The Discreet Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa
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To the memory of my friend Javier Silva Ruete
Our beautiful task is to imagine there is a labyrinth and a thread.
—Jorge Luis Borges, “The Fable’s Thread”
I
Felícito Yanaqué, the owner of the Narihualá Transport Company, left his house that morning, as he did every morning Monday to Saturday, at exactly seven thirty, after doing half an hour of qigong, taking a cold shower, and preparing his usual breakfast: coffee with goat’s milk and toast with butter and a few drops of raw chancaca honey. He lived in the center of Piura, and on Calle Arequipa the noise of the city had already erupted, the high sidewalks filled with people going to the office or the market, or taking their children to school. Some devout old women were on their way to the cathedral for eight o’clock Mass. Peddlers hawked their wares: molasses candies, lollipops, plantain chips, empanadas, and all kinds of snacks; and Lucindo the blind man, with the alms can at his feet, had already settled in at the corner under the eaves of the colonial house. Everything just as it had been every day from time immemorial.
With one exception: This morning someone had attached to the old studded wooden door of his house, at the height of the bronze knocker, a blue envelope on which the name of the owner, DON FELÍCITO YANAQUÉ, was clearly written in capital letters. As far as he could recall, it was the first time anyone had left him a letter hanging this way, like a judicial notice or a fine. Normally the mailman would slide a letter through the slot in the door. He took down the letter, opened the envelope, and began to read, moving his lips as he did so.
Señor Yanaqué:
The fact that your Narihualá Transport Company is doing so well is a source of pride for Piura and Piurans. But also a risk, since every successful business is at risk of being ravaged and vandalized by resentful, envious people and other undesirable types, and as you know very well, we have plenty of them here. But don’t worry. Our organization will take care of protecting Narihualá Transport, along with you and your worthy family, against any accident, unpleasantness, or threat from criminal elements. Our compensation for this work is $500 a month (a modest sum to protect your inheritance, as you can see). We’ll contact you soon regarding forms of payment.
There’s no need for us to emphasize the importance of your utmost discretion with regard to this matter. Everything should be kept strictly between us.
May God keep you.
Instead of a signature, the letter had a rough drawing of what seemed to be a spider.
Don Felícito read it a few more times. The letter, covered in inkblots, was written in an irregular hand. He was surprised, amused, and had the vague feeling it was a joke in bad taste. He crumpled the letter and envelope and was about to toss them into the trash basket at Lucindo the blind man’s corner. But then he changed his mind, smoothed it out, and put it in his pocket.
There were a dozen blocks between his house on Calle Arequipa and his office on Avenida Sánchez Cerro. He usually used this time to prepare for the day’s appointments as he walked, but today he also turned over in his mind the letter with the spider. Should he take it seriously? Go to the police and file a complaint? The blackmailers said they’d get in touch regarding “forms of payment.” Would it be better to wait until they did before going to the police? Maybe it was nothing but an idle joke intended to harass him. It was certainly true that for some time now crime had been on the rise in Piura: break-ins, muggings, and even kidnappings, people said, settled quietly by the families of white children in El Chipe and Los Ejidos. He felt unsettled and indecisive, but he was sure about at least one thing: Under no circumstances and not for any reason would he give a cent to those gangsters. And once again, as he had so many times in his life, Felícito recalled his father’s dying words: “Never let anybody walk all over you, son. This advice is the only inheritance you’ll have.” He’d paid attention and never let anybody walk all over him. And with more than fifty years behind him, he was too old now to change his ways. He was so caught up in these thoughts that he barely nodded a greeting to Joaquín Ramos, the reciter of poetry, and walked even faster; on other occasions he would stop to exchange a few words with that unrepentant bohemian, who had probably spent the night in some dive and was only now going home, his eyes glassy, wearing his usual monocle and tugging at the young she-goat he called his gazelle.
