Conversation in the Cathedral (49 page)

“Did Mr. Becerra talk to you?” Santiago asked. “It’s about the murder in Jesús María.”

“He promised to keep me completely out of it, he swore to me and I hope he keeps his word.” Her spongy hand, her mechanical smile, her honeyed voice with a touch of alarm and hatred. “If there’s any scandal, it’s the place that will suffer, understand?”

“We only want a little information,” Santiago said. “Who she was, what she did.”

“I barely knew her, I don’t know much of anything.” The stiff lashes that fluttered evasively, Zavalita, the thick red lips that closed up like mimosa leaves. “She stopped singing here six months ago. Farther back than that, eight months ago. She’d just about lost her voice, I hired her because I felt sorry for her, she’d sing three or four numbers and leave. Before that she was at the Laguna.”

She stopped speaking when the first rainbow burst and she remained looking, her mouth open: Periquito was peacefully taking pictures of the bar, the dance floor, the microphone.

“What are those pictures for?” she grumbled, pointing. “Becerrita swore to me that my name wouldn’t be mentioned.”

“Just to show one of the places where she sang, your name won’t be mentioned,” Santiago said. “I’d like to know something about the Muse’s private life. Some story, anything.”

“I don’t know much of anything,” Paqueta murmured, following Periquito with her eyes. “Outside of what everybody knows. That she was pretty famous a long time ago, that she sang at the Embassy Club, that later on she was the girl friend of you know who. But I imagine they won’t say anything about that.”

“Why not, ma’am?” Periquito laughed. “Odría isn’t President
anymore
, Manuel Prado is, and
La
Crónica
belongs to the Prados. We can say whatever we want to.”

“And I thought we would be able to and I mentioned it in the first story, Carlitos.” Santiago laughed. “Former mistress of Cayo Bermúdez stabbed to death.”

“I think you’re being a little dumb, Zavalita,” Becerrita grunted, looking over the pages ill-humoredly. “Well, let’s see what the big boss thinks.”

“Nightclub star stabbed to death would have more impact,” Arispe said. “And besides, they’re orders from above, my good sir.”

“Was she or wasn’t she the mistress of that son of a bitch?” Becerrita asked. “And if she was and the son of a bitch isn’t in the government and isn’t even in the country, why can’t we say it?”

“Because it suits the balls of the headman not to say it, my good sir,” Arispe said.

“All right, that argument always wins me over,” Becerrita said. “Change the whole story, Zavalita. Wherever you say former mistress of Cayo Bermúdez put former nightclub queen.”

“And then Bermúdez abandoned her and left the country, during Odría’s last days.” Paqueta snorted: another bulb had just flashed. “You probably remember, during that trouble with the Coalition in Arequipa. She went back to singing, but she wasn’t the same as before. Not her looks and not her voice. She drank a lot, once she tried to kill herself. She couldn’t get work. The poor girl had a hard time of it.”

“All the time you were with him you never knew him to have a woman?” Santiago asks. “He must have been queer, then.”

“What kind of life did she lead?” Paqueta asked. “A bad life, I already told you. She drank, she couldn’t hold onto boyfriends, always needing money. I hired her because I felt sorry for her, and I didn’t keep her long, only a couple of months, maybe not even that long. The customers were bored. Her songs were out of style. She tried to get up to date, but she just couldn’t get the new music.”

“I didn’t know him to have any mistresses, but he did have some women,” Ambrosio says. “Whores, that is, son.”

“And what was that drug trouble all about, ma’am,” Santiago said.

“Drugs?” Paqueta said, stupefied. “What drugs?”

“He would go to whorehouses, I took him a lot of times,” Ambrosio says. “To that one you remembered from way back. Ivonne’s, that one. Lots of times.”

“But you were involved too, ma’am, you were arrested with her,” Santiago said. “And, thanks to Mr. Becerra, nothing came out in the papers, don’t you remember?”

A quick tremor animated her fleshy face, the inflexible lashes vibrated with indignation, but then a challenging, reminiscent smile softened Paqueta’s expression. She closed her eyes as if to look inside and locate that lost episode among her memories: oh yes, oh that.

“And Ludovico, the fellow I told you about, the one who got me into a jam by sending me to Pucallpa, the one who took my place as Don Cayo’s chauffeur, he used to take him to whorehouses all the time,” Ambrosio says. “No, son, he wasn’t any fairy.”

