Conversation in the Cathedral

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  “I didn’t see the newspapers and I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ambrosio says. “I must have been in Pucallpa when it happened, son.”

  “Cayo Bermúdez’ mistress?” Darío said. “Then it really is a story.”

  “You felt like a Sherlock Holmes, digging into that foul story,” Carlitos said. “And look what it cost you.”

  “You were his chauffeur and you didn’t know that he had a mistress?” Santiago asks.

  “I didn’t know and I never saw her,” Ambrosio says. “It’s the first I ever heard of it, son.”

  An anxious excitation had replaced the dizziness of the first moment, a crude excitement as the van crossed the downtown area and you were trying to decipher the scribbling in your notebook and reconstruct the conversation with Inspector Peralta, Zavalita. He leaped out and strode up the stairs at La Crónica. The lights in the editorial office were on, the desks occupied, but he didn’t stop to chat with anyone. Did you win the lottery? Carlitos asked him, and he a big story, Carlitos. He sat down at the typewriter and for an hour didn’t take his eyes off the paper, writing, correcting and smoking ceaselessly. Then, chatting with Carlitos, he waited, impatient and proud of yourself, Zavalita, for Becerrita to arrive. And finally you saw him come in, dumpy, he thinks, adipose, ill-humored, aged Becerrita, with hat left over from other days, his ex-boxer’s face, his ridiculous little mustache and his fingers stained with nicotine. What a disappointment, Zavalita. He didn’t answer your hello, he practically didn’t read the three pages, he listened without any expression of interest to the story Santiago was telling him. What was one crime more or less for Becerrita who got up in the morning, lived and went to bed in the midst of murders, Zavalita, robberies, embezzlements, fires, holdups, who had lived for a quarter of a century off stories of junkies, thieves, whores, cheating wives. But the disappointment didn’t last long, Zavalita. He thinks: he never got enthusiastic about anything, but he knew his trade. He thinks: maybe he liked it. He took off his turn-of-the-century hat, his jacket, rolled up his sleeves which he had fastened at the elbows with a bookkeeper’s armbands, he thinks, and loosened the necktie that was as threadbare and dirty as his suit and shoes, and weary and vinegary he went through the office indifferent to the nods, stolidly and slowly and straight to Arispe’s desk. Santiago went over to Carlitos’ corner to listen. Becerrita gave a little rap with his knuckles on the typewriter and Arispe raised his head: what could he do for him, my good sir?

  “The centerfold all for me.” His voice harsh and sickly, he thinks, weak, mocking. “And Periquito at my disposal for at least three or four days.”

  “Do you also want a house on the beach with a piano, my good sir?” Arispe asked.

  “And some reinforcements, Zavalita, for example, because two people in my section are on vacation,” Becerrita said dryly. “If you want us to do a thorough job on this, you’ll have to put a writer on it night and day.”

  Arispe chewed his red pencil thoughtfully, thumbing through the pages; then his eyes wandered about the room, searching. You screwed yourself, Carlitos said, get out of it under any pretext. But you didn’t use any, Zavalita, you went happily over to Arispe’s desk, happily over to the jaws of the wolf. Excitement, emotion, blood: already fucked up for some time, Zavalita.

  “Do you want to transfer to the police beat for a few days?” Arispe said. “Becerrita has asked for you.”

  “Do people have a choice now?” Becerrita muttered acidly. “When I started out on La Crónica nobody asked me what I thought. Go cover the police stations, we’re setting up a police section and you’re going to be in charge of it. They’ve kept me on it for twenty-five years and they still haven’t asked me whether I like it or not.”

  “One day your bad mood’s going to boil up in here, my good sir,” Arispe touched his heart with his red pencil, “and it’ll explode like a balloon. Besides, if they took you off the police page you’d die of sorrow, Becerrita. You’re the top ace of the gory page in all Peru.”

  “I don’t know what good it does me, because every week I’m in debt up to here,” Becerrita grunted, immodestly. “I’d rather not get so much praise and have my salary raised.”

  “Twenty years eating free off the most expensive whores, getting drunk free in the best brothels, and you’re still complaining, my good sir?” Arispe said. “What effect do you think it has on those of us who have to pay out of our own pockets every time we have to get ourselves a drink or a fuck?”

