Conversation in the Cathedral (13 page)

One day Amalia found Señora Rosario at the entrance to the alley, her hands on her hips, her eyes like hot coals: he’d shut himself up with Celeste, he’d tried to take advantage of her, he only opened the door when I threatened to call a patrol car. Amalia found Trinidad feeling sorry for himself, Señora Rosario had a dirty mind, calling the police when she knew they had his name on file, perverse, what did he care about dumpy Celeste, he’d only wanted to play a trick on her. Shameless, ingrate, Amalia insulted him, kept man, crazy, and finally she threw a shoe at him. He let her shout and wave her hands without protesting. That night he threw himself to the floor clutching his head and Amalia and Don Atanasio dragged him to the street and got him into a taxi. At the emergency ward they gave him an injection. They slowly returned to Mirones, Trinidad in the middle, stopping to rest at every block. They put him to bed and before he fell asleep Trinidad made her cry: leave me, she shouldn’t waste her life on him, he was finished, find someone who suits you better. The little girl’s name was Amalita Hortensia and she must be five or six by now, son.

One day when she got back from the laboratory, she found Trinidad jumping up and down: our troubles are over, he’d found a job. He hugged her, pinched her, he looked happy. But what about your sickness, Amalia said astounded, and he it’s gone, I’m cured. He had met his comrade Pedro Flores on the street, he told her, an Aprista with whom he’d been in jail on Frontón, and when Trinidad told him what was going on Pedro come with me, and he took him to Callao, introduced him to some comrades, and that very afternoon he had a job in a furniture store. You see, Amalia, that’s what comrades were like, he felt like an Aprista right down to his bones, long live Víctor Raúl. He wouldn’t make very much, but what difference did that make since it was good for his morale. Trinidad left very early but he got back before Amalia did. His mood was better, my head doesn’t ache as much, his comrades had taken him to a doctor who didn’t charge anything and gave him some injections and you see, Amalia, he told her, the party takes care of me, it’s my family. Pedro Flores never came to Mirones, but Trinidad went out many nights to meet him and Amalia was jealous, do you think I could cheat on you after you’ve helped me so much? Trinidad laughed, I swear that I’m going to underground meetings with my comrades. Don’t get mixed up in politics, Amalia told him, the next time they’ll kill you. He stopped talking about the scabs, but the vomiting continued. On many afternoons she found him lying on the bed, his eyes sunken and with no desire to eat. One night when he’d gone out to a meeting, Don Atanasio came and told Amalia come and took her to the corner. There was Trinidad, all alone, sitting on the curb, smoking. Amalia watched him and when Trinidad came back to the alley how did it go? and he fine, he argued a lot. She thought: another woman. But why was he so loving, then? After the first week of work he waited for Amalia before opening his pay envelope, let’s buy something for Señora Rosario so she’ll get over her annoyance, they picked out some perfume for her, and then what should I buy you, love? It would be better to pay the rent, Amalia told him, but he wanted to spend that money on her, love. Amalita for her mother, and Hortensia for a lady where Amalia had worked, son, one she liked a lot and who died too: of course after what you did you have to leave here, you poor devil, Don Fermín said. You were my salvation, Trinidad told her, tell me what you want. And then Amalia let’s go to the movies. They saw a picture with Libertad Lamarque, sad, a story like theirs. Amalia came out sighing and Trinidad you’re very sentimental, love, you’re a good woman. They were joking and once more he remembered the child and touched her belly, nice and fat. Señora Rosario started to weep over the perfume and told Trinidad you didn’t know what you were doing, hug me. The next Sunday Trinidad let’s go see your aunt, she’d make up with Amalia when she found out about the child. They went to Limoncillo and Trinidad went in first and then the aunt came out with open arms to call Amalia. They stayed to eat with her and Amalia thought the bad’s all gone, everything’s patched up. She felt very heavy now, Gertrudis Lama and other friends at the laboratory were sewing clothes for the baby.

