The Discreet Hero

  He’d seen her for the first time a quarter of a century earlier, when he was an interprovincial truck driver and didn’t have his transport company yet, though he dreamed night and day about owning one. It happened at kilometer 50 on the Pan-American Highway, in one of those settlements where bus drivers, truck drivers, and jitney drivers always stopped to have chicken soup, coffee, a shot of chicha, and a sandwich before facing the long, burning-hot run through the Olmos desert filled with dust and stones, devoid of towns, without a single gas station or repair shop in the event of an accident. Adelaida, who already wore the mud-colored tunic that would always be her only article of clothing, had one of the stands that sold dried meat and soft drinks. Felícito was driving a truck loaded with bales of cotton from Casa Romero to Trujillo, traveling alone because his helper had backed out of the run at the last minute when Hospital Obrero informed him that his mother had fallen very ill and might pass at any moment. He was eating a tamale, sitting at Adelaida’s counter, when he noticed her giving him a strange look with her deep-set, piercing eyes. Hey waddya think, what was the matter with the woman? Her face was contorted. She looked frightened.

  “What’s wrong, Señora Adelaida? Why are you looking at me like that, like you suspected something?”

  She didn’t say anything. She continued to stare at him with her large, dark eyes and made a face that showed repugnance or fear, sucking in her cheeks and wrinkling her brow.

  “Do you feel sick?” an uncomfortable Felícito asked.

  “Better if you don’t get in that truck,” she said finally in a hoarse voice, as if making a great effort to control her tongue and throat. She gestured with her hand toward the red truck Felícito had parked at the side of the road.

  “Don’t get in my truck?” he repeated, disconcerted. “And why not, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  Adelaida moved her eyes away from him for a moment to look to either side, as if she were afraid that the other drivers, customers, or owners of the shops and bars in the vicinity, might hear her.

  “I have an inspiration,” she said, lowering her voice, her face still upset. “I can’t explain it to you. Just believe what I’m telling you, please. Better if you don’t get in that truck.”

  “I appreciate your advice, señora, and I’m sure you mean well. But I have to earn my bread. I’m a driver, I make my living with trucks, Doña Adelaida. How would I feed my wife and two little boys if I didn’t?”

  “Then at least be very careful,” the woman begged, lowering her eyes. “Listen to me.”

  “I’ll do that, señora. I promise. I always am.”

  An hour and a half later, at a curve on the unpaved road, the bus from La Cruz de Chalpón came skidding and screeching out of a thick, grayish-yellow cloud of dust and hit his truck with a great clamor of metal, brakes, shouts, and squealing tires. Felícito had good reflexes and managed to swerve, turning the front part of the truck out of the way, so that the bus crashed into the chute and cargo, which saved his life. But until the bones in his back, shoulder, and right leg healed, he was immobilized in a sheath of plaster that not only hurt but also caused a maddening itch. When he was finally able to drive again, the first thing he did was go to kilometer 50. Señora Adelaida recognized him right away.

  “Well, well, I’m glad you’re better now. The usual tamale and a soda?”

  “I beg you, Señora Adelaida, for the sake of what you love best, tell me how you knew the bus from La Cruz de Chalpón would run into me. It’s all I think about ever since it happened. Are you a witch, a saint, or what?”

  He saw her turn pale, and she didn’t know what to do with her hands. She lowered her head in confusion.

  “I didn’t know anything about that,” she stammered, not looking at him, as if she’d been accused of something very serious. “I just had an inspiration, that’s all. It happens sometimes, I never know why. And hey waddya think, I don’t want it to happen, I swear. It’s a curse that’s fallen on me. I don’t like it that Almighty God made me like this. I pray every day for Him to take back this gift He gave me. It’s something terrible, believe me. It makes me feel like I’m to blame for all the bad things that happen to people.”

  “But what did you see, señora? Why did you tell me that morning it would be better not to get into my truck?”

  “I didn’t see anything, I never see the things that are going to happen. Didn’t I tell you that? I just had an inspiration that if you got into that truck, something could happen to you. I didn’t know what. I never know what it is that’s going to happen. Just that there are things it’s better not to do because they’ll turn out bad. Are you going to eat that tamale and drink your Inca Kola?”

  They’d been friends since then and soon began to use familiar address with each other. When Señora Adelaida left the settlement at kilometer 50 and opened her little shop selling herbs, notions, odds and ends, and religious images in the area near the old slaughterhouse, Felícito came by at least once a week to say hello and chat for a while. He almost always brought a little present—some candy, a cake, sandals—and when he left he placed a bill in her hands, as hard and callused as a man’s. He’d consulted her about all the important decisions he’d made in those twenty-some years, especially since the establishment of Narihualá Transport: the debts he assumed, the trucks, buses, and cars he bought, the places he rented, the drivers, mechanics, and clerks he hired or fired. Most of the time, Adelaida laughed at his questions. “Hey waddya think, Felícito, what do I know about that? How can I tell you if a Chevrolet or a Ford is better, how can I tell you about the makes of cars if I’ve never had one and never will?” But from time to time, though she didn’t know what it was about, she’d have an inspiration and give him some advice: “Yes, get into that, Felícito, it’ll be good for you, I think.” Or “No, Felícito, that’s not a good idea. I don’t know what it is but something about it smells bad.” For him the words of the holy woman were revealed truths, and he obeyed them to the letter, no matter how incomprehensible or absurd they might seem.

