Conversation in the Cathedral (34 page)

*

“It’s a shame this had to happen just now when the contract with Ansa is about to run out.” Through the waves of smoke he was looking for Tallio’s eyes. “You can imagine how hard it’s going to be for me to convince the Minister that we should renew it.”

“I’ll talk to him, I’ll explain it to him.” There they were: clear,
disconsolate
, alarmed. “I was just about to talk to you about renewing the contract. And now, with this absurd mixup. I’ll explain everything to the Minister, Mr. Bermúdez.”

“It would be better not to deal with him until he gets over his anger.” He smiled and got up suddenly. “In any case, I’ll try to straighten things out.”

The color came back to the milky face, hope, loquacity, he walked beside him to the door, almost dancing.

“The editor who talked to Dr. Alcibíades is out of the agency as of today.” He smiled, sweetening his voice, sparkling. “You know that the renewal of the contract means life or death for Ansa. I don’t know how to thank you, Mr. Bermúdez.”

“It ends next week, doesn’t it? Well, make arrangements with
Alcibíades
. I’ll try to get the Minister’s signature as soon as possible.”

He reached a hand toward the doorknob but didn’t open it. Tallio hesitated, he’d begun to blush again. He was waiting, without taking his eyes off him, for him to get up his courage and say something.

“Regarding the contract, Mr. Bermúdez.” You seem to be swallowing the shit, you eunuch. “Under the same conditions as last year. I’m referring to, I mean …”

“My services?” he said, and saw the uneasiness, the discomfort,
Tallio’s
difficult smile; he scratched his chin and added modestly: “This time it’s not going to cost you ten, it’s going to cost you twenty percent, friend Tallio.”

He saw him open his mouth a little, wrinkle and unwrinkle his
forehead
in a second; he saw that he’d stopped smiling and was nodding with his look suddenly far off.

“A check made out to cash drawn on a New York bank; bring it to me personally next Monday.” You were making calculations, Caruso. “You know that the paper work in the Ministry takes a while. Let’s see if we can get it through in a couple of weeks.”

He opened the door, but when Tallio made a gesture of anguish, he closed it. He waited, smiling.

“Very good, it will be wonderful if it can be done in a couple of weeks, Mr. Bermúdez.” His voice had grown hoarse, he was sad. “As far as, that is, don’t you think that twenty percent is a little steep?”

“Steep?” He opened his eyes a little as if he didn’t understand, but he recovered immediately, with a friendly gesture. “Let’s say no more. Forget about the whole thing. Now you have to excuse me, I have a lot of things to do.”

He opened the door, the chatter of typewriters, Alcibíades’ silhouette in the background, at his desk.

“No problem at all, everything’s agreed on,” Tallio blurted, waving his arms in desperation. “No problem at all, Mr. Bermúdez. Monday at ten o’clock, is that all right?”

“Fine,” he said, almost pushing him. “Until Monday, then.”

He closed the door and immediately stopped smiling. He went to the desk, sat down, took the little vial from the right drawer, filled his mouth with saliva before he put the pill on the tip of his tongue. He swallowed, kept his eyes closed for a moment, his hands flattening out the blotter. A moment later Alcibíades came in.

“The Italian’s all upset, Don Cayo. I hope that editor was there at the agency at eleven o’clock. I told him that was when I called.”

“He’s going to fire him in any case,” he said. “It’s not right for a fellow who signs manifestoes to work at a news agency. Did you give my message to the Minister?”

“He expects you at three, Don Cayo,” Dr. Alcibíades said.

“All right, tell Major Paredes I’m coming by to see him, doctor. I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.”

*

“I came to
La
Crónica
without any enthusiasm, just because I had to make some money,” Santiago said. “But now I think that out of all the possible jobs, it may be the least bad of the lot.”

“Three and a half months and you haven’t been disillusioned?”
Carlitos
asked. “That’s enough to put you in a cage and show you off at the circus, Zavalita.”

No, you hadn’t been disillusioned, Zavalita: the new Ambassador from Brazil Dr. Hernando de Magalhães presented his credentials this
morning
, I am optimistic about the future of tourism in the country the Director of Tourism declared last night at a press conference, the Entre Nous Society celebrated another anniversary with a well-attended and select reception. But you liked that garbage, Zavalita, you sat down at your typewriter and you were happy. No more of that careful detail with which you wrote short articles, he thinks, that fierce conviction with which you corrected, tore up and rewrote the pages before you took them to Arispe.

