“I know that, sir,” Ambrosio had said. “I’ve got a little money saved up. I wanted to see if you could help me invest it in something good. Ludovico told me my Uncle Hilario is a fox when it comes to business.”
“You screwed him again there,” Amalia had said, laughing.
“He became a different person,” Ambrosio had said. “He began to treat me like a human being.”
“Oh, that Ludovico,” Don Hilario had rasped with a sudden
good-natured
air. “He told you the absolute truth. Some people are born to be aviators, others to be singers. I was born for business.”
He’d smiled roguishly at Ambrosio: he was wise to have come to him, he would pilot him. They would find something where they could make a little money. And out of the blue: let’s go to a Chinese restaurant, he was beginning to get hungry, how about it? All of a sudden as smooth as silk, see the way people are, Amalia?
“He lived in all three of them at the same time,” Ambrosio says. “And later on I found out that he had a wife and kids in Tingo María too, just imagine, son.”
“But you still haven’t told me how much you’ve got saved up,” Amalia had dared to ask.
“Twenty thousand soles,” Don Fermín had said. “Yes, yours, for you. It will help you get started again, help you disappear, you poor devil. No crying, Ambrosio. Go on, on your way. God bless you, Ambrosio.”
“He bought me a big meal and we had half a dozen beers,” Ambrosio had said. “He paid for everything, Amalia.”
“In business, the first thing is to know what you’re dealing with,” Don Hilario had said. “The same as in war. You have to know what forces you have to send into battle.”
“My forces right now are fifteen thousand soles,” Ambrosio had said. “I have more in Lima, and if the deal suits me, I can get that money later.”
“It isn’t too much,” Don Hilario had reflected, two greedy fingers in his mouth. “But something can be done.”
“With all that family I’m not surprised he was a thief,” Santiago says.
Ambrosio would have liked something related to the Morales
Transportation
Co., sir, because he’d been a chauffeur, that was his field. Don Hilario had smiled, Amalia, encouraging him. He explained that the company had been started five years before with two vans, and that now it had two small trucks and three vans, the first for cargo and the second for passengers, which made up the Tingo María–Pucallpa line. Hard work, Ambrosio: the highway a disaster, it ruined tires and motors. But as he could see, he’d brought the business along.
“I was thinking about a secondhand pickup. I’ve got the down
payment
, the rest I’ll pay off as I work.”
“That’s out, because you’d be in competition with me,” Don Hilario had said with a friendly chuckle.
“Nothing is set yet,” Ambrosio had said. “He said we’ve made the first contacts. We’ll talk again tomorrow.”
They’d seen each other the next day and the next and the one after that, and each time Ambrosio had come back to the cabin tight and with the smell of beer, stating that this Don Hilario turned out to be quite a boozer! At the end of a week they’d reached an agreement, Amalia: Ambrosio would drive one of Morales Transportation’s buses with a base salary of five hundred plus ten percent of the fares, and he would go in as Don Hilario’s partner in a little deal that was a sure thing. And Amalia, seeing that he was hesitating, what little deal?
“Limbo Coffins,” Ambrosio had said, a little drunk. “We bought it for thirty thousand, Don Hilario says the price was a giveaway. I won’t even have to look at the dead people, he’s going to run the funeral parlor and give me my share of the profits every six months. Why are you making that face, what’s wrong with it?”
“There’s probably nothing wrong with it, but I have a funny feeling,” Amalia had said. “Especially since the dead people are children.”
“We’ll make boxes for old people too,” Ambrosio had said. “Don Hilario says it’s the safest thing there is because people are always dying. We’ll go fifty-fifty on the profits. He’ll run the place and won’t collect anything for that. What more could I want, isn’t that so?”
“So you’ll be traveling to Tingo María all the time now,” Amalia had said.
“Yes, and I won’t be able to keep an eye on the business,” Ambrosio had answered. “You’ll have to keep your eyes wide open, count all the coffins that come out. It’s good we’re so close by. You can keep an eye on it without leaving the house.”
“All right,” Amalia had said. “But it gives me a funny feeling.”
“All in all, for months on end I did nothing but start up, put on the brakes, pick up speed,” Ambrosio said. “I was driving the oldest thing on wheels in the world, son. It was called The Jungle Flash.”
