Mario Vargas Llosa - The Discreet Hero

“What did you say to him?” Doña Lucrecia asked, sitting beside him. “Poor Narciso, what he’s gotten himself into for being so decent to his employer.”

“I tried to reassure him,” recounted Don Rigoberto, tasting the lemonade with pleasure. “I told him not to be frightened, that nothing would happen to him or me because we’d been witnesses, that there was absolutely no crime in what we did. And that Ismael would win this battle with the hyenas. That Escobita and Miki’s campaign, the fuss they were making, didn’t have the slightest basis in law. That if he wanted more reassurance, he should consult a lawyer in Chincha whom he trusted and send me the bill. In short, I did everything I could. He’s a very honorable man and I repeat: Those thugs won’t be able to control him. But they certainly are giving him a very hard time.”

“And us too, aren’t they?” Doña Lucrecia complained. “I tell you, ever since this joke began, I’m even afraid to go out. Everybody asks me about the couple, as if it were the only thing Limeños cared about. Everybody I see looks like a reporter. You can’t imagine how much I hate them when I hear and read all the foolishness and lies they write.”

“She’s frightened too,” thought Don Rigoberto. His wife smiled at him, but he could detect a fleeting glimmer in her eyes and saw the uneasy way she was constantly wringing her hands. Poor Lucrecia. Not only had the European trip she’d so looked forward to been canceled but, on top of everything else, there was this scandal. And old man Ismael was still on his honeymoon in Europe, staying out of touch, while in Lima his boys were making life impossible for Narciso, for him, and for Lucrecia; they had even thrown the insurance company into an uproar.

“What is it, Rigoberto?” Lucrecia asked with some surprise. “The man who laughs alone is thinking of his evil deeds.”

“I’m laughing at Ismael,” Rigoberto explained. “He’s been on his honeymoon for a month. And he’s over eighty! I’ve confirmed it, he’s an octogenarian, not a septuagenarian. Chapeau! Do you see, Lucrecia? All that Viagra will eat up his brains, and the hyenas’ accusation that he’s soft in the head will turn out to be true. Armida must be a wild animal. She’ll drain him dry!”

“Don’t be vulgar, Rigoberto.” His wife laughed and pretended to admonish him.

“She knows how to make the best of a bad time,” Rigoberto thought tenderly. Over the past few days, while the twins’ campaign of intimidation had filled their house with judicial and police citations and bad news — the worst: they’d managed to tie up his retirement process with some legal dirty tricks — Lucrecia hadn’t shown the least sign of weakness. She’d supported him body and soul in his decision not to give in to the hyenas’ extortion and remain loyal to his employer and friend.

“The one thing that bothers me,” said Lucrecia, reading his mind, “is that Ismael hasn’t even called or dropped us a line. Doesn’t that seem strange to you? Can he really not know about the headaches he’s giving us? Doesn’t he realize what poor Narciso is going through?”

“He knows everything,” Rigoberto assured her. “Arnillas is in touch with him and keeps him up to date. They speak every day, he told me.”

Dr. Claudio Arnillas, Ismael Carrera’s attorney for many years, was now Rigoberto’s intermediary with his former employer. According to him, Ismael and Armida were traveling through Europe and would return to Lima very soon. He assured him that the plans of Ismael Carrera’s sons to annul the marriage and have their father declared incompetent to head the insurance company on the grounds of incapacity and senile dementia were doomed to the most resounding failure. All Ismael had to do was appear and submit to the relevant medical and psychological tests, and their accusations would collapse.

“But then, I don’t understand why he doesn’t do that right now, Dr. Arnillas,” exclaimed Don Rigoberto. “For Ismael this scandal has to be even more painful than it is for us.”

“Do you know why?” explained Dr. Arnillas, adopting a Machiavellian expression and hooking his thumbs behind the psychedelic-colored suspenders holding up his trousers. “Because he wants the twins to keep spending what they don’t have: the money they must be borrowing all over the place to pay their army of shyster lawyers and the bribes they’re coughing up for the police and judges. It’s more than likely they’re being skinned alive, and he wants them completely ruined. Señor Carrera planned everything down to the smallest detail. Do you see?”

Don Rigoberto saw very clearly now that Ismael Carrera’s rancor toward the hyenas, from the day he discovered that in their eagerness to inherit everything they were waiting impatiently for his death, was unhealthy and irreversible. He never would have imagined the peaceable Ismael capable of a vengeful hatred of this magnitude, least of all toward his own children. Would Fonchito ever desire his death? And by the way, where was that boy?

“He went out with his friend Pezzuolo, I think to the movies,” Lucrecia said. “Haven’t you noticed that for the past few days he’s seemed better? As if he’d forgotten about Edilberto Torres.”

Yes, he hadn’t seen that mysterious character for more than a week. At least that’s what he’d told them, and Don Rigoberto had never caught his son in a lie.

“All of this wrecked the trip we’d planned so carefully,” Doña Lucrecia said with a sigh, suddenly becoming sad. “Spain, Italy, France. What a shame, Rigoberto. I’d been dreaming about it. And do you know why? It’s your fault, you kept telling me about it in that detailed, obsessive way. The places we’d visit, the museums, the concerts, the theaters, the restaurants. Well, what can you do except be patient.”

Rigoberto agreed. “We’ve only postponed it, my love,” he reassured her, kissing her hair. “Since we can’t go in the spring, we’ll go in the fall. A very nice time of year too, with the trees turning golden and the leaves carpeting the streets. For operas and concerts, it’s the best time of year.”

“Do you think this mess with the hyenas will be over by October?”

“They don’t have any money, and they’re spending the little they have trying to annul the marriage and have their father declared incompetent,” Rigoberto said. “They won’t succeed and they’ll be ruined. Do you know something? I never imagined that Ismael was capable of doing what he’s doing. First, marrying Armida. And second, planning so unforgiving a revenge against Miki and Escobita. It’s true that it’s impossible to know anyone else completely, people are unfathomable.”

They spent a long time talking as it grew dark and the lights in the city came on. They could no longer see the ocean, and the sky and the night were filled with lights that seemed like fireflies. Lucrecia told Rigoberto she’d read an essay Fonchito had written for school that had made an impression on her. She couldn’t get it out of her head.

“Did he show it to you himself?” Rigoberto asked pointedly. “Or were you snooping through his desk?”

“Well, it was right there, in plain sight, and it made me curious. That’s why I read it.”

“It’s not right for you to read his things without his permission and behind his back.” Rigoberto seemed to be reprimanding her.

“It left me thinking,” she continued, ignoring him. “It’s a half-philosophical, half-religious text. About liberty and evil.”

“Do you have it handy?” Rigoberto was interested. “I’d like to take a look at it too.”

“I made a copy for you, Mr. Nosy,” said Lucrecia. “I left it in your study.”