“I haven’t changed my clothes because I don’t have anything else to wear,” his sister-in-law continued as if she hadn’t heard him. “I left Lima with what I had on my back. I tried one of Gertrudis’s dresses, but I was swimming in it. Well, I ought to begin this story at the beginning.”
“Explain at least one thing to me,” Felícito asked her. “Because Gertrudis, as you must have seen, has become mute and will never explain it to me. Are you full sisters?”
Armida shifted in her seat, disconcerted, not knowing how to answer. She looked for help to Gertrudis, who remained silent, folded in on herself, like one of those mollusks with odd names sold in the Central Market by fishwives. Her expression was one of total apathy, as if nothing she heard had anything to do with her, but she didn’t take her eyes off either one of them.
“We don’t know,” Armida said finally, gesturing toward her sister with her chin. “We’ve talked a lot about it these past three days.”
“Ah, in other words, Gertrudis talks to you. You’re luckier than I am.”
“We have the same mother, that’s the only thing we know for sure,” Armida declared, slowly regaining her self-control. “She’s a few years older than me. But neither one of us remembers our father. Maybe he was the same man. Maybe not. There’s nobody left to ask, Felícito. As far back as we can remember, the Boss Lady — that’s what they called my mama, do you remember? — didn’t have a husband.”
“Did you live in El Algarrobo too?”
“Until I was fifteen,” Armida said. “It wasn’t a boardinghouse yet, just a wayside inn for mule drivers in the middle of the sandy tract. When I was fifteen I went to Lima to find a job. It wasn’t easy. I went through some hard times, worse than you can imagine. But Gertrudis and I never lost touch. I wrote to her sometimes, though she answered only once in a blue moon. She never liked writing letters. The fact is, Gertrudis only spent two or three years in school. I was luckier and finished elementary school. The Boss Lady made sure I went to school, but she put Gertrudis to work in the boardinghouse very early.”
Felícito turned to his wife.
“I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me you had a sister,” he said.
But she kept looking at him as if she were looking through water and didn’t respond.
“I’ll tell you why, Felícito,” Armida intervened. “Gertrudis was ashamed, she didn’t want you to find out her sister was working in Lima as a maid. Especially after she married you and became respectable.”
“You were a domestic servant?” the trucker said in surprise, looking at his sister-in-law’s dress.
“All my life, Felícito. Except for a time when I worked in a textile factory in Vitarte.” She smiled. “I can see you think it’s strange for me to have a fine dress and shoes, and a watch like this. They’re Italian, just imagine.”
“That’s right, Armida, I think it’s very strange,” Felícito concurred. “You look like anything but a servant.”
“It’s just that I married the man who owned the house where I worked,” Armida explained, blushing. “An important man, and prosperous.”
“Ah, caramba, I get it, a marriage that changed your life,” said Felícito. “In other words, you won the lottery.”
“In a certain sense I did, but in another way, no,” Armida corrected him. “Because Señor Carrera, I mean Ismael, my husband, was a widower. He had two sons from his first marriage. They’ve hated me since I married their father. They tried to annul the marriage, they filed a complaint against me with the police, they went before a judge and accused their father of being a demented old man. They said I’d tricked him, given him cocaine, and used all other kinds of witchcraft.”
Felícito saw that Armida’s face had changed. It wasn’t serene anymore. Now there was sadness and anger in her expression.
“Ismael took me to Italy for our honeymoon,” she added, sweetening her voice and smiling. “They were very nice weeks. I never imagined I’d see such pretty things, such different things. We even saw the pope on his balcony, from St. Peter’s Square. That trip was like a fairy tale. My husband always had business meetings, and I spent a lot of time alone, being a tourist.”
“That’s how she got the dress, those jewels, that watch, those shoes,” thought Felícito. “A honeymoon in Italy! She married a rich man! A gold digger!”
“Over there in Italy, my husband sold an insurance company he had in Lima,” Armida continued. “So it wouldn’t fall into the hands of his sons, who couldn’t wait to inherit it, even though he’d already given them an advance on their inheritance. They’re big spenders and the worst kind of bums. Ismael suffered a lot because of them and that’s why he sold the company. I tried to understand the whole complicated situation but couldn’t follow his legal explanations. Well, we went back to Lima, and as soon as we got there, my husband had a heart attack that killed him.”
“I’m very sorry,” Felícito stammered. Armida had fallen silent, and her eyes were lowered. Gertrudis was motionless, implacable.
“Or they killed him,” added Armida. “I don’t know. He used to say his sons wanted him to die so much so they could get his money that they would even hire somebody to kill him. He died so suddenly, I can’t help thinking that the twins — his sons are twins — somehow caused the heart attack that killed him. If it was a heart attack and not poison. I don’t know.”
“Now I’m beginning to understand your escaping to Piura and hiding here, not even going outside,” said Felícito. “Do you really think your husband’s sons might—”
“I don’t know if it’s even occurred to them or not, but Ismael used to say they were capable of anything, even having him killed.” Armida was agitated now and talking quickly. “I began to feel unsafe and very scared, Felícito. There was a meeting with them at the lawyers’ offices. They talked to me and looked at me in a way that made me think they might have me killed too. My husband used to say that nowadays in Lima you can hire a killer to murder anybody for a few soles. Why wouldn’t they do that if it meant keeping all of Señor Carrera’s inheritance?”
She paused and looked into Felícito’s eyes.
“That’s why I decided to escape. It occurred to me that nobody would come to look for me here, in Piura. That’s pretty much the story I wanted to tell you, Felícito.”
“Well, well,” he said. “I understand, I do. The thing is, what bad luck. Fate delivered you straight into the lion’s den. The thing is, it’s called jumping from the frying pan into the fire, Armida.”
“I told you I’d stay only two or three days, and I promise you I’ll keep my word,” said Armida. “I need to talk to a person who lives in Lima. The only one my husband trusted completely. He was a witness at our wedding. Would you help me contact him? I have his phone number. Would you do me that huge favor?”
“But call him yourself, from here,” said the trucker.
“It wouldn’t be smart.” Armida hesitated, pointing at the telephone. “What if the line’s bugged? My husband thought the twins had tapped all our phones. Better to call outside, from your office, and use your cell phone, it seems cell phones are harder to bug. I can’t leave this house. That’s why I’ve turned to you.”
“Give me the number and the message I should give him,” said Felícito. “I’ll do it from the office this afternoon. Very happy to, Armida.”
That afternoon, when he’d shoved his way past the roadblock of reporters and was walking to his office along Calle Arequipa, Felícito Yanaqué told himself that Armida’s story seemed straight out of one of the adventure films he liked to see on the rare occasions he went to the movies. And he’d thought that kind of brutal action had nothing to do with real life. But Armida’s story and his own, ever since he received the first spider letter, were nothing more or less than action movies.