The day that Trinidad disappeared, Amalia had gone to the doctor’s with Gertrudis. She got back to Mirones late and Trinidad wasn’t there, dawn came and he hadn’t come, and around ten in the morning a taxi stopped in the alley and a fellow got out asking for Amalia: I want to talk to you alone, it was Pedro Flores. He had her get into the taxi and she what’s happened to my husband, and he he’s in jail. It’s your fault, Amalia shouted, and he looked at her as if she were mad, you fixed things for him to get into politics, and Pedro Flores me, in politics? He hadn’t got mixed up and he never would get mixed up in politics because he hated politics, ma’am, and instead that big nut of a Trinidad could have got him involved in a big mess last night. And he told her: they were coming back from a little party in Barranco and when they went by the Colombian Embassy Trinidad stop for a minute, I’ve got to get out, Pedro Flores thought he was going to urinate, but he got out of the taxi and started shouting scabs, long live APRA, Víctor Raúl, and when he started up in fright he saw that the cops were all over Trinidad. It’s your fault, Amalia was weeping, APRA is to blame, they’re going to beat him up. What was the matter with her, what are you talking about: Pedro Flores wasn’t an Aprista and Trinidad had never been an Aprista either, I know only too well because we’re cousins, they’d been raised together in Victoria, we were born in the same house, ma’am. That’s a lie, he was born in Pacasmayo, Amalia whimpered, and Pedro Flores who made you believe that story. And he swore to her: he was born in Lima and he’s never left it and he was never mixed up in politics, except that once they arrested him by mistake or for some reason during Odría’s revolution, and when he got out of jail he got the crazy idea of passing himself off as a northerner and an Aprista. She should go to the police station, tell them that he was drunk and half out of his mind, they’ll turn him loose. He left her in the alley and Señora Rosario went with her to Miraflores to weep to Don Fermín. He wasn’t at the station house, Don Fermín said after telephoning, she should come back tomorrow, he’d find out. But the following morning a boy came into the alley: Trinidad López was in San Juan de Dios, ma’am. At the hospital they sent Amalia and Señora Rosario from one ward to another, until an old nun with the stubble of a man’s beard ah yes, and began to counsel Amalia. She had to resign herself. God has taken your husband away, and while Amalia was
weeping
to Señora Rosario they told her that they’d found him early that morning by the hospital door, that he’d died of a stroke.

She almost didn’t mourn for Trinidad because on the day after the burial her aunt and Señora Rosario had to take her to the Maternity Hospital, the pains quite close together now, and early that morning Trinidad’s son was born dead. She was in the Maternity Hospital for five days, sharing a bed with a Negro woman who had given birth to twins and who tried to talk to her all the time. She answered her yes, fine, no. Señora Rosario and her aunt came to see her every day and brought her something to eat. She didn’t feel pain or grief, only fatigue, she ate listlessly, it was an effort for her to talk. On the fourth day Gertrudis came, why didn’t you let us know, Engineer Carrillo might think she’d quit work, it’s good you’ve got pull with Don Fermín. Let the engineer think whatever he wanted to, Amalia thought. When she left the
Maternity
Hospital she went to the cemetery to bring some gladioli to Trinidad. The holy picture that Señora Rosario had put there was still by the grave and the letters that his cousin Pedro Flores had scratched on the plaster with a stick. She felt weak, empty, listless, if ever she got any money she would buy a stone and I’ll have them carve Trinidad López in gold letters. She began to talk to him slowly, why did you go now that everything was all set, to scold him, why did you make me believe so many lies, to tell him things, they took me to the Maternity Hospital, his son had died, maybe you’ve met him up there. She went back to Mirones remembering the blue coat that Trinidad said is my mark of elegance and how badly she sewed the buttons for him as they fell off again. The small room was padlocked, the landlord had come with a dealer and sold everything he found, leave her something to remember her husband by Señora Rosario had begged, but they refused and Amalia what do I care. Her aunt had taken in boarders in the little house in Limoncillo and didn’t have any room, but Señora Rosario made space for her in one of her two rooms, and Santiago what trouble did you get mixed up in, why did you have to hightail it out of Pucallpa? A week later Gertrudis Lama appeared in Mirones, why hadn’t she come back to the lab, how long do you think they’ll wait for you? But Amalia wouldn’t ever go back to the lab. And what was she going to do, then? Nothing, stay here until I’m kicked out, and Señora Rosario silly, I’m never going to kick you out. And why didn’t she want to go back to the lab? She didn’t know, but she wasn’t going back, and she said it with such anger that Gertrudis Lama didn’t ask anymore. A terrible mix-up, he had to hide because of something to do with the truck, son, he didn’t even want to remember. Señora Rosario made her eat, counseled her, tried to make her forget. Amalia slept between the girls Celeste and Jesús, and the youngest of Señora Rosario’s daughters complained that she talked about Trinidad and her child in the darkness. She helped Señora Rosario wash the clothes in a trough, hang them on the line, heat up the charcoal irons. She did it almost without paying attention, her mind blank, her hands weak. Night came, dawn came, evening came, Gertrudis came to visit her, her aunt came, she listened to them and said yes to everything and thanked them for the gifts they brought. Are you still thinking about Trinidad? Señora Rosario asked her every day, and she yes, about her little son, too. You’re like Trinidad, Señora Rosario told her, you lower your head, you don’t fight, she should forget about her troubles, you’re young, she could remake her life. Amalia never left Mirones, she was nothing but an old rag, she rarely washed or combed her hair, once when she looked at herself in a mirror she thought if Trinidad saw you he wouldn’t love you anymore. At night when Don Atanasio came home, she would shut herself up in his room to talk to him. He lived in a room with such a low ceiling that Amalia couldn’t stand, and on the floor were a mattress with the stuffing coming out and a thousand odds and ends. While they were chatting, Don Atanasio would take out his bottle and have a drink. Did he think that the informers had beaten Trinidad, Don Atanasio, that when they saw he was dying they dropped him by the door of San Juan de Dios? Sometimes Don Atanasio yes, that was probably what happened, and others no, they probably let him go and he didn’t feel well and went to the hospital on his own, and other times what does it matter to you now, he’s dead, think about yourself, forget about him.

