Conversation in the Cathedral (79 page)

“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” Her voice was hard and deep, her eyes were turning red, she was wringing her hands as she spoke. “Getting married in secret like that? Passing the shame on to your parents, your brother and sister?”

Don Fermín still had his head down, absorbed in his shoes, and Popeye’s smile had frozen and he looked like an idiot. Cary was looking from one person to another, discovering that something was happening, asking with her eyes what’s going on, and Sparky had folded his arms and was looking at Santiago severely.

“This isn’t the time, mama,” Santiago said. “If I’d known it was going to upset you like this I wouldn’t have come.”

“I would have preferred a thousand times that you hadn’t come,” Señora Zoila said, raising her voice. “Do you hear me? Do you hear me? A thousand times not to see you rather than see you married like this, you lunatic.”

“Be quiet, Zoila.” Don Fermín had taken her arm, Popeye and Sparky were looking apprehensively toward the stairs, Cary had opened her mouth. “Please, girl.”

“Can’t you see who he’s married?” Señora Zoila sobbed. “Don’t you realize, can’t you see? How can I accept it, how can I see my son married to someone who could be his servant?”

“Zoila, don’t be an idiot.” He was pale too, Zavalita, he was terrified too. “You’re saying stupid things, dear. The girl might hear you. She’s Santiago’s wife, Zoila.”

Papa’s hoarse and stumbling voice, Zavalita, his efforts and those of Sparky to calm mama down as she shouted and sobbed. Popeye’s face was freckled and crimson, Cary had huddled in her chair as if there were a polar wind blowing.

“You’ll never see her again, but be quiet now, mama,” Santiago said finally. “I won’t let you insult her. She hasn’t done anything to you and …”

“She hasn’t done anything to me, anything to me?” Señora Zoila roared, trying to break away from Don Fermín and Sparky. “She
wheedled
you, she turned your head, and that little social climber hasn’t done anything to me?”

A Mexican movie, he thinks, one of the kind you like. He thinks: mariachis and charros were the only things missing, love. Sparky and Don Fermín had finally led Señora Zoila, almost dragging her, into the study and Santiago was standing up. You were looking at the stairs, Zavalita, you were locating the bathroom, calculating the distance: yes, she’d heard. There was that indignation you hadn’t felt for years, that holy wrath from the days of Cahuide and the revolution, Zavalita. His mother’s moans could be heard inside, his father’s desolate and
recriminatory
voice. Sparky had come back to the living room a moment later, flushed, incredibly furious.

“You’ve given mama an attack.” He furious, he thinks, Sparky
furious
, poor Sparky furious. “A person can’t live in peace around here because of your crazy tricks, it would seem that you haven’t got anything better to do than make the folks fly into a rage.”

“Please, Sparky,” Cary peeped, getting up. “Sparky, please, please.”

“It’s all right, love,” Sparky said. “Just that this nut always does things the wrong way. Papa in such delicate health and this one here …”

“I can take certain things from mama, but not from you,” Santiago said. “Not from you, Sparky, I’m warning you.”

“You’re warning me?” Sparky said, but Cary and Popeye had got hold of him now and were pulling him back: what are you laughing at, son? Ambrosio asks. You weren’t laughing, Zavalita, you were looking at the stairs and over your shoulder you heard Popeye’s strangled voice: don’t get all worked up, man, it’s all over, man. Was she crying and was that why she didn’t come down, should you go up to get her or wait? They finally appeared at the top of the stairs and Teté was looking as if there were ghosts or demons in the living room, but you carried yourself splendidly, sweet, he thinks, better than María Félix in such-and-such, better than Libertad Lamarque in the other one. She came downstairs slowly, holding the banister, looking only at Santiago, and when she got to him she said in a steady voice:

“It’s getting late, isn’t it? We have to leave now, don’t we, love?”

“Yes,” Santiago said. “We can get a taxi over by the square.”

“We’ll take you,” Popeye said, almost shouting. “We’ll take them, won’t we, Teté?”

“Of course,” Teté babbled. “We’ll take a little drive.”

Ana said good-bye, walked past Sparky and Cary without shaking hands, and went rapidly into the garden, followed by Santiago, who hadn’t said good-bye. Popeye got ahead of them by leaps and bounds to open the gate to the street and let Ana through; then he ran as if someone were chasing him and brought up his car and jumped out to open the door for Ana: poor Freckle Face. At first they didn’t say anything. Santiago started to smoke, Popeye started to smoke, Ana, very stiff in her seat, was looking out the window.

