Conversation in the Cathedral (83 page)

“She looked so depressed that I started making up lies,” Ambrosio says. “We’re going to buy that truck, Panta and me, we decided today. She wasn’t even listening to me. Her eyes were big, like this.”

She’d been awake all night because of the coughing spells of one of the patients, and frightened by another one who kept moving about in his hammock beside her and cursing some woman in his sleep. She’d beg, she’d cry, and the doctor would listen to her: more shots, more medicine, anything, but don’t operate on me, she’d suffered so much the last time, doctor. In the morning they’d brought mugs of coffee to all the patients in the ward except her. The nurse had come and, without saying a word, had given her a shot. She’d started to beg her to call the doctor, she had to talk to him, she was going to convince him, but the nurse hadn’t paid any attention to her: did she think they were going to operate on her because they liked to, silly? Then, with another nurse, she’d pulled her cot to the door of the ward and they’d transferred her to a stretcher and when they had started rolling her along she’d sat up, screaming for her husband. The nurses had left, the doctor had come, annoyed: what was all that noise, what’s going on. She’d begged him, told him about the Maternity Hospital, what she’d gone through, and the doctor had
nodded
his head: fine, good, just be calm. Like that until the morning nurse had come in: there was your husband now, that’s enough crying.

“She grabbed me,” Ambrosio says. “Don’t let them operate, I don’t want them to. Until the doctor lost his patience. Either we get your permission or you take her out of here. What was I going to do, son?”

They’d been trying to convince her, Ambrosio and an older nurse, older and nicer than the first, one who’d spoken to her lovingly and told her it’s for your own good and for the good of the baby. Finally she said all right and that she would behave herself. Then they took her off on the stretcher. Ambrosio had followed her to the door of the other room, telling her something that she’d barely heard.

“She smelled it, son,” Ambrosio says. “If not, why was she so
desperate
, so frightened?”

Ambrosio’s face had disappeared and they’d closed a door. She’d seen the doctor putting on an apron and talking to another man dressed in white and wearing a little cap and a mask. The two nurses had taken her off the cart and laid her on a table. She had asked them raise my head, she was suffocating like that, but instead of doing it they’d said to her yes, all right, quiet now, it’s all right. The two men in white had kept on talking and the nurses had been walking around her. They’d turned on a light over her face, so strong that she had to close her eyes, and a moment later she’d felt them giving her another shot. Then she’d seen the doctor’s face very close to hers and heard him tell her start counting, one, two, three. While she was counting, she’d felt her voice die.

“I had to work on top of it all,” Ambrosio says. “They took her into the room and I left the hospital, but I went to Doña Lupe’s and she said poor thing, how come you didn’t stay until the operation was over. So I went back to the hospital, son.”

It had seemed to her that everything was moving softly and she too, as if she were floating on water and beside her she had barely recognized the long faces of Ambrosio and Doña Lupe. She had tried to ask them was the operation over? tell them I don’t feel any pain, but she didn’t have the strength to speak.

“Not even a place to sit down,” Ambrosio says. “Standing there, smoking all the cigarettes I had on me. Then Doña Lupe arrived and she started waiting too and they still hadn’t brought her out of the room.”

She hadn’t moved, it had occurred to her that with the slightest movement a whole lot of needles would start pricking her. She hadn’t felt any pain, more like a heavy, sweaty threat of pain and at the same time a languor and she’d been able to hear, as if they were talking in secret or were far, far away, the voices of Ambrosio, of Doña Lupe, and even the voice of Señora Hortensia: had it been born, was it a boy or a girl?

“Finally a nurse came pushing out, get out of the way,” Ambrosio says. “She left and came back carrying something. What’s going on? She gave me another push and in a little while the other one came out. We lost the baby, she said, but there’s a chance we can save the mother.”

It seemed that Ambrosio was weeping and Doña Lupe was praying, that there were people milling around them and telling them things. Someone had crouched over her, his lips near her face. They think you’re going to die, she’d thought, they think that you’re dead. She’d felt a great surprise and much grief for everyone.

“That there was a chance to save her meant that there was a chance she’d die too,” Ambrosio says. “Doña Lupe began to pray on her knees. I went over and leaned against the wall, son.”