  “You fell asleep, baby,” he heard her say.

  It was true, he’d dozed off after drinking the glass of cool water Adelaida had brought him. How long had he been nodding in the hard rocking chair that gave him a cramp in his rear end? He looked at his watch. Good, just a few minutes.

  “It was all the tension this morning, the running around,” he said, getting to his feet. “See you soon, Adelaida. Your shop is so peaceful. It always does me good to visit you, even if you don’t have an inspiration.”

  And at the very instant he said the key word “inspiration,” which Adelaida used to define the mysterious faculty she’d been given, foretelling the good or bad things that were going to happen to some people, Felícito noticed that the holy woman’s expression had changed since she’d said hello, listened to him read the spider letter, and assured him it inspired no reaction at all in her. She was very serious now: Her expression was somber, she was frowning and biting a fingernail. One might say she was controlling an anguish that had begun to paralyze her. She kept her large eyes fastened on him. Felícito felt his heart beat faster.

  “What is it, Adelaida?” he asked in alarm. “Don’t tell me that now…”

  Her callused hand took him by the arm and her fingers dug into him.

  “Give them what they ask for, Felícito,” she murmured. “It’s better if you give it to them.”

  “Give five hundred dollars a month to extortionists so they won’t do me any harm?” He was scandalized. “Is that what your inspiration is telling you, Adelaida?”

  The holy woman released his arm and patted it affectionately.

  “I know it’s wrong, I know it’s a lot of dough,” she agreed. “But after all, what difference does money make, right? Your health is more important, your peace of mind, your work, your family, your little girlfriend in Castilla. Well, I know you don’t like me telling you that. I don’t like it either, you’re a good friend, baby. Besides,
I’m probably wrong, I’m probably giving you bad advice. You have no reason to believe me, Felícito.”

  “It isn’t the dough, Adelaida,” he said firmly. “A man shouldn’t let anybody walk all over him in this life. That’s what it’s about, that’s all, comadrita.”

  II

  When Don Ismael Carrera, the owner of the insurance company, stopped by his office and suggested having lunch together, Rigoberto thought, “He’s going to ask me again to change my mind,” because Ismael, along with all his colleagues and subordinates, had been startled by Rigoberto’s unexpected announcement that he’d take his retirement three years early. Why retire at the age of sixty-two, they all said, when he could stay three more years in the manager’s position that he filled with the unanimous respect of the firm’s almost three hundred employees.

  “And really, why, why?” he thought. He wasn’t even sure. But the truth was that his determination was immovable. He wouldn’t take a step backward, even though by retiring before the age of sixty-five, he wouldn’t keep his full salary or have any right to all the indemnities and privileges of those who retired when they reached the upper age limit.

  He tried to cheer himself by thinking of the free time he’d have. Spending hours in his small space of civilization, protected against barbarism, looking at his beloved etchings and the art books that crowded his library, listening to good music, taking a trip to Europe once a year with Lucrecia in the spring or fall, attending festivals, art fairs, visiting museums, foundations, galleries, seeing again his best-loved paintings and sculptures and discovering others that he would bring into his secret art gallery. He’d made calculations, and he was good at math. By spending judiciously and prudently administering his almost million dollars of savings, as well as his pension, he and Lucrecia would have a very comfortable old age and be able to secure Fonchito’s future.

  “Yes, yes,” he thought, “a long, cultured, and happy old age.” Why then, in spite of this promising future, did he feel so uneasy? Was it Edilberto Torres or anticipatory melancholy? Especially when, as now, he looked over the portraits and diplomas hanging on the walls in his office, the books lined up on two shelves, his desk meticulously arranged with its notebooks, pencils and pencil holders, calculator, reports, turned-on computer, and the television set always tuned to Bloomberg with the stock market quotations. How could he feel anticipatory nostalgia for this? The only important things in his office were the pictures of Lucrecia and Fonchito—newborn, child, adolescent—which he would take with him on the day of the move. As for the rest, soon this old building on Jirón Carabaya, in the center of Lima, would no longer be the insurance company’s headquarters. The new location, in San Isidro, on the edge of the Zanjón, was almost finished. This ugly edifice, where he’d worked for thirty years of his life, would probably be torn down.

  He thought Ismael would take him, as always when he invited him to lunch, to the Club Nacional and he, once again, would be incapable of resisting the temptation of that enormous steak breaded with tacu-tacu they called “a sheet,” or of drinking a couple of glasses of wine—so that for the rest of the afternoon he’d feel bloated and dyspeptic, and lack all desire to work. To his surprise, when they got into the Mercedes-Benz in the building’s garage, his boss told the driver, “To Miraflores, Narciso, La Rosa Náutica.” Turning to Rigoberto, he explained, “It will do us good to breathe a little sea air and listen to the gulls screeching.”

