The Bad Girl (43 page)

it's my treat. All right?"

"When?" The old man played for time, scrutinizing me with

growing suspicion.

"Now. Today, for example. Let's say I pick you up right here,

about twelve, and we go to have lunch anywhere you choose. All

right?"

After a while he nodded, still looking at me as if I suddenly had

turned into something that threatened him. "What the hell can this

individual want with me?" his calm, liquid, yellowish-gray eyes were

asking.

When, half an hour later, Arquimedes, Alberto, Chicho Canepa,

and the men from the Municipality of Callao had finished arguing,

and my nephew and his friend walked up to the van they had parked

on the Figueredo seawall, I told them I was staying. I wanted to walk

around La Punta, remembering my youth, when I sometimes came

to the dances at Regatas Union with my friends from the Barrio

Alegre to flirt with the little blond Lecca twins who lived nearby and

took part in the summer sailing championships. I'd go back to

Miraflores in a taxi. They were a little surprised, but finally they left,

not without suggesting that I be very careful where I went, Callao

was full of hoodlums, and muggings and abductions had recently

become the order of the day.

I took a long walk along the Figueredo, Pardo, and Wiese

seawalls. The large mansions from forty or fifty years ago looked

faded, smaller, stained by dampness and time, their gardens

withered. Though clearly in decline, the neighborhood retained

traces of its former splendor, like an aged woman who trails behind

her a shadow of the beauty she once had been. I peered through the

fence at the installations of the Naval School. I saw one group of

cadets marching in their ordinary white uniforms, and another at

the end of the embarcadero, tying a launch up to the dock. And

meanwhile I kept repeating to myself: "It's impossible. It's absurd. A

wild idea that makes no sense. Forget about the fantasy, Ricardo

Somocurcio." It was madness to suppose an association like that.

But at the same time, I reflected that enough had happened to me in

life for me to know nothing was impossible, that the most

outlandish and unbelievable coincidences and incidents could occur

when the woman who was now my wife was involved. In spite of the

dozens of years I hadn't been back here, La Punta hadn't changed as

much as Miraflores, it still had a seigneurial, out-of-fashion air, an

impoverished elegance. Now some impersonal, oppressive buildings

had appeared among the houses, as they had in my old

neighborhood, but there weren't many of them, and they didn't

completely destroy the general harmony. The streets were almost

deserted except for an occasional maid coming home from shopping,

an occasional housewife pushing a baby carriage or taking her dog

out to urinate along the shore.

At twelve o'clock I returned to the beach at Cantolao, now almost

entirely covered by fog. I saw Arquimedes in the posture Alberto had

described to me: sitting like a Buddha, motionless, staring at the sea.

He was so still that a flock of white gulls walked around him,

indifferent to his presence, pecking between the rocks, looking for

something to eat. The noise of the tide was stronger. Periodically,

the gulls screeched together: a sound between hoarse and shrill, at

times strident.

"The breakwater can be built," said Arquimedes when he saw me,

with a little smile of triumph. And he snapped his fingers. "I'll give

Engineer Canepa a nice surprise."

"So now you're certain?"

"Very certain, sure I am," he said, nodding several times and

using a boastful tone. His eyes gleamed with satisfaction.

He pointed at the ocean with absolute conviction, as if showing

me that the evidence was there for anyone who bothered to see it.

But the only thing I saw was a line of greenish-gray water, stained

with foam, crashing against the stones, making a symmetrical,

clamorous noise for a few moments then withdrawing, leaving

behind tangles of dark brown seaweed. The fog was advancing and

soon would envelop us.

"You amaze me, Arquimedes. What talents you have! What

happened between this morning, when you were doubtful, and now,

when you're finally sure? Have you seen something? Heard

something? Was it a hunch, a premonition?"

I saw that the old man was having difficulties getting up, and I

helped him, taking his arm. It was very thin, with no muscles and

soft bones, like the limb of an amphibian.

"I felt they could," Arquimedes explained, then immediately fell

silent, as if that verb could clarify the entire mystery.

In silence we climbed the stony beach toward the Figueredo

seawall. The old man's shoes, riddled with holes, sank into the

stones, and since he seemed about to fall, I took his arm again to

hold him up, but he pulled away with a gesture of annoyance.

"Where do you want to go for lunch, Arquimedes?"

He hesitated for a second and then pointed toward the blurred,

ghostly horizon of Callao.

"There, in Chucuito, I know a place," he said doubtfully. "The

Chim Pum Callao. They make good ceviches, with nice, fresh fish.

Sometimes Engineer Chicho goes there to down pork and onion

sandwiches."

"Terrific, Arquimedes. Let's go there. I like ceviche a lot and

haven't had a pork and onion sandwich in ages."

As we walked toward Chucuito accompanied by a cold wind,

listening to the screech of the gulls and the clamor of the ocean, I

told Arquimedes that the name of the restaurant reminded me of

the fans of the Sport Boys, the famous soccer team of Callao, who, at

matches in the Estadio Nacional on Calle Jose Diaz, would deafen

the stands when I was a boy with the thundering cry "Chim Pum!

Callao! Chim Pum! Callao!" And in spite of all the years that had

passed, I always remembered that miraculous pair of forwards on

the Sport Boys, Valeriano Lopez and Jeronimo Barbadillo, the terror

of all the defensive players who faced that lineup of pink shirts.

"I knew Barbadillo and Valeriano Lopez when we were all kids,"

the old man said; he walked somewhat timidly, looking down at the

ground, and the wind blew through his thin, whitish hair. "We even

kicked a ball around together sometimes in the Estadio del Potao

where the Sport Boys trained, or in empty lots in Callao. Before they

became famous, I mean. Back then, soccer players played just for

glory. Maybe they got a few tips once in a while. I liked soccer a lot.

