Conversation in the Cathedral

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  *

  “Alcibíades telephoned your office in person asking that that piece of news not be sent to the newspapers.” He sighed, barely smiling. “I wouldn’t have bothered you if I hadn’t already looked into it, Mr. Tallio.”

  “But it can’t be.” His ruddy face devastated by his upset, his tongue suddenly thick. “My office, Mr. Bermúdez? But my secretary gives me all the … Dr. Alcibíades in person? I don’t understand how …”

  “They didn’t give you the message?” he helped him, without sarcasm. “Well, I imagine something like that. Alcibíades spoke to one of the editors, I think.”

  “One of the editors?” Not a trace of the smiling aplomb, the exuberance of before. “But it can’t be, Mr. Bermúdez. I’m all mixed up, I’m terribly sorry. Do you know which editor, sir? I’ve only got two, and well, all I can say is that I can assure you it won’t happen again.”

  “I was surprised because we’ve always had good relations with Ansa,” he said. “National Radio and the Information Service buy your complete bulletins. That costs the government money, as you well know.”

  “Of course, Mr. Bermúdez.” So get mad now and sing your aria, opera singer. “Can I use your phone? I’m going to find out right now who got Dr. Alcibíades’ message. This is going to be cleared up right now, Mr. Bermúdez.”

  “Sit down, don’t worry about it.” He smiled at him and offered him a cigarette, lighted it for him. “We have enemies everywhere, there must be someone who doesn’t like us in your office. You can investigate later, Mr. Tallio.”

  “But those two editors are a couple of boys who …” Grieved, with a tragicomic expression. “Well, I’m going to clear this up today. I’m going to ask that in the future Dr. Alcibíades always communicate with me personally.”

  “Yes, that would be the best thing,” he said; he reflected, observing as if by chance the clippings that were dancing in Tallio’s hands. “The sad part is that it’s created a bit of a problem for me. The President, the Minister are going to ask me why we buy bulletins from an agency that gives us headaches. And since I’m the one responsible for the contract with Ansa, you can imagine.”

  “That’s precisely why I’m bothered, Mr. Bermúdez.” And that’s so true, you probably wish you were miles away from here. “The person who spoke to the doctor will be fired today, sir.”

  “Because things like this are bad for the government,” he said, as if thinking aloud and with melancholy. “Enemies take advantage when a piece of news like that appears in the press that way. They already give us enough problems. It isn’t right for friends to give us problems too, don’t you think?”

  “It won’t happen again, Mr. Bermúdez.” He had taken out a pale blue handkerchief, was drying his hands furiously. “Of that you can be sure. You can be sure of that, Mr. Bermúdez.”

  *

  “I admire the dregs of humanity.” Carlitos doubled over again as if he’d been punched in the stomach. “The police beat has corrupted me, as you can see.”

  “Don’t have any more to drink,” Santiago said. “We’d better go.”

  But Carlitos had sat up straight again and was smiling.

  “With the second beer the jabs disappear and I feel great, you still don’t know me. This is the first time we’ve had a drink together, isn’t it?” Yes, Carlitos, he thinks, it was the first time. “You’re so serious, Zavalita, you finish work and you take off. You never come to have a drink with us castaways. Are you afraid we’ll corrupt you?”

  “I can just get by on my salary,” Santiago said. “If I went to brothels with you people, I wouldn’t be able to pay my rent.”

  “Do you live by yourself?” Carlitos asked. “I thought you were a good family boy. Haven’t you got any relatives? And how old are you? You’re just a kid, aren’t you?”

  “A lot of questions all at the same time,” Santiago said. “I have a family, yes, but I live alone. Listen, how can you people get drunk and go to whorehouses with the money you make? I can’t understand it.”

  “A professional secret,” Carlitos said. “The art of living in debt, dodging creditors. And why don’t you go to whorehouses, have you got a woman?”

  “Are you going to ask me if I jerk off too?” Santiago said.

  “If you haven’t got one and you don’t go to whorehouses, I imagine you must jerk off,” Carlitos said. “Unless you’re a fag.”

