The Bad Girl: A Novel
Page 29
“You’re losing your powers, Arquímedes,” said my nephew Alberto, giving him another affectionate slap on the back. “You never had doubts about these things before.”
“I don’t think that’s true, engineer,” said Arquímedes, becoming very serious. He pointed at the greenish-gray water. “These are things of the sea, and the sea has its secrets, like everybody else. I almost always know at the first look if you can or you can’t. But this Cantolao beach is fucked-up, it has its little tricks and throws me off.”
The undertow and the noise of the waves breaking against the stones on the beach were very strong, and at times I couldn’t hear the old man’s voice. I noticed a tic: from time to time he would raise a hand to his nose and brush it very rapidly, as if chasing away an insect.
Two men approached wearing boots and canvas jackets with yellow letters printed on them that said “Municipality of Callao.” Chicho Cánepa and Alberto took them aside. I heard Cánepa say to them, not caring if Arquímedes heard, “Now it seems the asshole isn’t sure if we can or we can’t. So we’ll just have to make the decision ourselves.”
The old man was next to me but didn’t look at me. Again his eyes were fixed on the ocean, and at the same time he moved his lips slowly, as if praying or talking to himself.
“Arquímedes, I’d like to invite you to lunch,” I said in a quiet voice. “So you can talk to me a little about breakwaters. It’s a subject I’m very interested in. Just the two of us. All right?”
He turned his head and fixed his quiet, and now serious, eyes on me. My invitation had disconcerted him. A mistrustful expression appeared among his wrinkles and he frowned.
“Lunch?” he repeated, confused. “Where?”
“Wherever you want. Anyplace you like. You choose the spot and it’s my treat. All right?”
“When?” The old man played for time, scrutinizing me with growing suspicion.
“Now. Today, for example. Let’s say I pick you up right here, about twelve, and we go to have lunch anywhere you choose. All right?”
After a while he nodded, still looking at me as if I suddenly had turned into something that threatened him. “What the hell can this individual want with me?” his calm, liquid, yellowish-gray eyes were asking.
When, half an hour later, Arquímedes, Alberto, Chicho Cánepa, and the men from the Municipality of Callao had finished arguing, and my nephew and his friend walked up to the van they had parked on the Figueredo seawall, I told them I was staying. I wanted to walk around La Punta, remembering my youth, when I sometimes came to the dances at Regatas Unión with my friends from the Barrio Alegre to flirt with the little blond Lecca twins who lived nearby and took part in the summer sailing championships. I’d go back to Miraflores in a taxi. They were a little surprised, but finally they left, not without suggesting that I be very careful where I went, Callao was full of hoodlums, and muggings and abductions had recently become the order of the day.
I took a long walk along the Figueredo, Pardo, and Wiese seawalls. The large mansions from forty or fifty years ago looked faded, smaller, stained by dampness and time, their gardens withered. Though clearly in decline, the neighborhood retained traces of its former splendor, like an aged woman who trails behind her a shadow of the beauty she once had been. I peered through the fence at the installations of the Naval School. I saw one group of cadets marching in their ordinary white uniforms, and another at the end of the embarcadero, tying a launch up to the dock. And meanwhile I kept repeating to myself: “It’s impossible. It’s absurd. A wild idea that makes no sense. Forget about the fantasy, Ricardo Somocurcio.” It was madness to suppose an association like that. But at the same time, I reflected that enough had happened to me in life for me to know nothing was impossible, that the most outlandish and unbelievable coincidences and incidents could occur when the woman who was now my wife was involved. In spite of the dozens of years I hadn’t been back here, La Punta hadn’t changed as much as Miraflores, it still had a seigneurial, out-of-fashion air, an impoverished elegance. Now some impersonal, oppressive buildings had appeared among the houses, as they had in my old neighborhood, but there weren’t many of them, and they didn’t completely destroy the general harmony. The streets were almost deserted except for an occasional maid coming home from shopping, an occasional housewife pushing a baby carriage or taking her dog out to urinate along the shore.
