Conversation in the Cathedral (14 page)

They had registered for the same courses, they sat in the same row, they went together to the San Marcos or National libraries, it was hard for them to go their separate ways and home to sleep. They read the same books, saw the same movies, got all worked up over the same
newspapers
. When they left the university, at noon and in the afternoon, they would talk for hours in El Palermo on Colmena, argue for hours in the Huérfanos pastry shop on Azángaro, talk for hours about the political news in a café and billiard parlor behind the Palace of Justice. Sometimes they would slip into a movie, sometimes go through bookstores,
sometimes
take long walks through the city as an adventure. Asexual,
fraternal
, the friendship also seemed eternal.

“The same things were important to us, we hated the same things, and we never agreed on anything,” Santiago says. “That was great too.”

“Why were you so bitter, then?” Ambrosio asks. “Was it because of the girl?”

“I never saw her alone,” Santiago says. “I wasn’t bitter; a little worm in my stomach sometimes, nothing else.”

“You wanted to make love to her and you couldn’t with the other one there,” Ambrosio says. “I know what it’s like to be close to the woman you love and not be able to do anything.”

“Did that happen to you with Amalia?” Santiago asks.

“I saw a movie about it once,” Ambrosio says.

The university reflected the country, Jacobo said, twenty years ago those professors were probably progressives and readers, then because they had to work at other things and because of the environment they became mediocre and bourgeois, and there, sticky and tiny at the mouth of his stomach: the little worm. It was the students’ fault too, Aída said, they liked the system; and if everybody was to blame, was conforming the only thing left for us to do? Santiago asked, and Jacobo: the solution was university reform. A diminutive and acidy body in the underbrush of conversations, all of a sudden in the heat of the arguments, interfering, leading astray, distracting with flashes of melancholy or nostalgia.
Parallel
teaching chairs, cogovernment, popular universities, Jacobo said: everyone who was capable should come to teach, the students could get rid of bad professors, and since the people didn’t come to the university, the university should go to the people. Melancholy from those impossible dialogues alone with her that he yearned for, nostalgia for those strolls alone with her that he invented? But if the university was a reflection of the country San Marcos would never be in good shape as long as Peru was so badly off, Santiago said, and Aída if what was wanted was to cure the disease at its roots there shouldn’t be any talk of university reform but of revolution. But they were students and their field of action was the university, Jacobo said, by working for reform they would be
working
for the revolution: you had to go through stages and not be
pessimistic
.

“You were jealous of your friend,” Ambrosio says. “And jealousy is the worst kind of poison.”

“Jacobo was probably going through the same thing I was,” Santiago says. “But we both kept it hidden.”

“He probably felt like getting rid of you with a magic look too so he could be alone with the girl.” Ambrosio laughs.

“He was my best friend,” Santiago says. “I hated him, but at the same time I loved and admired him.”

“You shouldn’t be such a skeptic,” Jacobo said. “That business of all or nothing is typically bourgeois.”

“I’m not a skeptic,” Santiago said. “But we talk and talk and here we are in the same place.”

“That’s right, up till now we haven’t gone beyond theory,” Aída said. “We ought to do something else besides talk.”

“We can’t do it alone,” Jacobo said. “First we have to make contact with the progressives at the university.”

“We’ve been there two months and we haven’t found a single one,” Santiago said. “I’m beginning to believe they don’t exist.”

“They have to be careful and it’s logical,” Jacobo said. “They’ll turn up sooner or later.”