  He doubled over again and when he straightened up his face was all twisted. He leaned his curly head against the magazine covers, kept his eyes closed for a moment, then dug into his pockets, took out something that he put to his nose and breathed in deeply. He stayed with his head back like that, his mouth half open, with an expression of peaceful drunkenness. He opened his eyes, looked mockingly at Santiago.

  “To put the daggers in my belly to sleep. Don’t look surprised, I’m not proselytizing.”

  “Are you trying to surprise me?” Santiago asked. “You’re wasting your time. A drunk, an addict, I knew it all the time, everybody on the paper told me. I don’t pass judgment on people over things like that.”

  Carlitos smiled affectionately at him and offered him a cigarette.

  “I had a bad impression of you because I’d heard you’d been hired on somebody’s recommendation and because you didn’t hang around with us. But I was wrong. I like you, Zavalita.”

  He was speaking slowly and on his face there was a growing ease and his gestures were becoming more and more ceremonious and slow.

  “I sniffed coke once, but it made me sick.” It was a lie, Carlitos. “I vomited and my stomach got all upset.”

  “You still haven’t turned bitter and you’ve already been on La Crónica for three months, right?” Carlitos was saying with absorption, as if he were praying.

  “Three months and a half,” Santiago said. “I just finished the trial period. They gave me a contract on Monday.”

  “I feel sorry for you,” Carlitos said. “Now you’ve got your whole life ahead of you as a newspaperman. Listen, come closer so nobody can hear. I’m going to tell you a big secret. Poetry is the greatest thing there is, Zavalita.”

  *

  That time Miss Queta arrived at the little house in San Miguel at noon. She blew in like a storm, as she passed she pinched Amalia’s cheek when she opened the door for her and Amalia thought high as a kite. Señora Hortensia appeared at the top of the stairs and Miss Queta threw her a kiss: I’ve come to rest awhile, girl, old Ivonne’s been looking for me and I’m dead from lack of sleep. How popular you’ve become, the mistress laughed, come on up, girl. They went into the bedroom and a while later a shout from the mistress, bring us some cold beer. Amalia went up with the tray and from the door she saw Miss Queta collapsed on the bed with just her slip on. Her dress and shoes and stockings were on the floor, and she was singing, laughing and talking to herself. It was as if the mistress had been infected by Miss Queta, because even though she hadn’t had anything to drink in the morning, she too was laughing, singing and joking with Miss Queta from the stool by the dressing table. Miss Queta pounded the pillow, did gymnastics, her red hair covering her face, in the mirrors her long legs looked like those of an enormous centipede. She saw the tray and sat down, oh, she was so thirsty, she drank half her glass in one swallow, oh, how delicious. And suddenly she grabbed Amalia by the wrist, come here come here, looking at her with such deviltry, don’t leave me. Amalia looked at the mistress, but she was looking at Miss Queta roguishly, as if thinking what are you going to do, and then she laughed too. Listen, you find good ones, girl, and Miss Queta pretended to threaten the mistress, you’ve been cheating on me with this one, haven’t you? and the mistress let out one of her laughs: yes, I’ve been cheating on you with her. But you don’t know who this little innocent has been cheating on you with, Miss Queta was laughing. Amalia’s ears began to buzz, Miss Queta shook her arm and began to sing, an eye for an eye, girl, a tooth for a tooth, and she looked at Amalia and as a joke or seriously? tell me Amalia
, in the morning after the master leaves do you come to console this girl? Amalia didn’t know whether to be annoyed or to laugh. Sometimes yes, then she stammered and she must have said something funny. Oh, you devil, Miss Queta exploded, looking at the mistress and the mistress, dying with laughter, I’ll loan her to you, but take good care of her for me, and Miss Queta gave Amalia a push and made her sit on the bed. It was good that the mistress got up, ran over and, laughing, struggled with Miss Queta until she let her go: go on, get out of here, Amalia, this nut is going to corrupt you. Amalia left the room, pursued by the laughter of both of them, and went down the stairs laughing, but her legs were trembling and when she went into the kitchen she was serious and furious. Símula was scrubbing the washbasin, humming: what’s the matter. And Amalia: nothing, they’re drunk and they were trying to embarrass me.

