlitos, trying to show him that he’d already made up with him. “Thank you, Don Cayo.”

  They left. Don Fermín went ahead and the small, narrow figure of Bermúdez, his striped gray suit, his short, quick little steps. He didn’t return the guards’ salutes, the greetings of the plainclothesmen. The courtyard, the front of the Headquarters building, the gates, fresh air, the avenue. The car was at the bottom of the steps. Ambrosio took off his cap, opened the door, smiled at Santiago, good evening, young sir. Bermúdez nodded and disappeared into the main door. Don Fermín got into the car: home, quickly, Ambrosio. They left and the car headed toward Wilson, turned toward Arequipa, picking up speed at each corner, and all that air coming in the window, Zavalita, so he could breathe, so he didn’t have to think.

  “That son of a bitch is going to pay for this.” The annoyance on his face, he thinks, the fatigue in his eyes that were looking straight ahead. “That shitty half-breed isn’t going to humiliate me like this. I’ll teach him his place.”

  “The first time I ever heard him curse, Carlitos,” Santiago said
. “Insult somebody like that.”

  “He’s going to pay for it.” His brow eaten with wrinkles, he thinks, a cold rage. “I’m going to teach him how to treat his betters.”

  “I’m sorry I put you through such a bad time, papa, I swear that …” And his face spinning around quickly, he thinks, and the slap that shut your mouth, Zavalita.

  “The first and only time he ever hit me,” Santiago says. “Do you remember, Ambrosio?”

  “You’re going to answer to me too, snotnose.” His voice changed into a grunt, he thinks. “Don’t you know that if you want to plot you’ve got to be on the ball? That only an imbecile would plot on the telephone from his house? That the police might be listening in? The telephone was tapped, you dummy.”

  “They’d recorded at least ten conversations of mine with the people from Cahuide, Carlitos,” Santiago said. “Bermúdez had had him listen to them. He felt humiliated, that’s what pained him most.”

  When they got to the Colegio Raimondi there was a detour; Ambrosio turned toward Arenales, and they didn’t speak until the corner of Javier Prado.

  “Besides, it wasn’t because of you.” His voice depressed, worried, he thinks, hoarse. “He was keeping track of me. He took advantage of this occasion to let me know without saying it to my face.”

  “I don’t think I ever felt as bitter, until that time in the whorehouse,” Santiago said. “Because they’d been arrested on my account, because of the business between Jacobo and Aída, because I’d been released and not them, because the old man was in such a state.”

  Avenida Arequipa again, almost deserted, headlights and quick palm trees, gardens and darkened houses.

  “So you’re a Communist, just as I predicted, you didn’t go to San Marcos to study but to play politics.” His bitter little tone, he thinks, harsh, mocking. “Letting yourself be taken in by drifters and malcontents.”

  “I passed my exams, papa. I’ve always gotten good marks, papa.”

  “What the hell do I care if you’re a Communist, an Aprista, an anarchist, or an existentialist?” Furious again, he thinks, slapping his knee, not looking at me. “If you’re a bomb-thrower or a murderer? But only after you’ve reached the age of twenty-one. Until then you’re going to study and only study. Obey, only obey.”

  He thinks: there. Didn’t it occur to you that you were going to make your mother a nervous wreck? He thinks no. That you were going to get your father in a mess? No, Zavalita, it didn’t occur to you. The Avenida Angamos, Diagonal, Quebrada, Ambrosio hunched over the wheel: you didn’t think, it didn’t occur to you. Because you were quite comfortable, everything taken care of, right? Daddy fed you, daddy gave you clothes to wear and paid for your schooling and gave you money, and you playing at Communism, and you plotting against people who were giving your daddy work, not that, God damn it. Not the slap, papa, he thinks, that’s what hurt me. The Avenida 28 de Julio, its trees, the Avenida Larco, the little worm, the snake, the knives.

  “When you make some money and support yourself, when you don’t depend on your daddy’s pockets anymore, then it’ll be all right.” Softly, he thinks, savagely. “Communist, anarchist, bombs, whatever you want. In the meantime you study and obey.”

  He thinks: which I didn’t forgive you for, papa. The garage in the house, the lighted windows, Teté’s profile in one of them, here comes Superbrain, mama!

  “And was that when you broke with Cahuide and your buddies?” Carlitos asked.

  “You go in, Skinny, I’ve got to get this mess fixed up.” Sorry now, he thinks, trying to make friends with me. “And take a bath. God knows how many lice you brought back from Police Headquarters.”

  “And with Law School and with my family and with Miraflores, Carlitos.”

  The garden, mama, kisses, her face with tears, couldn’t he see what had happened to him for being so crazy? even the cook and the maid were there, Teté’s excited little shouts: the return of the prodigal son, Carlitos, if I’d been in for a day instead of a few hours, they would have welcomed me with a brass band. Sparky flew down the stairs: you gave us quite a turn, man. They sat him down in the living room and surrounded him, Señora Zoila rumpled his hair and kissed his brow. Sparky and Teté were dying with curiosity: in the penitentiary, at Headquarters, had he seen thieves, murderers? The old man had tried to call the Palace, but the President was sleeping, but he called Headquarters and gave them hell, Superbrain. Some fried eggs, Señora Zoila said to the cook, a glass of chocolate milk, and if that lemon tart is left. He hadn’t done anything, mama, it had been a mistake, mama.

  “He’s glad he was arrested, he feels like a hero,” Teté said. “Now there’ll be no holding him.”

