Dona Nicanora's Hat Shop (41 page)

Don Bosco bristled slightly as the camera swung around to point at him. He did not like the accusatory tone of the interviewer's question.

‘Nothing,' Don Bosco said.

‘Can you tell us what he was like,' the interviewer encouraged.

‘He was very polite.'

‘Yes, yes,' the interviewer continued. ‘But who was he? What was his name?'

‘I really don't know. He was a gringo.'

‘I understand he was here for quite some time. Didn't you find out anything about him?'

‘No,' Don Bosco replied, ‘nothing at all.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because I had no reason to,' agitation showing on his face.

‘So where is he now?'

‘On his way back home, I expect.'

‘Why has he gone home now?'

‘To take up where he left off.'

‘So what do you think he was doing here?'

‘I think he needed a different point of view for a while.'

‘So tell me about your own recent journey,' the interviewer said, changing tack to see whether that would help to get more useful information out of the obstinate and, frankly, annoying little barber. ‘I understand you went to Puerta de la Coruña recently.'

‘I did.'

‘So tell me, why did you bring back all those hats?'

‘Because', Don Bosco replied, ‘I had grown tired of cutting hair. So I thought I would buy a hat for everyone to cover their heads instead.'

‘And you had no idea that the army was watching you?'

‘Why would I?' Don Bosco said. ‘You see, I know we are far from the centre of things here, but I had no idea that in our country today a man no longer has the right to buy hats should he wish to.'

The camera moved in on Don Bosco as Doña Nicanora and Doña Gloria edged closer to hear what he was saying. ‘He really has become very interesting these days,' Nicanora whispered to Gloria.

‘You see,' Don Bosco continued on live national television, ‘I hadn't realised that an ordinary man going about his business was such a threat to our national security. That he would find himself unwittingly under surveillance and that the powers that be could misunderstand his innocent motives so much that they would risk his and others' lives by indiscriminately shooting at him. Troubled as this country is, I had understood, until now, that a man still has the liberty to do as he wishes, as long as he is not harming others. I had not realised that the army would take such an interest in my personal affairs.'

‘So tell me, Mr Woods,' the journalist said, trying to change the tone of the interview, ‘tell me again what happened that day, exactly as you saw it,' and Don Bosco relayed once again the story of how the Virgin had been destroyed, Nena had been felled by a bullet and the townsfolk had been brought down by fear and grief as box after box of hats had exploded over the plaza.

‘So how did you feel?' the interviewer asked quietly, with apparent emotion in his voice.

‘How did I feel?' Don Bosco said.

‘Yes,' the interviewer said slowly and slightly louder, so that the
barber would understand. ‘How did you feel when you saw the little girl being hit? How did that make you feel?'

‘How did that make me feel?' Don Bosco asked, lingering over the question. ‘You, an educated man, have come all this way to ask a simple man like me how it feels to see his town destroyed and have his feet washed by the blood of a child whom he has loved all her short life? Isn't that a question that all humanity would immediately know the answer to? You certainly don't need to come here with your cameras to ask me that.'

The journalist was silent for a moment before deciding to wrap up the interview. ‘So tell us about the miracle,' he said.

‘Do you mean the miracle of the Virgin, or the miracle of life?' Don Bosco asked.

Nena had lain cold and motionless in the bed above the barber's shop. The sobbing Gringito had carried her there, away from the mayhem in the plaza. Nicanora kept vigil over her daughter, begging the Virgin, the ancestors, the doctor, the Gringito, whoever might have the powers to help, to give her daughter life. Arturo worked quickly and without hesitation, stemming the flow of blood, Isabela never far from his side, helping him throughout the night, changing blood-soaked bandages, until there was nothing more for anyone to do but hope. Only the faintest sign of breathing indicated that for the moment Nena was still in the tenuous clutches of the present.

‘It is my fault,' Arturo confided to Don Bosco as he left the room, allowing Nicanora time alone with her daughter.

‘How can that be?' Don Bosco asked. ‘If that child lives it will be thanks to you; and you alone.'

‘No,' Arturo said. ‘You don't understand. It's my fault that the army were here in the first place. I see it now. They were led here on purpose. The friend that I told you about, the one who came to me in the night, it wasn't a dream. They were looking for her. She brought them here to put them off her scent. I thought she had come because she needed me, but she came to me for quite another reason.'

‘Who was she?' Don Bosco asked.

‘Someone I once thought was very dear to me,' Arturo replied. ‘Someone I once believed I could not live without.'

‘Were you her lover?' Don Bosco asked.

