Authors: Mario Vargas Llosa
Sure, it half calms me down that Panta has gotten to be such a pest about doing his duty, it means his wife pleases him (ahem, ahem) and he doesn’t have to look for excitement out in the street. But after that, nothing doing, Chichi, because here in Iquitos women are taken very, very seriously. Do you know what’s the big excuse your brother-in-law has invented for doing a little business whenever he’s horny? Pantita Junior! Yes, Chichi, you heard right, at last he’s eager for us to have a baby. He promised me we would as soon as he got his third stripe and he’s keeping his promise, but now with this change in temperament, I don’t know anymore if doing our business morning and afternoon is to please me or just him. I tell you it’s enough to make you die laughing, he comes off the street like a little wind-up mouse and he circles and circles around me until he dares, can we take care of the little cadet tonight, Pocha? Ha ha, isn’t that cute? I adore him, Chichi. (Listen, I don’t know how I can tell you all these dirty things when you’re single.) Up till now, don’t breathe a word, Skinny, in spite of working at it, just yesterday my period came, what a pain, I thought this month for sure. Will you come take care of your sister when she’s got a big belly, Chichi? Oh, if only it was tomorrow you’d come, what a pleasure to have you here to gossip as much as we want. Of course, you’ll wear a dress for the men in Loreto, to find a handsome guy you have to search for him like a needle in a haystack, I’ll start giving anyone who’s worth it the once-over so you won’t get too bored when you come. (Have you noticed how this letter is pouring out of me by the mile? You’ll have to answer with the same number of pages, O.K.?) It’s not possible that I can’t have babies, is it, Chichi? It scares me so much that every day I ask God for any punishment but that one, I’d die of grief if I couldn’t have at least one little boy and one little girl. The doctor says I’m perfectly normal so I’m hoping it’ll be next month. Did you know that every time a man does his business
millions
of sperms come out of him and only one gets into the woman’s egg and makes the little baby there? I was reading a pamphlet the doctor gave me, explaining everything so well you could go crosseyed with the miracle of life. If you want me to I’ll send it to you, so you’ll learn about those things for when you get wise, marry, lose your virginity and learn what a soufflé is, you skinny little kid. I hope I don’t get too ugly, Chichi, some women look terrible when they’re pregnant, they puff up like toads, varicose veins pop out, really disgusting. I won’t please your horny brother-in-law anymore and when you least expect it he’ll be out looking for his fun on the street, I tell you I don’t know what I’ll do with him. I’ll bet with all the heat and humidity here pregnancy must be awful, especially not living on the army base but instead where we unlucky people do. I’m telling you, another worry gives me gray hair, I’m glad to have the baby, but what if on the excuse that I got fat that miserable Panta gets tangled up with some woman in Loreto, especially since now I let him have his way about doing a little business even when I’m asleep? I’m dying of hunger, Chichi, I’ve been writing you for hours, Mother Leonor’s already serving lunch, you can picture to yourself how happy my mother-in-law’s going to be with the idea of the grandchild, I’m coming, lunch and later I’ll continue, so you don’t kill yourself, I’m still not ending,
ciao
, Sis.
I’m back at last, Chichi, I took years, it’s nearly six, I had to take a nap because I ate like a boa constrictor. Just think, Alicia made us a present of a plate of
tacacho
, a native dish here. Isn’t she friendly? It’s better that I’ve found a friend here in Iquitos. I’d heard so much about this famous
tacacho
, it’s mashed green bananas with pork, I had to go to the Bethlehem Market to have some, to a restaurant called Aladdin Panduro’s Lamp where there’s a great cook, so I pestered Panta until he took us there the other day very early, the market is open at dawn and closes early. Bethlehem is the prettiest place here, you’ll see, an entire neighborhood of little wooden houses floating on the river, people get from one side to the other in little boats, I’m telling you, it’s so original, they call it the Venice of the Amazon, even though you see a lot of poverty. The market’s very good to get to know and to buy fruit, fish or the necklaces and bracelets the Indians make, very pretty, but not to go and eat, Chichi. We nearly died when we entered Aladdin Panduro’s, you can’t imagine the filth and the hordes of insects. The plates they brought us were black with flies, you frightened them and they came back right away and got in your eyes and mouth. In the end, neither Mother Leonor nor I tasted one mouthful, we were sick to our stomachs, that barbarian Panta ate three platefuls and also the dried meat that Mr. Aladdin insisted he had to have with the
tacacho
. I told Alicia about how disappointed we were and she told me one of these days I’ll make you
tacacho
so you can see how good it is and this morning she brought us a platter. Delicious, Sis, it’s like a dish of
chifles
from the North, although not quite the same, the banana tastes different here. The only trouble is it’s heavy as lead, I had to force myself to get it down, and my mother-in-law is bent over with stomachaches and gas, green with embarrassment because she can’t control herself and little farts keep popping out in front of me, soon she’ll explode from it and go straight to heaven once and for all. No, how mean I am, poor Mother Leonor, deep down she’s good, the only thing that annoys me is that she treats her son as if he’s still a baby and a little saint, isn’t she a stupid old thing?