“You know, Ana, give me a call,” Teté said with a voice that was still wounded, when they said good-bye at the door of the boardinghouse. “So I can help you find an apartment, anything.”

“Yes, of course,” Ana said. “So you can help me find an apartment. Yes, of course.”

“The four of us ought to go out together sometime, Skinny,” Popeye said, smiling with his whole mouth and blinking furiously. “To eat, to the movies. Whenever you say, brother.”

“Yes, of course,” Santiago said. “I’ll call you one of these days, Freckle Face.”

In the room, Ana began to weep so hard that Doña Lucía came to ask what was the matter. Santiago was calming her down, caressing her, explaining to her, and Ana had finally dried her eyes. Then she began to protest and to insult them: she was never going to see them again, she detested them, she hated them. Santiago agreed with her: yes sweet, of course love. She didn’t know why she hadn’t come downstairs and slapped that old woman, that stupid old woman: yes sweet. Even though she was your mother, even though she was an older woman, so she would learn what it meant to call her a social climber, so she would see: of course love.

*

“All right,” Ambrosio said. “I’ve washed, I’m clean now.”

“All right,” Queta said. “What happened? Wasn’t I at that little party?”

“No,” Ambrosio said. “It was meant to be a little party and it wasn’t. Something happened and a lot of guests didn’t show up. Only three or four and him among them. The mistress was furious, they’ve snubbed me, she said.”

“The madwoman thinks Cayo Shithead gives those little parties so she can have a good time,” Queta said. “He gives them to keep his buddies happy.”

She was stretched out on the bed, lying on her back like him, both dressed now, both smoking. They were putting the ashes in an empty matchbox that he held on his chest; the cone of light fell on their feet, their faces were in the shadows. No music or talking could be heard; only the distant creak of a lock or the rumble of a vehicle on the street from time to time.

“I’d already realized that those little parties had some reason behind them,” Ambrosio said. “Do you think that’s the only reason he keeps the mistress? To entertain his friends with her?”

“Not just for that.” Queta laughed with a spaced and ironic chuckle, looking at the smoke that she was letting out. “Because the madwoman is pretty too and she tolerates his vices. What was it that happened?”

“You tolerate them too,” he said respectfully, not turning to look at her.

“I tolerate them?” Queta asked slowly; she waited a few seconds while she crushed the butt of her cigarette and laughed again with the same slow, mocking laugh. “Yours too, right? It’s been expensive for you to come and spend a couple of hours here, hasn’t it?”

“It cost me more at the whorehouse,” Ambrosio said; and he added, as if in secret, “You don’t charge me for the room.”

“Well, it costs him a lot more than you, don’t you see?” Queta said. “I’m not the same as her. The madwoman doesn’t do it for money, or because she’s looking after her interests. Or because she loves him, naturally. She does it because she’s naïve. I’m like the second lady of Peru, Quetita. Ambassadors, ministers come here. Poor madwoman. She doesn’t seem to realize that they go to San Miguel as if they were going to a whorehouse. She thinks they’re her friends, that they come because of her.”

“Don Cayo does realize it,” Ambrosio murmured. “They don’t
consider
me their equal, those sons of bitches, he says. He used to say that to me lots of times when I worked for him. And that they fawn on him because they have to.”

“He’s the one who fawns on them,” Queta said and, without pausing, “What was it, how did it happen? That night, that party.”

“I’d seen him there a few times,” Ambrosio said, and there was a slight change in his voice: a kind of fleeting retractile movement. “I knew that he used the familiar form with the mistress, for example. Ever since I started working for Don Cayo his face was familiar to me. I’d seen him twenty times maybe. But I don’t think he’d ever seen me. Until that party, that time.”

“Why did they have you come in?” Quetita seemed distracted. “Had they had you join other parties?”

“Just once, just that time,” Ambrosio said. “Ludovico was sick and Don Cayo had sent him home to sleep. I was in the car, knowing that I’d be on my behind all night long, and then the mistress came out and told me to come help.”

“The madwoman?” Queta asked, laughing. “Help?”