  The clicking of the machines had stopped, smiling faces followed the dialogue between Arispe and Becerrita from the desks, and the latter had begun to smile in a hybrid way, releasing little spasms of that hoarse and unpleasant laugh that would change into a thunder of hiccuping, belching and invectives when he was drunk, he thinks.

  “I’m old now,” he finally said. “I don’t swill anymore, I don’t like women anymore.”

  “You changed your tastes in your old age,” Arispe said, and he looked at Santiago. “Watch out, now I can see why Becerrita asked for you for his section.”

  “My, the chief editors are in a good mood,” Becerrita grunted. “What about that other matter? Will you give me the centerfold and Periquito?”

  “You’ve got them, but take good care of them for me,” Arispe said. “I want you to get people shook up and raise circulation for me. Icing on the cake, my good sir.”

  Becerrita nodded, turned halfway around, the typewriters began to clack again and, followed by Santiago, he went to his desk. It was in the rear, he saw everyone’s back from there, he thinks, it was one of his constant themes. He would come in drunk and plant himself in the middle of the room, open his jacket, his fists on his chubby hips, they always send me to the asshole of the universe! The reporters hunched down in their seats, sank their noses into their machines, not even Arispe dared look at him, he thinks, while Becerrita, with slow, infuriated eyes, looked over the busy reporters, they looked down on his page and they looked down on him, didn’t they? the concentrating copy editors, was that why they’d hemmed him in in the asshole of the office? Hernández the busy headline writer, so he could look at the asses of the local-news gentlemen, the asses of the foreign-news gentlemen? pacing back and forth like a restless general before a battle, so he’d get the gentlemen reporters’ farts full in his chops? and raising his tortured laughter to the ceiling from time to time. But once when Arispe had suggested that he move his desk, he became indignant, he thinks: I’ll have to be dead before they can haul me out of my corner, God damn it. His desk was low and a bit rickety, like him, he thinks, greasy like the shiny suit he usually wore decorated with food stains. He’d sat down, lighted a crumpled cigarette, Santiago was waiting on his feet, excited that he’d asked for you, Zavalita, already excited by the articles you’d write: going to the slaughterhouse like someone on his way to a party, Carlitos.

  “All right, she’s been given to us and we’ve got to move.” Becerrita picked up the phone, dialed a number, spoke with his sour mouth close to the piece, his chubby hand with blackish fingernails were doodling on a writing pad.

  “You were always looking for strong emotions,” Carlitos said. “Somehow you seemed to get them.”

  “Yes, Porvenir, get over there right now with Periquito.” Becerrita hung up the phone, fastened his rheumy little eyes on Santiago. “That woman used to sing there some time ago. The woman who runs it knows me. Get information, pictures. Her girl friends, her boyfriends, addresses, the kind of life she led. Have Periquito take some pictures of the place.”

  Santiago put on his jacket as he went down the stairs. Becerrita had called Darío and the van, parked in front of the door, was blocking traffic; the drivers blew their horns. A moment later Periquito appeared, furious.

  “I’d warned Arispe that I wouldn’t work for that slave driver anymore and now he gives me to Becerrita for a week.” He was loading his camera, complaining. “He’s going to grind us into dust, Zavalita.”

  “He may ha
ve the mood of a dog, but he fights like a lion for his reporters,” Darío said. “If it wasn’t for him old drunken Carlitos would have been fired long ago. Don’t put Becerrita down.”

  “I’m going to quit the newspaper business, I’ve had enough,” Periquito said. “I’m going to get into commercial photography. One week with Becerrita is worse than a dose of the clap.”

  The van went up Colmena to the Parque Universitario, down Azángaro, passed the whitish stone base of the Palace of Justice, turned into the rainy sunset of República, and when, on the right, in the middle of the shadowy park, the Cabaña appeared with its lighted windows and sparkling sign in front, Periquito began to laugh, calm all of a sudden: he didn’t even want to look at that dive, Zavalita, his liver was still one big ulcer from the drunk he’d been on last Sunday.

