Conversation in the Cathedral (38 page)

“It is a question of several millions, after all,” he said benevolently. “Their impatience makes sense.”

“I’ll never understand gringos, don’t they seem like little children to you?” Don Fermín said with the same casual, almost indifferent tone. “Half-savages besides. They put their feet on the desk, take off their jackets wherever they are. And the ones I’m talking about aren’t
nobodies
, important people, I imagine. Sometimes I feel like giving them one of Carreño’s books on etiquette.”

He was looking out the window at Colmena where the streetcars were coming and going, listening to the endless jokes of the men at the next table.

“The whole thing’s all set,” he said suddenly. “Last night I had dinner with the Minister of Development. The winning bid should appear in the
Official
Journal
on Monday or Tuesday. Tell your friends they’ve won the contract, they can sleep in peace.”

“My partners, not my friends,” Don Fermín protested, smiling. “Could you be the friend of gringos? We don’t have much in common with those boors, Don Cayo.”

He didn’t say anything. Smoking, he waited for Don Fermín to reach his hand out to the little dish of peanuts, lift his glass of gin to his mouth, drink, wipe his lips with his napkin and look into his eyes.

“Is it true that you don’t want those shares?” He watched him avert his eyes, suddenly interested in the empty chair opposite him. “They insist I convince you, Don Cayo. And really, I can’t see why you won’t accept them.”

“Because I don’t know anything about business,” he said. “I’ve
already
told you that during my twenty years in business I never made a good deal.”

“Shares made out to the bearer, the safest, most discreet thing in the world.” Don Fermín was smiling at him in a friendly way. “Which can be sold at twice their value in a short time, if you don’t want to keep them. I hope you don’t think it improper for you to accept those shares.”

“It’s been a long time since I’ve known what was proper or improper.” He smiled. “Only whether it suits me or not.”

“Shares that won’t cost the state a cent, just those gringo boors.” Don Fermín smiled. “You’re doing them a favor, and it’s logical for them to reimburse you. Those shares mean a lot more than a hundred thousand soles in cash, Don Cayo.”

“I’m a modest man, the hundred thousand soles is plenty for me.” He smiled again, an attack of coughing made him stop speaking for a
moment
. “Let them give them to the Minister of Development, he’s a businessman. I only take what I can handle and count. My father was a moneylender, Don Fermín, and he used to say that. I’ve inherited it from him.”

“Well, to each his own,” Don Fermín said, shrugging his shoulders. “I’ll take care of the deposit, the check will be ready today.”

They were silent for a moment until the waiter came over to pick up the glasses and brought the menu. Don Fermín ordered a consommé and corvina, and he a steak with salad. While the waiter was setting the table, he was listening, sparingly, to Don Fermín, who was talking about a way to lose weight and still eat that had appeared in that month’s
Selecciones
del
Reader’s
Digest.

*

“They never invited you to the house,” Santiago said. “They’ve always treated you as if they were better than you.”

“Well, thanks to your running away we see each other more now.” Uncle Clodomiro smiled. “Even if it’s only for their own interest, they do come to see me all the time to get news of you. Not just Fermín, Zoilita too. It was about time that absurd distance between us came to an end.”

“Where did that distance come from, uncle?” Santiago asked. “We almost never saw you.”

“Zoilita’s foolishness,” as if he were saying charms, he thinks, Zoilita’s charming manias. “Her delusions of grandeur, Skinny. I know she’s a great woman, every inch a lady, naturally. But she was always
stand-offish
with our family because we were paupers and didn’t have any family tree. She infected Fermín with it.”

“And you can forgive them for that,” Santiago said. “Papa spends his life insulting you and you let him.”

“Your father has a horror of mediocrity.” Uncle Clodomiro laughed. “He probably thinks that if we saw a lot of each other he’d become infected by me. He’s always been ambitious, ever since he was a boy. He always wanted to be somebody. Well, he got to be and you can’t reproach anyone for that. You should be proud instead. Because Fermín got what he has with hard work. Zoilita’s family may have helped him afterward, but when they were married he already had a fine position. While your uncle was rotting away buried alive in provincial branches of the Banco de Crédito.”

