The Discreet Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa
How stubborn Felícito was! Mabel never would have imagined that the old man was prepared to die rather than give money to the extortionists. He seemed so meek, so understanding, and then suddenly he displayed an iron will to all of Piura. The day after she was freed, she and Felícito had a long conversation. At one point Mabel unexpectedly asked him, point-blank, “If the kidnappers had said they’d kill me if you didn’t give them the money, would you have let them kill me?”
“Now you see it didn’t happen that way, love,” the trucker stammered, very uncomfortable.
“Answer me honestly, Felícito,” she insisted. “Would you have let them kill me?”
“And afterward I would’ve killed myself,” he conceded, his voice breaking and his expression so pathetic she took pity on him. “Forgive me, Mabel. But I’ll never pay an extortionist. Not even if they kill me or the thing I love most in this world, which is you.”
“But you told me yourself that all your colleagues in Piura do it,” Mabel replied.
“And lots of businessmen and entrepreneurs too, it seems,” Felícito acknowledged. “The truth is I learned that only now, through Vignolo. It’s their business. I’m not criticizing them. Each man knows what he’s doing and how to defend his interests. But I’m not like them, Mabel. I can’t do it. I can’t betray my father’s memory.”
And then the trucker, with tears in his eyes, began to talk about his father to a surprised Mabel. Never, in all the years they’d been together, had she heard him refer to his parent so emotionally. With feeling, with tenderness, just like when they were intimate in bed and he said sweet things to her as he caressed her. He’d been a very humble man, a sharecropper, a Chulucano from the countryside, and then, here in Piura, a porter, a municipal garbage collector. He never learned to read or write, he went barefoot most of his life, something you noticed when they left Chulucanas and came to the city so that Felícito could go to school. Then he had to wear shoes and you could see how strange it felt to him when he walked and how his feet hurt when he had them on. He wasn’t a man who showed his love by hugging and kissing his son, or saying those affectionate things parents say to their kids. He was severe, hard, even ready with his fists when he got angry. But he’d shown him he loved him by making him study, by dressing him and feeding him, even when he had nothing to put on his own back or in his own mouth, by sending him to a school for drivers so that Felícito could learn to drive and get his license. Thanks to that illiterate sharecropper, Narihualá Transport existed. His father might have been poor but he was a great man because of his upstanding spirit, because he never harmed anyone, or broke the law, or felt rancor toward the woman who abandoned him, leaving him with a newborn to bring up. If all of that about sin and evil and the next life was true, he had to be in heaven now. He didn’t even have time to do any evil, he spent his life working like a dog in the worst-paying jobs. Felícito remembered seeing him drop with fatigue at night. But even so, he never let anyone walk all over him. According to him, that was the difference between a man who was worth something and a man who was worth only a rag. That had been the advice he gave him before he died in a bed with no mattress in the Hospital Obrero: “Never let anybody walk all over you, son.” Felícito had followed the advice of the father who, because they had no money, he couldn’t even bury in a niche; he couldn’t stop them from tossing him into a common grave.
“Do you see, Mabel? It’s not the five hundred dollars the crooks are asking for. That’s not the point. If I give it to them, they’d be walking all over me, turning me into a rag. Tell me you understand, honey.”
Mabel hadn’t really understood, but hearing him say those things made an impression on her. Only now, after being with him for so long, did she realize that behind his insignificant appearance—a little man, so thin, so small—Felícito had a cast-iron character and a bulletproof will. It was true, he’d let himself be killed before he gave in.
“Sit down and shut up,” the officer ordered and Mabel shut up and dropped back into her seat, defeated. “You don’t need a lawyer yet. You’re not arrested yet. We’re not questioning you yet. This is a friendly, confidential conversation, I already told you that. And it would be better for you to get that into your head once and for all. So let me talk, Mabelita, and listen to what I’m going to say very carefully.”
But before he continued, he took another long drag of his cigarette and expelled the smoke slowly, making rings. “He wants to make me suffer, that’s why he came,” thought Mabel. She felt weak and exhausted, as if at any moment she might fall asleep. In the armchair, leaning forward slightly, as if he didn’t want to miss a syllable of what his boss was saying, Sergeant Lituma didn’t speak or move. And he didn’t take his eyes off him for a second.
“There are various charges and they’re serious,” the captain went on, looking into her eyes as if he wanted to hypnotize her. “You tried to make us believe you’d been kidnapped but it was all a farce, cooked up by you and your pal to coerce Don Felícito, the gentleman who’s dying of love for you. It didn’t work out because you weren’t counting on this man’s determination to refuse to be extorted. To soften him up, you even set fire to Narihualá Transport on Avenida Sánchez Cerro. But that didn’t work out either.”
“I set fire to it? Is that what you’re accusing me of? Being an arsonist too?” Mabel protested, trying in vain to stand again, but weakness or the captain’s belligerent gaze and aggressive expression stopped her. She dropped back into the chair, shrinking into herself and crossing her arms. Now she was not only sleepy, she felt warm as well and began to perspire. She felt her hands begin to drip with sweat and fear. “So I was the one who set fire to Narihualá Transport?”