“There weren’t any drugs or anything like that involved, it was a mistake, it was cleared up right there,” Paqueta said. “The police
arrested
a person who used to come here from time to time, he was pushing cocaine, it seems, and they called her and me as witnesses. We didn’t know anything and they let us go.”

“Who was the Muse going with when she was working here?”
Santiago
asked.

“Who was her lover?” Her overlapping and uneven teeth, Zavalita, her gossipy eyes. “She didn’t have just one, she had a lot of them.”

“Even if you don’t give me their names,” Santiago said, “at least tell me what kind of guys they were.”

“She had her adventures, but I don’t know the details, she wasn’t my girl friend,” Paqueta said. “I only know what everybody else does, that she’d fallen into a bad life and that’s all.”

“Do you know if she has any family here?” Santiago asked. “Or some girl friend who might be able to give us more information?”

“I don’t think she had any family,” Paqueta said. “She said she was Peruvian, but some people thought she was a foreigner. They said she got her Peruvian passport through you know who, when he was her lover.”

“Mr. Becerra would like some photographs of the Muse when she was singing here,” Santiago said.

“I’ll give them to you, but please don’t get me mixed up in this, don’t mention my name,” Paqueta said. “I’ll help you under that condition. Becerrita promised me.”

“And we’ll keep his promise, ma’am,” Santiago said. “Don’t you know anyone who could give us more information on her? That’s the last question and we’ll leave you alone.”

“When she stopped singing here I didn’t see her again.” Paqueta sighed, suddenly took on the mysterious air of an informer. “But you heard things about her. That she’d gone into one of those houses. I’m not sure. I only know that she lived with a woman who was a hustler, who worked at the Frenchwoman’s place.”

“The Muse with one of the women from Ivonne’s?” Santiago asked.

“You can name the Frenchwoman.” Paqueta laughed, and her soft voice had become growly with hatred. “Use her name, so the police will bring her in for questioning. That old woman knows a lot of things.”

“What was the name of the girl friend she lived with?” Santiago asked.

“Queta?” Ambrosio says, and a few seconds later, stupefied: “Queta, son?”

“If you say I gave the information they’ll ruin me, the Frenchwoman is the worst enemy you could have.” Paqueta softened her voice. “I don’t know her real name. Queta’s the name she went by.”

“Didn’t you ever see her?” Santiago asks. “Didn’t you ever hear Bermúdez mention her?”

“They were living together and people said a lot of things about them,” Paqueta whispered, winking. “That they were more than just girl friends. It was probably all gossip, of course.”

“I never heard of her, I never saw her,” Ambrosio says. “Don Cayo wasn’t going to talk to me about his chippies, I was just his chauffeur, son.”

They went out into the mist, dampness and darkness of Porvenir; Darío was nodding, leaning over the steering wheel of the van. When he started up the motor a dog barked mournfully from the sidewalk.

“She’d forgotten about the coke, that she’d been arrested with the Muse.” Periquito laughed. “Some nerve, eh?”

“She’s glad she got killed, you can see that she hated her,” Santiago said. “Did you catch it all, Periquito? That she was a drunk, that she’d lost her voice, that she was a dyke?”

“But you got some good information from her,” Periquito said. “You can’t complain.”

“This is all garbage,” Becerrita said. “You’ve got to keep on digging until you hit the pus.”

Those had been agitated and difficult days, Zavalita, you felt
interested
, restless, he thinks: alive again. Coming and going without rest: getting in and out of the van, going in and out of nightclubs, radio stations, boardinghouses, brothels, an incessant back and forth among the musty night-walking fauna of the city.

“The name Muse doesn’t come off too well, we have to rechristen her,” Becerrita said. “On the Track of the Nighttime Butterfly!”

You wrote long articles, short pieces, boxes, captions for the
photographs
with a growing excitation, Zavalita. Becerrita would read over the pages with sour eyes, scratching out, adding words with trembling red letters, and he would write the headlines: New Revelations in Dissipated Life of Nighttime Butterfly Murdered in Jesús María. Was Muse a Woman with a Terrible Past?
La
Crónica
Reporters Uncover New Facts in Crime That Has All Lima Shocked, From Show Business Start to Bloody End of One-Time Night-Life Queen, Stabbed Nighttime
Butterfly
Had Fallen to Lowest Level of Immorality Manager of Nightclub Where Muse Sang Her Last Songs Declares, Did Nighttime Butterfly Lose Voice Because of Drugs?

