Conversation in the Cathedral

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  “Why did they have you come in?” Quetita seemed distracted. “Had they had you join other parties?”

  “Just once, just that time,” Ambrosio said. “Ludovico was sick and Don Cayo had sent him home to sleep. I was in the car, knowing that I’d be on my behind all night long, and then the mistress came out and told me to come help.”

  “The madwoman?” Queta asked, laughing. “Help?”

  “Really help, they’d fired the maid or she’d left or something,” Ambrosio said. “To help pass the plates around, open bottles, get more ice. I’d never done anything like that, you can imagine.” He stopped speaking and laughed. “I helped, but I wasn’t very good. I broke two glasses.”

  “Who was there?” Queta asked. “China, Lucy, Carmincha? How come none of them realized?”

  “I don’t know their names,” Ambrosio said. “No, there weren’t any women. Only three or four men. And him, I’d been watching him when I came in with the plates of things and the ice. He was having his drinks but he wasn’t falling off his horse like the others. He didn’t get drunk. Or he didn’t look it.”

  “He’s elegant, his gray hair suits him,” Queta said. “He must have been a good-looking boy when he was young. But there’s something annoying about him. He thinks he’s an emperor.”

  “No,” Ambrosio insisted firmly. “He didn’t do anything crazy, he didn’t carry on. He had his drinks and that’s all. I was watching him. No, he wasn’t at all stuck-up. I know him, I know.”

  “But what caught your attention?” Queta asked. “What was strange about the way he looked at you?”

  “Nothing strange,” Ambrosio murmured, as if apologizing. His voice had grown faint and was intimate and thick. He explained slowly: “He must have looked at me a hundred times before, but all of a sudden you could see that he was looking at me. Not like at a wall anymore. You see?”

  “The madwoman must have been falling all over herself, she didn’t notice,” Queta said distractedly. “She was very surprised when she found out you were going to go to work for him. Was she falling all over herself?”

  “I would go into the living room and right away I could see that he’d started looking at me,” Ambrosio whispered. “His eyes were half laughing, half shining. As if he was telling me something, you know?”

  “And you still didn’t realize?” Queta said. “I’ll bet you Cayo Shithead did.”

  “I realized that way of looking at me was strange,” Ambrosio murmured. “On the sly. He’d lift his glass so Don Cayo would think he was going to sip his drink and I realized that wasn’t why. He’d put his eyes on me and wouldn’t take them off until I was out of the room.”

  Queta started laughing and he stopped immediately. He waited, not moving, for her to stop laughing. Now they were both smoking again, lying on their backs, and he’d put his hand on her knee. He wasn’t stroking it, he was letting it rest there, peacefully. It wasn’t hot, but sweat had broken out on the portion of naked skin where their arms touched. A voice was heard going down the hall. Then a car with a whining motor. Queta looked at the clock on the night table. It was two o’clock.

  “One of those times I asked him if he wanted more ice” Ambrosio murmured. “The other guests had gone, the party was almost over, he was the only one left. He didn’t answer me. He closed and opened his eyes in a funny way that’s hard to explain. Half as a challenge, half making fun, you know?”

  “And you still hadn’t caught on?” Queta insisted. “You’re dumb.”

  “I am,” Ambrosio said. “I thought he was acting drunk, I thought he probably is and wants to have some fun at my expense. I’d had my few drinks in the kitchen and thought I’m probably drunk myself and only think that’s what it is. But the next time I came in I said no, what’s eating him. It must have been two or three o’clock, how should I know. I came in to empty an ashtray, I think. That’s when he spoke to me.”

  “Sit down for a bit,” Don Fermín said. “Have a drink with us.”

  “It wasn’t an invitation, it was more like an order,” Ambrosio murmured. “He didn’t know my name. In spite of the fact that he’d heard Don Cayo say it a hundred times, he didn’t know it. He told me later on.”

  Queta started to laugh, he fell silent and waited. A halo of light was reaching the chair and lighting up his jumbled clothes. The smoke was flattening out over them, spreading, breaking up into stealthy rhythmical swirls. Two cars passed in rapid succession as if racing.