And in fact, stealthily, suspiciously, mysteriously, little by little, they had been turning up, like furtive shadows: they were in the first year of Letters, right? Between classes they would usually sit on a bench in the courtyard of the Faculty, it seemed they were taking up a collection, or walking around the fountain in Law, to buy mattresses for the students in jail, and sometimes there they exchanged words with students from other faculties or other classes, who were being held in the cells of the penitentiary sleeping on the floor, and in those quick fleeting dialogues, behind the mistrust, opening a path through the suspicion, hadn’t anyone told them about the collection before? they noticed or seemed to notice a subtle exploration of their way of thinking, it wasn’t a matter of anything political, a discreet sounding, just a humanitarian act, vague indications that they were getting ready for something that would come, and even simple Christian charity, or a secret call so that they could show in the same coded way that they could be trusted: could they maybe give just one sol? They would appear alone and slippery in the courtyards of San Marcos, they would come over to chat with them for a few moments about ambiguous things, they would disappear for several days and suddenly reappear, cordial and evasive, the same cautious smiling
expression
on the same Indian, half-breed, Chinese, black faces, and the same ambivalent words in their provincial accents, with the same
threadbare
and faded suits and the same old shoes and sometimes a magazine or newspaper or book under their arm. What were they studying, where did they come from, what were their names, where did they live? Like a bald bolt of lightning in the cloudy sky, that boy in Law had been one of those who had shut themselves up in San Marcos during Odría’s revolution, a quick confidence suddenly tore through the gray
conversations
, and he had been imprisoned and had gone on a hunger strike in jail, and lighted them up and made them feverish, and he had only been let out a month ago, and those revelations and discoveries, and that one had been a delegate from Economics when the Federated Centers and the University Federation still functioned, awoke in them an anxious excitation, before the police had destroyed the student organizations by putting their leaders in jail, a fierce curiosity.

“You come home late so you won’t have to eat with us and when you do us the honor you don’t open your mouth,” Señora Zoila said. “Did they cut off your tongue in San Marcos?”

“He spoke against Odría and against the Communists,” Jacobo said. “An Aprista, wouldn’t you say?”

“He plays silent in order to make himself more interesting,” Sparky said. “Geniuses don’t waste their time talking to ignoramuses, isn’t that right, Superbrain?”

“How many children does young Teté have?” Ambrosio asks. “And how many have you got, son?”

“A Trotskyite more likely, because he had good things to say about Lechín,” Aída said. “Don’t they say that Lechín is a Trotskyite?”

“Teté two and me none,” Santiago says. “I didn’t want to be a father, but maybe I’ll decide to one of these days. The way we’re going, what difference does it make?”

“And besides, you go around like a sleepwalker with the eyes of a slaughtered lamb,” Teté said. “Have you fallen in love with some girl at San Marcos?”

“When I get home I see the lamp on your night table still on,” Don Fermín said. “It’s fine for you to read, but you ought to be a little sociable, Skinny.”

“Yes, with a girl in braids who goes barefoot and speaks only
Quechua
,” Santiago said. “Are you interested?”

“The old black woman used to say that every child comes with his loaf of bread under his arm,” Ambrosio says. “If it was up to me, I’d have a lot of them, I’ll say that. The old black woman, my mama, may she rest in peace.”

“I’m a little tired when I get home. That’s why I go to my room, papa,” Santiago said. “Why don’t I stay and talk to you all? Don’t you think I’m crazy?”

“That’s what happens to me for having spoken to you, you’re a
stubborn
mule,” Teté said.

“Not crazy, just a little strange,” Don Fermín said. “Now that we’re alone, Skinny, you can talk frankly to me. Is something bothering you?”

“That one just might belong to the Party,” Jacobo said. “His
interpretation
of what’s going on in Bolivia was very Marxist.”

“Nothing, papa,” Santiago said. “Nothing’s wrong with me, I give you my word.”

“Pancras had a son in Huacho years and years ago and his woman ran off on him one day and he never saw her again,” Ambrosio says. “Ever since then he’s been trying to find that son. He doesn’t want to die without knowing if he turned out as ugly as he is.”

“That one doesn’t come over to sound us out but to be with you,” Santiago said. “He only talks to you, and all those little smiles. You’ve made a conquest, Aída.”

“What a dirty mind you’ve got, you’re such a bourgeois,” Aída said.

“I can understand it because I’ve spent days too thinking about Amalita Hortensia,” Ambrosio says. “Wondering what she’s like, who she looks like.”

“Do you think that only happens to the bourgeoisie?” Santiago asked. “That revolutionaries don’t ever think about women?”

“There you are, now you’re mad because I called you a bourgeois,” Aída said. “Don’t be so sensitive, don’t be so bourgeois. Agh, I let it slip again.”

