Dona Nicanora's Hat Shop (25 page)

‘I understand that you recently lost your husband,' she said gently to a caller.

‘Yes …' a sobbing voice said on the other end of the line, but was unable to continue.

Tia Sophia left a slight pause into which the woman shed her tears, before asking, ‘How long ago did it happen?'

‘Just two days ago,' the woman replied, making a great effort to control herself.

‘Two days ago,' Tia Sophia repeated. ‘You must still be in shock.'

‘I am,' the woman whispered, ‘it has come as a great shock.'

‘It wasn't expected?'

‘No,' the woman said, ‘we've been there many times before.'

Tia Sophia allowed some silence to follow the non sequitur, before asking softly, ‘To the hospital?'

‘No, to visit my sister,' the woman said.

‘He died on the journey?' Tia Sophia asked.

‘I don't think so,' the woman said, her voice quavering with tears.

‘You don't think so,' Tia Sophia said, an edge of irritation creeping in. ‘So where is he?'

‘I don't know,' the woman replied. ‘As I said, I've lost him.'

‘Let me get this clear,' Tia Sophia said, the sympathetic tone having vanished from her voice. ‘You have lost your husband, as in you have misplaced him?'

‘Yes,' the woman said. ‘I can be very careless. God forgive me.'

‘Don't be ridiculous,' Tia Sophia snapped. ‘You can't just lose a grown man.'

‘Oh yes you can,' the woman and Nicanora said in unison.

‘It was in a crowd,' the woman tried to explain. ‘We went to market on the way to my sister's. He was hungry so he went off to buy something to eat. But the market is very large and we just lost each other. He's probably still wandering around looking for me.'

‘Surely he'll find his own way home,' Tia Sophia said.

‘You don't know my husband,' the woman said enigmatically, and was instantly cut off by an advertisement offering the slime of snails to lighten the skin.

Nicanora finished her preparations and sat down at the table. It was true. You could, indeed, be careless enough to lose a grown man. She felt as helpless as Tia Sophia's caller. She had no idea how to rectify a situation that seemed to be getting worse by the hour. For now, all she could do was wait. Lost in her thoughts for some time, she suddenly became aware that
Tia Sophia's Problem Hour
had been replaced by the voices of knowledgeable city folk, arguing stridently.

‘The issue is with the rural provinces,' a man was saying loudly. ‘These remote places have been left to fester for too long. They are the root cause of all the problems in this country. This is where these groups like the People's Liberation Front are recruiting from, the uneducated and simple-minded peasants. They will follow anybody.'

‘But these demonstrations haven't been started by the peasants,' another argued. ‘The riots were led by the teachers and students at the university. This was a well-planned operation. Apparently the PLF is being financed by an international group. But they won't be able to mobilise the peasants here. They don't even speak their language.'

‘I don't agree,' the other replied. ‘They have the support of the peasant unions. The perpetrators of these crimes are being harboured in the remote countryside as we speak. The
campesinos
believe they are fighting their cause. These people are just a bunch of foreign opportunists.'

Nicanora listened for a while and wondered who these uneducated peasants were. It's a shame that people have to live like that,
she thought to herself. But her mind wandered from the state of the country to worrying once again about the lost husband. Would he really be doomed to spend the rest of his life walking round and round a market, hoping that he might eventually bump into his wife? She supposed she would never find out whether the couple were ever reunited.

The table was laid, the stew bubbling, but no guests appeared. Nicanora sat waiting. She had lost track of for what or for whom. After all, she had spent a lifetime waiting. She was waiting for Don Teofelo so that she could thank him for his friendship even when she felt she did not deserve it. She was waiting for her son to return as the man she had always hoped he would be. She was waiting for Don Bosco, to know that he was safe, and she was waiting for the life that she had never known but now wanted to start. But nobody arrived.

It occurred to her that maybe the search party had already returned and that Don Bosco was sitting at home waiting for someone to notice he was back. After all, he probably had more than one key and Ernesto might have gone straight back to the clinic with the doctor. She had sat holding the key for the whole day, waiting until the market had closed so that she would be able to slip in unseen and at least have a little look around the shop.

As Nicanora approached the plaza, she felt an uncanny quiet hanging over the town. The doors on a couple of the small shops were swinging lazily open, the owners asleep under the counters. Everything looked just as it should. A couple of men, too old to
worry about having their hair cut, were sitting on the benches talking. The shutters on Don Bosco's shop were closed. And yet, there was a life about the old place. Although the shop was clearly locked, the usual table and chairs had been set outside and a man was sitting there writing on a piece of paper. Taking in the scene, Nicanora's heart missed a beat and then raced a little. She rushed over to see what was going on and in the blindness of anticipation did not realise until she was almost upon him that the man sitting at the table was the Gringito.

‘What are you doing?' she shouted at him. ‘What on earth is going on?' The Gringito looked up at her and smiled. Nena appeared from around the corner carrying one of Nicanora's bowls filled with cold soup from breakfast.

‘What are you doing?' Nicanora said, this time to Nena. ‘And what is
he
doing?'

‘Writing a postcard,' Nena said.

‘He's doing what?'

‘He's writing a postcard,' Nena repeated. ‘In a café,' she added in case her mother had not understood.