  “What about her?” Queta asked, now just barely laughing. “What about Hortensia?”

  Ambrosio’s eyes rolled around in a sea of confusion: Don Cayo didn’t seem either displeased or surprised. He looked at him for an instant seriously and then nodded yes to him, do what he says, sit down. The ashtray was dancing stupidly in Ambrosio’s uplifted hand.

  “She’d fallen asleep,” Ambrosio said. “Stretched out in the easy chair. She must have had a lot to drink. I didn’t feel right there, sitting on the edge of the chair. Strange, ashamed, my stomach upset.”

  He rubbed his hands and finally, with a ceremonious solemnity, said here’s how without looking at anyone and drank. Queta had turned to look at his face: his eyes were closed, his lips tight together, and he was perspiring.

  “At that pace you’re going to get sick on us.” Don Fermín started to laugh. “Go ahead, have another drink.”

  “Playing with you like a cat with a mouse,” Queta murmured with disgust. “You like that, I’ve come to see it. Being the mouse. Letting them step on you, treat you badly. If I hadn’t treated you badly, you wouldn’t have got the money together to come up here and tell me your troubles. Your troubles? The first few times I thought so, now I don’t. You enjoy everything that happens to you.”

  “Sitting there like an equal, having a drink,” he said with the same opaque, rarefied, distant tone of voice. “Don Cayo didn’t seem to mind or he was pretending he didn’t. And he wouldn’t let me leave, you know?”

  “Where are you going there, stay,” Don Fermín joked, ordered for the tenth time. “Stay there, where are you off to?”

  “He was different from all the other times I’d seen him,” Ambrosio said. “Those times he hadn’t seen me. By his way of looking and talking too. He was talking without stopping, about anything under the sun, and all of a sudden he said a dirty word. He, who seemed to have such good manners and with that look of a …”

  He hesitated and Queta turned her head a bit to observe him: look of what?

  “Of a fine gentleman,” Ambrosio said very quickly. “Of a president, how should I know.”

  Queta let out a curious and impertinent merry little laugh, stretched, and as she moved her hip she rubbed against his: she instantly felt Ambrosio’s hand come to life on her knee, come up under her skirt and anxiously look for her thigh, she felt his arm pressing on her up and down, down and up. She didn’t scold him, didn’t stop him, and she heard her own merry little laugh again.

  “He was softening you up with drinks,” she said. “What about the madwoman, what about her?”

  She kept lifting her face every so often, as if she were coming out of the water, looking around the room with eyes that were wild, moist, sleepwalking, she picked up her glass, raised it to her mouth and drank, murmuring something unintelligible, and submerged again. What about Cayo Shithead, what about him? He was drinking steadily, joining in the conversation with monosyllables and acting as if it were the most natural thing in the world for Ambrosio to be sitting there and drinking with them.

  “That’s how it went,” Ambrosio said: his hand calmed down, returned to her knee. “The drinks made me less bashful and I was already bearing up under his little look and answering his jokes. Yes I like whiskey sir, of course it’s not the first time I’ve drunk whiskey sir.”

  But now Don Fermín wasn’t listening to him or so it seemed: he had him photographed in his eyes, Ambrosio looked at them and he saw himself, did she see? Queta nodded, and all of a sudden Don Fermín tossed d
own what was left in his glass and stood up: he was tired, Don Cayo, it was time to go. Cayo Bermúdez also got up.

  “Let Ambrosio take you, Don Fermín,” he said, holding back a yawn with his fist. “I won’t need the car until tomorrow.”

  “It means that he didn’t only know,” Queta said, moving about. “Of course, of course. It means that Cayo Shithead had planned it all.”

  “I don’t know,” Ambrosio cut in, rolling over, his voice suddenly agitated, looking at her. He paused, fell onto his back again. “I don’t know if he knew, if he planned it. I’d like to know. He says he didn’t know either. You, hasn’t he …?”

  “He knows now, that’s the only thing I know.” Queta laughed. “But neither the madwoman nor I have been able to get out of him whether he planned it or not. When he wants to be, he’s as silent as a tomb.”