“Let’s go have some coffee,” Jacobo said. “Come on, Moscow gold is paying for it.”

Were they solitary rebels, were they active in some underground
organization
, could one of them be an informer? They didn’t go around together, they rarely appeared at the same time, they didn’t know each other or they made people think they didn’t know each other. Sometimes it was as if they were going to reveal something important, but they would stop on the threshold of revelation, and their hints and allusions, their threadbare suits and their calculated manners aroused restlessness in them, doubts, an admiration held back by mistrust or fear. Their casual faces began to appear in the cafés where they went after class, was he a messenger, was he exploring the terrain? their humble silhouettes as they sat down at the tables where they were, then let’s show them that there was no reason to pretend with them, and there, outside San
Marcos
, there are two informers in our class Aída said, instead of waiting for a trap, we found them out and they couldn’t deny it Jacobo said, the dialogues began to be less ethereal, they excused themselves alleging that as lawyers they would go up the ladder, Santiago said, sometimes taking on a boldly political tone, the fools didn’t even know how to lie Aída said. The chats would begin with some anecdote, the dangerous ones were not the ones who let themselves be found out said Washington, or joke or story or inquiry, but the small-fry informers who don’t appear on police lists, and then, timid, accidental, the questions came, what was the atmosphere like in the first year? was there restlessness, were the kids concerned about problems? was there a majority interested in setting up the Federated Centers again? more and more sibylline, serpentine, what did they think of the Bolivian revolution? the conversation would slip, and Guatemala, what did they think about that? toward the international situation. Animated, excited, they gave their opinions without lowering their voices, let the informers hear them, let them arrest them, and Aída became stimulated, she was the most enthusiastic he thinks, she let herself be won over by her own emotions, the most daring he thinks, the first boldly to shift the conversation from Bolivia and Guatemala to Peru: we were living under a military dictatorship, and her nighttime eyes glowed, even if the Bolivian revolution was only liberal, and her nose grew thinner, even if Guatemala hadn’t even gotten as far as a
democratic
-bourgeois revolution, and her temples throbbed more rapidly, they were better off than Peru, and a lock of her hair danced, governed by a stinking general, and it bounced on her forehead as she spoke, and by a pack of thieves, and her small fists pounded on the table.
Uncomfortable
, restless, alarmed, the furtive shadows interrupted Aída, changed the subject, or got up and left.

“Your papa said that San Marcos was bad for you,” Ambrosio says. “That you stopped loving him because of the university.”

“You gave Washington a hard time,” Jacobo said. “If he belongs to the Party he has to be careful. Don’t talk so strongly about Odría in front of him, you could get him in trouble.”

“Did my father tell you that I’d stopped loving him?” Santiago asks.

“Do you think Washington left because of that?” Aída asked.

“It was the thing he was most worried about in life,” Ambrosio says. “Finding out why you’d stopped loving him, son.”

He was in the third year of Law, he was a white and jovial little Andean who spoke without taking on the solemn, esoteric, archepiscopal air of the others, he was the first one whose name they learned:
Washington
. Always dressed in light gray, always with his merry canine teeth showing, with his jokes he imposed on the conversation in El Palermo, in the café-poolroom, or in the courtyard of Economics a personal
climate
which didn’t come out in the hermetic or stereotyped dialogues they had with the others. But in spite of his communicative appearance, he also knew how to be impenetrable. He’d been the first to change from a furtive shadow into a being of flesh and blood. Into an acquaintance, he thinks, almost into a friend.

“Why did he think that?” Santiago asks. “What else did my father tell you?”

“Why don’t we organize a study group?” Washington asked casually.

They stopped thinking, breathing, their eyes fastened on him.

“A study group?” Aída asked very slowly. “To study what?”

“Not me, son,” Ambrosio says. “He’d be talking to your mama, your brother and sister, friends, and I’d listen to them while I was driving the car.”

“Marxism,” Washington said in a natural way. “They don’t teach it at the university and it might be useful to us as a part of our general culture, don’t you think?”