When he reached the offices of the Narihualá Transport Company, the buses to Sullana, Talara, Tumbes, Chulucanas, Morropón, Catacaos, La Unión, Sechura, and Bayóvar had already left, on schedule, all with a good number of passengers, as had the jitneys to Chiclayo and the vans to Paita. There was a handful of people dispatching packages or verifying the schedules of the afternoon buses and jitneys. His secretary, Josefita of the broad hips, flirtatious eyes, and low-cut blouses, had already placed the list of the day’s appointments and commitments on his desk, along with the thermos of coffee he’d drink throughout the morning until it was time for lunch.
“What’s wrong, Boss?” she greeted him. “Why that face? Did you have bad dreams last night?”
“Minor problems,” he replied as he took off his hat and jacket, hung them on the rack, and sat down. But he stood up immediately and put them on again, as if he’d remembered something very urgent.
“I’ll be back soon,” he said to his secretary on his way to the door. “I’m going to the police station to file a complaint.”
“Did thieves break in?” Josefita’s large, lively, protruding eyes opened wide. “It happens all the time in Piura nowadays.”
“No, no, I’ll tell you about it later.”
With resolute steps, Felícito headed for the police station a few blocks from his office, right on Avenida Sánchez Cerro. It was still early and the heat was tolerable, but he knew that in less than an hour these sidewalks lined with travel agencies and transport companies would begin to swelter, and he’d go back to the office in a sweat. Miguel and Tiburcio, his sons, had often told him he was crazy to always wear a jacket, vest, and hat in a city where everyone, rich or poor, spent the entire year in shirtsleeves or a guayabera. But since he had founded Narihualá Transport, the pride of his life, he had never abandoned those items meant to preserve propriety; winter or summer he always wore a hat, jacket, vest, and tie with its miniature knot. He was a small, very thin man, frugal and hardworking, who, in Yapatera, where he was born, and in Chulucanas, where he attended elementary school, had never worn shoes. He began to only when his father brought him to Piura. He was fifty-five years old and had maintained his health, industriousness, and agility. He thought his good physical condition was due to the morning qigong exercises his late friend, the storekeeper Lau, had taught him. It was the only sport he’d ever engaged in besides walking, if those slow-motion movements that were, more than an exercise for the muscles, a distinctive, scientific way of breathing, could be called a sport. By the time he reached the police station he was furious. Jok
The interior of the station was an oven, and since all the windows were closed, the light was very dim. There was a fan at the entrance, but it wasn’t working. The police officer at the reception desk, a beardless young man, asked how he could help him.
“I’d like to speak to the chief, please,” said Felícito, handing him his card.
“He’s on vacation for a few days,” the officer explained. “If you like, Sergeant Lituma can take care of you. He’s in charge of the station for now.”
“I’ll talk to him, then. Thank you.”
He had to wait a quarter of an hour before the sergeant deigned to see him. By the time the officer had him go into the small cubicle, Felícito’s handkerchief was soaked from wiping his forehead so often. The sergeant didn’t stand to greet him. He extended a plump, damp hand and indicated the empty chair across from him. He was a stocky man, tending toward fat, with narrow, affable eyes and the beginnings of a double chin that he rubbed from time to time with affection. The khaki shirt of his uniform was unbuttoned and had circles of perspiration under the arms. On the small desk was a fan that did work. Felícito was grateful for the gust of cool air that caressed his face.
“How can I help you, Señor Yanaqué?”
“I just found this letter. It was stuck to my front door.”
He watched Sergeant Lituma put on a pair of glasses that made him look like a shyster lawyer and, with a tranquil expression, read the letter.
“Well, well,” he said finally, making a face that Felícito couldn’t interpret. “This is the result of progress, sir.”
When he saw the trucker’s confusion, he shook the letter in his hand and explained. “When Piura was a poor city, these things didn’t happen. Who would have thought back then to demand money from a businessman? Now that there’s money around, the smart guys play rough and try to make hay while the sun shines. The Ecuadorans are to blame. They distrust their government and bring their capital here to invest it. They’re using us Piurans to stuff their pockets.”