  “I don’t know,” Ambrosio repeated. His voice sank into a well and came back up weak and hazy. “He doesn’t know either. Sometimes he says yes, he has to know; other times no, maybe he doesn’t know. I’ve seen Don Cayo a lot of times and there’s been nothing about him that tells me he knows.”

  “You’re completely out of your mind,” Queta said. “Of course he knows now. Who doesn’t know now?”

  He accompanied them to the street, ordered Ambrosio tomorrow at ten o’clock, shook hands with Don Fermín and went back into the house, crossing through the garden. Dawn was about to break, small strips of blue were peeping through across the sky and the policemen on the corner murmured good night with voices that were cracked from being up all night and from so many cigarettes.

  “And then there was that funny thing,” Ambrosio whispered. “He didn’t sit in back the way he should have, but next to me. That was when I had my suspicions, but I couldn’t believe that was it. It couldn’t be, not in the case of someone like him.”

  “Not in the case of someone like him,” Queta said slowly, with disgust. She turned over: “Why are you so servile, so …?”

  “I thought it was just to show me a little friendship,” Ambrosio whispered. “I treated you like an equal back there, now I’m still doing the same thing. I thought sometimes he likes the common touch, to be on familiar footing with the people. No, I don’t know what I thought.”

  “Yes,” Don Fermín said, closing the door carefully and not looking at him. “Let’s go to Ancón.”

  “I looked at his face and it seemed the same as ever, so elegant, so proper,” Ambrosio said in a complaining way. “I got very nervous, you know. You said Ancón, sir?”

  “Yes. Ancón.” Don Fermín nodded, looking out the window at the faint light in the sky. “Have you got enough gas?”

  “I knew where he lived, I’d driven him home from Don Cayo’s office once,” Ambrosio complained. “I started up and on the Avenida Brasil I got up the courage to ask him. Aren’t you going to your house in Miraflores, sir?”

  “No, I’m going to Ancón,” Don Fermín said, looking straight ahead now; but a moment later he turned to look at him and he was a different person, you know? “Are you afraid of going to Ancón alone with me? Are you afraid something will happen to you on the way?”

  “And he began to laugh,” Ambrosio whispered. “And I did too, but it didn’t come out. It couldn’t. I was so nervous, I knew then.”

  Queta didn’t laugh: she’d turned over, resting on her elbow, and she looked at him. He was still on his back, not moving, he’d stopped smoking and his hand lay dead on her bare knee. A car passed and a dog barked. Ambrosio had closed his eyes and was breathing with his nostrils opened wide. His chest was slowly going up and down.

  “Was that the first time?” Queta asked. “Had there ever been anyone before for you?”

  “Yes, I was afraid,” he complained. “I went up Brasil, along Alfonso Ugarte, crossed the Puente del Ejército and both of us quiet. Yes, the first time. There wasn’t a soul on the streets. On the highway I had to turn my bright lights on because there was fog. I was so nervous that I started driving faster. All of a sudden the needle was at sixty, seventy, you know? It was there. But I didn’t run into anything.”

  “The street lights have already gone out,” Queta said distractedly for an instant, and turned back. “What was it you felt?”

  “But I didn’t crash, I didn’t crash,” he repeated furiously, clutching her knee. “I felt myself waking up, I felt … but I was able to put the brakes on.”

  Suddenly, as if a truck, a donkey, a tree, a man had appeared out of nowhere on the wet pavement, the car skidded, squealing savagely and whipping from left to right, zigzagging, but it didn’t leave the road. Rolling, creaking, it recovered its balance just when it appeared it would turn over and now Ambrosio slowed down, trembling.

  “Do you think that with the braking, with the skid he let go of me?” Ambrosio complained, hesitating. “His hand stayed right there, like this.”

  “Who told you to stop,” Don Fermín’s voice said. “I said Ancón.”

  “And his hand there, right here,” Ambrosio whispered. “I couldn’t think and I started up again and, I don’t know. I don’t know. You know? All of a sudden sixty, seventy on the needle again. He hadn’t let go of me. His hand was still like this.”

