Conversation in the Cathedral

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  “Don’t hold me so tight,” she joked, amused. “Dance like a human being.”

  But he didn’t understand and instead of getting closer, he drew back an inch or two more, murmuring something. What a coward he is, Queta thought, almost with feeling. While she was spinning, humming, moving her hands in the air and changing step, he, rocking gracelessly where he stood, had an expression as amusing as the carnival masks that Robertito had hung from the ceiling. They went back to the bar and she ordered another vermouth.

  “It wasn’t very bright of you to come here,” Queta said in a friendly way. “Ivonne or Robertito or somebody will tell Cayo Shithead and you’ll probably get into trouble.”

  “Do you think so?” he whispered, looking around with a stupid expression. The poor idiot had figured everything out except that, Queta thought, you’ve ruined his night.

  “Of course,” she said. “Can’t you see that they all tremble in front of him the way you do? Can’t you see that it seems that he’s Ivonne’s partner now? Are you so dumb that that didn’t occur to you?”

  “I wanted to go upstairs with you,” he stammered: his eyes burning, sparkling in the leaden face, over the broad nose with wide-open nostrils, his lips parted, the very white teeth gleaming, his voice run through with fright. “Could we?” And getting even more frightened: “How much would it cost?”

  “You’d have to work for months to be able to go to bed with me.” Queta smiled and looked at him with compassion.

  “What if I did,” he insisted. “What if it was just once. Could we?”

  “We could for five hundred soles,” Queta said, looking him over, making him lower his eyes, smiling. “Plus the room, which is fifty. You can see, it’s out of range of your pocket.”

  The whites of his eyes rolled for a second, his lips tightened together, crushed. But the big hand rose up and pointed pitifully at Robertito, who was at the other end of the bar: that fellow had said the price was two hundred.

  “The price of the other girls. I’ve got my own price,” Queta said. “But if you’ve got two hundred you can go upstairs with any of them. Except Martha, the one in yellow. She doesn’t like blacks. Well, pay your bill and go ahead.”

  She saw him remove some bills from his wallet, pay Robertito and take the change with a remorseful and meditative face.

  “Tell the madwoman I’ll call her,” Queta said in a friendly way. “Go ahead, go to bed with one of those, they charge two hundred. Don’t be afraid, I’ll talk to Ivonne and she won’t say anything to Cayo Shithead.”

  “I don’t want to go to bed with any of them,” he murmured. “I’d rather leave.”

  She accompanied him to the small garden by the entrance and there he suddenly stopped, turned around, and in the reddish light of the street lamp, Queta saw him hesitate, raise, lower and raise his eyes, struggle with his tongue until he managed to babble: he still had two hundred soles left.

  “If you keep on insisting, I’m going to get mad,” Queta said. “Go on, get on your way.”

  “For a kiss?” he choked, confused. “Could we?”

  He waved his long arms as if he were going to hang from a tree, put one hand into his pocket, drew a quick circle and Queta saw the bills. She saw them come down to her hand and without her knowing how, they were already there, wrinkled and crushed between her own fingers. He cast a glance inside and she saw him lean his heavy head over and felt a sticky sucker fish on her throat. He embraced her furiously but didn’t try to kiss her on the mouth, and as soon as he felt her resist, he drew back.

  “All right, it was worth it,” she heard him say, smiling, and she recognized the two white coals dancing in his eye sockets. “Someday I’m going to get that five hundred.”

  He opened the gate and left and Queta remained for a moment looking in astonishment at the two blue banknotes that were dancing about between her fingers.