Did I tell you that the poor woman is finding her amusement in superstition? She’s turned the house into a garbage dump. Imagine, after we were here only a few days, there was a big commotion in Iquitos over the arrival of Brother Francisco, you’ve probably heard about him, I hadn’t until I got here. In the Amazon he’s more famous than Marlon Brando, he’s founded a religion that’s called the Brothers of the Ark, he goes everywhere on foot and wherever he goes he hangs up an enormous cross and dedicates Arks that are his churches. He has a lot of followers, especially among the working people, and it seems the priests are furious about the competition he’s giving them but until now there hasn’t been one peep out of them. Well, my mother-in-law and I went to hear him in Moronacocha. There were lots of people and the surprising thing was that he spoke crucified like Christ, believe it or not. He was announcing the end of the world and asking people to make offerings and sacrifices for the Last Judgment. I couldn’t understand him very well, he speaks a very difficult Spanish. But the people listened to him hypnotized, the women were crying and got down on their knees. I got caught up with the emotion and even burst out crying, and you can’t imagine my mother-in-law, she was sobbing loudly and we couldn’t calm her down, the witch-doctor had really gotten to her, Chichi. Later, back at home, she was praising Brother Francisco and the next day she went back to the Ark of Moronacocha to talk with the “brothers” and now it turns out the old lady has become a “sister” too. It’s like a bolt out of the blue: she who never paid much attention to true religion ends up a pious follower of heretics. Just imagine, her room is full of little wooden crosses, and if it was only to distract herself, fine, but the dirty part of the business is that this religion has a mania for crucifying animals and I don’t like that because every morning I find cockroaches, butterflies, spiders nailed to her little crosses and even a mouse the other day, what a horrifying, disgusting mess. Every time I come across one of those dirty things I throw it into the garbage and we’ve already gotten into some good fights. It’s screwy because as soon as a row breaks out, and there’s one every minute here, the old lady starts to tremble thinking it’s the end of the world and every day she begs Panta to get a big cross made for the front door. Just look at how many changes in such a short time.
What was I telling you, kid, when I stopped for lunch? Oh, yes, about the people of Loreto. God, Chichi, everything they say was right and a lot more besides. Every day I find out something new, I’m nauseous and keep asking what is this? Iquitos must be the most perverted city in Peru, even worse than Lima. Maybe it’s true and the climate has a lot to do with it, I mean about the women being so awful, you can already see how Panta put one foot in the jungle and turned into a volcano. The worst thing is that these floozies are really attractive, the men are so ugly and with no class and the women are so great. I’m not exaggerating, Chichi, I think the most beautiful women in Peru (with the exception of yours truly and her sister, of course) are from Iquitos. All of them, the ones who look decent and the ones from the town and even—I’m telling you—the hookers, maybe they’re the best. Some shapes, kid, with a little way of walking so flirty and brazen, moving their backsides with a lot of nerve and throwing their shoulders back so their bust can be seen sticking out. Some pushy ones wear pants that fit like gloves, and do you think they flinch when men say things to them? What a question! They walk a straight line and look them in the eyes so fresh it stirs up some of the men to grab them by their boobs.
I have to tell you something I heard yesterday when I went into the record shop (where they have the four-for-three system, you buy three things and they give you the fourth, fantastic, isn’t it?) between two very young girls. One of them asked the other: “Have you ever kissed a soldier?” “No, why’re you asking?” “They kiss diviiiiiinely.” She made me laugh, she said it with that Loreto accent and in a loud voice, not worrying if everybody heard her. They’re just that way, Chichi, as fresh as they come. And do you think they stop at kissing? What a dreamer! According to Alicia, these little devils start getting into big trouble as early as high school and they learn to take care of themselves and everything and when they get married, the really smart ones put on a big act so their husbands believe they’re doing it for the first time. Some of them go to those witches who prepare
ayahuasca—
you’ve heard about it, haven’t you? A concoction that makes you dream really wild things—so they’ll make them like new again. Just imagine, imagine. I swear to you every time I go out shopping or to the movies with Alicia I come home blushing from the stories she tells me. She says hello to a friend, I ask her who’s that, and she tells me some terrible woman, imagine that, who has had at least a couple of lovers, all the married women have gotten involved at some time or other with a soldier, airman or marine, but especially with a soldier, they have great prestige with these floozies. Chichi, it’s not so bad for me they don’t let Panta wear a uniform. These crazy women take advantage of the husband’s smallest slip and Pow! cuckolded. Skinny, it makes you afraid of them. And do you think they do things right, in their own beds and sheets? Alicia said to me, if you want, let’s take a walk down to Moronacocha and you’ll see all the cars where the couples are carrying on (but really, I mean it) one next to the other, as if nothing was happening.