“How long did it take you to become disillusioned with journalism?” Santiago asked.

Those little articles and pygmy boxes that you’d look for anxiously the next morning in the copy of
La
Crónica
you bought at the newsstand next to the boardinghouse in Barranco. That you would show with pride to Señora Lucía: I wrote that, ma’am.

“A week after I came to
La
Crónica
,”
Carlitos said. “At the agency I wasn’t in journalism, I was more of a typist. I had a schedule that went straight through without any breaks, by two o’clock I was off and I could spend my afternoons reading and my nights writing. If they hadn’t fired me, literature wouldn’t have lost a great poet, Zavalita.”

You were due at five, but you got to the editorial room much earlier, and from three-thirty on you were already watching the clock in the boardinghouse, impatient to go get on the streetcar, would they give
you an outside assignment today? a reporting job? an interview? to arrive and sit down at your desk waiting for Arispe to call you: put this information into ten lines, Zavalita. Never again such enthusiasm, he thinks, the desire to do things, I’ll get myself a scoop and they’ll congratulate me, never again such plans, they’ll move me up. What went wrong, he thinks. He thinks: when, why.

“I never knew why, one morning that fag queen came into the agency and told me you’ve been sabotaging the service, you Communist,” and Carlitos laughed in slow motion. “Are you serious?”

“Quite serious, God damn you,” Tallio said. “Do you know how much your sabotage is going to cost me?”

“It’s going to cost you your mother’s name if you curse me or raise your voice to me again,” Carlitos said, happy all over. “I didn’t even get any severance pay. And then and there I came to
La
Crónica
and then and there I found the tomb of poetry, Zavalita.”

“Why didn’t you quit journalism?” Santiago asked. “You could have found a different kind of job.”

“You get in and you can’t get out, it’s quicksand,” Carlitos said, as if going away or falling asleep. “You keep on sinking, sinking. You hate it, you can’t free yourself. You hate it and suddenly you’re ready for anything just to get a scoop. Staying up all night, getting into incredible places. It’s an addiction, Zavalita.”

“I’ve had it up to here, but they’re not going to put a lid on me, you know why?” Santiago says. “Because I’m going to finish my law degree one way or another, Ambrosio.”

“I didn’t pick the police beat, it so happened that Arispe couldn’t stand me on local news anymore or Maldonado on cables either,”
Carlitos
was saying, far, far away. “Only Becerrita could stand to have me working for him. The police beat, the worst of the worst. Just what I like. The dregs, my element, Zavalita.”

Then he was silent and sat motionless and smiling, looking into space. When Santiago called the waiter, he woke up and paid the check. They went out and Santiago had to hold his arm because he was bumping into tables and walls. The arcade was empty, a pale blue strip of sky was creeping in over the rooftops of the Plaza San Martín.

“It’s strange that Norwin didn’t come by,” Carlitos was reciting in a kind of quiet tenderness. “One of the best of the castaways, a magnificent part of the dregs. I’ll introduce you to him someday, Zavalita.”

He was staggering, leaning against one of the columns of the arcade, his face dirty with a growth of beard, his nose igneous, his eyes tragically happy. Tomorrow without fail, Carlitos.

S
HE WAS COMING BACK
from the drugstore with two rolls of toilet paper when she came face to face with Ambrosio at the service entrance. Don’t look so serious, he said, I haven’t come to see you. And she: why should you be coming to see me, there’s nothing between us. Didn’t you see the car? Ambrosio asked, Don Fermín’s up there with Don Cayo. Don Fermín, Don Cayo? Amalia asked. Yes, why was she surprised. She didn’t know why, but she was surprised, they were so different, she tried to imagine Don Fermín at one of the parties and it seemed impossible.

“It would be better if he didn’t see you,” Ambrosio said. “He might tell him that you were thrown out of his house or that you ran out on the laboratory, and Señora Hortensia might fire you too.”

“What you don’t want is for Don Cayo to find out that you brought me here,” Amalia said.