  *

  Rough drafts written up and thrown into the wastebasket, he thinks, weeks and months that were rough drafts and thrown into … There they were, Zavalita: the static city room with its recurrent gab and gossip, the swirling conversations with Carlitos in the Negro-Negro, the thieflike visits to nightclub bars. How many times had Carlitos and China become friends, quarreled and made up? When had Carlitos’ drunken benders become one single chronic bender? In that gelatin of days, those jellyfish months, those liquid years that slithered out of his memory, only a very thin thread to cling to. He thinks: Ana. They’d gone out together a week after Santiago had left La Maison de Santé and they went to the Cine San Martín to see a movie with Columba Domínguez and Pedro Armendáriz and ate some sausages at a German restaurant on Colmena; the following Thursday, chili con carne at the Cream Rica on the Jirón de la Unión and a bullfighting movie at the Excelsior. Then everything fell apart and became confused, Zavalita, tea near the Palace of Justice, walks through Parque de la Exposición, until, suddenly, in a winter of fine mist and sticky fog, that anodyne relationship made up of cheap menus and Mexican melodramas and plays on words had taken on a vague stability. There was the Neptuno, Zavalita: the dim locale of dream-walking rhythms, its ominous couples dancing in the shadows, the phosphorescent little stars on the walls, its smell of drinks and adultery. You were worried about the bill, you made your glass endure like a miser, you were calculating. There you kissed for the first time, pushed by the lack of light, he thinks, the music and the silhouettes feeling each other in the shadows: I love you, Anita. There your surprise on feeling her body letting itself go against yours, I love you too, Santiago, there the juvenile avidity of her mouth and the desire that swallowed you up. They kissed at length as they danced, they kept on kissing at the table, and in the taxi, when he took her home, Ana let her breasts be fondled without protesting. No wisecracks the whole night, he thinks. It had been a listless and semiclandestine romance, Zavalita. Ana insisted on your coming to her home for lunch and you never were able, you had a story to cover, a meeting, next week, another day. One evening Carlitos ran into them in the Haití on the Plaza de Armas and he looked surprised at seeing them holding hands and Ana leaning on Santiago’s shoulder. It had been their first fight, Zavalita. Why hadn’t you introduced her to your family, why don’t you want to meet mine, why haven’t you even said anything to your best friend, are you ashamed to be going with me? They were at the door of La Maison de Santé and it was cold and you felt bored: now I know why you like Mexican melodramas so much, Anita. She gave a half-turn and went into the hospital without saying good-bye.

  The first days after that fight he’d felt a vague unrest, a quiet nostalgia. Love, Zavalita? Then you’d never been in love with Aída, he thinks. Or had that worm in the guts you felt years ago been love? He thinks: never with Ana then, Zavalita. He started going out with Carlitos and Milton and Solórzano and Norwin again: one night he joked with them about his affair with Ana and made up the story that they were going to bed together. Then one day, before going to the paper, he got off the bus at the stop by the Palace of Justice and made an appearance at the hospital. Without premeditation, he thinks, as if by chance. They made up in the entranceway, among people who were coming and going, without even touching hands, talking in secret, looking into each other’s eyes. I was wrong Anita, I was the one who was wrong, Santiago, you don’t know how upset I’ve Anita, and I cried every Santiago. They met again at nightfall in a Chinese café with drunks and a sawdust-covered tile floor, and they talked for hours without letting go of their hands over the untouched cups of coffee. But you should have told her before, Santiago, how was she to know that you weren’t getting along with your family, and he told her again, the university, the group, La Crónica, the tight cordiality with his parents and his brother and sister. Everything except about Aída, Zavalita, except about Ambrosio, about the Muse. Why had you told her your life story? From then on they saw each other almost every day and they’d made love a week or a month after, one night, at a shack-up house in the Margaritas development. There was her b
ody, so thin you could count the bones of her back, her frightened eyes, her shame and your confusion when you discovered she was a virgin. He’ll never take you here again Anita, he loved you Anita. From then on they made love at the boardinghouse in Barranco, once a week on the afternoon that Doña Lucía went visiting. There that anxious frightened love on Wednesdays, Ana’s weeping remorse every time she remade the bed, Zavalita.

