Conversation in the Cathedral

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  “I’m not afraid, I print anything, the paper can take anything,” Becerrita finally whispered softly. “If you dare, I dare. Who was it? Who do you think it was?”

  “If you’re dumb enough to get mixed up in something, that’s your lookout.” Ivonne’s frightened face, Carlitos, her terror, the shout she gave. “If those dumb things you’re thinking about, if that dumb thing you’ve invented …”

  “You don’t understand, Madama.” The small, almost weepy voice of Becerrita, Carlitos. “She doesn’t want the death of her friend to stay just like that, nowhere. If Queta dares, I dare. Who do you think it was, Queta?”

  “They’re not dumb things, you know I’m not making it up, ma’am,” Queta sobbed, and she lifted her head and let it out, Carlitos: “You know that Cayo Shithead’s strong-arm man killed her.”

  All pores sweating, he thinks, all bones creaking. Not missing the smallest gesture, not a syllable, not moving, not breathing, and at the entrance to his stomach the little worm growing, the snake, the knives, just like that time, he thinks, worse than that time. Oh, Zavalita.

  “Are you going to cry now?” Ambrosio asks. “Don’t have anything more to drink, son.”

  “If you want me to, I’ll publish it, if you want, I’ll tell it just the way it is, if you don’t want me to, I won’t put anything in,” Becerrita said. “Is Cayo Shithead Cayo Bermúdez? Are you sure he ordered her killed? That bastard’s living a long way off from Peru, Queta.”

  There was the face deformed by weeping, Zavalita, the eyes swollen and red, the mouth twisted with anguish, there were the head and hands denying: not Bermúdez.

  “What killer?” Becerrita insisted. “Did you see him, were you there?”

  “Queta was in Huacachina,” Ivonne interrupted, threatening him with her forefinger. “With a senator, if you want to know who with.”

  “I hadn’t seen Hortensia for three days,” Queta sobbed. “I found out about it in the papers. But I know, I’m not lying.”

  “Where did the strong-arm man come from?” Becerrita repeated, his little eyes fastened on Queta, pacifying Ivonne with an impatient hand. “I won’t publish anything, Madama, only what Queta wants me to say. If she doesn’t dare, naturally, I won’t either.”

  “Hortensia knew lots of things about a certain moneybags, she was starving to death, she just wanted to get away from here,” Queta sobbed. “It wasn’t out of meanness, it was just to get away and start all over again, where nobody knew her. She was already half dead when she was killed. From the awful way that swine Bermúdez behaved, from the awful way everybody behaved when they saw her down.”

  “She was getting money out of him and the guy had her killed so she wouldn’t blackmail him anymore,” Becerrita recited softly. “Who is the guy who hired the killer?”

  “He didn’t hire him, he must have talked to him,” Queta said, looking into Becerrita’s eyes. “He must have talked to him and convinced him. He had him under his power, he was like his slave. He could do whatever he wanted with him.”

  “I dare, I’ll print it,” Becerrita repeated, in a low voice. “What the hell, I believe you, Queta.”

  “Gold Ball had her killed,” Queta said. “The killer was his pratboy. His name is Ambrosio.”

  “Gold Ball?” He leaped to his feet, Carlitos, blinking, he looked at Periquito, at me, he regretted it and looked at Queta, at the floor, and repeated, like an idiot: “Gold Ball? Gold Ball?”

  “Fermín Zavala, you can see that she’s crazy,” Ivonne exploded, standing up too, shouting. “Isn’t that a stupid thing, Becerrita? Even if it was true, it would be a stupid thing. Don’t pay any attention to her, she’s making it all up.”

  “Hortensia was getting money out of him, was threatening him with his wife, with telling the story about his chauffeur all over town,” Queta roared. “It’s not a lie, instead of buying her a ticket to Mexico, he had her killed by his pratboy. Are you going to tell it, are you going to print it?”

  “We’re not going to sprinkle everybody with shit.” And he collapsed in his chair, Carlitos, without looking at me, snorting, suddenly he put on his hat so his hands would have something to do. “What proof have you got, where’d you pick up such a thing? It doesn’t hold water. I don’t like to be kidded, Queta.”