Just think, they found a woman carrying on with a police lieutenant in the last row of the Bolognesi movie house. They say the film broke, the lights went on and they caught them. Poor people, can you imagine the shock they got when they saw the lights were going on, especially her? They had stretched out, making good use of the benches they have instead of seats and the last row being empty. A tremendous scandal, it seems the lieutenant’s wife nearly killed the woman, because an announcer on Radio Amazon who’s terrible and gives out all the facts repeated the story in a blow-by-blow description and the lieutenant ended up being removed from Iquitos. I didn’t want to believe a story like that but Alicia pointed out the girl to me on the street, a really good-looking brunette, with a face that couldn’t hurt a fly. I looked at her and said to Alicia, you’re fibbing, they did
business
business in the middle of the movie, so uncomfortable and afraid of being caught? It seems so, they caught the girl without her blouse on and the lieutenant with his little bird up in the air. After Paris, Iquitos is sin city, Skinny. Don’t think Alicia is a chatterbox, I worm it out of her, from curiosity and also to be forewarned. My dear, here you have to have four eyes and eight hands to defend yourself from these women of Loreto, you turn your back and they make your husband disappear on you. Even though she’s a native, Alicia is
very
serious. Though at times she wears pants that are so tight she has to use a shoehorn to get them on, still she doesn’t go around arousing the men, she doesn’t give them such fresh looks as the other women in Iquitos.
As to how nervy the women of Loreto are, how stupid I am—I’ve been forgetting to tell you the funniest and best part (or really the worst). You can’t imagine the disaster we had when we were in the middle of getting ourselves settled in this house. Have you heard people talk about the famous “washerwomen” of Iquitos? Everybody’s said to me, but where have you been living, Pocha, where did you come from, the whole world knows about the famous “washerwomen” of Iquitos. Well, I must be dumb or wet behind the ears, sister, but never in Chiclayo or in lea or in Lima did I ever hear people talking about the “washerwomen” of Iquitos. Picture this, we’d been in our little house for a few days, and our bedroom is downstairs, with a window on the street. We still didn’t have a maid—now I have one that’d melt your heart, she’s so good—and suddenly at the strangest hours there’d be tapping at our window and you’d hear a woman’s voice: “Washerwoman! Got any clothes to be washed?” And me, without even opening the window, I’d say no, thanks very much. It never occurred to me to think how strange that there are so many washerwomen out on the streets in Iquitos and on the other hand it’s so hard to get a girl, because I put out a little “Girl Wanted” sign and only once in a while did anybody turn up. So one day, it was very early and we were still in bed, I heard this little tap on the window, “Washerwoman! Got any laundry?” and I had let a lot of dirty clothes pile up on me, because here, let me tell you, with this heat that’s so horrible, you sweat terribly and you have to change two and even three times a day. So I thought terrific, she can wash my clothes as long as she doesn’t charge too much. I yelled wait a minute, got out of bed in my nightie and went to open the door for her. Right there I should’ve suspected something funny was going on because she had enough make-up on to be anything but a washerwoman. But me, I’m a dumbbell, off on the moon. The most attractive little thing, cinched in to make her curves stand out, of course, with her fingernails painted and really fixed up. She looked me up and down in the most surprised way and I thought what’s wrong with this one, what’s wrong with me to make her look at me like that. I told her come in, she came into the house, and before I said anything to her she saw the bedroom door and Panta and Wham! she went right in and planted herself in front of your brother-in-law in a pose that left me cockeyed, her hand on her hip and her legs spread out like a rooster who’s going to attack. Panta sat right up in bed, his eyes popping out from the shock of this woman’s appearance. And do you know what this thing did before either Panta or I managed to tell her wait outside, what are you doing here in the bedroom? She began talking about her rates, you have to pay me double, that she wasn’t used to dealing with women, pointing at me, Skinny, you better believe it, but you really have to turn weird tricks, and I don’t know what other vulgarities, and suddenly I realized what the trouble was and my legs began to tremble. Yes, Chichi, she was a w——-. A w——-! The “washerwomen” of Iquitos are the w——-s of Iquitos and they go around from house to house offering their services with that story about laundry. Now you tell me, is Iquitos or isn’t it the most immoral city in the world, sister? Panta also realized what was going on and started shouting get out of here, you pig, what are you thinking about, get out right now. The thing had the fright of her life, she caught on to the mix-up and shot out of the house, tripping. Can you picture what a fiasco, Skinny? She thought we were some degenerates, that I had made her come in so the three of us could do a little business together. Who knows, Panta was joking later, maybe it was worth a try, didn’t I tell you he’s changed a lot? Now it’s over I can laugh at myself and make jokes about it but I’m telling you it was really ugly for a little while, I was dying with shame the whole day remembering that little scene. Now you can see what this place is like, sister, a city where the women who aren’t w——-s try to be and where if you’re careless for one second you’re left without a husband. Look at what a hole I’ve fallen into.