  Don Fermín was putting in an occasional appearance at the office again and Santiago lunched with them on Sundays. Señora Zoila had allowed Popeye and Teté to announce their engagement and Santiago promised to come to the party. It was Saturday, his day off at La Crónica, Ana was on duty. He sent his most presentable suit out to be cleaned, he shined his own shoes, put on a clean shirt, and at eight-thirty a taxi took him to Miraflores. A sound of voices and music poured over the garden wall and came into the street, maids in shawls were looking into the inside of the house from neighboring balconies. Cars were parked on both sides of the street, some on the sidewalk, and you went ahead hugging the wall, avoiding the door, suddenly undecided, lacking the urge to ring the bell or to leave. Through the garage gate he saw a corner of the garden: a small table with a white cloth, a butler standing guard, couples chatting around the pool. But the main body of guests were in the living room and the dining room and through the window shades one could make out their figures. The music and talking was coming from inside. He recognized the face of that aunt, this cousin, and faces that looked ghostly. Suddenly Uncle Clodomiro appeared and went to sit in the rocker in the garden, alone. There he was, hands and knees together, looking at the girls in high heels, the boys with neckties who were starting to come up to the table with the white cloth. They passed in front of him and he smiled at them eagerly. What were you doing there, Uncle Clodomiro, why did you come where nobody knew you, where those who did know you didn’t like you? To show that in spite of the snubs they gave you that you were a member of the family, that you had a family? he thinks. He thinks: in spite of everything, did the family matter to you, did you love the family that didn’t love you? Or was solitude even worse than humiliation, uncle? He had already decided not to go in, but he didn’t leave. A car stopped by the door and he saw two girls get out, holding onto their coiffures and waiting for the one driving to park and come along. You knew him, he thinks: Tony, the same little dancing brush on his forehead, the same parrot laugh. The three of them went into the house laughing and there the absurd impression that they were laughing at you, Zavalita. There those sudden savage desires to see Ana. From the store on the corner he explained to Teté by phone that he couldn’t get away from La Crónica: he’d come by tomorrow and give my brother-in-law a hug for me. Oh, you’re always such a wet blanket, Superbrain, how could you pull a stunt like that on them. He called Ana, went to see her, and they talked for a while at the entrance to La Maison de Santé.

  A few days later she had called La Crónica with a hesitant voice: she had some bad news for you, Santiago. He waited for her at a Chinese café and saw her coming all huddled up in a coat over her uniform, her face long: they were moving to Ica, love. Her father had been named director of a school system there, maybe she could get a job at the Workers’ Hospital there. It hadn’t seemed so serious to you, Zavalita, and you had consoled her: you’d go see her every week, she could come here too, Ica was so close by.

  *

  The first day he went to work as a driver for Morales Transportation, before leaving for Tingo María Ambrosio had taken Amalia and Amalita Hortensia for a little drive through the bumpy streets of Pucallpa in the dented little blue truck that was all patched up, with mudguards and bumpers tied on with ropes so they wouldn’t say good-bye at some pothole.

  “Compared to the cars I’ve driven here it was something to weep over,” Ambrosio says. “And still, the months I drove The Jungle Flash were happy ones, son.”

  The Jungle Flash had been fitted out with wooden benches and there was room for twelve passengers if they squeezed together. The lazy life of the first weeks had been replaced by an active routine from then on: Amalia would feed him, put his lunch in the glove compartment of the vehicle and Ambrosio, wearing a T-shirt, a visor cap, ragged pants and rubber-soled sandals, would leave for Tingo María at eight in the morning. Since he’d been traveling, Amalia had picked up on religion again after so many years, pushed a little by Doña Lupe, who had given her some holy pictures for the walls and had dragged her off to Sunday mass. If there wasn’t any flooding and the vehicle didn’t break down, Ambrosio would get to Tingo María at six in the afternoon; he would sleep on a mattress under the counter at Morales Transportation, and the next day he would leave for Pucallpa at eight o’clock. But that schedule had rarely been kept, he was always getting stuck on the road and there were trips that took all day. The engine was tired, Amalia, it kept stopping to get its strength back. He would arrive home covered with dirt from head to toe and weary unto death. He would flop down on the bed and, while she got him his dinner, he, smoking, using one arm as a pillow, peaceful, exhausted, would tell her about his wiles in fixing the motor, the passengers he’d carried, and the bills he was going to give to Don Hilario. And what he enjoyed most, Amalia, his bets with Pantaleón. Thanks to those bets the trips were less boring, even though the passengers were pissing with fright. Pantaleón drove The Highway Superman, a bus that belonged to Pucallpa Transport, the rival company of Morales Transportation. They left at the same time and they raced, not just to win the ten soles of the wager, but, most of all, to get ahead and pick up passengers who were going from one village to the next, traveling between farms along the way.

