Mario Vargas Llosa - The Discreet Hero

“He’s the spider,” Captain Silva declared categorically. “Your son, the white-skinned one. Miguel. It seems he didn’t do it just for the money; his motives are more twisted. And maybe, maybe, that’s why he went to bed with Mabel. He has something personal against you. A grudge, resentment, those bitter things that poison a person’s soul.”

“Because you forced him to do military service, it seems,” Lituma intervened again. And this time too he apologized: “Excuse me. At least, that’s what he led us to believe.”

“Are you listening to what we’re telling you, Don Felícito?” the captain asked, leaning toward the trucker and grasping his arm. “Do you feel sick?”

“I feel great.” The trucker forced a smile. His lips and nostrils were trembling, as were the hands holding the empty bottle of Inca Kola. A yellow ring encircled the whites of his eyes, and his voice was like a thread. “Just go on, Captain. But excuse me, I’d like to know one thing, if I can. Was Tiburcio, my other son, also involved?”

“No, it was just Miguel.” The captain tried to be encouraging. “I can assure you of that definitively. You can rest easy as far as that’s concerned, Señor Yanaqué. Tiburcio wasn’t involved and didn’t know anything about it. When he finds out, he’ll be as shocked as you are now.”

“This terrible story has a good side, Adelaida,” the trucker grunted, after a long pause. “Even if you don’t believe it, it does.”

“I believe it, Felícito,” said the holy woman, opening her mouth wide, showing her tongue. “Life’s always like that. Good things always have their bad side and bad things their good side. So, what’s the good side here?”

“I’ve resolved a doubt that’s been eating at my heart ever since I got married, Adelaida,” Felícito Yanaqué murmured. At that moment he seemed to recover: He regained his voice, his color, a certain sureness in his speech. “Miguel isn’t my son. He never was. Gertrudis and her mother made me marry her by telling me she was pregnant. Sure she was pregnant, but not by me, by another man. I was her dumb cholito . They stuck me with a stepson, passing him off as mine, and Gertrudis was saved from the shame of being a single mother. I mean, tell me how that white kid with blue eyes could be my son? I always suspected something fishy there. Now I finally have the proof, though it’s a little late. He isn’t mine, my blood doesn’t run in his veins. A son of mine, a son of my blood, would never have done what he did to me. Do you see, do you get the picture, Adelaida?”

“I see, baby, I get it,” the holy woman agreed. “Give me your glass, I’ll fill it again with cool water from the distilling stone. I can’t tell you how it makes me feel to see you drink water from an empty glass, hey waddya think.”

“And Mabel?” the trucker mumbled, his eyes lowered. “Was she involved in the spider plot from the beginning? Was she?”

“Unwillingly, but yes.” Captain Silva was modulating his words, as if reluctant to speak. “She was. She never liked the idea, and according to her, at first she tried to talk Miguel out of it, which is possible. But your son is strong-willed, and—”

“He isn’t my son,” Felícito Yanaqué interrupted, looking him in the eye. “Excuse me, I know what I’m saying. Go on, what else, Captain.”

“She was fed up with Miguel and wanted to break it off, but he didn’t let her and threatened to tell you about their affair,” Lituma interjected again. “And she began to hate him for dragging her into this mess.”

“Does this mean you’ve talked to Mabel?” asked the trucker, disconcerted. “What did she confess to?”

“She’s cooperating with us, Señor Yanaqué.” Captain Silva nodded. “Her testimony was instrumental in our learning about the entire spider plot. What the sergeant told you is correct. At first, when she became involved with Miguel, she didn’t know he was your son. When she found out, she tried to break it off, but it was too late. She couldn’t because Miguel blackmailed her.”

“He threatened to tell you everything, Señor Yanaqué, so you’d kill her or at least give her a good beating,” Sergeant Lituma interjected again.

“And leave her in the street without a cent, which is the main thing,” the captain continued. “It’s what I told you before, Don Felícito. Miguel hates you, he feels a great deal of rancor toward you. He says it’s because you forced him and not his brother Tiburcio to do military service. But it looks to me like there’s something else. Maybe his hatred goes all the way back to when he was a kid. You’d know.”

“He also must have suspected he wasn’t my son, Adelaida,” the trucker added. He sipped at the fresh glass of water the holy woman had just brought him. “All he had to do was look at his face in the mirror to realize he didn’t have, couldn’t have my blood. And that’s how he must have begun to hate me, what else could it be. What’s strange is that he always hid it, never showed it to me. Do you see?”

“What do you want me to see, Felícito?” exclaimed the holy woman. “Everything’s very clear, even a blind person could see it. She’s a girl and you’re an old man. Did you think Mabel would be faithful to you until she died? Especially with you having a wife and family and her knowing she’d never be anything but your girlfriend. Life is what it is, Felícito, you must’ve known that. You come from poor people, you know what suffering means, like me and all the poor Piurans.”

“Of course, the kidnapping never was a kidnapping, it was a joke,” said the captain. “To put pressure on you, on your feelings, Don Felícito.”

“I knew it, Adelaida. I never had any illusions. Why do you think I always chose to look the other way and never asked what else Mabel was up to? But I never imagined she’d get involved with my own son!”

“So now maybe he’s your son?” the holy woman chided him mockingly. “What difference does it make who she got involved with, Felícito. How can that matter to you now? Don’t think about it anymore, compadre. Turn the page, forget about it, it’s over. It’s for the best, believe me.”

“Do you know what I think about now with real sorrow, Adelaida?” His glass was empty again. Felícito was shuddering. “The scandal. You must think that’s silly, but it’s what tortures me most. It’ll be in tomorrow’s papers, on radio and television. Then the reporters will come after me. My life will be a circus again. Reporters persecuting me, curious people on the street, in the office. I don’t have the patience or energy to go through all that again, Adelaida. Not anymore.”

“He fell asleep, Captain,” whispered Lituma, pointing to the trucker whose eyes were closed, his head bent.

“I think he has,” the captain agreed. “The news crushed him. His son, his girlfriend. From bad to worse. No surprise there, damn it.”

Felícito heard them without hearing them. He didn’t want to open his eyes, not even for a moment. He dozed, hearing the noise and hubbub on Avenida Sánchez Cerro. If all this hadn’t happened, he’d be at Narihualá Transport, reviewing the morning’s movement of buses, trucks, and cars, studying today’s total number of passengers and comparing it to yesterday’s, dictating letters to Señora Josefita, settling accounts or cashing checks at the bank, getting ready to go home for lunch. He felt so much sadness that he began to tremble from head to foot, as if he had tertian fever. Never again would his life have the tranquil rhythm it once had, never again would he be an anonymous face in the crowd. Now he’d always be recognized on the street; when he went into a movie theater or a restaurant the gossiping would begin, rude glances, whispers, fingers pointing him out. This very night or tomorrow at the latest, the news would become public, all of Piura would know about it. And his life would be hell again.