  “Your picture’s going to come out in El Comercio,” Sparky said. “With your number and a hoodlum face.”

  “What’s it like, what did they do to you in jail?” Teté asked.

  “They undress you, put a striped uniform on you and shackle your feet,” Santiago said. “The dungeons are crawling with rats and there aren’t any lights.”

  “Hush up, you fibber,” Teté said. “Tell us, tell us what it was like.”

  “So you see now, you crazy boy, you see what’s come of wanting to go to San Marcos so much?” Señora Zoila said. “Will you promise me that next year you’ll transfer to the Catholic University? That you won’t ever get involved in politics again?”

  He promised you mama, never mama. It was two o’clock when they went to bed. Santiago got undressed, put on his pajamas, turned out the lamp. His body felt dull, hot.

  “Didn’t you ever look up the Cahuide people again?” Carlitos asked.

  He pulled the sheet up to his neck, but sleep fled and fatigue beat on his back. The window was open and a few stars could be seen.

  “Llaque was in jail for two years, Washington was exiled to Bolivia,” Santiago said. “The others were released two weeks later.”

  A restless feeling like a thief prowling in the darkness, he thinks, remorse, jealousy, shame. I hate you papa, I hate you Jacobo, I hate you Aída. He felt a terrible urge to smoke and he didn’t have any cigarettes.

  “They must have thought you got scared,” Carlitos said. “That you betrayed them, Zavalita.”

  Aída’s face, Jacobo’s and Washington’s and Solórzano’s and Héctor’s and Aída’s again. He thinks: a desire to be small, to be born again, to smoke. But if he went to ask Sparky he’d have to talk to him.

  “I was scared, in a way, Carlitos,” Santiago said. “I did betray them, in a way.”

  He sat up on the bed, dug in the pockets of his jacket, got up and went through all the suits in the closet. Without putting on his bathrobe or slippers, he went down to the first landing and into Sparky’s room. The pack and the matches were on the night table and Sparky was sleeping face down on the sheets. He went back to his room. Sitting beside the window, anxiously, deliciously, he smoked, flicking ashes into the garden. A while later he heard the car stop at the door. He saw Don Fermín come in, saw Ambrosio on his way to his small room in back. Now he must have been opening his study, now turning on the light. He felt for his slippers and bathrobe and went out of his room. From the stairs he saw that the light in the study was on. He went down, stopped beside the glass door: sitting in one of the green easy chairs, the glass of whiskey in his hand, with his late-night eyes, the gray hairs on his temples. He only had the floor lamp turned on, as on nights when he stayed home and read the newspapers, he thinks. He knocked on the door and Don Fermín came over and opened it.

  “I’d like to talk to you for a minute, papa.”

  “Come in, you’re going to catch cold out there.” No longer angry,

  Zavalita, happy to see you. “It’s very damp, Skinny.”

  He took his arm, led him in, went back to the easy chair, Santiago sat down across from him.

  “Have you all been up till now?” As if he’d already forgiven you, Zavalita, or had never quarreled with you. “Sparky has a good excuse not to go to the
office tomorrow.”

  “We went to bed a while back, papa. I couldn’t get to sleep.”

  “Couldn’t get to sleep because of so many emotions.” Looking at you tenderly, Zavalita. “Well, that’s not so bad. Now you have to tell me everything in all its details. Did they really treat you well?”

  “Yes, papa, they didn’t even interrogate me.”

  “Well, the scare wasn’t so bad, then.” Even with a touch of pride, Zavalita. “What did you want to talk to me about, Skinny?”

  “I’ve been thinking about what you said and you’re right, papa.” Feeling your mouth go dry all of a sudden, Zavalita. “I want to leave home and look for a job. Something that would let me keep on with my studies, papa.”

  Don Fermín didn’t joke, didn’t laugh. He raised his glass, took a drink, wiped his mouth.

  “You’re angry with your father because he slapped you.” Leaning over to put a hand on your knee, Zavalita, looking at you as if telling you let’s forget about it, let’s make up. “As old as you are, a hunted revolutionary and all that.”

  He straightened up, took out his pack of Chesterfields, his lighter.

  “I’m not mad at you, papa. But I can’t go on living one way and thinking another. Please try to understand me, papa.”

  “You can’t go on living how?” A bit wounded, Zavalita, suddenly distressed, tired. “What is there here that goes against your way of thinking, Skinny?”

  “I don’t want to depend on handouts.” Feeling your hands trembling, your voice, Zavalita. “I don’t want anything I do to bounce back on you. I want to be dependent on myself, papa.”

  “You don’t want to be dependent on a capitalist.” Smiling in an afflicted way, Zavalita, pained but without any rancor. “You don’t want to live with your father because he gets government contracts? Is that why?”

  “Don’t get angry, papa. Don’t think I’m trying to … papa.”

  “You’re grown up now, I can trust you now, isn’t that so?” Stretching out a hand toward your face, Zavalita, patting your cheek. “I’m going to explain to you why I got so mad. There’s something that was on the point of being wrapped up just now. Military men, senators, a lot of influential people. The phone was tapped because of me, not because of you. Something must have leaked out, that peasant Bermúdez took advantage of you so he could let me know that he suspected something, that he knew. Now we have to stop everything, start all over again. So you see, your father isn’t one of Odría’s lackeys, far from it. We’re going to get him out, we’re going to call for elections. You can keep the secret, can’t you? I wouldn’t have told this to Sparky, you can see that I’m treating you like a grown man, Skinny.”