Mario Vargas Llosa - The Discreet Hero

What Mabel had done was worse. He thought about her and a hollow opened in his stomach. She was the only woman he’d ever really loved. He’d given her everything: house, allowance, gifts. A freedom no other man would have granted to the woman he kept. So she’d go to bed with his son! So she’d extort him in cahoots with that hateful wretch! He wasn’t going to kill her, or even punch her in her lying mouth. He wouldn’t see her again. Let her make her living whoring. Let’s see if she could find another lover as considerate as him.

Instead of walking down Calle Lima, at the Puente Colgante he turned toward the Eguiguren Seawalk. There were fewer people there and he could walk more calmly, free of the feeling of knowing that people were looking at him and pointing him out. He thought of the old mansions that had lined this seawalk when he was a kid. They’d fallen into disrepair one after the other because of the havoc caused by El Niño: the rains, the river overflowing its banks and flooding the neighborhood. Instead of rebuilding, the whites had made their new homes in El Chipe, far from the center of town.

What would he do now? Go on with his work at Narihualá Transport as if nothing had happened? Poor Tiburcio. He’d suffer a terrible blow. His brother, Miguel, whom he’d always been so close to, suddenly a criminal who tried to rob his father with the help of his father’s mistress. Tiburcio was a very good man. Maybe not very intelligent but decent, reliable, incapable of anything as low as what his brother had done. He’d be destroyed by the news.

The Piura River was very high, carrying away branches, small shrubs, papers, bottles, plastic. It looked muddy, as if there’d been landslides in the mountains. Nobody was swimming in it.

As he went up the seawalk to Avenida Sánchez Cerro, he decided not to go to the office. It was a quarter to six, and the reporters would swarm like flies around Narihualá Transport as soon as they learned the news. Better to shut himself up in his house, lock the door to the street, and not go out for a few days until the storm had calmed down. Thinking about the scandal sent chills up and down his spine.

He walked up Calle Arequipa toward his house, feeling anxiety pooling again in his chest and making it difficult to breathe. So Miguelito had a grudge against him, had hated him even before he forced him to do military service. The feeling was mutual. No, not true, he’d never hated his bastard son. That was different from never having loved him because he sensed they didn’t have the same blood. But he didn’t remember showing a preference for Tiburcio. He’d been a fair father, careful to treat them both identically. It’s true he’d made Miguel spend a year in the barracks. It was for his own good. So that he’d get on track. He was an awful student, he only liked to have fun, kick around soccer balls, drink in the chicha bars. He’d caught him guzzling drinks in seedy bars and restaurants with evil-looking friends, spending his allowance in brothels. Things would go very badly for him if he continued down that path. “If you keep this up, I’ll put you in the army,” he’d warned him. He kept it up, and he put him in. Felícito laughed. Well, it hadn’t really straightened him out if he ended up doing what he’d done. Let him go to jail, let him find out what that meant. Let’s see who’d give him work after that, with that kind of record. He’d come out more of a bandit than when he went in, just like everyone else who passed through the prisons, those universities of crime.

He was in front of his house. Before opening the large studded door, he walked over to the corner and tossed some coins into the blind man’s jar.

“Good afternoon, Lucindo.”

“Good afternoon, Don Felícito. God bless you.”

He went back, feeling the tightness in his chest, breathing with difficulty. He opened the door and closed it behind him. From the vestibule he heard voices in the living room. Just what he needed. Visitors! It was strange, Gertrudis didn’t have women friends who dropped in unannounced, she never gave teas. He stood uncertainly in the vestibule until he saw his wife’s broad shape appear in the doorway to the living room. He saw her come toward him, enclosed in one of those dresses that looked like a habit, speeding up that laborious walk of hers. What was with that expression on her face? Well, she must have heard the news by now.

“So now you know everything,” he murmured.

But she didn’t let him finish. She pointed toward the living room and spoke hurriedly.

“I’m sorry, I’m very sorry, Felícito. I’ve had to put her up here in the house. There was nothing else I could do. It’ll only be for a few days. She’s running away. It seems they might kill her. An incredible story. Come on, she’ll tell you herself.”

Felícito Yanaqué’s chest was a drum. He looked at Gertrudis, not really understanding what she was saying, but instead of his wife’s face he saw Adelaida’s, transformed by the visions of her inspiration.

Why was Lucrecia taking so long? Don Rigoberto paced back and forth like a caged animal in front of the door of his Barranco apartment. His wife still hadn’t come out of the bedroom. He was dressed in mourning and didn’t want to be late for Ismael’s funeral, but because of Lucrecia and her incorrigible dawdling, her ability to find the most absurd pretexts to delay their departure, they’d get to the church after the funeral party had already left for the cemetery. He didn’t want to attract attention by showing up at Los Jardines de la Paz after the burial service had already begun, drawing the glances of everyone there. No doubt there’d be many people, as there had been the night before at the vigil, not only out of friendship for the deceased but because of the unhealthy Limeño curiosity to finally see in person the widow in the scandal.

But Don Rigoberto knew there was nothing he could do but resign himself and wait. Probably the only fights he’d had with his wife in all the years they’d been married had been due to Lucrecia’s tardiness whenever they went out, regardless of whether it was to a movie, a meal, an art show, the bank, or on a trip. At first, when they were newlyweds, when they had just started living together, he believed his wife was late because of a simple dislike or contempt for punctuality. Because of it they argued, lost their tempers, quarreled. Gradually, by observing her and reflecting, Don Rigoberto realized that his wife’s dallying when it was time to leave for any engagement wasn’t something superficial, the negligence of a pampered woman. It was a response to something deeper, an ontological state of mind, because without her being conscious of what was happening to her, each time she had to leave a place (her own house, the house of a friend she was visiting, the restaurant where she’d just had dinner) she was seized by a hidden anxiety, an insecurity, a dark, primitive fear of having to leave, go away, change where she was, and so she invented all kinds of excuses (getting a handkerchief, changing her handbag, finding her keys, making sure the windows were locked, the television or the stove turned off, or the telephone not off the receiver), anything that would delay for a few minutes or seconds the terrifying act of leaving.

Had she always been like this? Even as a girl? He didn’t dare ask. But he’d confirmed that as the years went by, this urge, mania, or calamity became more pronounced, to the point where Rigoberto sometimes thought with a shudder that the day might come when Lucrecia, with the same mildness as Melville’s character, might contract Bartleby’s metaphysical lethargy or indolence and decide never again to move from her house, perhaps her room, even her bed. “Fear of leaving behind her being, losing her being, being left without her being,” he told himself again. It was the diagnosis he’d made of his wife’s delays. The seconds passed and Lucrecia still didn’t appear. He’d already called to her three times, reminding her that it was getting late. Undoubtedly, given her distress and nervous upset since receiving the call from Armida announcing Ismael’s sudden death, her panic at losing her being, forgetting it like an umbrella or a raincoat if she went out, had gotten worse. She’d keep delaying and they’d be late for the funeral.