  *

  “It’s a shame this had to happen just now when the contract with Ansa is about to run out.” Through the waves of smoke he was looking for Tallio’s eyes. “You can imagine how hard it’s going to be for me to convince the Minister that we should renew it.”

  “I’ll talk to him, I’ll explain it to him.” There they were: clear, disconsolate, alarmed. “I was just about to talk to you about renewing the contract. And now, with this absurd mixup. I’ll explain everything to the Minister, Mr. Bermúdez.”

  “It would be better not to deal with him until he gets over his anger.” He smiled and got up suddenly. “In any case, I’ll try to straighten things out.”

  The color came back to the milky face, hope, loquacity, he walked beside him to the door, almost dancing.

  “The editor who talked to Dr. Alcibíades is out of the agency as of today.” He smiled, sweetening his voice, sparkling. “You know that the renewal of the contract means life or death for Ansa. I don’t know how to thank you, Mr. Bermúdez.”

  “It ends next week, doesn’t it? Well, make arrangements with Alcibíades. I’ll try to get the Minister’s signature as soon as possible.”

  He reached a hand toward the doorknob but didn’t open it. Tallio hesitated, he’d begun to blush again. He was waiting, without taking his eyes off him, for him to get up his courage and say something.

  “Regarding the contract, Mr. Bermúdez.” You seem to be swallowing the shit, you eunuch. “Under the same conditions as last year. I’m referring to, I mean …”

  “My services?” he said, and saw the uneasiness, the discomfort, Tallio’s difficult smile; he scratched his chin and added modestly: “This time it’s not going to cost you ten, it’s going to cost you twenty percent, friend Tallio.”

  He saw him open his mouth a little, wrinkle and unwrinkle his forehead in a second; he saw that he’d stopped smiling and was nodding with his look suddenly far off.

  “A check made out to cash drawn on a New York bank; bring it to me personally next Monday.” You were making calculations, Caruso. “You know that the paper work in the Ministry takes a while. Let’s see if we can get it through in a couple of weeks.”

  He opened the door, but when Tallio made a gesture of anguish, he closed it. He waited, smiling.

  “Very good, it will be wonderful if it can be done in a couple of weeks, Mr. Bermúdez.” His voice had grown hoarse, he was sad. “As far as, that is, don’t you think that twenty percent is a little steep?”

  “Steep?” He opened his eyes a little as if he didn’t understand, but he recovered immediately, with a friendly gesture. “Let’s say no more. Forget about the whole thing. Now you have to excuse me, I have a lot of things to do.”

  He opened the door, the chatter of typewriters, Alcibíades’ silhouette in the background, at his desk.

  “No problem at all, everything’s agreed on,” Tallio blurted, waving his arms in desperation. “No problem at all, Mr. Bermúdez. Monday at ten o’clock, is that all right?”

  “Fine,” he said, almost pushing him. “Until Monday, then.”

  He closed the door and immediately stopped smiling. He went to the desk, sat down, took the little vial from the right drawer, filled his mouth with saliva before he put the pill on the tip of his tongue. He swallowed, kept his eyes closed for a moment, his hands flattening out the blotter. A moment later Alcibíades came in.

  “The Italian’s all upset, Don Cayo. I hope that editor was there at the agency at eleven o’clock. I told him that was when I called.”

  “He’s going to fire him in any case,” he said. “It’s not right for a fellow who signs manifestoes to work at a news agency. Did you give my message to the Minister?”

  “He expects you at three, Don Cayo,” Dr. Alcibíades said.

  “All right, tell Major Paredes I’m coming by to see him, doctor. I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.”

  *

  “I came to La Crónica without any enthusiasm, just because I had to make some money,” Santiago said. “But now I think that out of all the possible jobs, it may be the least bad of the lot.”

  “Three and a half months and you haven’t been disillusioned?” Carlitos asked. “That’s enough to put you in a cage and show you off at the circus, Zavalita.”

  No, you hadn’t been disillusioned, Zavalita: the new Ambassador from Brazil Dr. Hernando de Magalhães presented his credentials this morning, I am optimistic about the future of tourism in the country the Director of Tourism declared last night at a press conference, the Entre Nous Society celebrated another anniversary with a well-attended and select reception. But you liked that garbage, Zavalita, you sat down at your typewriter and you were happy. No more of that careful detail with which you wrote short articles, he thinks, that fierce conviction with which you corrected, tore up and rewrote the pages before you took them to Arispe.