“That’s no consolation, Sergeant. Besides, listening to you, it would seem like a problem that things are going well now in Piura—”
“I didn’t say that,” the sergeant interrupted him quickly. “It’s just that everything has its price in this life. This is the price of progress.”
The sergeant shook the letter with the spider in the air again, and it seemed to Felícito Yanaqué that his dark, plump face was mocking him. A yellow-green light, like the one in the eyes of iguanas, flashed in the sergeant’s eyes. At the back of the station he could hear a voice shouting, “The best asses in Peru are here in Piura! I’ll swear to that, damn it!” The sergeant smiled and raised his finger to his temple. A very serious Felícito felt claustrophobic. There was barely room for the two of them between the grimy wooden partitions covered with announcements, memos, photos, and newspaper clippings. The office smelled of sweat and age.
“The son of a bitch who wrote this is a good speller,” the sergeant declared, looking at the letter again. “At least I don’t see any grammatical mistakes.”
Felícito felt his blood boil.
“I’m not good at grammar and I don’t think that matters very much,” he muttered with a certain tone of protest. “What do you think’s going to happen now?”
“For the moment, nothing,” the sergeant replied, not changing his expression. “I’ll take your information, just in case. Maybe things won’t go beyond this letter. Somebody has a grudge and wants to give you a hard time. Or maybe they’re serious. It says they’ll contact you about payments. If they do, come back and we’ll see.”
“You don’t seem to think it’s very serious,” Felícito protested.
“For the moment it isn’t,” the sergeant admitted with a shrug. “This is only a crumpled piece of paper, Señor Yanaqué. It might be nothing but bullshit. But if it becomes serious, the police will act, I assure you. Well, let’s get down to business.”
It took a while for Felícito to recite his personal and business information. Sergeant Lituma wrote everything down in a green notebook, using a pencil stub he kept wetting in his mouth. The trucker answered the questions, which seemed useless to him, growing increasingly disheartened. Coming here to file a complaint had been a waste of time. This cop wouldn’t do anything. Besides, didn’t everybody say the police were the most corrupt of the public institutions? The letter with the spider had probably come from this foul-smelling cave. When Lituma said the letter had to remain in the police station as proof of the charge, Felícito made a gesture of annoyance.
“I’ll want to make a photocopy first.”
“We don’t have a photocopier here,” the sergeant said, indicating with his eyes the Franciscan austerity of the station. “Lots of places on the avenue make copies. Just go and come right back, sir. I’ll wait for you here.”
Felícito went out to Avenida Sánchez Cerro and found what he was looking for near the General Market. He had to wait while some engineers made copies of a pile of blueprints, and he decided he would not submit to more of the sergeant’s questions. He handed the copy of the letter to the young officer at the reception desk, and instead of returning to his office plunged again into the center of the city filled with people, horns, heat, loudspeakers, mototaxis, cars, and noisy trolleys. He crossed Avenida Grau, walked in the shade of the tamarinds on the Plaza de Armas, resisted the temptation to have a frozen fruit drink at El Chalán, and headed for La Gallinacera, the old slaughterhouse district along the river where he’d spent his adolescence. He prayed that Adelaida would be in her little shop. It would do him good to talk to her. She’d raise his spirits and, who knows, the holy woman might even give him some good advice. The heat was at its height and it wasn’t even ten o’clock. He felt the dampness on his forehead and a spot that was burning hot on the back of his neck. He walked quickly, taking short, fast steps, bumping into the people who crowded the narrow sidewalks that smelled of piss and fried food. A radio at top volume blared the salsa number “Merecumbé.”
Felícito sometimes told himself—and had even said so on occasion to his wife, Gertrudis, and to his children—that God, to reward his lifelong efforts and sacrifices, had placed two people in his path, the grocer Lau and the holy woman Adelaida. Without them, things wouldn’t have gone well for him in business, his transport company wouldn’t have moved forward, he wouldn’t have created a respectable family or enjoyed his robust good health. He’d never had many friends. Ever since poor Lau had been carried off to the next world by an intestinal infection, he had only Adelaida. Fortunately, she was there, at the counter of her small shop that sold herbs, figures of saints, notions, and odds and ends, looking at photographs in a magazine.