“We have some other details, but these are the most serious charges as far as you’re concerned,” said the captain, calmly turning to his subordinate. “Let’s see, Sergeant, inform the señora of the crimes she could be tried for and the sentences she might receive.”
Lituma became animated, shifted in his seat, wet his lips with his tongue, took a paper out of his shirt pocket, unfolded it, cleared his throat, and read like a pupil reciting a lesson for his teacher.
“Unlawful association for the purpose of committing a criminal act in a kidnapping scheme and sending anonymous letters and extortion threats. Unlawful association for the purpose of destroying a commercial site with explosives, with the aggravating circumstance of putting at risk the houses, businesses, and persons in the area. Active participation in a false kidnapping for the purpose of frightening and coercing a businessman into paying protection. Dissimulation, duplicity, and deception before the authorities during their investigation into the false kidnapping.” He put the paper back in his pocket and added: “These would be the principal charges against the señora, Captain. The prosecutor might add other, less serious ones, like the clandestine practice of prostitution.”
“And how high could the penalty go if the señora is convicted, Lituma?” the captain asked, his mocking eyes fixed on Mabel.
“Eight to ten years in prison,” the sergeant replied. “It would depend on the aggravating and extenuating circumstances, naturally.”
“You’re trying to scare me, but you’ve made a mistake,” murmured Mabel, making an enormous effort to get her tongue, as dry and harsh as an iguana’s, to form words. “I won’t answer any of those lies without a lawyer present.”
“Nobody’s asking you questions yet,” Captain Silva said ironically. “For now, the only thing you’re being asked to do is listen. Understood, Mabelita?”
He kept looking at her with a leer that forced her to lower her eyes. Disheartened, defeated, she nodded.
As a result of nerves, fear, and the idea that with every step she took she’d have an invisible pair of cops on her tail, she didn’t leave the house for five days. She went out only to run to the Chinese store on the corner to buy a few things, to the laundry, and to the bank. She hurried back to close herself in with her worries and torture
“And see what, honey?” asked Zoila.
“Anything, whatever they’re showing,” Mabel answered. “I need to see people, talk a little bit. I’m suffocating here.”
They met in front of Los Portales, on the Plaza de Armas. They had lunch at El Chalán, and went into the multiplex at the Centro Comercial Open Plaza, next to the Universidad de Piura. They saw a fairly graphic movie with nudity. Zoila, who pretended to be very proper, crossed herself when there were sex scenes. She was shameless; in her personal life she was a real libertine, changed partners every other day, and even bragged about it: “As long as your body holds out, you have to use it, baby.” She wasn’t especially pretty, but she had a good body and nice taste in clothes. Because of that and her uninhibited ways, she was successful with men. When they left the theater, she suggested they have something to eat at her house, but Mabel said no, she didn’t want to go back to Castilla alone when it was late.
She took a taxi, and as the old jalopy plunged into the half-darkened neighborhood, Mabel told herself that, after all, it was lucky the police had kept the kidnapping from the press. They thought this would confuse the extortionists and make it easier to catch them. But she was convinced that at any moment the news would reach the papers, radio, and television. What would her life turn into if that scandal broke? Maybe the best thing would be to listen to Felícito and leave Piura for a while. Why not go to Trujillo? They said it was big, modern, lively, with a nice beach and colonial houses and parks. And that the Marinera Dance Competition held there every summer was worth seeing. Were those two cops in plain clothes following her in a car or on a motorcycle? She looked through the rear and side windows and didn’t see any vehicles. Probably her protection was a lie. You had to be a half-wit to believe the cops’ promises.
She got out of the taxi, paid, and walked the twenty-some paces from the corner to her house down the center of an empty street, even though at almost all the neighboring doors and windows the dim lights of the neighborhood flickered. She could make out the silhouettes of people inside. She had her door key ready. She opened the door, went in, and when she reached out her hand to the light switch, she felt another hand in the way, blocking her and covering her mouth, stifling her scream as a man’s body pressed against hers and a well-known voice whispered in her ear, “It’s me, don’t be scared.”
“What are you doing here?” Mabel protested, trembling. She thought she’d collapse onto the floor if he weren’t holding her up. “Have you gone crazy, you asshole? Have you gone crazy?”
“I needed to fuck you,” said Miguel, and Mabel felt his feverish lips on her ear, her neck, eager, avid, his strong arms squeezing her and his hands touching her everywhere.
“Stupid pig, imbecile, vulgar filthy moron,” she protested, defending herself, furious. She was dizzy with indignation and fear. “Don’t you know the police are watching the house? Don’t you know what can happen to us on account of you, you dirty idiot?”
“Nobody saw me come in, the cop is in the dive on the corner drinking coffee, nobody was on the street.” Miguel kept embracing her, kissing her, pressing her body against his, rubbing against her. “Come on, let’s go to bed, I’ll fuck you and leave. Come on, baby.”
“You dumb, miserable dog, how do you have the nerve to come here, you’re out of your mind.” They were in the dark and, furious and frightened, she was trying to resist and push him away, at the same time feeling that in spite of her rage, her body was beginning to give in. “Don’t you realize that you’re ruining my life, damn you? And ruining your own too, you bastard.”