  “How long did it take you to become disillusioned with journalism?” Santiago asked.

  Those little articles and pygmy boxes that you’d look for anxiously the next morning in the copy of La Crónica you bought at the newsstand next to the boardinghouse in Barranco. That you would show with pride to Señora Lucía: I wrote that, ma’am.

  “A week after I came to La Crónica,” Carlitos said. “At the agency I wasn’t in journalism, I was more of a typist. I had a schedule that went straight through without any breaks, by two o’clock I was off and I could spend my afternoons reading and my nights writing. If they hadn’t fired me, literature wouldn’t have lost a great poet, Zavalita.”

  You were due at five, but you got to the editorial room much earlier, and from three-thirty on you were already watching the clock in the boardinghouse, impatient to go get on the streetcar, would they give you an outside assignment today? a reporting job? an interview? to arrive and sit down at your desk waiting for Arispe to call you: put this information into ten lines, Zavalita. Never again such enthusiasm, he thinks, the desire to do things, I’ll get myself a scoop and they’ll congratulate me, never again such plans, they’ll move me up. What went wrong, he thinks. He thinks: when, why.

  “I never knew why, one morning that fag queen came into the agency and told me you’ve been sabotaging the service, you Communist,” and Carlitos laughed in slow motion. “Are you serious?”

  “Quite serious, God damn you,” Tallio said. “Do you know how much your sabotage is going to cost me?”

  “It’s going to cost you your mother’s name if you curse me or raise your voice to me again,” Carlitos said, happy all over. “I didn’t even get any severance pay. And then and there I came to La Crónica and then and there I found the tomb of poetry, Zavalita.”

  “Why didn’t you quit journalism?” Santiago asked. “You could have found a different kind of job.”

  “You get in and you can’t get out, it’s quicksand,” Carlitos said, as if going away or falling asleep. “You keep on sinking, sinking. You hate it, you can’t free yourself. You hate it and suddenly you’re ready for anything just to get a scoop. Staying up all night, getting into incredible places. It’s an addiction, Zavalita.”

  “I’ve had it up to here,
but they’re not going to put a lid on me, you know why?” Santiago says. “Because I’m going to finish my law degree one way or another, Ambrosio.”

  “I didn’t pick the police beat, it so happened that Arispe couldn’t stand me on local news anymore or Maldonado on cables either,” Carlitos was saying, far, far away. “Only Becerrita could stand to have me working for him. The police beat, the worst of the worst. Just what I like. The dregs, my element, Zavalita.”

  Then he was silent and sat motionless and smiling, looking into space. When Santiago called the waiter, he woke up and paid the check. They went out and Santiago had to hold his arm because he was bumping into tables and walls. The arcade was empty, a pale blue strip of sky was creeping in over the rooftops of the Plaza San Martín.

  “It’s strange that Norwin didn’t come by,” Carlitos was reciting in a kind of quiet tenderness. “One of the best of the castaways, a magnificent part of the dregs. I’ll introduce you to him someday, Zavalita.”

  He was staggering, leaning against one of the columns of the arcade, his face dirty with a growth of beard, his nose igneous, his eyes tragically happy. Tomorrow without fail, Carlitos.

  4

  SHE WAS COMING BACK from the drugstore with two rolls of toilet paper when she came face to face with Ambrosio at the service entrance. Don’t look so serious, he said, I haven’t come to see you. And she: why should you be coming to see me, there’s nothing between us. Didn’t you see the car? Ambrosio asked, Don Fermín’s up there with Don Cayo. Don Fermín, Don Cayo? Amalia asked. Yes, why was she surprised. She didn’t know why, but she was surprised, they were so different, she tried to imagine Don Fermín at one of the parties and it seemed impossible.

  “It would be better if he didn’t see you,” Ambrosio said. “He might tell him that you were thrown out of his house or that you ran out on the laboratory, and Señora Hortensia might fire you too.”