“Well, that too,” Ambrosio said. “But not because of me, because of you. I already told you that Don Cayo has hated me ever since I left him to go work for Don Fermín. If he found out that you know me, you’d be all through.”

“My, what a good person you’ve become,” she said. “The way you worry about me now.”

They’d been chatting by the service entrance and Amalia kept looking to see if Símula or Carlota was coming. Hadn’t Ambrosio told her that Don Fermín and Don Cayo didn’t see each other the way they used to? Yes, ever since Señor Cayo had young Santiago arrested they weren’t friends anymore; but they had business together and that’s probably why Don Fermín is in San Miguel now. Was Amalia happy here? Yes, very happy, she had less work than before and the mistress was very good. Then you owe me a favor, Ambrosio said, but she cut off his joking: I already paid you a long time back, don’t you ever forget it. And she changed the subject, how was everybody in Miraflores? Señora Zoila very good, young Sparky had a girl friend who’d been a runner-up for Miss Peru, Missy Teté a young lady now, and young Santiago hadn’t been back to the house since he ran away. You couldn’t mention his name in front of Señora Zoila because she’d start crying. And all of a sudden: San Miguel’s been good for you, you’ve turned into a good-looking girl. Amalia didn’t laugh, she looked at him with all the fury she could muster.

“Sunday’s your day off, isn’t it?” he said. “I’ll wait for you there at the streetcar stop, at two o’clock. Will you come?”

“Not in your wildest dream,” Amalia said. “Is there something
between
us that we should go out together?”

She heard a sound in the kitchen and went into the house without saying good-bye to Ambrosio. She went to the pantry to spy: there was Don Fermín, saying good-bye to Don Cayo. Tall, gray-haired, so elegant in gray, and she remembered all at once all the things that had happened since she’d seen him last, Trinidad, the alley in Mirones, the Maternity Hospital, and she felt the tears coming on. She went to the bathroom to wash her face. Now she was furious with Ambrosio, furious with herself for having stopped to talk to him as if there was anything between them, for not having told him did you think that just because you told me they needed a maid I’d forgotten, that I’d forgiven you? I hope you drop dead, she thought.

*

He tightened his tie, put on his jacket, took his briefcase and left the office. He passed by the secretaries with an absent-minded face. The car was parked by the door, the Ministry of War, Ambrosio. It took them fifteen minutes to cross the downtown area. He got out before Ambrosio could open the door for him, wait for me here. Soldiers who saluted, a hallway, stairs, an officer who smiled. In the waiting room of the
Intelligence
Service a captain with a little mustache was expecting him: the Major is in his office, Mr. Bermúdez, go right in. Paredes got up when he saw him come in. On the desk there were three telephones, a small flag, a green blotter; on the walls maps, city plans, a photograph of Odría and a calendar.

“Espina called me to complain,” Major Paredes said. “If you don’t get rid of that man at the door I’ll take a shot at him. He was furious.”

“I already ordered the plainclothesman withdrawn,” he said,
loosening
his tie. “At least he knows he’s being watched now.”

“I’ll say again that it’s a waste of time,” Major Paredes said. “Before he was let go he was promoted. Why should he start plotting?”

“Because it hurts his pride not being Minister,” he said. “No, he wouldn’t plot on his own, he’s too dumb for that. But they can use him. Anybody can get his finger into the Uplander’s mouth.”

Major Paredes shrugged his shoulders, made a skeptical gesture. He opened a cupboard, took out an envelope and handed it to him. He thumbed distractedly through the papers, the photographs.

“All his movements, all his telephone conversations,” Major Paredes said. “Nothing suspicious. He’s spending his time consoling himself through his fly, you can see. Besides the mistress in Breña, he’s taken on another one, in Santa Beatriz.”

He laughed, muttered something, and he could see them for an instant: fat, fleshy, their teats hanging down, advancing one after the other with a perverse joy in their eyes. He put the papers and photographs back into the envelope and laid it on the desk.

“The two mistresses, the dice games at the Military Club, one or two drinking bouts a week, that’s his life,” Major Paredes said. “The
Uplander
is a used-up man, believe me.”

“But with a lot of friends in the army, lots of officers who owe him favors,” he said, “I’ve got the nose of a hound dog. Stay with me, give me a little more time.”