“I’ve been paying for my faults all these years, Felícito,” he heard Gertrudis say, almost without moving her full lips or taking her eyes off him for a second, though she didn’t appear to see him and spoke as if he weren’t there. “Bearing my cross in silence. Knowing very well that the sins one commits have to be paid for. Not only in the next life, in this one too. I’ve accepted it. I’ve repented for myself and for the Boss Lady. I’ve paid for myself and my mama. I don’t feel the rancor toward her that I did when I was young. I keep paying and hope that with so much suffering, Our Lord Jesus Christ will forgive so many sins.”
Felícito wanted her to be quiet right now and leave. But he didn’t have the strength to stand and walk out of the room. His legs were trembling. “I wish I were that buzzing fly and not me,” he thought.
“You helped me pay for them, Felícito,” his wife continued, lowering her voice a little. “And I’m grateful. That’s why I never said anything. That’s why I never made a jealous scene or asked questions that might have bothered you. That’s why I never let on that I knew you’d fallen in love with another woman, that you had a mistress who wasn’t old and ugly like me, but young and pretty. That’s why I never complained about Mabel and never blamed you. Because Mabel also helped me pay for my sins.”
She fell silent, waiting for the trucker to say something, but since he didn’t open his mouth, she added: “I never thought we’d have this conversation either, Felícito. You wanted it, not me.”
Again she paused for a long time and murmured, making the sign of the cross in the air with her gnarled fingers. “Now this thing Miguel did to you is the penance you have to pay for yourself. And for me too.”
After her last words, Gertrudis stood with an agility Felícito didn’t remember her possessing and shuffled out of the room. He remained seated in the television room, not hearing the noises, the voices, the horns, the bustle of Calle Arequipa, or the mototaxi engines, sunk in a dense lethargy, a despair and sadness that didn’t let him think and deprived him of even the energy needed to get to his feet. He wanted to, he wanted to leave this house even though as soon as he walked outside the reporters would be all over him with their relentless questions, each one stupider than the last, he wanted to go to the Eguiguren Seawalk and sit down to watch the brown-and-gray river water, watch the clouds in the sky, breathe in the warm afternoon, listen to the birds calling. But he didn’t try to move because his legs weren’t going to obey him, or vertigo would knock him to the carpet. It horrified him to think that his father, from the next life, might have heard the conversation he’d just had with his wife.
He didn’t know how long he was in that state of viscous somnolence, feeling time pass, ashamed and sorry for himself, Gertrudis, Mabel, Miguel, everybody. From time to time, like a ray of clear light, his father’s face would appear in his mind, and that fleeting image would relieve him for an instant. “If you’d been alive and found out about all this, you’d have died again,” he thought.
Suddenly he realized that Tiburcio had come into the room without his having noticed. He was kneeling beside him, holding his arms, looking at him in fright.
“I’m fine, don’t worry,” he reassured his son. “I just dozed off for a minute.”
“Do you want me to call a doctor?” He was in the blue coveralls and cap that were the company’s drivers’ uniform; on the visor was written “Narihualá Transport.” In one hand he held the untanned leather gloves he wore to drive the buses. “You look very pale, Father.”
“Did you just get back from Tumbes?” he replied. “A good trip?”
“Almost full and a lot of cargo,” Tiburcio said. His face still looked frightened, and he was studying Felícito, as if trying to pull out a secret. He clearly would have liked to ask endless questions but didn’t dare. Felícito pitied him too.
“I heard the news about Miguel on the radio in Tumbes,” said Tiburcio, clearly confused. “I couldn’t believe it. I called the house a thousand times but nobody answered the phone. I don’t know how I managed to drive here. Do you think what the police say about my brother is true?”
Felícito was about to interrupt to say, “He isn’t your brother,” but stopped himself. Weren’t Miguel and Tiburcio brothers? Half brothers, maybe, but brothers.
“It might be a lie, I think they’re lies,” Tiburcio was saying now, upset, still on the floor, still holding his father’s arms. “The police might have forced a false confession out of him, beat him, tortured him. Everybody knows they do those things.”
“No, Tiburcio. It’s true,” said Felícito. “He was the spider. He planned all of it. He confessed because that woman, his accomplice, accused him. Now I’m going to ask you for a big favor, son. Let’s not talk about it anymore. Not ever again. Not about Miguel or the spider. For me, it’s as if your brother has ceased to exist. I mean, as if he’d never existed. I don’t want him mentioned in this house. Never again. You can do whatever you like. Go to see him, if you want. Bring him food, find him a lawyer, whatever. I don’t care. I don’t know what your mother will want to do. Just don’t tell me anything. I don’t want to know. He’ll never be mentioned in my presence. I curse his name and that’s it. Now, help me up, Tiburcio. I don’t know why, but it’s as if my legs were suddenly rebelling.”
Tiburcio stood, and holding him by both arms, lifted him effortlessly.
“I’m going to ask you to come with me to the office,” said Felícito. “Life must go on. We have to get back to work and straighten out the company: It’s been through a rough time. The family’s not the only one suffering over this, son. Narihualá Transport is too. We have to get it moving again.”
“The street’s full of reporters,” Tiburcio cautioned him. “They were all over me when I arrived and wouldn’t let me pass. I almost got into a fight with one of them.”
“You’ll help keep those savages away from me, Tiburcio.” He looked into his son’s eyes and, giving his face a clumsy caress, sweetened his voice: “I’m grateful to you for not mentioning Mabel, son, or asking about that woman. You’re a good son, you know.”
He grasped the boy’s arm and walked with him toward the door. A clamor broke out as soon as he opened it, and the flashbulbs made him blink. “I have nothing to say, gentlemen, thank you very much,” he repeated two, three, ten times while, clutching Tiburcio’s arm, he struggled to make his way along Calle Arequipa, pursued, shoved, jostled by the swarm of reporters who kept interrupting one another and pushing microphones, cameras, notebooks, and pencils in his face. They asked questions he couldn’t understand. He kept repeating periodically, as if it were a refrain: “I have nothing to say, ladies, gentlemen, thank you very much.” They followed him to Narihualá Transport but couldn’t go in because the watchman slammed the heavy door in their faces. When he sat down at the board placed over two barrels that still served as his desk, Tiburcio handed him a glass of water.
“And that elegant lady named Armida, did you know her, Father?” his son asked. “Did you know my mama had a sister in Lima? She never told us about her.”
He shook his head and lifted a finger to his mouth. “A big mystery, Tiburcio. She came to hide here because it seems they’re hounding her in Lima and even want to kill her. You’d better forget about her and not tell anybody you saw her. We have enough problems without inheriting my sister-in-law’s too.”
It required a huge effort, but he began to work. To look over accounts, drafts, due dates, current expenditures, income, bills, payments to providers, collections. At the same time, at the back of his mind, he was formulating a plan of action for the days that followed. And after a while he began to feel better, to suspect that it was possible to win this extremely difficult battle. Suddenly he felt a powerful desire to listen to the warm, tender voice of Cecilia Barraza. Too bad he didn’t have any of her CDs at the office — songs like “Thistle or Ash,” “Innocent Love,” “Sweet Affection,” or “The Bull Kills”—or a machine to play them on. As soon as things improved, he’d buy one. After the fire damage had been repaired, on afternoons or nights when he stayed to work in the office, he’d put on a series of CDs by his favorite singer. He’d forget about everything and feel happy, or sad, always moved by the voice that could bring out in waltzes, handkerchief dances, polkas, vendors’ cries, all Peruvian music, the most delicate feelings hidden deep inside him.