  “With a single item on his page he can sink any go-go girl, close any brothel, ruin the reputation of any nightclub,” Darío said. “Becerrita is a god in Lima’s bohemian world. And no page editor treats his people the way he does. He takes them to whorehouses, buys them drinks, gets women for them. I don’t know how you can complain about him, Periquito.”

  “All right,” Periquito admitted. “Keep a stiff upper lip in a storm. If we have to work with him, instead of getting bitter, let’s try to exploit his weak point.”

  The brothels, the stinking dives, the promiscuous little bars with vomit and sawdust, the fauna of three o’clock in the morning. He thinks: his weak point. That’s where he became human, he thinks, that’s where he made himself liked. Darío put the brakes on: a faceless mass was moving along the sidewalks in the shadows of 28 de Julio, over the gloomy silhouettes the small, rancid light of the lamps of Porvenir languished. It was misty, the night was very damp. The door of the Montmartre was closed.

  “Let’s knock, Paqueta must be inside,” Periquito said. “This dive opens late, the nightclubs pour out into here.”

  They knocked on the glass of the door—a piano player in the pink light of the window, he thinks, his teeth as white as the keys of his piano, two dancers with plumes on their behinds and their heads—steps were heard, a skinny boy in a white vest and a small bow tie who looked at them with concern: from La Crónica, right? Come in, madame was expecting them. A bar covered with bottles, a ceiling with platinum stars, a tiny dance floor with an upright microphone, empty tables and chairs. A small disguised door behind the bar opened, good evening said Periquito and there was Paqueta, Zavalita: her eyes with long false lashes and round halos of eyeshadow, her scarlet cheeks, her protuberant buttocks smothering in the tight slacks, her tiny tightrope-walker steps.

  “Did Mr. Becerra talk to you?” Santiago asked. “It’s about the murder in Jesús María.”

  “He promised to keep me completely out of it, he swore to me and I hope he keeps his word.” Her spongy hand, her mechanical smile, her honeyed voice with a touch of alarm and hatred. “If there’s any scandal, it’s the place that will suffer, understand?”

  “We only want a little information,” Santiago said. “Who she was, what she did.”

  “I barely knew her, I don’t know much of anything.” The stiff lashes that fluttered evasively, Zavalita, the thick red lips that closed up like mimosa leaves. “She stopped singing here six months ago. Farther back than that, eight months ago. She’d just about lost her voice, I hired her because I felt sorry for her, she’d sing three or four numbers and leave. Before that she was at the Laguna.”

  She stopped speaking when the first rainbow burst and she remained looking, her mouth open: Periquito was peacefully taking pictures of the bar, the dance floor, the microphone.

  “What are those pictures for?” she grumbled, pointing. “Becerrita swore to me that my name wouldn’t be mentioned.”

  “Just to show one of the places where she sang, your name won’t be mentioned,” Santiago said. “I’d like to know something about the Muse’s private life. Some story, anything.”

  “I don’t know much of anything,” Paqueta murmured, following Periquito with her eyes. “Outside of what everybody knows. That she was pretty famous a long time ago, that she sang at the Embassy Club, that later on she was the girl friend of you know who. But I imagine they won’t say anything about that.”

  “Why not, ma’am?” Periquito laughed. “Odría isn’t President anymore, Manuel Prado is, and La Crónica belongs to the Prados. We can say whatever we want to.”

  “And I thought we would be able to and I mentioned it in the first story, Carlitos.” Santiago laughed. “Former mistress of Cayo Bermúdez stabbed to death.”

  “I think you’re being a little dumb, Zavalita,” Becerrita grunted, looking over the pages ill-humoredly. “Well, let’s see what the big boss thinks.”

  “Nightclub star stabbed to death would have more impact,” Arispe said. “And besides, they’re orders from above, my good sir.”

  “Was she or wasn’t she the mistress of that son of a bitch?” Becerrita asked. “And if she was and the son of a bitch isn’t in the government and isn’t even in the country, why can’t we say it?”

  “Because it suits the balls of the headman not to say it, my good sir,” Arispe said.

  “All right, that argument always wins me over,” Becerrita said. “Change the whole story, Zavalita. Wherever you say former mistress of Cayo Bermúdez put former nightclub queen.”