“Hello, Adelaida,” he said, extending his hand. “Gimme five. I’m glad to see you.”
She was an ageless mulatta, short, fat-bottomed, big-breasted, who walked barefoot on the dirt floor of her shop; her long, curly hair hung loose to her shoulders, and she was wearing her usual coarse, clay-colored tunic or habit that fell to her ankles. She had enormous eyes and a gaze that seemed to bore into rather than look at you, softened by an amiable expression that gave people confidence.
“If you’ve come to visit me, something bad’s happened or’s gonna happen to you.” Adelaida laughed and patted his back. “So what’s your problem, Felícito?”
He handed her the letter.
“They left it on my front door this morning. I don’t know what to do. I filed a complaint at the police station, but I think it was a waste of time. The cop I talked to didn’t pay much attention to me.”
Adelaida touched the letter and smelled it, inhaling deeply as if it were perfume. Then she raised it to her mouth and Felícito thought she actually tasted an edge of the paper.
“Read it to me, Felícito,” she said, giving it back to him. “I can see it’s not a love letter, hey waddya think.”
“Tell me if this thing is serious, Adelaida. If I ought to worry or not. Or if it’s just a lousy trick. Clear this up for me, please.”
The holy woman gave a laugh that shook her entire hefty body hidden beneath the wide mud-colored tunic.
“I’m not God—I don’t know those things,” she exclaimed, raising and lowering her shoulders and fluttering her hands.
“Your inspiration doesn’t tell you anything, Adelaida? In the twenty-five years I know you, you never gave me bad advice. It’s always useful. I don’t know what my life would’ve been without you, comadre. Can’t you tell me something now?”
“No, baby, nothing,” Adelaida said, pretending to be sad. “No inspiration comes to me. I’m sorry, Felícito.”
“Well, what can you do,” the businessman said, taking out his wallet. “When it’s not there, it’s not there.”
“Waddya giving me money for if I couldn’t give you advice?” Adelaida protested. But in the end she slipped the twenty-sol bill that Felícito insisted she accept into her pocket.
“Can I sit here for a while in the shade? I’m worn out with so much running around, Adelaida.”
“Sit down and rest, baby. I’ll bring you a glass of nice cool water fresh from the filtering stone. Just make yourself comfortable.”
While Adelaida went to the rear of the store and then came back, Felícito examined in the half-light the silvery cobwebs hanging from the ceiling, the ancient shelves with packets of parsley, rosemary, coriander, and mint, and boxes of nails, screws, seeds, eyelets, and buttons, the prints and images of the Virgin, of Christ, of male and female saints and holy men and women cut from magazines and newspapers, some with lit candles in front of them and others with adornments—rosaries, amulets, and wax or paper flowers. It was because of those images that in Piura she was called a holy woman, but in the quarter century he’d known her, Adelaida had never seemed very religious to Felícito. He’d never seen her at Mass, for example. And people said the parish priests considered her a witch. Sometimes the street kids shouted at her: Witch! Witch! It wasn’t true, she didn’t do witchcraft like so many sharp-witted cholas in Catacaos and La Legua who sold potions for falling in love, falling out of love, or bringing bad luck, or the medicine men from Huancabamba who passed a guinea pig over the infirm, or the ones in Las Huaringas who thrust their hands into the afflicted, who paid them to be free of their ailments. Adelaida wasn’t even a professional fortune-teller. She did that work only occasionally and only with friends and acquaintances, not charging them a cent. Though if they insisted, she’d keep the little gifts they were moved to give her. Felícito’s wife and sons (as well as Mabel) mocked him for the blind faith he had in Adelaida’s inspirations and advice. He not only believed her; he’d become fond of her. He regretted her solitude and her poverty. She had no husband or family he knew of; she was always alone but seemed content with her hermit’s life.