“Really help, they’d fired the maid or she’d left or something,”
Ambrosio
said. “To help pass the plates around, open bottles, get more ice. I’d never done anything like that, you can imagine.” He stopped
speaking
and laughed. “I helped, but I wasn’t very good. I broke two glasses.”

“Who was there?” Queta asked. “China, Lucy, Carmincha? How come none of them realized?”

“I don’t know their names,” Ambrosio said. “No, there weren’t any women. Only three or four men. And him, I’d been watching him when I came in with the plates of things and the ice. He was having his drinks but he wasn’t falling off his horse like the others. He didn’t get drunk. Or he didn’t look it.”

“He’s elegant, his gray hair suits him,” Queta said. “He must have been a good-looking boy when he was young. But there’s something annoying about him. He thinks he’s an emperor.”

“No,” Ambrosio insisted firmly. “He didn’t do anything crazy, he didn’t carry on. He had his drinks and that’s all. I was watching him. No, he wasn’t at all stuck-up. I know him, I know.”

“But what caught your attention?” Queta asked. “What was strange about the way he looked at you?”

“Nothing strange,” Ambrosio murmured, as if apologizing. His voice had grown faint and was intimate and thick. He explained slowly: “He must have looked at me a hundred times before, but all of a sudden you could see that he was looking at me. Not like at a wall anymore. You see?”

“The madwoman must have been falling all over herself, she didn’t notice,” Queta said distractedly. “She was very surprised when she found out you were going to go to work for him. Was she falling all over herself?”

“I would go into the living room and right away I could see that he’d started looking at me,” Ambrosio whispered. “His eyes were half
laughing
, half shining. As if he was telling me something, you know?”

“And you still didn’t realize?” Queta said. “I’ll bet you Cayo Shithead did.”

“I realized that way of looking at me was strange,” Ambrosio
murmured
. “On the sly. He’d lift his glass so Don Cayo would think he was going to sip his drink and I realized that wasn’t why. He’d put his eyes on me and wouldn’t take them off until I was out of the room.”

Queta started laughing and he stopped immediately. He waited, not moving, for her to stop laughing. Now they were both smoking again, lying on their backs, and he’d put his hand on her knee. He wasn’t stroking it, he was letting it rest there, peacefully. It wasn’t hot, but sweat had broken out on the portion of naked skin where their arms touched. A voice was heard going down the hall. Then a car with a whining motor. Queta looked at the clock on the night table. It was two o’clock.

“One of those times I asked him if he wanted more ice” Ambrosio murmured. “The other guests had gone, the party was almost over, he was the only one left. He didn’t answer me. He closed and opened his eyes in a funny way that’s hard to explain. Half as a challenge, half making fun, you know?”

“And you still hadn’t caught on?” Queta insisted. “You’re dumb.”

“I am,” Ambrosio said. “I thought he was acting drunk, I thought he probably is and wants to have some fun at my expense. I’d had my few drinks in the kitchen and thought I’m probably drunk myself and only think that’s what it is. But the next time I came in I said no, what’s eating him. It must have been two or three o’clock, how should I know. I came in to empty an ashtray, I think. That’s when he spoke to me.”

“Sit down for a bit,” Don Fermín said. “Have a drink with us.”

“It wasn’t an invitation, it was more like an order,” Ambrosio
murmured
. “He didn’t know my name. In spite of the fact that he’d heard Don Cayo say it a hundred times, he didn’t know it. He told me later on.”

Queta started to laugh, he fell silent and waited. A halo of light was reaching the chair and lighting up his jumbled clothes. The smoke was flattening out over them, spreading, breaking up into stealthy rhythmical swirls. Two cars passed in rapid succession as if racing.

“What about her?” Queta asked, now just barely laughing. “What about Hortensia?”

Ambrosio’s eyes rolled around in a sea of confusion: Don Cayo didn’t seem either displeased or surprised. He looked at him for an instant seriously and then nodded yes to him, do what he says, sit down. The ashtray was dancing stupidly in Ambrosio’s uplifted hand.

“She’d fallen asleep,” Ambrosio said. “Stretched out in the easy chair. She must have had a lot to drink. I didn’t feel right there, sitting on the edge of the chair. Strange, ashamed, my stomach upset.”

He rubbed his hands and finally, with a ceremonious solemnity, said here’s how without looking at anyone and drank. Queta had turned to look at his face: his eyes were closed, his lips tight together, and he was perspiring.