  “And then Bermúdez abandoned her and left the country, during Odría’s last days.” Paqueta snorted: another bulb had just flashed. “You probably remember, during that trouble with the Coalition in Arequipa. She went back to singing, but she wasn’t the same as before. Not her looks and not her voice. She drank a lot, once she tried to kill herself. She couldn’t get work. The poor girl had a hard time of it.”

  “All the time you were with him you never knew him to have a woman?” Santiago asks. “He must have been queer, then.”

  “What kind of life did she lead?” Paqueta asked. “A bad life, I already told you. She drank, she couldn’t hold onto boyfriends, always needing money. I hired her because I felt sorry for her, and I didn’t keep her long, only a couple of months, maybe not even that long. The customers were bored. Her songs were out of style. She tried to get up to date, but she just couldn’t get the new music.”

  “I didn’t know him to have any mistresses, but he did have some women,” Ambrosio says. “Whores, that is, son.”

  “And what was that drug trouble all about, ma’am,” Santiago said.

  “Drugs?” Paqueta said, stupefied. “What drugs?”

  “He would go to whorehouses, I took him a lot of times,” Ambrosio says. “To that one you remembered from way back. Ivonne’s, that one. Lots of times.”

  “But you were involved too, ma’am, you were arrested with her,” Santiago said. “And, thanks to Mr. Becerra, nothing came out in the papers, don’t you remember?”

  A quick tremor animated her fleshy face, the inflexible lashes vibrated with indignation, but then a challenging, reminiscent smile softened Paqueta’s expression. She closed her eyes as if to look inside and locate that lost episode among her memories: oh yes, oh that.

  “And Ludovico, the fellow I told you about, the one who got me into a jam by sending me to Pucallpa, the one who took my place as Don Cayo’s chauffeur, he used to take him to whorehouses all the time,” Ambrosio says. “No, son, he wasn’t any fairy.”

  “There weren’t any drugs or anything like that involved, it was a mistake, it was cleared up right there,” Paqueta said. “The police arrested a person who used to come here from time to time, he was pushing cocaine, it seems, and they called her and me as witnesses. We didn’t know anything and they let us go.”

  “Who was the Muse going with when she was working here?” Santiago asked.

  “Who was her lover?” Her overlapping and uneven teeth, Zavalita, her gossipy eyes. “She didn’t have just one, she had a lot of them.”

  “Even if you don’t give me their names,” Santiago said, “at least te
ll me what kind of guys they were.”

  “She had her adventures, but I don’t know the details, she wasn’t my girl friend,” Paqueta said. “I only know what everybody else does, that she’d fallen into a bad life and that’s all.”

  “Do you know if she has any family here?” Santiago asked. “Or some girl friend who might be able to give us more information?”

  “I don’t think she had any family,” Paqueta said. “She said she was Peruvian, but some people thought she was a foreigner. They said she got her Peruvian passport through you know who, when he was her lover.”

  “Mr. Becerra would like some photographs of the Muse when she was singing here,” Santiago said.

  “I’ll give them to you, but please don’t get me mixed up in this, don’t mention my name,” Paqueta said. “I’ll help you under that condition. Becerrita promised me.”

  “And we’ll keep his promise, ma’am,” Santiago said. “Don’t you know anyone who could give us more information on her? That’s the last question and we’ll leave you alone.”

  “When she stopped singing here I didn’t see her again.” Paqueta sighed, suddenly took on the mysterious air of an informer. “But you heard things about her. That she’d gone into one of those houses. I’m not sure. I only know that she lived with a woman who was a hustler, who worked at the Frenchwoman’s place.”

  “The Muse with one of the women from Ivonne’s?” Santiago asked.

  “You can name the Frenchwoman.” Paqueta laughed, and her soft voice had become growly with hatred. “Use her name, so the police will bring her in for questioning. That old woman knows a lot of things.”

  “What was the name of the girl friend she lived with?” Santiago asked.

  “Queta?” Ambrosio says, and a few seconds later, stupefied: “Queta, son?”

  “If you say I gave the information they’ll ruin me, the Frenchwoman is the worst enemy you could have.” Paqueta softened her voice. “I don’t know her real name. Queta’s the name she went by.”