She hadn’t been able to tell how much time had passed between one thing and another and had still heard them speaking, but long silences too now, which could be heard, which made noise. She had still felt that she was floating, that she was sinking down in the water a bit and that she was rising and sinking and had suddenly seen the face of Amalita Hortensia. She had heard: wipe your feet before you go into the house.

“Then the doctor came out and put his hand on me here,” Ambrosio says. “We did everything we could to save your wife, but God didn’t will it that way and I don’t know how many other things, son.”

It had occurred to her that they were going to pull her down, that she was going to drown, and she had thought I’m not going to look, I’m not going to talk, she wasn’t going to move and that way she would keep on floating. She’d thought how can you be hearing things that happened in the past, dummy? and she’d become frightened and had felt a lot of pain again.

“We held her wake at the hospital,” Ambrosio says. “All the drivers from the Morales and Pucallpa companies came, and even that bastard Don Hilario came to offer his condolences.”

She’d felt more and more pain as she sank and she felt that she was going down and spinning as she fell and she knew that the things she was hearing were staying up above and that all she could do while she sank, while she fell, was bear that terrible pain.

“We buried her in one of the coffins from Limbo,” Ambrosio says. “We had to pay I don’t know how much for the cemetery. I didn’t have it. The drivers took up a collection and even that bastard Don Hilario gave something. And the same day I buried her, the hospital sent
someone
to collect the bill. Dead or not, the bill had to be paid. With what, son?”

“W
HAT WAS IT LIKE
, son?” Ambrosio asks. “Did he suffer much
before
…?”

It had been some time after Carlitos’ first attack of d.t.’s, Zavalita. One night he’d announced in the city room, with a determined air: I’m off booze for a month. No one had believed him, but Carlitos scrupulously followed his voluntary cure of drying out and went four weeks without touching a drop of liquor. Each day he would scratch out a number on his desk calendar and wave it around with a challenge: that makes ten, that makes sixteen. At the end of the month he announced: now for my revenge. He’d started drinking that night when he left work, first with Norwin and Solórzano in downtown dives, then with some sports writers he ran into who were celebrating someone’s birthday in a bar, and dawn found him drinking in the Parada market, he said himself afterward, with some strangers who stole his wallet and his watch. That morning they saw him at the offices of
Última
Hora
and
La
Prensa
trying to borrow some money and at nightfall Arispe found him sitting at a table of the Zela Bar on the Portal, his nose like a tomato and his eyes bleary, drinking by himself. He sat down with him, but he couldn’t talk to him. He wasn’t drunk, Arispe told them, he was pickled in alcohol. That night he showed up in the city room, walking with extreme caution and looking straight through things. He smelled of a lack of sleep, of
indescribable
combinations, and on his face there was a quivering uneasiness, an effervescence of the skin over his cheekbones, his temples, his forehead and his chin: everything was throbbing. Without answering the remarks, he floated over to his desk and stood there, looking at his typewriter with anxiety. Suddenly he lifted it up over his head with great effort and, without saying a word, dropped it: the great noise there, Zavalita, the shower of keys and nuts and bolts. When they went to grab him, he started to run, giving out grunts: he flung paper about, kicked over wastebaskets, stumbled into chairs. The next day he’d been put into the hospital for the first time. How many other times since then, Zavalita? He thinks: three.

“It doesn’t seem so,” Santiago says. “It seems that he died in his sleep.”

It had been a month after Sparky and Cary’s wedding, Zavalita. Ana and Santiago received an announcement and an invitation, but they didn’t attend or call or send flowers. Popeye and Teté hadn’t even tried to persuade them. They’d shown up at the elf houses a few weeks after getting back from their honeymoon and there were no hard feelings. They poured out the details of their trip to Mexico and the United States and then they’d gone for a drive in Popeye’s car and stopped for milk shakes in Herradura. They’d continued seeing each other that year every so often, at the elf houses and sometimes in San Isidro when Popeye and Teté moved into their apartment. You got all the news from them, Zavalita: Sparky’s engagement, the wedding preparations, your parents’ pending trip to Europe. Popeye was all taken up in politics. He would accompany Belaúnde on his trips to the provinces and Teté was
expecting
a baby.

