Dona Nicanora's Hat Shop (7 page)

‘Oh,' said Isabela. ‘Then I suppose we'd better not tell him that it's snake.'

After the tree incident, the Gringito started to spend less time in Nicanora's house and more time sitting in the plaza. He would leave the house when Isabela was around and, although always friendly to Nena, he became a little more wary of being the centrepiece of her antics. Nicanora began to notice him sitting on the bench at the side of the plaza in the afternoons as she made her way back home from the market. Sometimes she would stop and try to pass the time of day with him. Occasionally, he would be writing in a little note-book, but more often than not he would just be sitting in a trance-like state watching people hurrying backwards and forwards on their way to and from the fields, the school and Don Bosco's barber shop. Gradually he began to spend whole days in the plaza without even returning to the house for lunch. Nicanora would see him set off in the morning on his long, circuitous routes, which consisted of any amount of detours to avoid the packs of marauding dogs that mercilessly prowled the side streets.

Then Nicanora noticed that he had shifted his attention from the bench at the side of the plaza to the old eucalyptus tree in the centre. It began with him sitting under the tree, smoking and reading. Nena would often sit and chat with him there on her way to and from school, and Nicanora started to send her down to the plaza at lunchtime with a bowl of rice and stewed fish. A scrupulously honest woman, Nicanora felt that, as the Gringito was paying for their food, he ought at least to be able to eat some of it. Don Bosco, who delighted in observing the daily comings and goings
in the plaza, also began to comment to Nicanora on her house guest.

‘Ah, my dear Nicanora,' he greeted her one day as she hurried past his shop working out her strategy for usurping his business. ‘I believe we are indebted to your delightful Ernesto for having introduced yet another strange creature to our town. Hopefully, this one will not be as difficult to tame as those delightful giant lizards.'

Nicanora hated sarcasm, but Don Bosco's observations were always delivered with his irrepressible smile and a glint in his eye. Nicanora struggled for a suitably quick-witted reply and failed. Don Bosco was the only person in whose presence she became lost for words, the memory of their past never far from her mind.

‘He's a foreigner. He's come a long way, and I'm very proud that he's decided to stay in my house during his time here,' she replied with an unnecessarily haughty air.

‘And well you might be, Nicanora,' Don Bosco said. ‘He's truly a great find. For how long do you think our humble town will benefit from his presence?'

‘I don't know,' Nicanora said, not wishing to divulge her plans to keep the Gringito for as long as was necessary to make a successful bid for Don Bosco's shop.

‘Well, I'm sure our good and honest mayor will be most delighted to be greeted by a chanting foreigner outside his office – that is, when he finally decides to grace us with his company again.'

The chanting to which Don Bosco referred had been a recent addition to the Gringito's daily repertoire of odd behaviour. It had started with short episodes of humming, during which time he sat under the eucalyptus tree cross-legged and with his eyes shut. Then one day Nena noticed, as she brought him his lunch bowl, that he seemed to be talking to himself and repeating the same
words over and over again. After the humming and chanting episodes began, Nena also noticed a pungent smell wafting around the square as the Gringito sat smoking his cigarettes and burning little pieces of twig that he stuck into the ground around the eucalyptus tree.

Although his behaviour in the plaza seemed to be becoming more and more bizarre, he was much the same as he had always been in Nicanora's house, entertaining Nena, getting in everyone's way and smiling hopelessly when anyone asked him a question. Exasperated by the continual jibes made by Don Bosco, Nicanora asked Nena to find out from the Gringito what all this business in the plaza was about.

‘Apparently he's on a journey,' Nena reported.

‘What do you mean “he's on a journey”?' Nicanora asked irritably.

‘That's what he said. He's on a personal journey.'

‘Well,' retorted Nicanora. ‘If he's on a journey, could you ask him if he could please move around a bit while he's making it. This sitting under the eucalyptus tree all day is disturbing the children and upsetting Don Bosco, and heaven knows what the mayor will say when he gets back. I don't want to have to deal with the consequences.'

‘All right,' said Nena, who skipped off to the plaza to find the Gringito and suggest a more appropriate route for his personal travels.

When Nena got to the square, she found that the Gringito was no longer sitting cross-legged under the tree, but was now standing on his head. Deciding that either the world had turned upside down or the Gringito had finally gone mad, she went home to tell her mother.

Arturo sat in the plaza reflecting on life. It had become part of his daily routine over the past weeks. He was becoming quietly accustomed to his contemplative existence and he was struggling with guilt over the intoxicating sense of freedom he was enjoying away from his mother's cloying affection and his father's unbending disapproval. In truth, he was relishing the liberation of having, for the first time in his life, nobody to tell him what he should think and who he should be. Indeed, nobody seemed to care that he was there at all. He was confused by the mixed sense of loss and relief he felt away from the hold of Claudia's charismatic charms, which in his youth had given him the strength to disobey his parents' wishes, always with the hidden safety of knowing that he was meeting with Claudia's approval. He sat gazing at the little square, a yearning growing in him to become a part of the life of the uncomplicated town: simply to be accepted for himself.

As usual, a group of men were seated at a table outside the barber's shop. They were eating watermelon and drinking beer, engaged in a lively debate. The only other sign of activity in the middle of the weekday afternoon was the gentle humming of the Gringito as he
sat under the eucalyptus tree, and an emaciated dog who sidled up to the men only to be chased away with handfuls of watermelon pips. As yet, Arturo had not spoken to the men, beyond the exchange of a friendly nod and greeting, and they seemed to eye him with a wary suspicion. He felt a surge of warmth as he looked at them, trying to pluck up the courage to go over and make conversation. They were dressed just like the peasants he had seen every day of his life as they flooded into the city to sell their produce in the large central market, which, as a boy, his mother had forbidden him from visiting.

