Without saying anything, Felícito deposited the letter on the checkerboard, disturbing the pieces. He felt that his rage had risen to his brain and almost kept him from thinking.
“Sit down before you have a heart attack, Señor Yanaqué,” the captain said mockingly, pointing to a chair. He chewed on the ends of his mustache and his tone was arrogant and provocative. “Oh, by the way, you forgot to say good evening. I’m Captain Silva, the chief of police, at your service.”
“Good evening,” Felícito said, his voice strangled by irritation. “They just sent me another letter. I demand an explanation, officers.”
The captain read the paper, bringing it closer to the lamp on his desk. Then he passed it to Sergeant Lituma, muttering, “Well, well, this is heating up.”
“I demand an explanation,” repeated Felícito, choking. “How did the gangsters know I came to the station to file a complaint about this anonymous letter?”
“In many ways, Señor Yanaqué.” Captain Silva shrugged, looking at him with pity. “Because they followed you here, for example. Because they know you and know you’re not a man who lets himself be extorted but goes to the police and complains. Or because somebody you told that you’d filed a complaint repeated it to somebody else. Or because, suddenly, we’re the ones who wrote the letters, the villains who want to extort you. That’s occurred to you, hasn’t it? That must be why you go around in such a bad mood, hey waddya think, as your fellow Piurans say.”
Felícito repressed his desire to tell him yes. At this moment he was angrier with the two officers than with whoever wrote the letters.
“You found it the same way, attached to your front door?”
His face burned as he replied, hiding his embarrassment.
“They attached it to the front door of a person I visit.”
Lituma and Captain Silva exchanged glances.
“This means, then, that they have a thorough knowledge of your life, Señor Yanaqué,” Captain Silva commented with malicious slowness. “These bastards even know who you visit. They’ve done a good job of intelligence, it seems. So we can deduce that they’re professionals, not amateurs.”
“And now what’s going to happen?” the trucker asked. His rage of a moment ago had been replaced by a feeling of sadness and impotence. What was happening to him was unfair, it was cruel. What were they punishing him for up there? Holy God, what crime had he committed?
“Now they’ll try to scare you to soften you up,” the captain explained as if he were chatting about how mild the night was. “To make you believe they’re powerful and untouchable. And pow! That’s where they’ll make their first mistake. Then we’ll begin to track them down. Patience, Señor Yanaqué. Though you may not believe it, things are going well.”
“That’s easy to say when you’re watching from the audience,” the trucker philosophized. “Not when you’re receiving threats that upset your life and turn it upside down. You want me to be patient while these outlaws plan something bad against me or my family to soften me up?”
“Bring Señor Yanaqué a glass of water, Lituma,” Captain Silva ordered the sergeant with his usual sarcasm. “I don’t want you to have a fainting fit, because then we’ll be accused of violating the human rights of a respectable Piuran businessman.”
This cop wasn’t joking, thought Felícito. Yes, he could have a heart attack and drop dead right here on this filthy floor covered with cigarette butts. A sad death in a police station, sick with frustration because some faceless, nameless sons of bitches were toying with him, drawing spiders. He recalled his father and was moved as he evoked his hard face: the lines like knife wounds, always serious, very dark, the bristly hair and toothless mouth of his progenitor. “What should I do, Father. I know, not let them walk all over me, not give them a cent of what I’ve earned honestly. But what other advice would you give if you were alive? Spend my time waiting for the next anonymous letter? This is making me a nervous wreck, Father.” Why had he always called him Father and never Papa? Not even in these secret dialogues with him did he dare to use the informal tú. Like his sons with him. Tiburcio and Miguel had never used tú with him. But they both did with their mother.
“Do you feel better, Señor Yanaqué?”
“Yes, thank you.” He took another sip from the glass of water the sergeant had brought him and stood up.
“Let us know about any new developments right away,” the captain urged him as a way of saying goodbye. “Trust us. Your case is ours now, Señor Yanaqué.”
The officer’s words sounded sarcastic to him. He left the station profoundly depressed. For the entire walk along Calle Arequipa to his house he moved slowly, close to the buildings. He had the disagreeable sensation that someone was following him, someone who liked to think he was demolishing Felícito bit by bit, plunging him into insecurity and uncertainty, a real cocksucker so sure that sooner or later he’d defeat him. “You’re wrong, motherfucker,” he murmured.