“You always talk about yourself as being mediocre, but underneath it all I don’t think you really believe it,” Santiago said. “And I don’t believe it either. You may not have any money, but you live a contented life.”

“Contentment isn’t happiness,” Uncle Clodomiro said. “That horror your father has for what my life has been used to seem unjust to me, but I can understand it now. Because sometimes I start thinking and I can’t find one single important memory. Office, home, home, office. Foolish little things, routines, that’s all. Well, let’s not get sad.”

Old Inocencia came into the small living room: dinner was on the table, they could come in. Her slippers, her shawl, the apron that was too big for her small, rachitic body, her weary voice. There was a plate of stew steaming at his place, but at his uncle’s there was only coffee and a sandwich.

“That’s all I can eat at night,” Uncle Clodomiro said. “Go ahead and start in before it gets cold.”

From time to time Inocencia would come in and to Santiago how is it, is it good? She took his face in her hand, how big you’d gotten, what a fine young man you were, and when she left Uncle Clodomiro would wink: poor Inocencia, so warm to you, to everybody, poor old woman.

“I wonder why my Uncle Clodomiro never got married,” Santiago says.

“Tonight you’re letting all your questions out,” Uncle Clodomiro said without rancor. “Well, I made the mistake of spending fifteen years in the provinces, thinking that in that way I’d get ahead faster in the bank. In those small towns I couldn’t find a suitable girl.”

“Don’t be scandalized, what if he was?” Santiago says. “It happens in the best of families, Ambrosio.”

“And when I got to Lima the shoe was on the other foot, the girls didn’t think I was suitable.” Uncle Clodomiro laughed. “After the bank gave me the boot, I had to start all over again at the Ministry with a miserable salary. So I stayed a bachelor. But don’t think I haven’t had my share of fun, nephew.”

“Wait a minute, child, don’t get up yet,” Inocencia shouted from inside. “There’s still dessert to come.”

“She can barely see or hear anymore and the poor thing works all day,” Uncle Clodomiro whispered. “Several times I tried to take on another girl so she could get some rest. Absolutely not, she went into a terrible fit, saying I wanted to get rid of her. She’s as stubborn as a mule. She’ll go straight to heaven, Skinny.”

*

You’re crazy, Amalia said, I haven’t forgiven him and I’m not going to, she hated him. Did they fight a lot? Gertrudis asked. Not much and always because he was such a coward, if he hadn’t been they would have gotten along famously. They’d see each other on their days off, go to the movies, go walking, at night she’d cross the garden in her bare feet and spend an hour with Ambrosio, two hours. All very fine, not even the other maids suspected anything. And Gertrudis: when did you realize he had another woman? The morning she saw him cleaning the car and talking to young Sparky. Amalia was looking at him out of the corner of her eye while she was putting the clothes into the washer, and
suddenly
she saw that he was confused and she heard what he was saying to young Sparky: me, son? What a thing to say, he could like that one? he wouldn’t take her as a gift, son. Pointing to me, Gertrudis, knowing that I was listening. Amalia felt like dropping the clothes, running over and scratching him. That night she went to his room only to tell him I heard you, who do you think you are, thinking that Ambrosio would ask to be forgiven. But he didn’t, Gertrudis, he didn’t, nothing of the sort: go on, beat it, get out of here. She’d been confused in the darkness, Gertrudis. She wasn’t going to go, why do you treat me like this, what have I done, until he got up from the bed and closed the door. Furious, Gertrudis, full of hate. Amalia had begun to cry, do you think I didn’t hear what you said to the boy about me? and now why are you kicking me out, why are you treating me like this. The boy’s getting suspicious, he shook her by the shoulders, with such fury, don’t ever set foot in my room again, with such desperation, Gertrudis: never again, understand? get out of here. Furious, frightened, crazy, he was shaking her against the wall. It’s not because of the master and the mistress, don’t look for excuses, Amalia was trying to say, you’ve found someone else, but he dragged her to the door, pushed her out and closed it: never again, understand. And still you’ve forgiven him, and you still love him,
Gertrudis
said, and Amalia are you crazy? She hated him. Who was the other woman? She didn’t know, she’d never seen her. Shamed, humiliated, she ran to her room crying so hard that the cook woke up and came in to her, Amalia had to pretend that it was her period, it always hurts me a lot. And since then never again? Never again. Naturally, he’d tried to make friends, let me explain, let’s still go together, but only seeing each other outside. Hypocrite, coward, liar, damn him, Amalia’s voice rose and he flew off in fright. At least he didn’t leave you pregnant, Gertrudis said. And Amalia: I didn’t speak to him again until later, much later. They would pass in the house and he good morning and she would turn her head away, hello Amalia and she as if a fly had passed. Maybe it wasn’t an excuse, Gertrudis said, maybe he was afraid they’d catch you and fire you both, maybe he didn’t have any other woman. And Amalia: do you think so? The proof that after years he saw you on the street and helped you get a job, Gertrudis said, if not, why had he looked her up, invited her out. Maybe he’d always loved her, maybe while you were with Trinidad he was pining for you, thinking about you, maybe he really was sorry for what he’d done to you. Do you think so? Amalia said, do you think so?