‘Don't get too close to them,' she would warn. ‘They are crawling with lice and carry all sorts of diseases on their clothes that will make your fingers and toes drop off. There was a good reason why they didn't used to be allowed to ride on the buses,' she would deliberate loudly within earshot of their maid Doña Julia. Even at the age of six, Arturo would feel his eyes and face burn with the humiliation that Doña Julia accepted in dignified silence. Arturo remembered with clarity the lecture his mother had delivered to him one day after he had begged her to be allowed to go to the market, shopping with Julia.

‘You are different from them,' his mother told him. ‘It demeans you to be seen with them. Doña Julia should know that.'

‘But she looks after me,' Arturo protested. ‘She's kind to me.'

‘She may be kind to you,' his mother replied. ‘But she is not to be trusted. Give these people half a chance and they will stab you in the back. You must understand, Arturo, they are not like us. They think and feel differently from us. They are ignorant peasants, always remember that.' And Arturo always had remembered it, with an acute and profound shame.

The
campesinos
sitting at the little table outside the barber's were
now drinking their beer in silence, staring at him. The emaciated dog had lost interest in the watermelon remains and had deserted the plaza to try his luck in the scrabble for pickings from the closing market. Arturo decided that now was the moment to break the deadlock. Apart from anything else he wanted to know whether anyone among them knew when the mayor would be returning. His resolve to start a conversation melted away under the steady gaze of the men as he approached. He felt awkward and over-dressed in the white city shirt and black trousers that Doña Julia had packed for him. He had worn them having set out that morning to try, yet again, to arrange a meeting with Ramon. As usual, when he had arrived at the town hall Ramon was nowhere to be seen. As he walked over to the men, one of them muttered something in an indistinguishable dialect and the others smiled and nodded in agreement. Suddenly, a small man with a balding head appeared in the doorway of the shop, holding a razor in one hand as he reached out to greet Arturo with the other.

‘At last,' Don Bosco said, ‘and I've won the wager that today would be the day that you would finally talk to us. You owe me five hundred pesos each,' he said, addressing the other men.

‘So, tell us, what brings you to these parts?' Don Bosco continued, smiling amiably.

Surprised at the question, Arturo was momentarily stuck for a reply. His first inclination was to tell the truth and say that his father had sent him in order to separate him from his unsuitable attachment to Claudia, or that Claudia had sent him to separate him from his unsuitable respect for his father. He decided it was easier to say that he understood that the mayor had asked for him because the town needed a doctor.

‘Indeed we do. Of course,' said Don Bosco, ‘and I'm sure you'll
be very good for us all. You are, indeed, just what we need here, an educated man.'

Arturo felt uncomfortable, uncertain whether or not Don Bosco was toying with him. ‘Actually,' Arturo continued, ‘I was wondering if you knew where the mayor's assistant is. He sent me a note yesterday and I need to make an appointment to see him. Do you know when the mayor will be returning?'

The men looked at each other. ‘As far as I know the mayor left town on business a couple of months back. We're hoping he isn't lost in the forest,' Don Bosco said with a look that suggested no such thing. ‘You're not acquainted with our mayor?' he continued.

‘No,' Arturo replied. ‘I've never met him.'

‘Well,' said Don Bosco, ‘that's a pleasure awaiting you. Don Teofelo here will take you over to find Ramon in a moment. But first, why not join us in a quick beer?'

‘So, what were you thinking?' Don Bosco asked as Arturo sat down, a chair having been placed for him at the table. ‘We've been watching you for some time now, sitting there in the afternoons staring at our plaza, and although we all think it is a fine square ourselves – one of the best in the province by all accounts – we were asking ourselves whether it is interesting enough to warrant staring at for an hour. Don Teofelo here was wisely saying how the world that is so familiar to one man can look so different through the eyes of another. So I wonder, how does our little world look to you?'

‘Actually, I was thinking how beautiful it is here. Different, but quite beautiful,' Arturo replied with sincerity.

‘Yes, and more besides that, I'll wager,' Don Bosco replied knowingly. ‘So you like what you see so far?'

‘The church is like no building I have ever seen before,' said
Arturo. ‘I'd love to see inside. I would give anything to be able to see the statue of the Virgin. Is she really in there?'

‘That is what we would all like to know,' Don Bosco replied. The men looked at each other in silence. Don Teofelo cleared his throat nervously. After a pause Don Bosco continued. ‘Perhaps the doctor could help us settle our little dispute. Seeing you sitting there in the square got us to discussing how times change. We seldom see visitors these days, and suddenly we have two, you and that odd fellow over there,' and Don Bosco nodded in the direction of the eucalyptus tree. One of the men who had left the table at the start of the introductions returned with a bottle of beer, which he gave to Arturo. Arturo, who seldom drank alcohol and never in the afternoons, accepted the beer gratefully.

‘Our mayor, it seems, has great plans for our town,' Don Bosco said suddenly, ‘and you, doctor, I suppose, are part of those plans. Don Teofelo has his views on the subject. Teofelo is a clever man, you know. He went to work in the mines when he was a young man, before he came and settled back here.'

‘As you know, Bosco,' Teofelo said, ‘I'm a modern man, I'm not against change like you people who have lived all your lives staring at this plaza and never seeing anything beyond its four corners.' Don Bosco winked at Arturo again, indicating that he was taking the insult in good spirit.

‘Not all that “modern man” nonsense again,' Don Alfredo mumbled as he took a gulp of his beer. ‘Having been in the mines makes you no more modern than the rest of us. I don't see what is so modern about going here, there and everywhere. I'm sure the beer is the same wherever you go. And anyway, if you are so modern and we are not, then why did you come back?'