“I swear nobody saw me come in, I was very careful,” he repeated, pulling at her clothes to try to undress her. “Come on, come on. I want you, I’m hungry for you, I want to make you cry out, I love you.”
Finally she stopped defending herself. Still in the dark, fed up, exhausted, she allowed him to undress her and throw her down on the bed, and for a few minutes she abandoned herself to pleasure. Could that be called pleasure? It was, in any case, something very different from what she’d felt at other times. Tense, on edge, sad. Not even at the height of her excitement, when she was about to come, could she get the images of Felícito, the police who questioned her at the station house, the scandal that would explode if the news reached the press, out of her head.
“Now go, and don’t set foot in this house again until all of this is over,” she ordered when she felt Miguel release her and fall back onto the bed. “If your father finds out because of this crazy thing you did tonight, I’ll get back at you. I swear it’ll be bad. I swear you’ll regret it the rest of your life, Miguel.”
“I told you nobody saw me. I swear nobody did. At least tell me if you liked it.”
“I didn’t like anything and I hate you with all my heart, just so you know,” Mabel said, slipping out of Miguel’s hands and standing up. “Go on, leave right now and don’t let anybody see you go out. Don’t come back here, you idiot. You’ll get us sent to prison, you son of a bitch, why can’t you see that.”
“All right, I’m going, don’t be like that,” said Miguel, sitting up. “I’m putting up with your insults because you’re so stressed. Otherwise, I’d knock them down your throat, sweetie.”
She could hear Miguel dressing in the semidarkness. Finally he bent over to kiss her and at the same time, with the vulgarity that erupted from all the pores of his body at intimate moments, he said, “For as long as I like you, I’ll come here to fuck you every time my prick tells me to, baby.”
“Eight to ten years in prison is a lot of years, Mabelita,” said Captain Silva, changing his voice again; now he seemed sad and compassionate. “Especially if you’re in the women’s prison at Sullana. A hell, I can tell you, I know it like the back of my hand. There’s no water or electricity most of the time. The inmates sleep in piles, two or three in each cot along with their kids, a lot of them on the floor, stinking of shit and piss because the bathrooms are almost always out of order, and they take care of their needs in buckets or plastic bags that are emptied only once a day. A body can’t put up with that system for very long. Least of all a nice little woman like you, accustomed to a different kind of life.”
Even though she wanted to shout and insult him, Mabel remained silent. She’d never been inside the women’s prison at Sullana, but she’d seen it from the outside, passing by. She sensed that the captain wasn’t exaggerating at all in his description.
“After a year or a year and a half of that kind of life, surrounded by prostitutes, murderers, thieves, drug traffickers, many of them driven crazy in prison, a young, beautiful woman like you gets old, ugly, and half nuts. I don’t want that for you, Mabelita.”
The captain sighed, filled with pity over the possible fate of the lady of the house.
“You might say that it’s perverse to tell you these things and paint this kind of picture for you,” the implacable chief continued. “You’d be wrong. The sergeant and I aren’t sadists. We don’t want to frighten you. What do you say, Lituma?”
“Of course not, just the opposite,” the sergeant declared, shifting again in the armchair. “We’ve come with good intentions, señora.”
“We want to spare you those horrors.” Captain Silva grimaced, contorting his face, as if he’d had an awful hallucination, and raised his hands in alarm. “The scandal, the trial, the interrogations, the prison bars. Can you imagine it, Mabel? Instead of paying the penalty for complicity with those thugs, we want you to be free, no strings attached, living the good life you’ve been living for years. Do you see why I told you our visit was for your
Now she could sense what this was about. From panic she’d moved on to rage and from rage to profound dejection. Her eyelids were heavy, and again she felt a weariness that made her close her eyes for a few moments. How marvelous it would be to sleep, to lose consciousness and memory, to doze off right here, curled up in the chair. To forget, to feel that none of this had happened, that life was what it had always been.
Mabel brought her face close to the windowpane and after a little while saw Miguel go out and disappear a few meters farther on, swallowed up by the dark. She looked over the area carefully. She couldn’t see anyone. But that didn’t reassure her. The cop could be standing in the doorway of a nearby house and could have seen him from there. He’d report to his bosses and the police would inform Don Felícito Yanaqué: “Your son and employee, Miguel Yanaqué, visits your mistress’s house at night.” The scandal would explode. What would happen to her? As she bathed, changed the sheets, and then lay down, the lamp on the night table lit, trying to sleep, she asked herself again, as she had so often in the past two and a half years since she’d begun to see Miguel in secret, how Felícito would react if he ever found out. He wasn’t the kind of man who pulled a knife or a revolver in defense of his honor, the kind who thinks that sexual affronts are washed away with blood. But he’d leave her. She’d be on the street. Her savings would last barely a few months, and only if she cut expenses drastically. At this point it wouldn’t be so easy for her to establish another relationship as comfortable as the one she had with the owner of Narihualá Transport. She’d been stupid. An idiot. It was her own fault. She always knew that sooner or later she’d have to pay the price. She was so depressed that sleep eluded her. This would be another night of insomnia and nightmares.