At twelve o’clock I returned to the beach at Cantolao, now almost entirely covered by fog. I saw Arquímedes in the posture Alberto had described to me: sitting like a Buddha, motionless, staring at the sea. He was so still that a flock of white gulls walked around him, indifferent to his presence, pecking between the rocks, looking for something to eat. The noise of the tide was stronger. Periodically, the gulls screeched together: a sound between hoarse and shrill, at times strident.
“The breakwater can be built,” said Arquímedes when he saw me, with a little smile of triumph. And he snapped his fingers. “I’ll give Engineer Cánepa a nice surprise.”
“So now you’re certain?”
“Very certain, sure I am,” he said, nodding several times and using a boastful tone. His eyes gleamed with satisfaction.
He pointed at the ocean with absolute conviction, as if showing me that the evidence was there for anyone who bothered to see it. But the only thing I saw was a line of greenish-gray water, stained with foam, crashing against the stones, making a symmetrical, clamorous noise for a few moments then withdrawing, leaving behind tangles of dark brown seaweed. The fog was advancing and soon would envelop us.
“You amaze me, Arquímedes. What talents you have! What happened between this morning, when you were doubtful, and now, when you’re finally sure? Have you seen something? Heard something? Was it a hunch, a premonition?”
I saw that the old man was having difficulties getting up, and I helped him, taking his arm. It was very thin, with no muscles and soft bones, like the limb of an amphibian.
“I felt they could,” Arquímedes explained, then immediately fell silent, as if that verb could clarify the entire mystery.
In silence we climbed the stony beach toward the Figueredo seawall. The old man’s shoes, riddled with holes, sank into the stones, and since he seemed about to fall, I took his arm again to hold him up, but he pulled away with a gesture of annoyance.
“Where do you want to go for lunch, Arquímedes?”
He hesitated for a second and then pointed toward the blurred, ghostly horizon of Callao.
“There, in Chucuito, I know a place,” he said doubtfully. “The Chim Pum Callao. They make good ceviches, with nice, fresh fish. Sometimes Engineer Chicho goes there to down pork and onion sandwiches.”
“Terrific, Arquímedes. Let’s go there. I like ceviche a lot and haven’t had a pork and onion sandwich in ages.”
As we walked toward Chucuito accompanied by a cold wind, listening to the screech of the gulls and the clamor of the ocean, I told Arquímedes that the name of the restaurant reminded me of the fans of the Sport Boys, the famous soccer team of Callao, who, at matches in the Estadio Nacional on Calle José Díaz, would deafen the stands when I was a boy with the thundering cry “Chim Pum! Callao! Chim Pum! Callao!” And in spite of all the years that had passed, I always remembered that miraculous pair of forwards on the Sport Boys, Valeriano López and Jerónimo Barbadillo, the terror of all the defensive players who faced that lineup of pink shirts.
“I knew Barbadillo and Valeriano López when we were all kids,” the old man said; he walked somewhat timidly, looking down at the ground, and the wind blew through his thin, whitish hair. “We even kicked a ball around together sometimes in the Estadio del Potao where the Sport Boys trained, or in empty lots in Callao. Before they became famous, I mean. Back then, soccer players played just for glory. Maybe they got a few tips once in a while. I liked soccer a lot. But I never was a good player, I didn’t have the stamina. I got tired fast, and by the second quarter I’d be panting like a dog.”
“Well, you have other skills, Arquímedes. Very few people in the world know what you’ve mastered: where to build breakwaters. It’s a skill that’s yours alone, I assure you.”