  “If you think you’re going to bribe me with a lunch, Ismael, you’re crazy,” he warned him. “I’m retiring no matter what, even if you put a pistol to my head.”

  “I won’t do that,” said Ismael with a mocking gesture. “I know you’re as stubborn as a mule. And I also know you’ll be sorry, feeling useless and bored at home, getting on Lucrecia’s nerves all day. Soon you’ll show up on bended knee asking me to put you back in the manager’s office. I’ll do it, of course I will. But first I’ll make you suffer for a good long time, I’m warning you.”

  He tried to remember how long he’d known Ismael. A lot of years. Ismael had been very good-looking as a young man. Elegant, distinguished, sociable. And, until he married Clotilde, a seducer. He made women, single and married, old and young, sigh for him. Now he’d lost most of his hair and had just a few white tufts on his bald head; he’d become wrinkled and fat and dragged his feet when he walked. His denture, fitted by a dentist in Miami, was unmistakable. The years, and especially the twins, had ruined him physically. They’d met the first day Rigoberto came to work at the insurance company in the legal department. Thirty long years! Damn, a lifetime ago. He recalled Ismael’s father, Don Alejandro Carrera, the founder of the company. Severe, tireless, a difficult but upright man whose mere presence imposed order and communicated certainty. Ismael respected him though he never loved him. Because Don Alejandro forced his only son, recently returned from England, where he’d studied economics at the University of London and completed a year’s training at Lloyd’s, to work in every division of the firm, which was just beginning to be prominent. Ismael was close to forty and felt humiliated by an apprenticeship that even had him sorting the mail, running the cafeteria, and tending to the machinery in the electrical plant and to the security and cleanliness of the company. Don Alejandro could be somewhat despotic, but Rigoberto recalled him with admiration: a captain of industry. He’d made this company out of nothing, starting out with almost no capital and loans that he repaid down to the last cent. And the truth was that Ismael had carried on his father’s work in excellent fashion. He too was tireless and knew how to exercise his gift for command when necessary. But with the twins at its head, the Carrera line would end up in the garbage. Neither one had inherited the entrepreneurial virtues of their father and grandfather. When Ismael died, pity the insurance company! Fortunately, he would no longer be there as manager to witness the catastrophe. Why had his boss invited him to lunch if not to talk to him about his upcoming retirement?

  La Rosa Náutica was filled with people, many of them tourists speaking English or French; Don Ismael had reserved a table next to the window. They drank a Campari and watched some surfers riding the waves in their rubber suits. It was a gray winter morning, with low leaden clouds that hid the cliffs and the flocks of screeching seagulls. A squadron of pelicans glided past, just grazing the ocean’s surface. The rhythmic sound of the waves and the undertow was pleasant. “Winter is melancholy in Lima, though a thousand times preferable to the summer,” Rigoberto thought. He ordered grilled corvina and a salad and told his boss he wouldn’t have even a drop of wine; he had work to do in the office and didn’t want to spend the afternoon yawning like a crocodile and feeling like a zombie. It seemed to him that a self-absorbed Ismael didn’t even hear him. What was troubling him?

  “You and I are good friends, aren’t we?” his boss said suddenly, as if just waking up.

  “I suppose we are, Ismael,” Rigoberto replied, “if friendship can really exist between an employer and his employee. The class struggle is real, you know.”

  “We’ve had our battles at times,” Ismael continued very seriously. “But even so, I think we’ve gotten along pretty well these thirty years. Don’t you agree?”

  “All this sentimental beating around the bush just to ask me not to retire?” Rigoberto teased. “Are you going to tell me that if I leave, the company will go under?”

  Ismael wasn’t in the mood for jokes. He eyed the scallops à la parmigiana that had just been brought to him as if they might be poisoned. He moved his mouth, making his denture click. There was disquiet in his half-closed eyes. His prostate? Cancer? What was wrong with him?

  “I want to ask you for a favor,” he murmured, very quietly, not looking at him. When he raised his eyes, Rigoberto saw them filled with perplexity. “Not a favor, no. A huge favor, Rigoberto.”

  “If I can, of course,” he agreed, intrigued. “What’s wrong, Ismael? You look so strange.”

  “I want you to be my witness,” said Ismael, l
owering his eyes again to the scallops. “I’m getting married.”

  The fork with a mouthful of corvina stayed in the air for a moment and then, instead of carrying it to his mouth, Rigoberto returned it to his plate. “How old is he?” he thought. “No younger than seventy-five or seventy-eight—maybe even eighty.” He didn’t know what to say. He was dumbstruck with surprise.

  “I need two witnesses,” Ismael added, looking at him now, more calmly. “I’ve gone over all my friends and acquaintances. And I’ve reached the conclusion that the most loyal people, the ones I trust most, are Narciso and you. My driver has accepted. Do you?”

  Still incapable of saying a word or making a joke, Rigoberto managed only to nod his agreement.

  “Of course I do, Ismael,” he finally stammered. “But tell me that this is serious and not the first symptom of senile dementia.”