But I never was a good player, I didn't have the stamina. I got tired

fast, and by the second quarter I'd be panting like a dog."

"Well, you have other skills, Arquimedes. Very few people in the

world know what you've mastered: where to build breakwaters. It's a

skill that's yours alone, I assure you."

The Chim Pum Callao was a ramshackle little food stand on one

of the corners of the Parque Jose Galvez. The surrounding area was

full of bums and kids selling candies, lottery tickets, peanuts, or

candied apples from little wooden carts or planks laid on sawhorses.

Arquimedes must have gone there frequently because he waved at

passersby, and some street dogs approached and wrapped

themselves around his feet. When we walked into the Chim Pum

Callao, the owner, a fat black woman with her hair in rollers who

was working behind the counter, a long board resting on two barrels,

greeted him affectionately: "Hello, Old Man Breakwater." There

were about ten rough tables, with benches for seats, and only part of

the roof was covered with galvanized metal; through the other part

you could see the winter sky, cloudy and sad. A radio played "Pedro

Navaja," a salsa by Ruben Blades, at top volume. We sat at a table

near the door, ordered ceviches, pork and onion sandwiches, and an

ice-cold Pilsen beer.

The black owner with the rollers was the only woman in the

place. Almost all the tables were occupied by two, three, or four

patrons, men who probably worked nearby because some had on the

smocks that employees of the cold-storage plants wore, and at one

table there were electricians' helmets and bags at the end of the

benches.

"What is it you wanted to know, caballero?" Arquimedes opened

fire. He looked at me, full of curiosity, and at regular intervals raised

his hand to his nose to brush it and chase away a nonexistent insect.

"I mean, why this imitation?"

"How did you learn you had the ability to read the ocean's

intentions?" I asked. "Were you a boy? A young man? Tell me. I'm

very interested in everything you can tell me."

He shrugged, as if he didn't remember or the matter wasn't

worth thinking about. He murmured that once a reporter from La

Cronica came to interview him about it, and it seemed he said

nothing. Finally, he murmured, "These aren't things that go through

my head, and that's why I can't explain it. I know where they can

and where they can't. But sometimes I'm in the dark. I mean, I don't

feel anything." He fell silent again for a long time. But as soon as

they brought the beer and we toasted each other and had a drink, he

began to talk and tell me about his life with a fair amount of fluency.

He was born not in Lima but in the sierra, in Pallanca, though his

family came down to the coast when he had just begun to walk, so

he had no memory of the sierra and it was as if he'd been born in

Callao. In his heart he felt like a real Callaoan. He learned to read

and write at District School Number 5, in Bellavista, but didn't finish

primary school because, to "fill the stew pot for the family," his

father put him to work selling ice cream, riding a tricycle for La

Deliciosa, a very famous ice-cream shop that was gone now but once

had been on Avenida Saenz Pena. As a boy and a young man he had

done a little of everything: carpenter's helper, bricklayer, errand boy

for a customs office, until finally he went to work as a helper on a

fishing boat based at the Terminal Maritimo. There he began to

discover, without knowing how or why, that he and the sea

"understood each other like a team of oxen." He could smell out

before anybody else did where to throw the nets because that's

where schools of anchovies would come looking for food, and also

where not to because jellyfish would frighten away the fish and not

even a miserable catfish would go for the hook. He remembered

very* well the first time he helped build a jetty in the Callao sea, up

around La Perla, more or less where Avenida de las Palmeras ends.

All the efforts of the foremen to make the structure stand up to the

surf failed. "What the hell's going on, why does this damn son of a

bitch sand up all the time?" The contractor, a Chinese-cholo grouch

from Chiclayo, was tearing his hair out and telling the ocean and

everybody else to go fuck themselves. But no matter how much he

goddamned and go-fucked, the ocean said no. And, caballero, when

the ocean says no, it's no. Back then he wasn't twenty yet and was

feeling jumpy because he still could be called up for military service.

Then Arquimedes started to think, to reflect, and instead of

calling it a whore, it occurred to him "to talk to the ocean." And, even

more important, "to listen to it the way you listen to a friend." He

raised his hand to his ear and adopted an attentive, humble

expression, as if he were receiving the secret confidences of the

ocean right now. The priest from the Church of Carmen de la Legua

once said, "Do you know who it is you're listening to, Arquimedes?

It's God. He tells you the wise things you say about the sea." Well,

maybe, maybe God lived in the sea. And that's how it happened. He

began to listen, and then, caballero, the sea made him feel that

instead of building there, where the sea didn't want the breakwater,

if they built fifty* meters to the north, toward La Punta, "the sea

would accept it." He went and told the contractor. At first the

Chiclayan almost pissed himself laughing, you can imagine. But

then, in sheer desperation, he said, "Let's give it a try, damn it." They

tried in the spot Arquimedes suggested, and the breakwater stopped

the sea cold. It's still there, all of it, resisting the rough surf. Word

got around and Arquimedes acquired a reputation as a "wizard," a

"magician," a "breakwater conjurer." Since then no breakwater was

built anywhere in Lima bay without the foremen or engineers

consulting him. Not only in Lima. They had taken him to Canete,

Pisco, Supe, Chincha, lots of places, for him to advise on the

construction of jetties. He was proud to say that in his long

professional life, he had made very few mistakes. Though

sometimes he had, because the only one who's never wrong is God,

caballero, and maybe the devil.

The ceviche burned as if the chili it contained were Arequipa

rocoto. When the bottle of beer was empty, I ordered another, which

we drank slowly, enjoying some excellent pork sandwiches on

French bread with a wonderful sauce of lettuce, onion, and chilies.