‘No,' Arturo replied sadly, ‘I was her decoy. I always have been.'

While Nicanora sat beside her lifeless daughter, the frightened townsfolk disappeared to the safety of their homes as a quiet calm descended on the town. Don Bosco and Don Teofelo worked alone into the night to clear the debris from the plaza, keeping watch for the forces encroaching on them from the forest. As all the hats were collected, the splinters of glass and plastic swept up, the leaves and petals removed, Don Bosco and Don Teofelo knelt silently side by side.

‘How could a child lose so much blood?' Don Bosco said at last, trying to remove the last stains of the night from the stones of the plaza. ‘Yesterday we were preparing for a procession of the Virgin, with so much hope. Now I fear, come daybreak, we will be making preparations of quite another kind.'

Teofelo said nothing, but placed his hand gently on his friend's arm.

‘How are we going to bear this, Teofelo?' Don Bosco whispered at last. ‘How will Nicanora survive it after all she has been through? It is my fault.'

‘How so?' Teofelo said gently. ‘How do you come to that conclusion, Bosco?'

‘Because I cheated everybody,' Don Bosco replied. ‘I cheated the town, and I cheated Nicanora. You know that, as well as I do. I knew the Virgin was a fake and I said nothing. I let the procession go ahead and now Nicanora is being punished for my mistake.'

‘I didn't take you for a superstitious man,' Teofelo said. ‘I thought you were a modern man like me. I'm sure there is quite another explanation for what took place tonight, which we will find out soon enough. But you were acting in good faith. Surely that is as much as any man can do. And besides, don't you think Nicanora would have realised herself that it was a fake?'

‘It was a foolish trick, Teofelo,' Don Bosco said. ‘I should never have asked you to buy such a thing in Rosas Pampas, and I should never have tried to trick the mayor.'

‘I think the opposite,' Teofelo said. ‘Whatever happened out here tonight, you saved her from destruction. Remember, Bosco, you only did it because you didn't trust him to safeguard our Virgin in the first place. You seem to have lost your memory suddenly. You thought he was going to sell her to the antiquity hunters.'

‘No, Teofelo. I just thought I was better than him. And look where my lack of trust has got us. But do you know what the real shame of it is? I have quite forgotten where I hid her, it was so long ago.'

‘Well, we had better start looking then,' Teofelo said, ‘before
whoever it is who is out there finds their way to us.' He picked up one of the hats as he stood. ‘These really are quite beautiful,' he said.

‘Yes,' Don Bosco replied. ‘Puerta de la Coruña, it seems, is a town of expert milliners.'

Nicanora and the Gringito sat in the bedroom above the shop, neither speaking, barely breathing in the silence of the room, oblivious to all that was happening in the plaza below. The young doctor knelt beside the body of Nena, unable to take his hand from her wrist for fear of letting go for ever the faint hope of the echo of a pulse. Nicanora felt a surge of hatred for the bedroom that, with no apparent struggle, was so readily transforming itself into a funeral parlour. Her anguish let out its objection to the night in an unguarded moan of tears. ‘My little girl,' she said as she rocked gently backwards and forwards, ‘my own little girl.'

Isabela clutched her mother's hand, and then pressed her face into Nicanora's shoulder, just as she had done as a child when she was too shy to speak to a neighbour, or when trying to deflect a scolding. The Gringito made a sound as if his voice were about to break in two in an effort to speak out and halt the movement of time. Nicanora looked up. ‘What did he say?' she whispered to Isabela.

‘I don't know,' Isabela replied. ‘Perhaps he is trying to tell us that Nena is the only one who has ever really been able to understand.'

Don Bosco and Don Teofelo sat in the refuge of the church.

‘Think, man,' Teofelo said. ‘She must be here somewhere.'

‘I'm trying,' Don Bosco replied. ‘I'm doing my best, but we've looked in every possible place.'

‘Well, perhaps he did sell her then,' Teofelo suggested.

‘Perhaps he did,' Don Bosco agreed. ‘But somehow I think not. Either way I've failed everybody, and Nicanora most of all.'

The two men sat in silence as the rain that had been politely tapping on the windows started to thump on the decaying roof of the church in an effort to be let in. The sound of boots crunching on stones could now be heard in the distance, replacing the deathly silence of the plaza. As Don Bosco rose to greet the visitors for whom they had been waiting, he noticed a door at the side of the church swinging open with the winds of the impending storm. A small trickle of water, which had made its way down the centre of the pews and had been seeping through the holes in the toes of his shoes, ran from under door. A faint memory stirred in his brain.