“Sparky got married in February and the old man died in March,” Santiago says. “He and mama were about to leave for Europe when it happened.”

“Did he die in Ancón, then?” Ambrosio asks.

“In Miraflores,” Santiago says. “They hadn’t gone to Ancón that summer because of Sparky’s wedding. They’d only been going to Ancón on weekends, I think.”

It had been a little while after they had adopted Rowdy, Zavalita. One afternoon Ana came back from the Delgado Clinic with a shoebox that was moving; she opened it and Santiago saw something small and white leap out: the gardener had given him to her with so much affection that she hadn’t been able to say no, love. At first he was an annoyance, a cause of arguments. He wet in the living room, on the beds, in the bathroom, and when Ana tried to teach him to do his duty outside by slapping him on the behind or rubbing his nose in the pool of poop and pee, Santiago came to his defense and they had a fight, and when he began to chew on some book, Santiago would hit him and Ana would come to his defense and they would have a fight. After a while he learned: he would scratch on the street door when he wanted to piss and he would give an electrified look at the bookshelf. During the first days he slept in the kitchen on some old rags, but at night he would howl and come
whimpering
to the bedroom door, so they ended up fixing a corner for him beside the shoe rack. Little by little, he was winning the right to climb onto the bed. That morning when he’d got into the clothes hamper and was trying to get out, Zavalita, and you were looking at him. He’d stood up with his front paws on the edge, he was putting all his weight forward and the hamper began to rock and finally fell over. After a few seconds without moving, he wagged his tail and went forward to his freedom, and at that moment the rap on the window and Popeye’s face.

“Your father, Skinny,” it was muffled, Zavalita, heavy, he must have run all the way from his car. “Sparky just called me.”

You were in your pajamas, you couldn’t find your shorts, your legs got tangled up in your pants, and while you were writing a note for Ana, your hand began to tremble, Zavalita.

“Hurry up,” Popeye was saying, standing in the door. “Hurry up, Skinny.”

They got to the American Hospital at the same time as Teté. She hadn’t been at home when Popeye got the phone call, she’d been in church, and she had Popeye’s message in one hand and a veil and a prayerbook in the other. They wasted several minutes going back and forth through the corridors until, turning a corner, they saw Sparky. Disguised, he thinks: the red and white pajama top, his pants
unbuttoned
, a jacket of a different color, and he wasn’t wearing socks. He was embracing his wife, Cary was crying and there was a doctor who was moving his lips with a mournful look. He shook your hand, Zavalita, and Teté began to weep loudly. He’d died before they got him to the hospital, the doctors said, he was probably already dead that morning when your mother woke up and found him motionless and rigid, his mouth open. It caught him in his sleep, they said, he didn’t suffer. But Sparky was certain that when he, Cary and the butler had put him in the car, he was still alive, that he’d felt a pulse. Mama was in the emergency room and when you went in they were giving her a shot for her nerves: she was raving and when you embraced her she howled. She fell asleep a short time later and the loudest howls were Teté’s. Then the relatives had begun to arrive, then Ana, and you, Popeye and Sparky had spent the whole afternoon making the arrangements, Zavalita. The hearse, he thinks, the business with the cemetery, the notices in the newspapers. There you made up with your family again, Zavalita, since then you hadn’t had another fight. Between one item of business and another, Sparky would give a sob, he thinks, he had some tranquilizers in his pocket and he was swallowing them like candy. They got home at dusk, and the garden, the rooms, the study were already full of people. Mama had got up and was overseeing the preparations for the wake. She wasn’t crying, she wasn’t wearing any makeup, and she looked terribly ugly. Around her were Teté and Cary and Aunt Eliana and Aunt Rosa and Ana too, Zavalita. He thinks: Ana too. People were still coming in, all night long there were people who came and went, murmurs, smoke, and the first flowers. Uncle Clodomiro had spent the night sitting by the coffin, mute, rigid, with a waxen face, and when you’d finally gone over to look at him, dawn was already breaking. The glass was fogged and you couldn’t make out his face, he thinks: only his hands on his chest, his most elegant suit, and his hair had been combed.