3
“S
O YOU WERE THE FIRST ONE
to get married, son,” Ambrosio says. “You set the example for your brother and sister.”
From La Maison de Santé he went to the boardinghouse in Barranco to shave and change his clothes and then to Miraflores. It was only three in the afternoon, but he saw Don Fermín’s car parked by the outside door. The butler received him with a grave face: the master and mistress had been worried because he hadn’t come to lunch on Sunday, master. Teté and Sparky weren’t there. He found Señora Zoila watching
television
in the little room she had fixed up under the stairway for the young people’s Thursday canasta parties.
“It’s about time,” she muttered, raising her furrowed brow. “Have you come to see if we’re still alive?”
He tried to break through her annoyance with jokes—you were in a good mood, Zavalita, free after being shut up in the hospital—but she, while she cast continuous involuntary glances at her soap opera, kept scolding him: they’d set a place for him on Sunday, Teté and Popeye and Sparky and Cary had waited until three o’clock for you, you ought to be more considerate to your father, who’s not well. Knowing that he counts the days until he can see you, he thinks, knowing how upset he gets when you don’t come. He thinks: he’d listened to the doctors, he wasn’t going to the office, he was resting, you thought he was completely recovered. And still that afternoon you could see he wasn’t, Zavalita. He was in the study, alone, a blanket over his knees, sitting in the usual easy chair. He was thumbing through a magazine and when he saw Santiago come in he smiled at him with affectionate crossness. His skin, still tanned from the summer, had grown old, a strange tic had appeared on his face, and it was as if in a few days he had lost twenty pounds. He was tieless, with a corduroy jacket, and tufts of grayish fuzz peeped through the open collar of his shirt. Santiago sat down beside him.
“You’re looking very well, papa,” he said, kissing him. “How do you feel?”
“Better, but your mother and Sparky make me feel so useless,” Don Fermín complained. “They only let me go to the office for a little while and make me take naps and spend hours here like an invalid.”
“Only until you’re completely recovered,” Santiago said. “Then you can let yourself go, papa.”
“I warned them that I’ll only put up with this fossil routine until the end of the month,” Don Fermín said. “On the first I’m going back to my normal life. Right now I don’t even know how things are going.”
“Let Sparky take care of them, papa,” Santiago said. “He’s doing all right, isn’t he?”
“Yes, he’s doing fine,” Don Fermín said, nodding. “He practically runs everything. He’s serious, he’s got a good head on his shoulders. It’s just that I can’t resign myself to being a mummy.”
“Who would have thought that Sparky would end up as a full-fledged businessman.” Santiago laughed. “The way things turned out, it was a lucky thing he was kicked out of the Naval Academy.”
“The one who’s not doing so well is you, Skinny,” Don Fermín said with the same affectionate tone and a touch of weariness. “Yesterday I stopped by your boardinghouse and Señora Lucía told me you hadn’t been home to sleep for several days.”
“I was in Trujillo, papa.” He’d lowered his voice, he thinks, made a gesture as if saying just between you and me, your mother doesn’t know anything. “They sent me off on an assignment. I was sent off in a hurry and didn’t have time to let you know.”
“You’re too big for me to scold you or give you advice,” Don Fermín said, with a softness both affectionate and sorrowful. “Besides, I know it wouldn’t do any good.”
“You can’t think that I’ve set out purposely to live a bad life, papa,” Santiago said, smiling.
“I’ve been getting alarming reports for some time,” Don Fermín said, without changing his expression. “That you’re seen in bars, nightclubs. And not the best places in Lima. But since you’re so sensitive, I haven’t dared ask you anything, Skinny.”
“I go once in a while, like anybody else,” Santiago said. “You know I’m not a carouser, papa. Don’t you remember how mama used to have to force me to go to parties when I was a kid?”
“A kid?” Don Fermín laughed. “Do you feel so very old now?”
“You shouldn’t pay any attention to people’s gossip,” Santiago said. “I may be a lot of things, but not that, papa.”
“That’s what I thought, Skinny,” Don Fermín said after a long pause. “At first I thought let him have a little fun, it might even be good for him. But now it’s been so many times that they come and tell me we saw him here, there, drinking, with the worst kind of people.”
“I haven’t got either the time or the money to go off on toots,” Santiago said. “It’s absurd, papa.”