*

“You’re losing a lot of money because of that attitude,” Don Fermín said. “It’s absurd for you to be satisfied with a paltry amount, absurd for you to keep your capital tied up in a bank.”

“You still insist on my getting into the world of business.” He smiled. “No, Don Fermín, I learned my lesson before. Never again.”

“For every twenty or fifty thousand soles that you get, there are people getting triple the amount,” Don Fermín said. “And it’s not fair, because you’re the one who decides things. As to the other part, when are you going to make up your mind to invest something? I’ve already proposed four or five things that anybody would have jumped at.”

He was listening to him with a courteous smile on his lips, but his eyes were bored. The steak had been on the table for a few minutes already and he hadn’t touched it.

“I explained it to you already.” He picked up the knife and fork, sat looking at them. “When this government comes to an end, I’ll be the one stuck with the broken dishes.”

“All the more reason to secure your future,” Don Fermín said.

“Everybody will jump on me and the first ones will be the people in the government,” he said, looking at the meat, the salad, depressed. “As if by slinging mud at me they’ll be keeping themselves clean. I’d have to be an idiot to invest a single penny in this country.”

“My, you’re pessimistic today, Don Cayo.” Don Fermín pushed aside his consommé, the waiter brought his corvina. “Someone would think that Odría is about to fall from one moment to the next.”

“Not yet,” he said. “But there’s no such thing as a government that lasts forever, you know that. Besides, I’m not ambitious. When all this comes to an end, I’ll go live quietly outside the country, to die in peace.”

He looked at his watch, tried to get through a few pieces of meat. He was chewing without pleasure, sipping mineral water, and finally he called the waiter to take the plate away.

“I’ve got an appointment with the Minister at three and it’s two-fifteen already. Didn’t we have another little matter to discuss, Don Fermín?”

Don Fermín ordered coffee for both of them, lighted a cigarette. He took an envelope out of his pocket and laid it on the table.

“I’ve prepared a memorandum for you so you can study the facts at your leisure, Don Cayo. A land claim in the Bagua region. They’re young, dynamic engineers who aren’t afraid of hard work. They want to bring in cattle, you’ll see. The application has been stuck at the Ministry of Agriculture for six months.”

“Did you write down the number of the application?” He put the envelope into his briefcase without looking at it.

“And the date when the whole procedure started and all the
departments
it’s been through,” Don Fermín said. “This time I haven’t got any interest in the deal. They’re people I want to help. Friends.”

“I can’t promise you anything without looking into it,” he said. “
Besides
, I’m not too popular at the Ministry of Agriculture. In any case, I’ll let you know.”

“Naturally, these fellows will accept your conditions,” Don Fermín said. “It’s all right for me to do them a favor out of friendship, but not for you to be bothered for nothing by people you don’t know.”

“Naturally,” he said without smiling. “I’m only bothered for nothing by the government.”

They drank their coffee in silence. When the waiter brought the check they both took out their wallets, but Don Fermín paid. They went out onto the Plaza San Martín together.

“I imagine you’re very busy with the President’s trip to Cajamarca,” Don Fermín said.

“Yes, a little. I’ll call you when this matter goes through,” he said, shaking hands. “There’s my car. I’ll see you later, Don Fermín.”