‘A postcard? A café?' Nicanora repeated.

‘Yes,' she said. ‘The mayor said all the tourists write them and send them home.'

‘A postcard?' Nicanora said again, and picked up the piece of paper that had been laid on the table in front of the Gringito. On one side Nena had drawn a picture of the plaza. It showed the church on the corner, a tree in the middle and a rather oversized barber's shop with an arrow saying: ‘I am here.' Her daughter was certainly enterprising, Nicanora had to give her that.

‘And what are you doing with that bowl?'

‘The mayor said that tourists write postcards in cafés,' Nena
explained. ‘We don't have a café, so I'm using Don Bosco's table while he is away, to pretend.'

‘And where did you get the table from?'

‘Don Bosco keeps it in the backyard.'

‘But you can't do that,' Nicanora said. ‘What will he say when he comes back later today and finds you have turned his shop into a café?'

‘He won't mind,' Nena said confidently.

‘You put the table back where you got it from right now,' Nicanora said firmly. ‘People will think we have no respect for the missing.'

‘OK, I'll take him round the plaza to start taking photos,' Nena said, pointing at the obliging Gringito, and then she reached into her bag and pulled out a camera.

‘Where did you get that from?' Nicanora asked, astonished.

‘The mayor gave it to me.'

‘The mayor? He gave it to you?' Nicanora was now so stunned at what she was hearing that she was simply repeating everything her daughter said. ‘Why?'

‘I don't know. But he said if I make the Gringito behave like a proper tourist in front of the visitors I can keep it. Ramon said the mayor is going to turn the barber's into a café, if Don Bosco doesn't come back tonight,' and Nena pointed to a note pinned to the door of the shop. ‘Ramon put that there after the meeting.' Nicanora peered at the note. It was so small that she had not even noticed it as she approached the shop. She tried to make out what was written in the near illegible scrawl. ‘“The mayor,”' Nena read out helpfully, ‘“on behalf of the town council, formally announces intention to change the lease of this premises to make it a tourist shop and a, a … something café due to vacant occupancy by the barber.” That's not fair,' she said turning to her mother, ‘I had the idea first.'

‘A tourist shop?' Nicanora said.

‘Yes, and a something café,' Nena repeated.

‘What do you mean “a
something
café”?'

‘I don't know,' Nena said. ‘I can't make the word out. It looks like “kyber café”.'

‘He can't do that,' Nicanora said. ‘Have you been putting ideas into the mayor's head?'

‘No,' Nena replied.

‘But what is he talking about? We haven't got any tourists,' Nicanora said. With perfect timing, the Gringito, who had been fiddling with the camera while Nicanora and Nena had been trying to read the notice, stood up and pointed it in their direction, made a clicking noise with his tongue and then grinned at them. ‘He is going to have to go,' Nicanora said to Nena. She then sat down on the chair next to the Gringito and put her head in her hands, feeling that she no longer comprehended the world in which she lived. Nena placed a postcard in front of her mother and asked her what she would like to order.

Nena, the Gringito and Isabela returned home for supper, drawn by the smell of the freshly baked bread that had made its way down the street and into the plaza, where it lingered in an enticing, welcoming cloud.

‘Are we expecting guests again?' Nena asked, staring at the burgeoning dinner fare, which replaced the usual fish soup.

‘I suppose it's for Don Bosco?' Isabela teased her mother.

‘Is he back already? I didn't see him,' Nena said, and she reached out to grab a slice of bread.

‘Never mind that. Where have you been all day?' Nicanora said, turning to Isabela and trying to change the subject. ‘There is a stack of washing to be done and the fruit is piling up on the trees for picking. What did you do with the oranges that I asked you to sell this morning?'

‘I sold them,' Isabela said, and she placed a pile of money on the table in front of her mother.

‘So quickly?' Nicanora asked, astonished. ‘How did you manage to sell so much so quickly?'

‘You have to understand your customers,' Isabela said. ‘You have to make them want to buy your fruit,' and she flashed her mother a coquettish smile that she usually saved for special occasions and followed the Gringito out into the yard. Nicanora had had a growing sense lately that there was more to Isabela than she had ever given her credit for, and she felt a pang of guilt that she had always underestimated her eldest daughter's talents.

‘He's learning very quickly,' Nena said, pointing at the Gringito. ‘Soon he'll make a perfect tourist. The mayor will be pleased.'

Nicanora had been waiting for the right moment to tell Nena that she had made her decision. She did not know quite how she was going to tell her that their house guest, who had been nothing but pleasant to them, had now outstayed his welcome. All she knew was that the Gringito had to go, and soon, to prevent any more damage being done. When she looked at him now, all she could feel was shame. She had been so overwhelmed by the money that he had given her that she had not considered how Don Bosco would feel when she made her offer to him. She had genuinely convinced herself that he would welcome the chance of giving up the shop, and would enjoy his new-found freedom. In so doing, she had driven him from the town, and the only home he had ever
known. And now the mayor was also using the Gringito as the reason to take Don Bosco's shop from him and turn it into a
something
café so that he could impress the provincial authorities, and encourage more Gringitos to visit. There would be no end to the troubles that she seemed to have started. The main difficulty, she now anticipated, lay in convincing Nena to tell her friend he had to leave.