  “He had your number as soon as he saw you,” Queta murmured, turning over on her back. “One look and he saw that you’d evaporate if you were treated badly. He looked at you and saw that if someone got on your good side, you’d be putty in his hands.”

  “I thought I’m going to crash and I went faster,” Ambrosio complained, panting. “I went faster, you know.”

  “He saw that you’d die of fright,” Queta said dryly, without compassion. “That you wouldn’t do anything, that he could do whatever he wanted with you.”

  “I’m going to crash, I’m going to crash.” Ambrosio panted. “And I pushed my foot farther down. Yes, I was afraid, you know?”

  “You were afraid because you’re servile,” Queta said with disgust. “Because he’s white and you’re not, because he’s rich and you’re not. Because you’re used to having people do whatever they want to with you.”

  “All I had room for in my head was that,” Ambrosio whispered, more agitated. “If he doesn’t let go, I’m going to crash. And his hand here, like this, see? Just like that all the way to Ancón.”

  *

  Ambrosio had come back from Morales Transportation with a face that right away made Amalia think it went bad for him. She hadn’t asked him anything. She’d seen him pass her without looking, go out into the garden, sit down on the chair that had no seat, take off his shoes, light a cigarette, scratching the match angrily, and start looking at the grass with murder in his eyes.

  “That time there wasn’t any foo yong or foo beer,” Ambrosio says. “I went into his office and right off he held me back with a look that meant you can stew in your own juice, nigger.”

  Besides that, he’d run the index finger of his right hand across his neck and then raised it to his temple: bang, Ambrosio. But still smiling with his wide face and his wily bulging eyes. He was fanning himself with a newspaper: it’s bad, boy, a total loss. They practically hadn’t sold a single coffin and for those last two months he’d had to pay the rent out of his own pocket, as well as the pittance for the half-wit and what they owed the carpenters: there were the bills, Ambrosio had fingered them without looking, Amalia, and had sat down across the desk: that was awful news he was giving him, Don Hilario.

  “Worse than awful,” he’d admitted. “The times are so bad that people can’t even afford to die.”

  “I just want to say one thing, Don Hilario,” Ambrosio had said after a moment, with complete respect. “Look, you’re right, of course. Of course the business will show a profit in a little while.”

  “Absolutely,” Don Hilario had said. “The world belongs to people who are patient.”

  “But I’ve got money trouble and my wife is expecting another child,” Ambrosio had continued. “So even if I wanted to be patient,
I can’t.”

  An intricate and surprised smile had filled out Don Hilario’s face as he continued fanning himself with one hand and had begun to pick his tooth with the other: two children were nothing, the trick was to reach a dozen, like him, Ambrosio.

  “So I’m going to let you have Limbo Coffins all to yourself,” Ambrosio had explained. “I’d rather have my share back. To work with it on my own, sir. Maybe I’ll have better luck.”

  That’s when he started his cackling, Amalia, and Ambrosio had fallen silent, as if concentrating on killing everything close by: the grass, the trees, Amalita Hortensia, the sky. He hadn’t laughed. He’d watched Don Hilario wriggling in his chair, fanning himself rapidly, and he’d waited with a tight seriousness for him to stop laughing.

  “Did you think it was some kind of savings account?” he’d finally thundered, drying the perspiration on his forehead, and the laugh got the better of him again. “That you can put your money in and take it out whenever you feel like it?”

  “Cluck, cluck, cock-a-doodle-doo,” Ambrosio says. “He was crying, he was laughing so hard, he turned red from laughing, he was worn out from laughing. And I was waiting peacefully.”

  “It’s not stupidity, it’s not trickery, I don’t know what it is.” Don Hilario pounded on the table, flushed and wet. “Tell me what you think I am. A fool, an imbecile, what am I?”

  “First you laugh and then you get mad,” Ambrosio had said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you, sir.”

  “When I tell you the business is going under, what do you think it is that’s going under?” He started to talk in riddles, Amalia, and he’d looked at Ambrosio with pity. “If you and I put fifteen thousand soles each into a boat and the boat sinks in the river, what sinks along with the boat?”

  “Limbo Coffins hasn’t sunk,” Ambrosio had stated. “It’s right there as large as life across from my house.”