“I don’t know what to think, Skinny.” He’d grown serious, Zavalita, his voice had become grave. “You go from one extreme to the other, it’s hard to understand you. Look, I think I’d rather have you end up as a Communist than as a drunkard and a carouser.”
“Neither one, papa, you can rest assured,” Santiago said. “It’s been years since I’ve known what politics is all about. I read all the newspaper except for the political news. I don’t know who’s a minister or who’s a senator. I even asked them not to send me out to cover political stories.”
“You say that with a terrible resentment,” Don Fermín murmured. “Are you that disturbed at not having dedicated yourself to
bomb-throwing
? Don’t reproach me for it. I just gave you a piece of advice, that’s all, and remember that you’ve been going against me all your life. If you didn’t become a Communist it’s because deep down you weren’t so sure about it.”
“You’re right, papa,” Santiago said. “Nothing bothers me, I never think about all that. I was just trying to calm you down. Neither a Communist nor a carouser, don’t worry about it.”
They talked about other things in the warm atmosphere of books and wooden shelves in the study, watching the sun set, rarefied by the first mists of winter, listening to the voices from the soap opera in the
distance
, and, little by little, Don Fermín was mustering his courage to bring up the eternal theme and repeat the ceremony celebrated so many times: come back home, get your law degree, come to work for me.
“I know you don’t like me to talk about it.” It was the last time he tried, Zavalita. “I know I’m running the risk of driving you away from home again if I talk about it.”
“Don’t talk nonsense, papa,” Santiago said.
“Aren’t four years enough, Skinny?” Had he become resigned from that point on, Zavalita? “Haven’t you done enough damage to yourself already, haven’t you hurt us enough?”
“But I am registered, papa,” Santiago said. “This year …”
“This year you’re going to do a lot of talking, just like in past years.” Or had he been cherishing to the bitter end, secretly, the hope that you’d come back, Zavalita? “I don’t believe you anymore, Skinny. You register, but you don’t set foot in the university or take any exams.”
“I’ve been very busy the past few years,” Santiago insisted. “But now I’m going to start going to classes. I have my schedule all made out so I can get to bed early and …”
“You’ve got used to staying up late, to your paltry little salary, to your carousing friends on the newspaper, and that’s your life.” Without anger, without bitterness, Zavalita, with a tender affliction. “How can I stop repeating to you that it can’t be, Skinny? You’re not what you’re trying to show yourself as being. You can’t go on being a mediocrity, son.”
“You’ve got to believe me, papa,” Santiago said. “I swear that this time it’s true. I’ll go to class, I’ll take the exams.”
“I’m not asking it for your sake now, but for mine.” Don Fermín leaned over, put his hand on his arm. “Let’s arrange a schedule which will let you study and you’ll make more than at
La
Crónica.
It’s time you got to know all about things. I might drop dead anytime and then you and Sparky will have to keep things going at the office. Your father needs you, Santiago.”
He wasn’t furious or hopeful or anxious as on other occasions, Zavalita. He was depressed, he thinks, he repeated the standard phrases out of routine or stubbornness, like someone betting his last reserves on one last hand, knowing that he’s going to lose that one too. He had a disheartened glow in his eyes and clasped his hands together under the blanket.
“I’d only get in your way at the office, papa,” Santiago said. “It would be a real problem for you and Sparky. I’d feel that you were paying me a salary as a favor. Besides, stop talking about dropping dead. You told me yourself that you never felt better.”
Don Fermín lowered his head for a few seconds, then he raised his face and smiled, in a resigned way: it was all right, he didn’t want to try your patience anymore by harping on the same thing, Skinny. He thinks: just to tell you that it would be the happiest moment of my life if one day you came through that door and told me I’ve quit my job at the paper, papa. But he stopped talking because Señora Zoila had come in, pushing a little wagon with toast and tea. Well, the soap opera was over at last, and she began to talk about Popeye and Teté. She was concerned, he thinks, Popeye wanted to get married the following year but Teté was still a child, she advised them to wait a little while longer. Your old mother doesn’t want to be a grandmother yet, Don Fermín joked. What about Sparky and his girl friend, mama? Ah, Cary was very nice,
charming
, she lived in La Punta, she could speak English. And so serious, so proper. They were talking about getting married next year too.