H
AD IT BEEN THAT FIRST YEAR
, Zavalita, when you saw that San Marcos was a brothel and not the paradise you’d thought? What hadn’t you liked, son? Not that the classes began in June instead of April, not that the professors were as decrepit as the desks, he thinks, but his schoolmates’ lack of interest when the subject of books came up, the indolence in their eyes when it was politics. The peasants were a lot like our well-bred little boys, Ambrosio. The professors were probably paid miserable salaries, Aída said, they probably worked in ministries, gave classes in private schools, who could ask anything better from them. You had to understand the students’ apathy, Jacobo said, the system made them that way: they needed to be stirred up, indoctrinated, organized. But where were the communists, where in the world were the Apristas? All in jail, all in exile? Those were backward-looking criticisms,
Ambrosio
, he didn’t realize it at the time and he liked San Marcos. What had become of the professor who in a whole year got through two chapters of the
Synthesis
of
Logical
Investigation
published by the
Revista
de
Occidente?
Phenomenologically suspending the problem of rabies, putting in parentheses, as Husserl would have said, the grave situation created by the dogs of Lima: what sort of face would the supervisor have put on? What about the one who only gave spelling tests, the one who asked for Freud’s mistakes on his exam?

“You’re wrong, you have to read the obscurantists too,” Santiago said.

“It would be nice to read them in their own language,” Aída said. “I’d like to know French, English, even German.”

“Read everything, but with a critical sense,” Jacobo said. “The progressives always seem bad to you and the decadents always good. That’s what I criticize in you.”

“I’m only saying that
The
Making
of
a
Hero
bored me and that I liked
The
Castle,
” Santiago protested. “I’m not generalizing.”

“The Ostrovsky translation is probably bad and the Kafka one good, don’t argue anymore,” Aída said.

What about the little old man with a fat belly, blue eyes and long white hair who lectured on historical sources? He was so good that he made me want to go into History and not Psychology, Aída said, and Jacobo yes, too bad he was a Hispanist and not an Indigenist. The classrooms, packed during the first days, were thinning out, by September only half the students attended and it wasn’t hard to find a seat in class anymore. They didn’t feel defrauded, it wasn’t that the professors didn’t know anything or didn’t want to teach, he thinks, they weren’t interested in learning either. Because they were poor and had to work, Aída said, because they were contaminated with bourgeois formalism and only wanted to get their degrees, Jacobo said; because in order to get them you didn’t have to go to class or be interested or study: you only had to wait. Was he happy at San Marcos Skinny, did the great minds of Peru really teach there Skinny, why had he become so withdrawn Skinny? Yes he was papa, they really do papa, he wasn’t withdrawn papa. You came in and went out of the house like a ghost, Zavalita, you shut yourself up in your room and didn’t show your face to the family, you were like a bear, Señora Zoila said, and Sparky you were going to go cross-eyed from so much reading, and Teté why didn’t you ever go out with Popeye anymore, Superbrain. Because Jacobo and Aída were enough, he thinks, because they were friendship which excluded, enriched and compensated for everything. There, he thinks, did I fuck myself up there?