  “Those passengers who don’t buy any tickets,” he’d told Amalia, “the ones who aren’t customers of Morales Transportation but of Ambrosio Pardo Transportation.”

  “What if Don Hilario finds out about it someday?” Amalia had asked him.

  “Bosses know how things are,” Pantaleón had explained to him, Amalia. “And they play dumb because they get their revenge by paying us starvation wages. A thief robbing from a thief will never run on a reef, brother, you know all about it.”

  In Tingo María Pantaleón had gotten himself a widow who didn’t know he had a wife and three children in Pucallpa, but sometimes he didn’t go to the widow’s but ate with Ambrosio in a cheap restaurant called La Luz del Día, and sometimes afterward to a brothel with skeletons who charged three soles. Ambrosio went with him out of friendship, he couldn’t understand why Pantaleón liked those women, he wouldn’t have got mixed up with them even if they’d paid him. Really, Ambrosio? Really, Amalia: squat, fat-bellied, ugly. Besides, he was so tired when he got there that even if he wanted to cheat on you, his body wouldn’t respond, Amalia.

  During the early days Amalia had been very serious in spying on Limbo Coffins. Nothing had changed since the funeral parlor changed hands. Don Hilario never went to the place; the same employee as before was still there, a boy with a sickly-looking face who spent the day sitting on the porch looking stupidly at the buzzards who were sunning themselves on the roofs of the hospital and the morgue. The single room of the funeral parlor was filled with coffins, most of them small and white. They were rough, rustic, only an occasional one planed down and waxed. During the first week one coffin had been sold. A barefoot man without a jacket but with a black tie and a remorseful face went into Limbo Coffins and came out a short time later carrying a little box on his shoulder. He passed by Amalia and she crossed herself. The second week there hadn’t been a sale; the third week a couple, one for a child and one for an adult. It didn’t seem like much of a business, Amalia. Ambrosio had begun to grow uneasy.

  After a month Amalia had grown careless in her vigilance. She wasn’t going to spend her life in the cabin door with Amalita Hortensia in her arms, especially since coffins were carried away so rarely. She’d made friends with Doña Lupe, they would spend hours chatting, they ate lunch and dinner together, took strolls around the square, along the Calle Comercio, by the
docks. On the hottest days they went down to the river to swim in their nightgowns and then had shaved ice at Wong’s Ice Cream Parlor. Ambrosio relaxed on Sundays: he slept all morning and after lunch he would go out with Pantaleón to watch the soccer games in the stadium on the road to Yarinacocha. At night they would leave Amalita Hortensia with Señora Lupe and go to the movies. People on the street already knew them and said hello. Doña Lupe came and went in the cabin as if she owned it; once she’d caught Ambrosio naked, having a bucket bath in the backyard, and Amalia had died laughing. They also went to Doña Lupe’s whenever they wanted to, they loaned each other things. When he came to Pucallpa, Doña Lupe’s husband would come out and sit by the street with them at night to get some air. He was an old man who only opened his mouth to talk about his little farm and his debts to the Land Bank.

  “I think I’m happy now,” Amalia had told Ambrosio one day. “I’ve already gotten used to it here. And you don’t seem as grumpy as you were at the start.”

  “You can see that you’re used to it,” Ambrosio had answered. “You go around barefoot and with your umbrella, you’re already a jungle girl. Yes, I’m happy too.”

  “Happy because I don’t think about Lima very much anymore,” Amalia had said. “I almost never dream about the mistress anymore, I almost never think about the police.”

  “When you first got here, I thought how can she live with him,” Doña Lupe had said one day. “Now I can tell you that you were lucky to get him. All the women in the neighborhood would like to have him for a husband, black as he is.”

  Amalia had laughed: it was true, he was behaving very well with her, much better than in Lima, and he even showed his affection for Amalita Hortensia. His spirits had become very merry of late and she hadn’t had a fight with him since they’d been in Pucallpa.