The Chim Pum Callao was a ramshackle little food stand on one of the corners of the Parque José Gálvez. The surrounding area was full of bums and kids selling candies, lottery tickets, peanuts, or candied apples from little wooden carts or planks laid on sawhorses. Arquímedes must have gone there frequently because he waved at passersby, and some street dogs approached and wrapped themselves around his feet. When we walked into the Chim Pum Callao, the owner, a fat black woman with her hair in rollers who was working behind the counter, a long board resting on two barrels, greeted him affectionately: “Hello, Old Man Breakwater.” There were about ten rough tables, with benches for seats, and only part of the roof was covered with galvanized metal; through the other part you could see the winter sky, cloudy and sad. A radio played “Pedro Navaja,” a salsa by Rubén Blades, at top volume. We sat at a table near the door, ordered ceviches, pork and onion sandwiches, and an ice-cold Pilsen beer.
The black owner with the rollers was the only woman in the place. Almost all the tables were occupied by two, three, or four patrons, men who probably worked nearby because some had on the smocks that employees of the cold-storage plants wore, and at one table there were electricians’ helmets and bags at the end of the benches.
“What is it you wanted to know, caballero?” Arquímedes opened fire. He looked at me, full of curiosity, and at regular intervals raised his hand to his nose to brush it and chase away a nonexistent insect. “I mean, why this invitation?”
“How did you learn you had the ability to read the ocean’s intentions?” I asked. “Were you a boy? A young man? Tell me. I’m very interested in everything you can tell me.”
He shrugged, as if he didn’t remember or the matter wasn’t worth thinking about. He murmured that once a reporter from La Crónica came to interview him about it, and it seemed he said nothing. Finally, he murmured, “These aren’t things that go through my head, and that’s why I can’t explain it. I know where they can and where they can’t. But sometimes I’m in the dark. I mean, I don’t feel anything.” He fell silent again for a long time. But as soon as they brought the beer and we toasted each other and had a drink, he began to talk and tell me about his life with a fair amount of fluency. He was born not in Lima but in the sierra, in Pallanca, though his family came down to the coast when he had just begun to walk, so he had no memory of the sierra and it was as if he’d been born in Callao. In his heart he felt like a real Callaoan. He learned to read and write at District School Number 5, in Bellavista, but didn’t finish primary school because, to “fill the stew pot for the family,” his father put him to work selling ice cream, riding a tricycle for La Deliciosa, a very famous ice-cream shop that was gone now but once had been on Avenida Sáenz Peña. As a boy and a young man he had done a little of everything: carpenter’s helper, bricklayer, errand boy for a customs office, until finally he went to work as a helper on a fishing boat based at the Terminal Marítimo. There he began to discover, without knowing how or why, that he and the sea “understood each other like a team of oxen.” He could smell out before anybody else did where to throw the nets because that’s where schools of anchovies would come looking for food, and also where not to because jellyfish would frighten away the fish and not even a miserable catfish would go for the hook. He remembered very well the first time he helped build a jetty in the Callao sea, up around La Perla, more or less where Avenida de las Palmeras ends. All the efforts of the foremen to make the structure stand up to the surf failed. “What the hell’s going on, why does this damn son of a bitch sand up all the time?” The contractor, a Chinese-cholo grouch from Chiclayo, was tearing his hair out and telling the ocean and everybody else to go fuck themselves. But no matter how much he goddamned and go-fucked, the ocean said no. And, caballero, when the ocean says no, it’s no. Back then he wasn’t twenty yet and was feeling jumpy because he still could be called up for military service.
