The Bad Girl (42 page)

passport that says I am. There I'll always be a meteque. And I'm no

longer Permian, because I feel even more of a foreigner here than I

do in Paris."

"Well, I suppose you know that according to a survey by the

University of Lima, the primary ambition of sixty percent of young

people is to go abroad, the immense majority to the United States

and the rest to Europe, Japan, Australia, wherever. We can't

reproach them, can we? If their country can't give them work, or

opportunities, or security, it's legitimate for them to want to leave.

That's why I admire Alberto so much. He could have stayed in the

United States with a magnificent job but chose to come and break

his heart in Peru. I hope he doesn't regret it. He has a great deal of

esteem for you, you know that, don't you, Ricardo?"

"Yes, uncle, and I for him. Really, he's very amiable. Thanks to

my nephew I've seen Lima's other faces. The faces of the

millionaires and of the shantytowns."

Just at that moment the phone rang and it was Alberto Lamiel,

calling me.

"Would you like to meet old Arquimedes, the breakwater builder

I told you about?"

"Man, of course I would," I said enthusiastically.

"They're building a new jetty at La Punta, and the municipal

engineer, Chicho Canepa, is a friend of mine. Tomorrow morning, if

that's all right with you. I'll pick you up at eight. That isn't too early

for you, is it?"

"I must be very old, Uncle Ataulfo, even though I'm only fifty," I

said when I hung up. "Because Alberto, being your nephew, is really

my cousin. But he insists on calling me uncle. He must think I'm

prehistoric."

"It isn't that," Uncle Ataulfo said with a laugh. "Since you live in

Paris, you inspire his respect. Living there is a credential for him,

the equivalent of having triumphed in life."

The next morning, punctual as a clock, Alberto came by a few

minutes before eight, accompanied by Canepa, the engineer in

charge of work at the Cantolao beach and the pier at La Punta, a

mature man with dark glasses and a large beer belly. He got out of

Alberto's Cherokee and gave me the front seat. The two engineers

wore jeans, sport shirts, and leather jackets. I felt ridiculous in my

suit, dress shirt, and tie next to those gentlemen in casual attire.

"Old Arquimedes will make a huge impression on you," Alberto's

friend, whom he called "Chicho," assured me. "He's a wonderful

madman. I've known him twenty years, and the stories he tells still

leave me openmouthed. He's a magician, you'll see. And a terrific

storyteller."

"Somebody ought to tape him, I swear, Uncle Ricardo," Alberto

joined in. "His tales about breakwaters are terrific, I always try to get

him to talk."

"I still can't wrap my mind around what you told me, Alberto," I

said. "I keep thinking you were kidding. It seems impossible that to

build an ocean jetty, you need a wizard more than you need an

engineer."

"Well, you ought to believe it," said Chicho Canepa with a laugh.

"Because if anybody knows that, I do, from bitter experience."

I told him to stop using the formal usted with me, I wasn't that

old, and from now on we'd use tu.

We were following the beach highway, heading for Magdalena

and San Miguel at the foot of the naked cliffs, and to our left was a

rough sea, half hidden by fog, where some surfers rode the waves in

their rubber suits even though it was still winter. Silent, indistinct,

they rode the ocean, some with their arms raised to keep their

balance. Chicho Canepa recounted what happened to him with one

of the jetties at Costa Verde, which we had just passed, the one that

was partially built and had a mast at the tip. The municipality of

Miraflores had hired him to widen the road and build two

breakwaters to create a beach on the ocean. He had no difficult}*

with the first one, which was built in the place Arquimedes advised.

Chicho wanted the second one to be a symmetrical distance from

the other, between the Costa Verde and La Rosa Nautica restaurants.

Arquimedes objected: it wouldn't stand up, the sea would swallow it.

"There was no reason for it not to stand up," said the engineer

Canepa emphatically. "I know about these things, it's what I studied.

The waves and currents were the same as the ones pounding the

first. The backward rush of the water was identical, as well as the

depth of the marine base. The laborers insisted I listen to

Arquimedes, but it seemed like the whim of an old drunk to justify*

his pay. And I built it where I wanted to. An evil hour, Ricardo, my

friend! I used twice the amount of stones and mortar as in the first,

and the damn thing sanded up over and over again. It caused eddies

that altered the entire environment and created currents and tides

that made the beach dangerous for swimmers. In less than six

months the ocean pulverized the damn jetty and left it the ruin you

just saw. Each time I pass there my face burns. A monument to my

shame! The municipality* fined me and I ended up losing money."

"What explanation did Arquimedes give you? Why couldn't the

breakwater be built there?"

"The explanations he gives aren't explanations," said Chicho.

"They're simpleminded, like: "The sea won't accept it there, it

doesn't fit there, it's going to move there, and if it moves, the water

will knock it over.' Nonsense like that, meaningless things.

Witchcraft, as you say, or whatever it is. But after what happened to

me at Costa Verde, I keep my mouth shut and do what the old man

says. As far as breakwaters are concerned, engineering isn't worth

anything: he knows more."

The truth was I felt impatient to meet this marvel of flesh and

blood. Alberto hoped we would find him watching the ocean. Then

Arquimedes became a spectacle: sitting on the beach, his legs

crossed like a Buddha, immobile, frozen, he could spend hours

scrutinizing the water, in a state of metaphysical communication

with the hidden forces of the tides and the gods of the marine

depths, questioning them, listening to them, or praying to them in

silence. Until, at last, he seemed to come back to life. Muttering

something he would rise to his feet and with an energetic gesture

proclaim: "Yes, you can," or "No, you can't"—in which case you had

to go and find another place favorable to the breakwater.