At the house, Gertrudis was surprised he’d come home so early. She asked whether the Truckers’ Association of Piura board of directors, of which Felícito was a member, had canceled their Friday-night dinner at Club Grau. Did Gertrudis know about Mabel? How could she not know? But in these eight years she’d never given the slightest hint that she did: not one complaint, not one scene, not one innuendo, not one insinuation. How could she not have heard rumors or gossip that he had a girlfriend? Wasn’t Piura a pretty small world? Everybody knew everybody’s business, especially what they did in bed. Maybe she knew and preferred to hide it to avoid trouble and just get along. But sometimes Felícito told himself no: Given the quiet life his wife led — no relatives, only leaving the house to go to Mass or novenas or rosaries in the cathedral — it really was possible she didn’t know a thing.
“I came home early because I don’t feel very well. I think I’m getting a cold.”
“Then you didn’t eat. Do you want me to fix you something? I’ll do it, Saturnina’s gone home.”
“No, I’m not hungry. I’ll watch television for a little while and go to bed. Anything new?”
“I had a letter from my sister Armida, in Lima. It seems she’s getting married.”
“Ah, that’s nice, we’ll have to send her a present.” Felícito didn’t even know Gertrudis had a sister in the capital. First he’d heard about it. He tried to remember. Could she be that little barefoot girl, very young, who ran around El Algarrobo boardinghouse where he met his wife? No, that kid was the daughter of a truck driver named Argimiro Trelles who’d lost his wife.
Gertrudis agreed and went off to her room. Ever since Miguel and Tiburcio had left to live on their own, Felícito and his wife had separate rooms. He saw her shapeless bulk disappearing in the small dark courtyard, around which the bedrooms, dining room, living room, and kitchen were located. He’d never loved her the way you love a woman, but he felt affection for her mixed with some pity, because even though she didn’t complain, Gertrudis must be very frustrated with a husband who was so cold and unloving. It couldn’t be otherwise in a marriage that wasn’t the result of falling in love but of a drunken spree and a fuck in the dark. Or, who knows. It was a subject that, in spite of doing everything he could to forget it, came to Felícito’s mind from time to time and ruined his day. Gertrudis was the daughter of the owner of El Algarrobo, a cheap boardinghouse on Calle Ramón Castilla in the area that back then was the poorest in El Chipe, where a good number of truck drivers would stay. Felícito had gone to bed with her a couple of times, almost without realizing it, on two nights of carousing and cane liquor. He did it because he could, because she was there and was a woman, not because he wanted the girl. Nobody wanted her. Who’d want a broad who was half cross-eyed, slovenly, and always smelled of garlic and onion? As a result of one of those two fucks without love and almost without desire, Gertrudis became pregnant. That, at least, is what she and her mother told Felícito. The owner of the boardinghouse, Doña Luzmila, whom the drivers called the Boss Lady, filed a complaint against him with the police. He had to go and make a statement and acknowledge before the police chief that he’d gone to bed with a minor. He agreed to marry her because it bothered his conscience that a child of his might be born without a father and because he believed the story. Afterward, when Miguelito was born, the doubts began. Was he really his son? He never got anything out of Gertrudis, of course, and he didn’t talk about it with Adelaida or anybody else. But for all these years he’d lived with the suspicion that he wasn’t. Because he wasn’t the only one who went to bed with the Boss Lady’s daughter during those little parties they had on Saturday nights at El Algarrobo. Miguel didn’t look anything like him; the boy had white skin and light eyes. Why did Gertrudis and her mother make him the one responsible? Maybe because he was single, a decent guy, hardworking, and because the Boss Lady wanted to marry off her daughter any way she could. Maybe Miguel’s real father was some white guy who was married or had a bad reputation. From time to time the question returned and ruined his mood. He never let anyone know about it, beginning with Miguel himself. He always treated him as if he were as much his son as Tiburcio. If he sent him into the army, it was to do him a favor, because the boy was leading a dissipated life. He’d never shown any preference for the younger son who was his spitting image: a Chulucano cholo from head to foot, with not a trace of white in his face or body.