  “I told her it was foolishness, I told her a hundred times,” Ivonne said. “She hasn’t got any proof, she was in Huacachina, she doesn’t know anything. And even if she did, who’s going to listen, who’s going to believe it. Fermín Zavala, with all his millions. You explain it to her, Becerrita. Tell her what can happen if she keeps on repeating that story.”

  “You’re spattering yourself with shit, Queta, and you’re spattering all of us too,” he grunted, Carlitos, making faces, fixing his hat. “Do you want me to print that so they’ll lock us all up in the booby hatch, Queta?”

  “Incredible for him,” Carlitos said. “All that filth was good for something. At least we found out that Becerrita is human too, that he can behave properly.”

  “You had something to do, didn’t you?” Becerrita grunted, looking at his watch, his voice anxiously natural. “On your way, Zavalita.”

  “You damned coward,” Queta said softly. “I knew you were only saying it, I knew you wouldn’t dare.”

  “At least you were able to get on your feet and get out of there without bursting out into tears,” Carlitos said. “The only thing that bothered me was that the whores knew about it and you couldn’t go back to that brothel. After all, it’s the best one in town, Zavalita.”

  “You mean at least I ran into you,” Santiago said. “I don’t know what I would have done that night without you, Carlitos.”

  Yes, it had been a piece of luck running into him, a piece of luck going to the Plaza San Martín and not to the boardinghouse in Barranco, a piece of luck not going home to cry with his mouth against his pillow in the loneliness of his little room, feeling that the world had ended and thinking about killing yourself or killing your poor old man, Zavalita. He’d got up, said so long, left the room, bumped into Robertito in the hall, walked to the Plaza Dos de Mayo without finding a taxi. You were breathing in the cold air with your mouth open, Zavalita, you felt your heart beating and sometimes you ran. You’d taken a group taxi, got out at Colmena, walked confusedly under the Portal, and suddenly there was Carlitos’ broken-down figure standing by a table in the Zela Bar, his hand calling you. Had they come back from Ivonne’s already, Zavalita, had that girl Queta shown up? What about Periquito and Becerrita? But when he got to Santiago he changed his tone: what was wrong, Zavalita.

  “I feel sick.” You’d taken his arm, Zavalita. “Awful sick, old man.”

  There was Carlitos looking at you with concern, hesitant, there was the pat he gave you on the shoulder: they’d better go have a drink, Zavalita. He let himself be dragged along, like a sleepwalker he went down the stairs of the Negro-Negro, crossed the floor blindly and stumbling in the half-empty shadows of the place, their usual table was empty, two German beers Carlitos said to the waiter and leaned against the New Yorker covers.

  “We always end up shipwrecked here, Zavalita.” His curly head, he thinks, the friendship in his eyes, his unshaven face, his yellow skin. “This den has got us hypnotized.”

  “If I’d gone to the boardinghouse I would have gone crazy, Carlitos,” Santiago said.

  “I thought it was a drunkard’s moaning, but now I can see it wasn’t,” Carlitos said. “Everybody ends up having a fight with Becerrita. Did he get drunk and throw you the hell out of the whorehouse? Don’t pay any attention to him, man.”

  There were the bright covers, sardonic and multicolored, the sound of conversation among invisible people. The waiter brought the beers, they drank in unison. Carlitos looked at him over his glass, offered him a cigarette and lighted it for him.

  “This is where we had our first masochistic dialogue, Zavalita,” he said. “This is where we confessed that we were failures as a poet and as a Commu
nist. Now we’re just a pair of newspapermen. This is where we became friends, Zavalita.”

  “I’ve got to tell you something because it’s burning a hole in me, Carlitos,” Santiago said.

  “If it’ll make you feel better, O.K.,” Carlitos said. “But think it over. Sometimes I start telling secrets when I have a crisis and afterwards I’m sorry and I hate the people who know my weak points. I don’t want you to hate me tomorrow, Zavalita.”

  But Santiago had started to cry again. Bending over the table, he was muffling his sobs by holding his handkerchief tight against his mouth, and he felt Carlitos’ hand on his shoulder: take it easy, man.

  “Well, it had to be that.” Softly, he thinks, timidly, compassionate. “Did Becerrita get drunk and bring out that business about your father in front of the whole brothel?”