And then suddenly, when we reached the little square of San

Miguel, wet with misty rain, not suspecting the turmoil that would

be unleashed deep inside me, it occurred to the engineer Chicho

Canepa to say, "He's a marvelous, fanciful old man. He's always

telling the wildest stories, because he also has delusions of

grandeur. At one point he fabricated a story about having a daughter

in Paris who was going to bring him over there to live with her, in

the City of Light!"

It was as if the morning had suddenly turned dark. I felt the acid

sometimes produced by an old duodenal ulcer, a sputtering of lights

in my head, I don't exactly know what I felt but there were a number

of things, and then I knew why, ever since Alberto Lamiel decided at

the Regatas Union to tell me the story of Arquimedes and the

breakwaters of Lima, I'd had an uneasy feeling, the strange itch that

precedes the unexpected, the premonition of a cataclysm or a

miracle, as if the story contained something that deeply concerned

me. I barely could control my desire to shower Chicho Canepa with

questions about what he had just said.

As soon as we got out of the van on the Figueredo de Punta

seawall, facing the beach at Cantolao, I knew who Arquimedes was

without their needing to point him out to me. He wasn't sitting still.

He was walking with his hands in his pockets along the shore where

gentle waves came to die on the little beach of black stones and

pebbles that I hadn't seen since my adolescence. He was an ashen,

wretched, emaciated cholo, a mestizo with thin, disheveled hair,

someone who had surely passed long ago into the time when old age

begins, the consolatory season when chronological distances

disappear and a man can be seventy, eighty, even ninety years old

without anyone noticing the difference. He wore a threadbare blue

shirt with hardly a button left on it, which the wind of the cold, gray

morning inflated like a sail, revealing the old man's hairless, bony

chest as, slightly bent and stumbling over the stones on the beach,

he went back and forth, striding like a heron and threatening to fall

down at each step.

"That's him, isn't it?" I asked.

"Who else would it be?" said Chicho Canepa. And cupping his

hands, he shouted: "Arquimedes! Arquimedes! Come here,

somebody wants to meet you. Just think, he came all the way from

Europe to see your face."

The old man stopped and his head gave a jerk. He looked at us,

disconcerted. Then he nodded and came toward us, balancing on the

black and lead-colored stones on the beach. When he was closer, I

could see him more clearly. His cheeks were sunken, as if he had

lost all his teeth, and his chin was divided by a cleft that could very

well have been a scar. The liveliest and most powerful part of his

person was his eyes, small, watery, but intense and belligerent,

which looked without blinking, with insolent fixity. He must have

been very old, given the wrinkles on his forehead and around his

eyes, the ones that gave his neck the appearance of a rooster's crest,

and the gnarled hand with black nails he held out to greet us.

"You're so famous, Arquimedes, that even if you don't believe it,

my uncle Ricardo has come from France to meet the great builder of

breakwaters in Lima," Alberto said, slapping him on the back. "He

wants you to explain to him how and why you know where to build a

breakwater and where not to."

"You can't explain it," the old man said, shaking my hand and

spraying saliva when he talked. "You feel it in your gut. Happy to

meet you, caballero. Are you a Frenchy?"

"No, I'm Permian. But I've lived there for many years."

He had a faint, high-pitched voice and barely said the end of his

words, as if he lacked the breath to pronounce all the letters. Almost

without a pause, as soon as he greeted me he turned to Chicho

Canepa.

"I'm sorry, but I think you won't be able to build here, engineer."

"What do you mean, 'think'?" The engineer was furious and

raised his voice. "Are you sure or not?"

"I'm not sure," the old man admitted, uncomfortable, wrinkling

his face even more. He paused, and taking a quick look at the ocean,

he added, "I mean, I don't even know if I'm sure. Don't get angry

with me, but something's telling me no."

"Don't fuck around, Arquimedes," the engineer Canepa

protested, waving his arms. "You have to give me a definitive

answer. Or I won't pay you, damn it."

"It's just that sometimes the ocean's a crafty female, one of those

who say 'Yes, but no,' and 'No, but yes.'" The old man laughed,

opening wide his large mouth where barely two or three teeth were

\isible. And then I realized his breath was saturated with the sharp,

acrid smell of some very strong cane liquor, or pisco.

"You're losing your powers, Arquimedes," said my nephew

Alberto, giving him another affectionate slap on the back. "You

never had doubts about these things before."

"I don't think that's true, engineer," said Arquimedes, becoming

very serious. He pointed at the greenish-gray water. "These are

things of the sea, and the sea has its secrets, like everybody else. I

almost always know at the first look if you can or you can't. But this

Cantolao beach is fucked-up, it has its little tricks and throws me

off."

The undertow and the noise of the waves breaking against the

stones on the beach were very strong, and at times I couldn't hear

the old man's voice. I noticed a tic: from time to time he would raise

a hand to his nose and brush it very rapidly, as if chasing away an

insect.

Two men approached wearing boots and canvas jackets with

yellow letters printed on them that said "Municipality of Callao."

Chicho Canepa and Alberto took them aside. I heard Canepa say to

them, not caring if Arquimedes heard, "Now it seems the asshole

isn't sure if we can or we can't. So we'll just have to make the

decision ourselves."

The old man was next to me but didn't look at me. Again his eyes

were fixed on the ocean, and at the same time he moved his lips

slowly, as if praying or talking to himself.

"Arquimedes, I'd like to invite you to lunch," I said in a quiet

voice. "So you can talk to me a little about breakwaters. It's a subject

I'm very interested in. Just the two of us. All right?"

He turned his head and fixed his quiet, and now serious, eyes on

me. My invitation had disconcerted him. A mistrustful expression

appeared among his wrinkles and he frowned.

"Lunch?" he repeated, confused. "Where?"

"Wherever you want. Anyplace you like. You choose the spot and