“We’ve left
Última
Hora
way behind,” Arispe said. “Keep laying it on, Becerrita.”

“More swill for the dogs, Zavalita,” Carlitos said. “Those are the orders from the big boss.”

“You’re doing a good job, Zavalita,” Becerrita said. “In twenty years you’ll be a passable police reporter.”

“Piling up shit with a great deal of enthusiasm, a small pile today, a little more tomorrow, a fair amount day after tomorrow,” Santiago said. “Until there was a whole mountain of shit. And now to eat it, down to the last crumb. That’s what happened to me, Carlitos.”

“Are we through now, Mr. Becerra?” Periquito asked. “Can I go get some sleep?”

“We haven’t even started,” Becerrita said. “Let’s go see Madama to find out if that muff business is true.”

Robertito had come out to meet them, welcome to this house which is yours, how was life treating him, Mr. Becerra, but Becerrita took away his joy at once: they’d come on business, could they go into the parlor? Come in, Mr. Becerra, all of you.

“Bring the boys some beer,” Becerrita said. “And bring me Madama. It’s urgent.”

Robertito shook his chestnut curls, nodded with an unfriendly chuckle, left with the leap of a ballet dancer. Periquito dropped into an easy chair with his legs stretched out, it was nice here, so elegant, and Santiago sat down beside him. The carpeted parlor, he thinks, the
indirect
lighting, the three paintings on the wall. In the first one a young man with blond hair and a mask was chasing along a tangled path after a very white girl with a wasp waist who was running on tiptoes; in the second one he had caught her and embracing they were sinking into a cascade of willows; in the third one the girl was lying on the grass, her bosom exposed, the young man was tenderly kissing her round shoulders and her expression was half alarmed and half languid. They were on the shore of a lake or a river and in the distance there was a group of long-necked swans.

“You’re the most rotten younger generation in history,” Becerrita said with satisfaction. “What else interests you besides drinking and
whoring
?”

His mouth was twisted in an almost smiling grimace, he was scratching his little mustache with his mustard-colored fingers, he’d pushed back his hat and was pacing up and down with one hand in his pocket, like the villain in a Mexican movie, he thinks. Robertito came in with a tray.

“The lady will be right along, Mr. Becerra.” He bowed. “She asked me if you’d like some whiskey.”

“I can’t. My ulcer,” Becerrita grunted. “Every time I take a drink I shit blood the next day.”

Robertito went out and there was Ivonne, Zavalita. Her long and heavily powdered nose, he thinks, her dress with crepe and noisy
spangles
. Mature, experienced, smiling, she kissed Becerrita on the cheek, extended a courtly hand to Periquito and Santiago. She looked at the tray, hadn’t Robertito served them? she gave a reproachful look, leaned over and filled the glasses expertly, halfway and without much foam, brought them to them. She sat down on the edge of the chair, stretched out her neck, crossed her legs, the skin was gathered into little folds under her eyes.

“Don’t look at me with that face full of surprise,” Becerrita said. “You know why we’re here, Madama.”

“I can’t believe that you don’t want anything to drink.” Her foreign accent, Zavalita, her affected gestures, her ease of a well-to-do matriarch. “You’re an old-time drunk, Becerrita.”

“I used to be, until my ulcer made mincemeat of my stomach,”
Becerrita
said. “Now all I can drink is milk. From a cow.”

“Still the same.” Ivonne turned to Santiago and Periquito. “This old man and I are like a brother and a sister, for centuries now.”

“A little incestuous at one point.” Becerrita laughed, and opening up with the same intimate tone, “Make believe I’m a priest and you’re making your confession. How long did you have the Muse here?”

“The Muse, here?” Ivonne smiled. “You make a funny priest,
Becerrita
.”

“Now you don’t trust me.” Becerrita sat on the arm of Ivonne’s chair. “Now you’re lying to me.”

“You’re crazy, Father.” Ivonne smiled and slapped Becerrita on the knee. “If she’d worked here I would have told you.”

She took a handkerchief from her sleeve, wiped her eyes, stopped smiling. She knew her, of course, sometimes she’d come here when she was the girl friend of, well, Becerrita knew who. He’d brought her several times to have some fun, so she could spy from that little window that looked out into the bar. But as far as Ivonne knew she’d never worked in any house. She laughed again, elegantly. The little wrinkles around her eyes, on her neck, he thinks, her hatred: the poor thing worked off the street, like a bitch.