Then Arquímedes started to think, to reflect, and instead of calling it a whore, it occurred to him “to talk to the ocean.” And, even more important, “to listen to it the way you listen to a friend.” He raised his hand to his ear and adopted an attentive, humble expression, as if he were receiving the secret confidences of the ocean right now. The priest from the Church of Carmen de la Legua once said, “Do you know who it is you’re listening to, Arquímedes? It’s God. He tells you the wise things you say about the sea.” Well, maybe, maybe God lived in the sea. And that’s how it happened. He began to listen, and then, caballero, the sea made him feel that instead of building there, where the sea didn’t want the breakwater, if they built fifty meters to the north, toward La Punta, “the sea would accept it.” He went and told the contractor. At first the Chiclayan almost pissed himself laughing, you can imagine. But then, in sheer desperation, he said, “Let’s give it a try, damn it.” They tried in the spot Arquímedes suggested, and the breakwater stopped the sea cold. It’s still there, all of it, resisting the rough surf. Word got around and Arquímedes acquired a reputation as a “wizard,” a “magician,” a “breakwater conjurer.” Since then no breakwater was built anywhere in Lima bay without the foremen or engineers consulting him. Not only in Lima. They had taken him to Cañete, Pisco, Supe, Chincha, lots of places, for him to advise on the construction of jetties. He was proud to say that in his long professional life, he had made very few mistakes. Though sometimes he had, because the only one who’s never wrong is God, caballero, and maybe the devil.
The ceviche burned as if the chili it contained were Arequipa rocoto. When the bottle of beer was empty, I ordered another, which we drank slowly, enjoying some excellent pork sandwiches on French bread with a wonderful sauce of lettuce, onion, and chilies. Animated by the glasses of beer, during one of Arquímedes’ silences I finally dared ask the question that had been burning my throat for the past three hours,
“They told me you have a daughter in Paris. Is that true, Arquímedes?”
He sat looking at me, intrigued at my knowing intimate details about his family. And gradually the expansive expression on his face turned sour. Before answering he brushed his nose furiously and with a crack of his hand chased away the invisible insect.
“I don’t want to know anything about that heartless girl,” he growled. “And I want to talk about her even less, caballero. I swear, even if she repented and came to see me, I’d slam the door in her face.”
When I saw how angry he was, I apologized for my impertinence. I had heard about his daughter from one of the engineers this morning, and since I lived in Paris too, I became curious and wondered if I knew her. I wouldn’t have mentioned it if I thought it would irritate him.
Without responding at all to my explanations, Arquímedes kept eating his sandwich and sipping his beer. Since he hardly had any teeth, it was difficult for him to chew, and he made noises with his tongue and took a long time to swallow each mouthful. Uncomfortable with the long silence, convinced I had committed an error by asking about his daughter—what were you expecting to hear, Ricardito?—I raised my hand to call over the black woman in rollers and ask for the check. And at that moment, Arquímedes began talking again.
“Because she’s an unfeeling girl, I swear,” he declared, frowning with a very severe expression. “She didn’t send money even for her mother’s funeral. An egotist is what she is. She went over there and turned her back on us. She must think she’s moved up in the world and that gives her the right to despise us now. As if she didn’t carry the blood of her father and mother in her veins.”
He was in a rage. When he spoke he grimaced, and that wrinkled his face even more. Again I murmured that I was sorry I had brought up the subject, it hadn’t been my intention to make him angry, we ought to talk about something else. But he wasn’t listening to me. In his staring eyes the pupils were gleaming, liquid and incandescent.
The black woman in rollers approached the table, swinging her hips like a panther, but instead of the check I asked her for another cold bottle of beer. Old Arquímedes had spoken so loudly that people at several tables turned to look at him. When he realized this he apologized, coughed, and lowered his voice.
“At first she did remember her family, I have to say that too. Well, only once in a while, but something’s better than nothing,” he continued more calmly. “Not when she was in Cuba; there, it seems, because of political things, she couldn’t write letters. At least, that’s what she said later, when she went to live in France and was already married. And then yes, from time to time, for the Patriotic Festival, or my birthday, or Christmas, she’d send a letter and a check. What a mess trying to cash it. Taking identity papers to the bank, and the bank charging I don’t know how much in commissions. But in those days, though it didn’t happen too often, she remembered she had a family. Until I asked her for the ticket to France. That’s when she cut it off. Never heard from her again. Not to this day. As if all her relatives had died. She buried us, I tell you. She didn’t bother to answer even when one of her brothers wrote asking for help to put up a marble tombstone for their mother.”