  Not the moment when you found out, Zavalita, but there. He thinks: the moment I found out that everybody in Lima knew he was a fairy except me. Everybody on the paper, Zavalita, except you. The piano player had started to play, a woman’s little laugh in the darkness occasionally, the acid taste of the beer, the waiter came with his light to take away the bottles and bring some new ones. You were talking and tearing your handkerchief, Zavalita, drying your mouth and your eyes. He thinks: the world wasn’t going to end, you weren’t going to go crazy, you weren’t going to kill yourself.

  “You know people’s tongues, whores’ tongues.” Leaning forward and back in his chair, he thinks, startled, he was surprised too. “She brought out that story to take Becerrita down a peg, to shut his mouth because of the bad time he’d put her through.”

  “They were talking about him as if they were old chums,” Santiago said. “And me there, Carlitos.”

  “The worst fucking part about it isn’t that story about the murder, that’s got to be a lie, Zavalita.” He was stammering too, he thinks, he was contradicting himself too. “But that you found out about the other thing there and from that mouth. I thought you already knew, Zavalita.”

  “Gold Ball, his pratboy, his chauffeur,” Santiago said. “As if they’d known him all his life. He in the midst of all that filth, Carlitos. And me there.”

  It couldn’t be and you were smoking, Zavalita, it had to be a lie and you were taking a drink and getting worked up, and you were losing your voice and you kept on repeating it couldn’t be. And Carlitos, his face dissolved in smoke, in front of the indifferent covers: it seemed terrible to you but it wasn’t, Zavalita, there were more terrible things. You’d get used to it, you wouldn’t give a damn and he ordered more beer.

  “I’m going to get you drunk,” he said, making a face. “Your body will be in such fucked-up shape that you won’t be able to think about anything else. A few more drinks and you won’t be able to think about anything else. A few more drinks and you’ll see that it’s not worth getting so bitter about, Zavalita.”

  But he was the one who got drunk, he thinks, like you now. Carlitos got up, disappeared into the shadows, the woman’s small laugh that died out and reappeared and the monotonous piano: I wanted to get you drunk and the one who got drunk is me, Ambrosio. There was Carlitos again, he’d pissed away a quart of beer, Zavalita, what a waste of money, eh?

  “And why did you want to get me drunk?” Ambrosio laughs. “I never get drunk, son.”

  “Everybody on the newspaper knew about it,” Santiago said. “When I’m not there, do they talk about Gold Ball’s boy, the fairy’s son?”

  “You talk as if the problem was yours and not his,” Carlitos said. “Don’t be dumb, Zavalita.”

  “I never heard anything, at school, in the neighborhood, at the university,” Santiago said. “If it was true, I would have heard something, suspected something. Never, Carlitos.”

  “It could be one of those bits of gossip that float around in this country,” Carlitos said. “The kind that change into truth because they’ve lasted so long. Don’t think about it anymore.”

  “Or maybe I didn’t want to know,” Santiago said. “I didn’t want to be aware of it, Carlitos.”

  “I’m not consoling you, there’s no reason to, you’re out of it,” Carlitos said, belching. “He’s the one who should be consoled. If it’s a lie, because they’ve stuck him with it, and if it’s true, because his life must have been pretty well fucked up. Put it out of your mind.”

  “But that other business can’t be true, Carlitos,” Santiago said. “That other business must be a damned lie. It can’t be true, Carlitos.”

  “That whore must hate him for some reason, she made that tale up to get back at him for something,” Carlitos said. “Some bedroom intrigue, some piece of blackmail to get money out of him, maybe. I don’t know how you can warn him. Especially since it’s been years since you’ve seen him, hasn’t it?”

  “Me warn him? Do you think I ever want to see his face again after this?” Santiago said. “I’d die of shame, Carlitos.”

  “Nobody dies of shame.” Carlitos smiled and belched again. “You’ll know what to do in the end. In any case, the story will stay buried one way or another.”

  “You know Becerrita,” Santiago said. “It isn’t buried. You know what he’s going to do.”

  “Consult with Arispe and Arispe with the owners, of course I know,” Carlitos said. “Do you think Becerrita is dumb, that Arispe is dumb? Upper-crust people never appear on the police page. Were you worried about that, the scandal? You’re still bourgeois, Zavalita.”

