Ramon Cervantes, I was now certain, was not a wealthy man, living as he had on a dark little street in a part of Lima out near the airport that I would characterize as decidedly modest, a neighborhood that reeked of rancid cooking oil and thwarted aspirations. The streets, unlike many of the streets in the old part of central Lima, were paved, although badly rutted and potholed. Ramon had lived in a flat that one reached by going up a dark and dirty staircase running between a malodorous restaurant and an engine repair shop. At street level, the visitor was overwhelmed by the dinginess of the location, but if one stepped back, across the street, one could see, on the second floor, vestiges of Lima’s colonial past in the large windows fronted by wrought iron railings, and the swirling plaster wreaths and garlands along the roofline above them. The shutters on the apartment to the left of the staircase were closed tight.
On my first visit, shortly after my arrival in Lima, I had climbed the dark steps to a second-floor landing. There were two apartments, one on either side of the staircase. On the door to the right was a little name-plate, not Cervantes, and on the other, a black ribbon tied to the door knocker. I knocked, tentatively at first, then louder. No one answered, and there was no sound from within. I waited outside for a few minutes, watched closely by a Chinese woman in a little chifa, or Chinese restaurant, across the street.
On my second visit, I was greeted by the same silence and lack of an answer. This time I took a seat in the chifa across the road where I could watch the staircase, and ordered a beer. After a few minutes, the Chinese proprietor came over to my table. “Who are you looking for?” she asked. I told her I was looking for Senora Cervantes.
“That tart,” she said. “Senora Cervantes you call her. Very fancy. She’d like that. Thinks she’s better than the rest of us, always putting on airs. But around here she’s just Carla. Or sometimes just the tart.” She used the word fulana. Spanish has as many words for those who ply the world’s oldest profession as we do in English. “She’s in there,” she went on. “Won’t answer the door. Worried it will be the landlord. She can’t pay the rent, you know. Or her brother-in-law, who blames her for what happened. Her husband’s dead.”
“I heard,” I said. “Too bad.”
“Too bad for her, that’s for certain. Maybe not for him. For him, perhaps, a blessing. Left her with three kids. She’s sent them away, you know, to her sister in Trujillo. She shouldn’t have kids. No patience with them. Too much of a child herself. Took all their money, did that husband of hers, what there was of it, and went off somewhere far, Canada I think, and then up and died.”
Clearly my newfound friend didn’t miss much, and didn’t mind whom she told about it either.
“Why would he do that, I wonder,” I said.
She snorted. “Die, you mean? Or go to Canada? The only thing to wonder about is how he got enough money to go there in the first place, and why he didn’t go sooner. Found her with someone. His own brother. A fine man, Ramon Cervantes. He didn’t deserve that, I can tell you. A real tart, that one.”
Dear me, I thought, poor Lizard. But how does finding your wife in flagrante delicto with your brother get you to an auction in Toronto and a gory and premature death in my storage room?
The woman from the chifa had more to tell me. She paused only long enough to get me another beer, unasked for. Buying from her was, I gathered, how I was paying for this information.
“But it’s no use feeling sorry for Ramon, is there? No use feeling sorry for the dead. It’s his brother I feel sorry for now: Jorge. Consumed with guilt. Just consumed with it. Drinks like a fish at the bar down the street, then comes and stands under the window watching for her. I call her a tart, but he calls her a witch, a bruja. Claims she bewitched both him and his brother, made them do bad things. His wife has left him now. Taken his kids too. Him, I feel sorry for.
“There,” she said, pointing to a young man, obviously drunk and disheveled, passing in front of the chifa. “Jorge.” We watched him lurch by. She was right: He looked pathetic indeed. A few moments later, when Jorge could no longer be seen, she went on. “As for her, when she does come out, she’s not dressed like a widow, that I can tell you. Disgraceful. Lots of loud colors: Pink’s her favorite. If she’s shedding tears, it’s for herself, and not for him. She’ll do all right, of course. Men like to look after her. First her father doted on her, then Ramon, the poor man. Not good enough for her, was he? A good man with a steady government job would be enough for most of us, wouldn’t it?”
“She goes out these days, does she?” I asked in what I hoped was a disinterested tone. The woman didn’t answer. I ordered a cheese sandwich to go with the beer. It was the cheapest bribe on the menu.
“At night,” she said, setting the grilled cheese sandwich in front of me. “After the landlord closes up his office down the street and goes home to Montericco. Then she usually goes out. About eight or nine.”
And so it was that I was back in Callao at night. I was a little uneasy about being out alone in this part of town, but the chifa was still open, and I ordered a coffee and a creme caramel while I waited to see what would happen.
Around seven-thirty, my newfound Chinese friend nudged my arm and pointed to a rather rotund middle-aged man heading down the street. As he passed the Cervantes residence, I saw him look up for a moment or two at the darkened apartment. “The landlord,” she whispered. “Going home. Now watch the shutters carefully.” I did, and a few minutes later I could see that a dim light had been turned on inside. The chifa owner gave me a knowing look.
About three quarters of an hour later, I heard, rather than saw, someone on the stairs, and a young woman entered the street.
“The tart,” the Chinese woman hissed, tossing her head in the direction of the woman. I quickly paid the bill and followed the young woman.
As my informant had predicted, Carla Cervantes was not dressed for a funeral. Instead she was wearing a pink dress, sleeveless, with narrow straps and a neckline that swooped rather low. The dress was, in my opinion, a little unfashionable, and more than a little tight on her, although I’ll admit I’d give my eyeteeth to be able to look like her in that dress. I could not help but note that all the men in the street gaped at her as she went by, and not one of them took any notice whatsoever of me, despite the fact that I was the only gringa on that street at that moment, testament, indeed, to the allure of Sefiora Cervantes.
At the end of the street was a busy avenue, and after a moment or two, Carla flagged down a colectivo headed for Miraflores. I immediately hailed a cab and asked the driver, a young man in jeans and a T-shirt advertising a rock group I’d never heard of, possibly the one on the tape in the car, to follow that colectivo. He jumped on the accelerator in his enthusiasm for the project, and whipped into the traffic, horn blaring, bouncing both me and his audiotape collection from side to side in the backseat like dice in a box. From time to time, he would turn to grin at me and quite unnecessarily point out the colectivo only one or two car lengths ahead. I held on to the door handle for dear life.
The colectivo turned off a side road, took a couple of backstreets, then turned down a ramp that led to what Limenos call the Ditch, a sunken expressway that cuts diagonally across the face of the city. A few minutes later, the colectivo pulled off another ramp and then dropped Carla at the door to one of the swankier hotels in Miraflores, in itself one of the poshest parts of Lima. I followed her through the glass doors into the hotel bar to the left of the main door, and took a seat at a table three away, but with a clear view of Carla and the man she had obviously come to meet.