  He belched and started to laugh and kept on talking, wandering more and more: tonight you’re a man, Zavalita, or you never will be. Yes, it had been a piece of luck: watching him get drunk, he thinks, listening to him belch, ramble on, having to drag him out of the Negro-Negro, hold him up in the Portal while a boy went for a cab. A piece of luck having had to take him to Chorrillos, bringing him up the ancient staircase of his house hanging on your shoulder, and undressing him and putting him to bed, Zavalita. Knowing that he wasn’t drunk, he thinks, that he was pretending in order to distract you and keep you busy, so that you’d think about him and not about yourself. He thinks: I’ll bring you a book, I’ll go by tomorrow. In spite of the bad taste in his mouth, the fog in his brain and the breakdown of his body, he’d felt better the next morning. Aching and at the same time stronger, he thinks, his muscles swollen from the uncomfortable easy chair where he’d slept with his clothes on, more peaceful, changed by the nightmare, older. There was the small shower crammed between the washbasin and the toilet in Carlitos’ room, the cold water that made you shiver and finally woke you up. He got dressed slowly. Carlitos was still asleep on his belly, his head hanging off the bed, in his shorts and with his socks on. There was the street and the sunlight that the morning mist was unable to hide, only maim, there was the small café on the corner and the group of streetcar conductors with blue caps talking about soccer at the counter. He ordered coffee, asked what time it was, ten o’clock, he was probably in the office already, you didn’t feel nervous or sentimental, Zavalita. In order to get to the telephone he had to go under the counter, through a corridor with sacks and crates, while he was dialing the number he watched a column of ants climbing up a beam. His hands suddenly grew moist as he recognized Sparky’s voice: yes, hello?

  “Hello, Sparky.” Tickling all over his body there, the feeling that the ground was going soft. “Yes, it’s me, Santiago.”

  “The coast isn’t clear.” Sparky’s whispering and almost inaudible voice there, his tone of an accomplice. “Call me later, the old man’s here.”

  “I want to talk to him,” Santiago said. “Yes, to the old man. Put him on, it’s urgent.”

  The long stupefied or baffled or amazed silence there, the remote clacking of a typewriter, and Sparky’s unhinged little cough as he was probably swallowing the telephone with his eyes and not knowing what to say, what to do, and there his theatrical yell: hey, it’s Skinny, it’s Superbrain, and the typewriter stopped at once. Where’ve you been keeping yourself, Skinny, when did you rise up f
rom the dead, Superbrain, what are you waiting for to come to the house? Yes papa, Skinny papa, he wanted to talk to you papa. Voices that rose over Sparky’s and drowned it out and the rush of heat on your face there, Zavalita.

  “Hello, hello, Skinny?” The identical voice from years past there, breaking, Zavalita, filled with anguish, joy, his confused voice which was shouting: “Son? Skinny? Are you there?”

  “Hello, papa.” There at the end of the hallway, behind the counter, the conductors were laughing and next to you a row of bottles of Pasteurina and the ants disappearing among tins of crackers. “Yes, I’m here, papa. How’s mama, how’s everybody, papa?”

  “Angry with you, Skinny, waiting for you every day, Skinny.” The terribly hopeful voice, Zavalita, disturbed, stumbling. “What about you, are you all right? Where are you calling from, Skinny?”

  “From Chorrillos, papa.” Thinking a lie, he wasn’t, he thinks, calumny, he couldn’t be. “I have to talk to you about something, papa. If you’re not too busy now, could I see you this morning?”

  “Yes, right away, I’ll come right over.” And suddenly alarmed, anxious. “Nothing’s happened to you, has it, Skinny? You’re not in any trouble, are you?”

  “No, papa, no trouble. If you want, I’ll meet you outside the Regatas Club. I’m not far away.”

  “Right away, Skinny. A half hour at the most. I’m leaving right now. Here’s Sparky, Skinny.”

  The imaginable sounds of chairs, doors, and the typewriter again there, and in the distance horns, car engines.

  “The old man got twenty years younger in one second,” Sparky said euphorically. “He went out of here as if the devil was after him. And I was the one who didn’t know how to hide it, man. What’s the matter, are you in some kind of trouble?”

  “No, nothing,” Santiago said. “It’s been a long time now. I’m going to make up with him.”

  “It’s about time, it’s about time,” Sparky repeated, happy, still not believing. “Wait, I’m going to call mama. Don’t go home until I tell her. So she doesn’t have an attack when she sees you.”